Coney Island Baby

Now that my father has been gone 3 years, Memorial Day is not the same.  Not that he spoke much about the war; it took him a good 50 years after his last medals were processed to begin meeting with other WWII veterans and survivors.  He never really considered his daughters as 'legacy', and one thing I respected about him most-- he considered it bad form to self-aggrandize and accept accolades of bravery when the real heroes had come back in boxes.

In my childhood, it was called 'Decoration Day' and it fell on May 30th.  No Monday euphemisms in the 50's and 60's.  Holidays were observed-- not shopped and marketed to death.  Yes, there was a cookout... even a trip to Washington DC where I experienced presidential and military Memorial monuments which were humbling and inspiring.  I was maybe 5-- the scale of these buildings was enormous... the lines of people waiting to enter were impressive; it was my first brush with 'America'.  What did I know? My father was a mystery-- a man with a hard shell who occasionally held my hand in crowds.

I've been tough on my father, as he was incredibly tough on me.  In the current culture, fathers are so hands-on... they are intimately involved in pregnancies, present at the birth, they change diapers and share parenting equally.  They are emotional and tender... this is accepted and acceptable... but maybe not so in my father's day.  After all, here was a tough military hero suddenly dropped in the big city with a young wife and domestic responsibility.  He left home a boy, lived with terror and violence and a daily task of staying alive against massive odds and challenges... then returned laden with medals and souvenir uniforms to join the city workforce-- to get an apartment, shop for groceries.  Every day on the subway and on street corners we are accosted by these displaced veterans who are struggling to adjust to regular life, and failing.  We are aware of this now.  Back then, there was little empathy built into the system-- they were expected to simply pick up the ball and continue.

The concept of a father, I suppose, was as important as the actuality.  Even though I had little communication with mine, it was assumed he paid bills, went to work, had the car fixed, etc.  Kind of the way we viewed our President as kids-- the Father of our country.  It was Eisenhower, during much of my childhood-- then Kennedy came and we all bonded.  He was the movie-star President-father-- our handsome hero  who was camera-ready and charming.  Brave and smart.  We didn't pick our heroes apart in those days;  Elvis was King.

By the same token, the concept of children was different.  No one bothered to ask me if I was happy or unhappy.  I was told where to go and what to do-- Scout wilderness camp, music, ballet... my parents placed their kids into the same slots all their neighbors kids were in.  There was no discussion, no question-and-answer.  I grew up and left home a teenager.  I had little desire to return.  As I studied and observed the world, I realized some things just look normal and pretty.  My independence, despite the ultra-dependent model of my Mom-- such a perfectly functional 50's style housewife-- was supreme.

Memorial Day now is a day of nostalgia for me.  Sure-- the sense of oncoming summer, and the absence of the excitement we felt as children about the end of school coalesces on the brink of June, but for me-- well, no parades, but memories.  As a single parent, it always brought the seasonal stress of how to amuse my son with no school and very little money.  There were camp options, sports options... but essentially we spent summers sweating it out in the city, me feeling guilty about lacking the means for a vacation... my own father judging me for my failure to do this, but never offering to help out; not his style, nor mine.  It is also the anniversary of the death of my baby daughter-- something I could not process for years.  It was a beautiful day... she held out until the post-Memorial Day Tuesday at lunchtime.

Coney Island was a frequent treat when I was very small.  Ditto for my own son.  It was something I could manage-- a subway ride, a day on the Boardwalk.. a few kiddie rides and a hotdog.  This year I kept remembering one incident... we took the D train to Brooklyn on the Friday after school.  My son had a full scholarship to a prestigious prep school which was great-- but all his friends would be whisked off to exotic weekend destinations and Fridays were kind of a finger pointing at me tattooed with 'Loser'.  So he was maybe 10--- had just reached the required height to ride the Cyclone.  I'd had my fill of that roller coaster as a child.  It was a rite of passage and I closed my eyes and made it through-- terror being the operative emotion.  Something about those old wooden rides... but my own son was determined-- it was like a test, a badge.  I'd put aside a little extra-- that was becoming tough for me-- to even afford a day at the amusement park.

So there we were, at maybe 4 PM-- we circled the park, watched a few games... finally approached the great ride, the King of the amusement park.   How he had grown in one year-- we'd measured him with his running sneakers...  even my heart was racing at the foot of the rollercoaster... we could hear screams every several second intervals and the unique rumbling noise of wheels on wooden tracks.  I'm really hungry, my son announced... there was a small stand across from the entrance that sold corncobs.  We ordered one... they were so good... he drank a coke... slowly... the cars stopped, dropped off their happy human passengers and reloaded...  watched another course.  Another.  He ordered another ear of corn... ate it with deliberation I'd never seen in a boy.  We watched.  It was loud... terrifying...  Five o'clock passed and lines were becoming longer.

8:15... the sun was going down... Four ears of corn, one pretzel for me... I finally announced I think I'd run out of cash...  there was barely enough for the Cyclone ticket-- we'd have to walk home.  So he scolded me, my son... damn you, Mom... let's go.  We rode quietly back, changed trains... he said not one word to me... I never brought it up; he never again asked to go back to Coney Island except to watch Marbury and Sebastian Telfair on the courts as a teenager... that was that.

I often thought-- if he'd had a father-- my father--  he would have been walked up to the ride, strapped in... done.  I had enough issues mothering a boy;  but I wasn't going to coerce him into anything.  I went to all his games, wildly cheered him on... God knows how I ended up with the star athlete, the girl-magnet in High School...  Maybe this was kind of a rebellion?  Anyway, it was his path.  He once commented, after some kid's Dad was coaching his basketball team-- you know, Mom... I'd rather have no father than that father.   There was a man downstairs who'd been a professional soccer star in South America.  He was rough and tough and his son was gay-at-birth.  The soccer star screamed and gave beatings and the kid often took refuge in my apartment; he'd sit and paint, wearing one of my hats; he had incredible talent.  Still, I wasn't sure.  The very word father made me emotional.

On Memorial Day Monday my son who is nearly thirty now buzzed my apartment unexpectedly.  He is rarely in my neighborhood and I am usually at home these days, holiday or not, obliviously working on music and poetry projects.  I was dressed in old clothes, unprepared for guests... and he was with a new girlfriend-- they'd been on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum-- one of my favorite places.  They came up.  She looked at his old room, the photos I have on my shelves and walls...  and I realized he was showing her the little monuments and souvenirs of his past-- no medals like in my childhood home-- but his old musician/writer mother in her cabinet of curiosities here... this boychild I had brought into the world with no skills or experience-- without a man to show him the ropes,  here he was-- no military honors, no Cyclone ticket stub, no cookouts and grilling contests or company picnics, but plenty of memories --not ashamed but proud of his roots and the  past we had somehow created in our own random uncharted family way.  Something to salute.

Closely Watched Trains

At 8 or 9 PM on New Year's Eve I generally try to phone one of my friends overseas where the year has begun in earnest.  It feels a little special-- as though we are bridging some time gap and violating some order-- me here in the past, getting ready to go to a gig, listening to the sounds of the future-- the singing and rowdy partygoers who have passed the finish line and have already begun to unwind and absorb the vaguely monotonous reality that 2018 or whatever year is not so different from 2017-- at least not yet.  My Norwegian friends were drunk and optimistic that we are all going to blow this one wide open.

Working as a musician on this night is a sort of brilliant copout.  I am not responsible for the success or failure of the party; there is no anticipated date, no dinner reservation or romantic disappointment-- just amps, microphones, music, dancing, alcohol and noise-making... and then I get paid and go home to my peaceful little uptown hideaway where I am relieved that the world passed another milestone without disaster, that there were no deaths in Times Square; the MTA is at least holiday-operative, and the global clock is still ticking.

The subway ride home at 4 AM January 1 is special.  Back in the 1980's public transportation was free on this night-- a gift to the city, so anyone could afford to get home somehow-- even those who had lost their wallets or spent every last dollar in bars and clubs.   I can remember being so poor as a student, we rode the train to Coney Island and back as our celebration; standing on the beach watching distant fireworks was intoxicating.  At some point full-fare was restored;  this year the extreme cold was the main topic...  it made things little extra festive-- we were all so relieved to be off the street and in a relatively warm car.  There was, of course, the prerequisite vomiter, the sleeping drunks... but mostly just revelers with their parties still in tow, stumbling in and out of train doors with paper hats and crowns and joy.

I am always relieved, these days, to go home after a gig-- relieved that there are no major disasters, no stage-pissing or broken bones, no lost chords or tuners-- and somehow this night I sensed the awkward-shaped package of 2017 tie itself off.  I felt clean-- unburdened of dread, and slightly lifted from the muddy ground of the old year which brought month after month of sad news-- death, illness and tragedy.  I was letting it go; or rather, it was releasing me.  Across the car from me was a twenty-something man with his knees drawn up,  skinny jeans down around his hips, designer underwear and bare back in full view.  Obviously he'd lost his coat-- he'd had a rough night.  The boys next to me began to try to wake him-- what should we do, they asked me, the obvious 'senior' passenger and designated mother? Let him sleep, I advised; he's safer in the warm car until he sobers up and can figure out his itinerary.... but they were adamant... he woke, the sleeper-- and in his dark wet eyes was the halo of narcotics.  He was angry-- defensive-- he was some kind of beautiful and non-gendered persona-- belligerent, wounded.  I could imagine he'd been personally traumatized-- disappointed or even abused just hours earlier; there was guilt in his attempt at defiance-- there was also resentment and old grief.  It took a few minutes until he recognized something behind my guitar case and my wraps...  a maternal presence;  on the verge of complicated tears, he at last confided his destination-- yes,  completely disoriented and traveling further and further from his Brooklyn home.  So we all put our January-1 heads together and mapped out a route with transfers and station-jumping so he could remain inside until the last exit.  A young couple took him across the platform at 42nd Street-- they hugged me as they departed the train.

There is always a great media-fuss made over the first baby of the year; inevitably in this huge city there is a birth shortly after midnight.  I realized, as I rode the rest of the way uptown, my train-mates were my newborns of 2018.  The sad, wounded coatless Brooklynite... the young couples with glitter-tattoos, the chef on his way to the morning shift at Mount Sinai, the tired bartender from Artichoke Pizza who plays upright bass and hopes for a career in music; he took his hat off as I left and let down his beautiful black hair-- with his lovely voice and hands-- I know he will be a star.

We humans begin to lose our memory as we collect time, but most of us seem to retain a special slot for 'firsts': the first day of school, the first dance, the first minute of pregnancy, first night we spent with almost every single lover-- even if it was also the last.  We can play back things-- the room, what he wore, the way he felt under the sheets... these things seem to persist somewhere, like a recurring dream.  And of course the moments with our children... even the difficult ones, when you are wracked with some fever or even labor, and your toddler is needing you to read to him.'

I played my  usual Monday gig, still in the spell of the new year, and returned home on the Q, realizing things were already dissolving into normalcy.  People were tired and cold, not many smiled or shared on the train or the platform.  Today I stopped for a coffee and finished my first book of the year, or really, the last of the past year-- a Salman Rushdie.  There was a little girl, nagging her father to read to her; he was distressed, searching his phone, pacing a bit...  she came over to me with her book, and her sad mouth, and I was nearly unable to read-- my voice cracking and nostalgic for the babies that were so grown up and the one that had not made it.  Here, I wanted to say to her father-- you have a clean slate.. what can be more urgent than this opportunity which fate can take from you any moment?  She leaned on me, this child, the way they do--with trust and affection, like a stray dog.

Tonight, January 2,  I wept in the cold-- for the already widening distance of the last year, for the missing children of my first day who are already lost in the city... for the lights, for the ghosts of the Christmas trees that lined the sidewalk on Lexington with hope and anticipation and now would be lying spent on the curb for sanitation pick-up, for the homeless men who must leave the warmth and light of the 96th Street library at 7 PM closing, for the crosstown bus driver who confessed he had no one to go home to after the night shift; for the passion and love and first nights of the past, the small family searching these buildings not so long ago for the home we discovered, for the emptiness of the future as a solitary woman who gleans from fruit vendors and thrift shops in a nondescript coat of non-recognition, trying to savor the grace of the beginning, while the world and time is thrusting us ever-forward.  We are prepared for the weather, some of us-- but not for whatever fate holds for us in the next onslaught of days and weeks and months.  I was so blindsided by 2017, trying hard to re-baptize myself into some incarnation of hope-- resolving, as we do, we perennials, to observe and honor what we are given, and to pray for another beginning when this one, too, has worn itself out.

Bell Clear

When you are small, you learn to listen on Christmas Eve.  There was usually snow, which mutes the street noise, and the sound of old radiators clanking keeping you at the edge of sleep when you were already excited about stockings and presents.  I always swore I heard sleigh bells in the near distance, and sneaked out of bed to check the windows and make sure our Glasswax Santa-stencils looked perfect enough for the Man himself.

These years I am grateful for the bells of the Brick Church which chime out Christmas carols, and the muffled train whistles from  the Metro North.  The rain on Christmas eve was calm and quiet.  Two weeks ago a woman I'd known briefly-- a gorgeous, former Ford model who seemed to have everything-- had hung herself in her country house.  I tried not to miss things, and sat up through the night listening to Handel by the blinking lights of the tree feeling grateful for the simple gift of groceries.

Christmas night, I went down to the laundry room.  My building, during holidays, is quite deserted.  I have the job of taking in everyone's newspaper.  Someone, like a gift,  had left a toy piano on the folding table-- a real antique one, made of wood.  All the keys worked and I plunked out a few simple carols in the dark and had one of those Proustian moments remembering the one my older sister had been given so many years ago.  For some reason hers reminded me of Cinderella.  Maybe everything that year reminded me of Cinderella-- but I craved it and she wouldn't let me touch it until years later when she discarded it altogether and hid it in the basement where I secretly banged out songs to my heart's content.  It was magical.

That same year Santa brought me a set of those colored bells which was absolutely my best present ever.  It was tedious, but you could essentially manage most songs if you didn't care about octave accuracy.  The two blue ones were my favorites. I polished them and covered them at night with a doll blanket.  I'm sure they have tons of these on ebay.  They were called Freedom bells, or that's what I called them.

My sister and I have been estranged for years.  For a brief minute in the laundry room, I thought of her and her Cinderella piano, ribbons in her ponytail matching her red plaid Christmas dress.  That was the Freedomland year, the fantasy amusement park they built somewhere in the Bronx which our parents boycotted for some reason.  It had been plagued by financial woes, freak accidents and bad luck.  But we children were desperate to see it.  My sister was 10 or 11- in 6th grade, and I was only 7.  All the kids on our block, including our cousins, decided we were going to cut school one day and go.  We had bus maps and timetables.  We knew exactly how we would do it.  So we began-- bake sales, hot chocolate, lemonade stands, hoarding unicef pennies… until we had a small pile of savings which would get us onto all the rides, hot dogs and roundtrip tickets.  We planned it out to the last detail… and one night---who knows why-- my sister told our parents.  She did stuff like that-- unplanned, non-sequitur weird behavioral about-faces.  They got on the phone, alerted all the others, and we were not just punished but forced to turn over our earnings.  I was utterly miserable.

The next morning, my cousins came over and started screaming at me.  Apparently my sister told everyone I was the traitor.  I was too young to have any credibility, and of course it made sense that the 'baby', as they all taunted me, had tattled.  It was unbearable.  My sister wouldn't look at me, and took her punishment like a martyr.  But I was tormented, I was hated.  It was not just the devastating disappointment of my trip and the fact that I had donated my little Winnie the Poohs to the purse---  but it was maybe my first real betrayal.

I guess the neighborhood kids eventually forgave me; one of the nicer mothers tried to console us with the news that some child had been paralyzed by another accident, and it could have been us.  But my sister never apologized.  Not only that--- someone bent the clapper of my favorite bell so it didn't ring anymore.  My sister hated me.  Maybe just because she had to share our Mom, a closet, whatever.  But years later, there were similar betrayals-- boys I loved, money she stole, things I traded her so she wouldn't say malicious things about me.  I had to do damage control.

Among the things I miss at Christmas-- the people, the places-- my sister is not.  I occasionally think I should call her-- it is adult closure, isn't it?  But I don't; I don't even know her phone number.  Every time someone in my life does something mean-spirited or manipulative, I think of her, of how maybe these things warped me and taught me not to trust people.  But I do trust people.  Even when they do totally unexpected and unkind things.

My friend's dog bit him the other day-- not just a nick, but a deep, penetrating wound.  He didn't really mean it-- he was riled by another dog and got sort of confused.  Dogs don't really apologize, and I accepted my sister's behavior.  It was a lesson.  Years later I used to take my son down to Coney Island and we would watch the Cyclone for hours while we ate grilled corn and pretzels.  Neither of us will ever take the ride, but we liked to watch, from a distance.  I will never betray my son, and he knows it.  I can't say that for anyone else, but that's the way it is.

I went back down to the laundry room at 5 AM; I decided I'd adopt the piano-- maybe give it to my guitar player friend who would undoubtedly appreciate the nostalgia of its imperfect tuning…. but it was gone.   Like those Christmas-story ghost visitors, like my own Christmas vision-- it was there, I know it was there.. .and then it wasn't.

My cousin called to wish me a happy holiday.  We talked about the girl who hung herself and our kids, about Freedomland and my damaged bells.  She said she still has nightmares about my sister.  We had a great laugh and it felt good.  My son slept over and went to have a beer and watch basketball at our local bar.  We walked home in the clearing late afternoon light and listened to the train whistle and the church bells chiming out Joy to the World.  I didn't tell him about the bells, or the toy piano; he doesn't have that 'gene', as he says, but he stopped for a minute and took a shot of the train as it went into the Park Ave. tunnel.  We used to stand there for hours-- even in the rain, when he was small.  And right at that instant, as he pressed the camera button, the mall trees lit up, and it was Christmas, and for the moment, all was calm and all was bright.

..Die He Must...

My father never really loved me. Maybe at some point he had some pride in my adolescent achievement; after all, I graduated with high honors from a top ivy college, turned down a scholarship to Harvard-- -stuff parents can 'bank'.  But person to person?  He couldn't look me in the eye, we both cringed if a goodbye hug was required, and I used to sigh with great relief if he worked late and couldn't make a school play or performance.

Teachers would always comment on how handsome he was; that was useless for me.  In fact I used to wish he'd never come home so my mother could marry someone who wouldn't ask me if I was a moron when I had a question about something.  I didn't feel hurt or sorry; for years I thought that's what fathers did.  I learned to use books.  They were reliable, available, kind and patient.

Maybe I grew up and rejected men who doted on me; it didn't feel right.  Of course at some point I realized that shame and alcohol had a lot to do with our family dynamics and my penchant for truth seeking was an unintentional finger pointing at him.  He's 95 now.  I can feel him squirm if he picks up the phone when I call my demented Mom, old cranky fuck that he is.  Once or twice he actually blurted out 'if you wanna give me a present, don't ever call me.'  The honesty is a relief… then every once in a while he says something almost 'paternal'.  He actually likes my son.  He's a boy.  He's not an unmarried poet who plays bass guitar in downtown clubs.

Wednesday is my day to get groceries in Harlem; something always on special at Pathmark and I get to absorb some uptown culture.  Pathmark in summer is my version of Coney Island.  It's massive, it's crowded, it's filled with colorful displays and distractions, most of which I'd rather observe than partake of.  There's tons of exposed skin and strange fashion statements… and at any given moment, a good percentage of the crowd is not intending to buy or participate.  Some are taking in the moderately cool air, some are consuming anything they did not intend to purchase… gaping, butt-watching, hand slapping and commentating.  There is plenty of narrative, family drama, the PA 'barker' beckoning the shoppers to sample the specials and bargains, old ladies shuffling and squeezing things, muttering, judging and spitting.  In front of me on the huge snaking line, a young family with 2 giant carts loaded with frozen entrees and french fries, boxed pies and cakes, gallons of juice and punch, pounds of hotdogs, pancake mix, canned icing---  the usual… and a virtual team of kids--- the girls packing and helping-- the 8 year old boy in glasses asking his Mom constantly -- how do you make ice cream cones, what's a ingredient… can you put a motor on the cart… until she whacked him…'No more fuckin questions, you hear me?'  The kid didn't seem hurt; he just leaned on the window sill and looked out at 125th street and fidgeted and talked to himself a little.

Of course the white liberal over-educated humanist wanted to pick him up and take him to a library-- I mean, I'm not predicting he's going to grow up and become an angry gangsta or a nerd who gets the shit kicked out of him at Promise Academy.  Maybe he'll be a teacher.  My own mother wisely bought-- from her housekeeper's handsome strapping football-playing son--- a set of Collier's Encyclopedia.  I could look everything up.  Jerusalem.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  Penis.  I no longer needed to fear my father's impatient wrath.  I was saved.

Back in Carnegie Hill this evening, one of the investment banker fathers walking behind his little girl… barely 3, in her little Jacadi frock and the Bonpoint shoes, with her pink my-little-pony and her neat pigtails…Are you sure?, he is saying to her?  Are you SURE?  And she is saying… mmh hmMM! with the little upswing… and just as I pass them, he actually says… 'and WHAT IF SHE ISN'T?…. '

What if she isn't?  What kind of twisted manipulative question is this to ask a 3-year old-- to plant doubt and fear and anxiety and all shades of grey in a tiny mind where everything is not only black and white but pink and blue… Is this what his boss asked him today when he put in a huge margin call betting that the market is going to drop tomorrow….And what if it doesn't?  Your Stepford wife will leave you for a richer man and your tiny daughter will imprison you weekends until she is old enough for boarding school?

We are born with eyes and ears and a mouth, the lucky among us.  We trust the people who hold us and swaddle us and feed us.  We smile at them and helplessly let them pick us up and put us in vehicles and cribs and baskets.  And some people pick us up and scold us when no one is looking--- they take our toys and touch us inappropriately and show us things we don't want to see and tell us things that give us lifetime nightmares.  Some of these people are even our parents or relatives.  And like random soldiers in a brutal war, some go home unscathed,  and some are blown up.  Some lose limbs and some become emotional amputees.  What happens to the Robin Williamses and the Heath Ledgers and the Philip Seymour Hoffmans that opens up a tiny fissure of doubt or fear which compels them to laugh and entertain and compensate and develop extraordinary talents that do little to cover the gaping wound that no one sees?

I know parents who, while bragging about their children, I can see in a nano-second when there is no love here.  I have seen these kids overdose, binge drink, do rehab and jail time.  And some of them become presidents and rockstars.  Actors.  Or men like my Dad who are heroes and wonderful human beings to someone but are emotionally cruel to some of the women in his family… yes, these people had their own wounds and damages… I try to understand.   And I pray none of my eccentricities ever hurt my own kids in some cavalier and branding way.

We read and watch footage of our beloved Robin Williams on every network… the great irony of the brilliant comedian--- the sad clown.  We have read this story before.  And knowing in this toxic media world that no secret would be kept sacred, that no detail would be spared… and still, he couldn't find the will to NOT go through with this…. well, we are chilled to the bone in the August summer.  Some of us feel the undertow every day of our lives.  We hold our ears against the screams of the Sirens and we struggle to make it to another day because even though the darkness beckons, we hesitate to leave this legacy of wreckage for the few that actually might love us.

Personally I thank my father for giving me an inroad to these souls, to the dark side.  And as much as we feel the shiver of this passing, we feel a tiny bit of relief…he is free,  we have a little vicarious 'what if' moment… and we mourn and go on. .. with our talents and our sadness and our curse of compassion and our gaping hearts…and we ask questions that are not answerable in any Encyclopedia or bottle or needle or warm bed.

Carnival of Animals

I hear Broadway's having a good season. A record season. Do I envy the theatre-goers or the cheerful queues of tourists thronging Times Square's 1/2-price booth? Do I get a thrill seeing actors emerge late-night from stage doors, greeting excited autograph-seekers and camera-philes? I do not. I seem to lack the Broadway- audience gene and have always felt squeamish when any actor breaks into song-and-dance or flies throught the air on a harness. My parents never did this, nor my schoolteachers or friends. The spectacle thing embarasses me. In fact I have maybe a clinical mild case of Coulrophobia (Fear of Clowns) and whatever the term may be for circus-revulsion. I love animals--- I am fascinated by the slow heavy grace of camels and elephants--- not so much lions and tigers or bears, but seeing them humiliated by humans in silly costumes, knowing they have been whipped and Pavlov-tricked into behaving like toddlers on a playground--- makes me cringe. What is it besides exhibitionism for the trainer? We all know humiliated animals will lick the hand that feeds them and unfortunately kiss the ass that whips them, and never tweet or testify in a courtroom.

I mean, you have to wonder about that Siegfried and Roy incident. The straw that broke the tiger's back. And you can't blame the tiger. After all, tigers lack ethics.

No matter how many times they revise it..I don't want to see Spiderman; I didn't like the movie and I don't like superheroes, and have enough trouble grappling with Jesus, let alone ridiculous outfits and wings.

I do realize that a certain percentage of the circus audience, like the TV audience for all these survival-type competitive shows--- is just waiting to witness a near-death disaster in real time, which is unsurprising considering the Roman antecedent in which the spectacle was a death-contest without window-dressing. I find it actually incredible that the circus, in all its manifestations, manages to attract an audience. Even as a child, the Crackerjacks were my only saving grace. I knew then that the elephants were only large men in animal suits. The clowns, on the other hand, were true freaks...creatures that had escaped my cartoon nightmares and were honking and slithering and truly beyond-terrifying.

Something so sad and desperate about a circus... something Tennessee-Williams-esque and morbidly wretched. In fact, Times Square has now transformed itself from the honest greasy side-show it was in the 1970's into a full-blown circus of many rings, in which the tourist audience can participate-- in seats, on billboards, live TV broadcasts--- you name it. We have photo-gigantism, freaky M&Ms, dancing buildings, bands and musicians, bad smells, foodcarts, vendors, ringmasters and barkers, Scottish kilts and bagpipes, flags of all sorts, spontaneous streetfights, tattooed men--even a naked cowboy playing bad acoustic classic-rock. We have to go all the way out to Coney Island and even then we get a watered-down version of the old freakshow, a slightly 'Forever 21' cast on the Siren Festival, and a souped-up version of the new HipHop gunslinging party culture. Overpriced cotton candy and a disappointing plate from Nathan's.

I'll take a zoo over a circus any day, however depressing it is to think these creatures are captives in a twilight-zone sort of life-sized dollhouse--giant living toys in a diorama. There's been a little drama in the Bronx this year--- escaping animals and a few disgruntled bear incidents. All in all, though, the zoo is 'chill' and having raised teenagers, I identify with the zookeeper although he gets to shovel food in through cage bars and doesn't have to make sure the tigers have pocket-money.

Several peer-friends with daughters called Zooey undoubtedly after Salinger inspired me to refer to my son as Manhattan Zoo-ey when he is at his most lethargic/slovenly although he fails to take the suggestion that I by proxy am burdened with the role of scheduled feedings and waste-removing, all without pay or a union.
I guess I should be thankful my adolescent giraffes, although wearing the costumes of their culture, no longer suspend themselves from the building ledge or bark and bray at passers-by and juggle basketballs in the street.

I do confess that I love standing by the midtown-tunnel entrance at 2 AM in springtime for the arrival of the Ringling Brothers' elephants who parade into Manhattan in single file, holding tails, the youngest and still unjaded swinging their heads from side to side as though some wide-eyed invisible mother were singing to them 'The Wheels on the Bus'. A long elephant-life awaits them... on trains, in caged vehicles, standing on their hind-legs and twirling around in a sawdust ring for peanuts. Happy? Some of them appear to smile. Not so unlike the rest of us here. You can even get peanuts and hotdogs on every corner, and if you hang with the bohemian foxes and don't care about a seat, the price can be quite right.

Smells like Mermaid Spirit

I am going to miss the Mermaid Parade tomorrow. In fact I’ll pass on every single parade this summer. The beach? Maybe I’ll do a few gigs out in Coney Island and smell the water, hear the surf as I arrive after dark. The midway is more my style…the sound of wooden balls knocking, air-rifles exploding, cheap carousel music, badly stuffed souvenirs of something that used to resonate of seediness. 42nd Street is a mall; Coney Island will soon be Trump Walk or something like Atlantic City. Small-time criminals will have to go back to muggings or move on. The nostalgia of boardwalk fear. Now we all know evil comes from the skies or the water supply, our bankers and politicians. We have to watch 70’s dvd re-releases to remember the innocence of neighborhood organized crime. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. He is busy texting Satan while bare-breasted girls are barely getting a look. Compared to his laptop this is nothing.

A few sad Christmasses ago, I dumped my boyfriend. Yeah, I could have waited. But if you do it on a holiday, it’s 50% more miserable. It was 10 degrees and I had to find Absolute Despair by New Year’s.

So a friend loaned me her house in a place called Point Lookout. Not the Hamptons, but not Asbury Park either …somewhere sort of middle class. Deserted. I made it out there on the last train to Long Beach, waited until dawn for a bus, arrived at an old wooden Victorian house—the only 3-story structure in town-- wearing my son’s discarded Gap flannels, an old football hoodie someone left in our laundry bag… with my guitar, ready to write my bleak anti-Yule anthem.

Unfortunately it was so cold in the house my fingers were useless. I piled up all the blankets I could, made a bed in the kitchen, turned on the stove and propped myself against the refrigerator. I could hear the surf not pounding but moving, always moving. So desperate I felt, I couldn’t bear to look out. I alternated between vodka and hot instant coffee. Nothing came. Day 2…no sleep except a few brief nods before the stab of emptiness jolted and the Sears compressor turning on and off. I was starving. I wrapped myself in blankets, still in the stale hoodie and flannels, scuffed up to the main drag in unmatched fleece mules. Never have I seen a more deserted town in daylight. Boxing Day. One lone delicatessen, open 11-3. I made it in time for a coffee and a tuna sandwich to go. The old unshaven manager asking me wordlessly what the fuck I was doing there. I looked like a homeless woman. I felt like one. So I’m chowing down on the sandwich, black coffee 3 sugars, letting the cheap mayonnaise drip down my face, my hair ratted and uncombed…and in walks a guy called Killer Joe. Used to do security for rockstars…a guy with biceps like small sedans and the required Long Island ponytail with the receding hairline. Shit, I think. But I’m invisible. I keep on stuffing my face, getting into the dysfunctional beach hobo head, and he actually spins my soda-fountain stool around… sticks his huge well-cologned wind-burned face in mine, and says…’Heyyyyy….aren’t you…?’
‘No’, I snapped, like an overstretched rubber band…’She’s about 10 years younger. And she’s happy’.
He bought a pack of Marlboros and a black coffee/3 sugars and split.

I’ve seen him a few times since…at gigs, doing security—whatever…and he gives me the roofed left eyebrow thing.

Anyway, I went back to my shed. 'Into the Wild' wasn’t released then, or I would have had an image to commune with. For 3 days I contemplated my cold grave at the shore. I even found a jigsaw puzzle and started it on an old bridge table, but somehow I knew in this well-used summer place, there’d be as many pieces missing as days in the skewed sequence of my life. Needed the cliche, there. I thought about memorizing each one. I thought about the tides. I listened. To the water, the wind, the occasional car, the cold gulls, the dial tone. I explored suicide. Day 4 I looked. I went up on the roofdeck and looked out…looked toward Coney Island, toward downtown Manhattan where the towers once were. Things are never as cool as when they’re gone. I tried not to turn my failed romance into a 9/11 tower. I refused to dramatize. I was unable to write.

When I couldn’t stand my own smell I waited for the bus back. I’d lost track of days but felt the New Year closing in. People avoided my seat on the train. It was cool. I was an outcast. At Penn Station the city rushed in on me like the sea hadn’t. I stood for what seemed like hours in my own shower. I erased messages, accepted a last-minute gig for New Year’s. Heard my voice like a stranger.

When I think about the beach now, I remember Point Lookout. I remember I am terrified of water, especially at night. I feel like I could suffocate with loneliness. Drown. My chest tightens up and my nose twitches.

Tonight my neighbors are packing their SUVs with surfboards and sandtoys. I am dressed in black on the warm sidewalk safely at sundown, having a coffee. Not waving. I can see Killer Joe at the Mermaid Parade, smoke curling out of the side of his thin lip, a girl with Pamela Anderson boobs hanging on his sweaty tattooed arm. The soundtrack is John Lee Hooker. The Veejay Hooker. Smells of women and fried fish. I miss him with my Point Lookout Heart. It’s as close to the beach as I dare. Someone else will write the song, realize in some cheap world, mermaid rhymes with parade.

Let Them Eat (Warhol) Hot Dogs. Or: Wrap It Up

4/04
Raining today. Spring, finally. And it’s raining. Definitely not a beach day. Actually I like the rain. I like the fact that it’s Passover and there’s way less competition for the $1 bagged up bagels at Food Emporium. Which makes you think it’s not the economically challenged who buy these, but maybe the Jews.

There’s an anecdote someone told me once—about this Hassidic guy who was walking down the street on the Sabbath and there right on the sidewalk was a twenty. Crisp, new paper with old Andrew Jackson just staring him in the Jew eye. And he stops—dead like a time-freeze-- because it’s the Sabbath and he can’t handle money. But he can’t handle the concept of this bill on the street, easy money. And which will win? I forget the story. Maybe he decides it’s a sign from God—a gift, like manna. Or maybe it’s like Jewish temptation. Maybe he stands there until sundown when he can pick it up.

I don’t mean to dis Jews. It is just the religious taboo thing, and the Hassidic silhouette that seems compelling. But it is anyone, I think, who has the genetics of poverty in their DNA. Such people are always having to publicly thumb their nose at the extravagance of life as a regular person, toss gold coins to the wind, or fretting perpetually about every single cent that could potentially have been saved and invested. Or all of the above.

Trust me. I have been in the homes of people whose names are on the plaques of some very big institutions. I have seen their twenty-year-old underwear that they keep for when no one is looking, seen them watch their cleaning ladies with an eagle-eye to make sure they do not not use more than one can of tunafish for their lunch. And not too much mayonnaise. It’s expensive.

Trust me, because I am currently and perhaps forever warped by poverty. Forget about clothing. Sales no longer tempt me; fashion does nothing. It is the essentials. I can’t pass a 99-cent store in East Harlem without checking the price of a gallon of Tide. And here’s the thing: I will use generic everything—Corn Flakes, Crisp Rice, Oatmeal, toilet paper, butter, yoghurt, whatever. But detergent? Rhymes with Pride. Like a superstition. Where I draw my personal line.

On the other side, you have this culture of extreme greed going on in Manhattan. Not just excessive, vulgar amassing of assets, but competitive greed. Like competitive eating. We have competitive stock portfolios, hedge funds, Art Auctions where these people stand up and make outrageous bets on objects they have been advised will compound geometrically. Even though they couldn’t tell a Picasso from a Basquiat. And check this out: I would estimate 90 percent of the so-called art experts couldn’t tell a real from a fake Basquiat if they were held at gunpoint. And Warhol? Don’t get me started. The posthumous Warhol market.

There is just so much available real estate in New York City. They have built up, down and to the very edge. Now there is the Real Estate of Art. Soon you will be able to search online Sotheby’s and Christie’s catalogues by size, period, price-range, color. We already have the Pre-war and Postwar. That makes art user-friendly for the nouveau competitive consumers.
There are one or two contemporary artists who mock the masters—who forge, dissemble….I have even noticed in the last auction, the Miro look-alikes actually sold for more than the real Miros. The Art Advisors had to be working overtime for this deal. And is it that these people are mocking themselves? Or do they think that paying $500,000 for a Warhol mockery actually swindles the average cocktail party guest into believing you have the 6 million dollar Warhol. And it’s not a fake, or a forgery, it is a smart-Warhol. You are so hip. And no hotdogs on your hors d-oeuvres platter. Oh, no.

Just like the winner of the Nathan’s contest is the skinny Asian guy, there are very few fat people in the competitive greed game. Well—he is a true athlete, while they have to work out and stay on diets because God-forbid they should be guilty of the sin of gluttony which I always thought was a form of greed. One and the same. Consumer-itis.

But it is Passover: the season where something is given up. And Lent. No major art auctions until this is over and the season of greed can resume full-tilt. No competitive eating because that would be crossing religious barriers.

At least the people wolfing down hotdogs, as opposed to the art collectors, are eating real meat. Kosher meat, because no one is ethnically excluded from this contest, except of course the vegans. Maybe they’ll be protesting, this July 4th….that is, if there is still a Coney Island…if the Donald Trumps have not bought it out with mega-billions for development so the kids from the Housing Projects will have to crash the beach and risk arrest just for the privilege of looking at the ocean.

Or maybe Christo will come and wrap the whole thing up and then the hedge funds can convince their customers they’re investing in art and pay by the square inch. Because competitive investors will always pay a little more for something they can’t quite understand. Since they raised the MOMA admission price to exclude schmucks like me, crowds are breaking records. And for a few billion dollars, you can get a seat on their board and perpetual free admission. Will it make you more cultured? Doubtful. And when the value of your art portfolio falls into the negative territory it belongs in, maybe you can sell it for enough to afford an inflated hotdog for a newly-homeless vagrant in Coney Island.