Gimme Shelter

As I've said before, I live on the cusp of two neighborhoods-- one posh and landmarked-- block after block of old, grand buildings with sidewalk gardens, elegant doormen servicing large apartments many of which have been handed down from generation to generation.  The other-- East Harlem-- a mixed bag of renovations and new businesses interspersed with block after block of projects.   Coming home the other evening, a man from the posh side was walking his retriever-- wearing pocketless shorts and a leather jacket-- the luxury of being able to go out and not even lock his door, knowing his trusted building staff will protect everything.   As I passed, the dog was in the act of relieving itself-- the great common denominator of life… and I recognized the owner as Jamie Dimon, notorious overpaid head of JP Morgan, talking head of the financial crisis, a man whose bank was loaned umpteen billions in a scandalous economic bailout, and walked away with a reward.  I resent these neighbors, many of whom live in the same fortress-like building around the corner, with a set of unformed guards outdoors like some kind of UES Buckingham Palace fantasy.  I silently bared my teeth, and didn't turn to watch him in the act of picking up after his dog.

Back in the days of Mayor Koch, when the first dog-waste law was passed, people balked and resisted.  My own dog looked at me like I'd lost my mind.  This, I thought, will clear the city dog population.  No one is going to want to live this way, publicly cleaning up after our animals, looking for a place to stash the trash, etc.  It felt damned humiliating.  But it didn't.  In fact, it seems there are more dogs than ever-- fewer buildings forbidding pets, which used to be rather common in the 60's and 70's-- more dog runs and pens, a huge new generation of pet services and shops, boarding and grooming options, dog walking and training, psychologists and specialized veterinarians.

The dog culture in New York is maybe beginning to edge out the child culture for economic opportunity and profit.  When I had my son here, there were maybe 3 stores in the city which sold baby furniture, very few toy shops besides Toys R Us.  Baby Gap had just opened up; things like jogging strollers had yet to be invented.  We looked to Scandinavia for well-designed accessories and carriers.
The market now is glutted with products-- toys, vehicles, safety devices, learning programs, phone apps. Re: dogs… cats… there were a few specialty pet stores… now there are spas, trainers, day-boarding, hotel accommodations, fashion, food, etc…

I grew up with dogs… yes, some retrievers and bred varieties-- but mostly strays and mutts I found and brought home.  Still, they were treated as animals-- no frills, no table food, no grooming and primping.  My Dad disciplined them with the same sternness as his children.  They got hosed down when necessary….  the long-haired ones were sheared for summer-- no fancy cuts. But they were wonderful animals-- companions, life-savers, friends, soul mates.

So many of my friends have filled their lives with animals.  It's a beautiful thing, but I still have a hard time when I see middle-aged women pushing their pets in baby strollers, cooing and babbling to their manicured little Yorkies and arguing with food establishment staff when asked to leave their animals outside.  There are women in my neighborhood who forgot to have kids-- or maybe never wanted them-- and have replaced some kind of maternal instinct with the dog bug.  People are going to hate me for this, and I am essentially an animal lover, but I still believe dogs are dogs.  I like to see them running wild in fields, chasing birds, rolling in the dirt, hunting prey, jumping for joy and diving into bodies of water.  Most are natural swimmers.

Walking across the Brooklyn bridge yesterday, I was once again impressed with the swarms of people who find New York endlessly explorable.  Residents, commuters, tourists.  The views of Manhattan from the other boroughs are constantly changing-- the density of new architecture is not just impressive but alarming.  The crowds of residents swell and services are in demand.  New York City is uber heaven.  It is also dog central.  I wonder if there is a pet census.  It seems to be almost a prerequisite for young couples and families… a priority.

My best dogs, like my men, were the bad boys.  I loved my wandering strays.  They taught me a harsh lesson about life and also helped me to learn the difference between parenting and ownership.  Dogs are dogs… and kids-- well, they are family and responsibility, and works in progress.  Training is never over; problems abound.. preparing a being for independence is a very different task than teaching a creature about dependence.  Love is not conditional; punishment is difficult and the Pavlovian approach goes just so far.  Trust is something we must nurture and learn.  Dogs love the hand that feeds; not so with children.  And appetites are complicated.

What I am trying to say, I think… is first I find it understandable but challenging that our sympathies are so easily triggered by animals-- abused animals, abandoned and sick animals.. .while the world and our city are overpopulated with abandoned people-- the abused or ill who have fallen off track and are not so easy to cage and adopt.  Foster children-- misbehaving children, disabled children without genuine support.  Few people are likely to stop in the street and give their heads a pat or offer them treats.  It's tough.

But also, I think there's kind of a message in the fact that we have an overwhelming need for the iconic canine virtues-- loyalty, fidelity…  and these are becoming more and more rare in this media-ruled culture.  Much easier to buy or adopt values ready-made then to try to build them into the fabric of your life.  Buy a cute dog-- feed it, train it--- it will stay by your side.  Not so with friends, or even family.  Not everyone shows up when your chips run out, or you get a terminal diagnosis.  But your dog won't know the difference or judge.  Jamie Dimon knows this when he picks up after his retriever.

I loved my bad stray dog.  He took off periodically, but when he came back it more than made up for the fair-weather conditional behaviors of so many of my family.  It felt real.  It felt deserved and mutual.
What still bothers me is my poor friend who passed away in isolated agony, unwilling to abandon her cat who seemed to care little for its owner, and who in the end received a lion's share of concern while
her human owner heroically suffered in a kind of cruel human abandonment.  It's difficult and awkward to reach out to the sick and dying and destitute around us… but we can learn from our animals who love us despite our physical or health issues.  When alone, they are placed in shelters, where hopefully human sympathy will rescue them.  For my friend, there was no shelter, nor was she commended for her loyalty and love for animals.  Not by her cats, not by her neighbors.  On Memorial Day, I offer the sound of my one hand clapping for her, a veteran not of war but of life… a kind person who took so little, whose only true companion in life and death was a cat-- one of many she'd rescued and saved her from utter loneliness but in the end was helpless and a little distant, as cats can be.  Surely it did not know her only dying wish was for its safety and comfort.  Loyal as a dog, she was.

Behind the Times

Early morning I listened to this sociological philosopher commenting on internet culture--- our habits, our lifestyle.  It used to be, via any Industrial Revolution, that the usefulness of technology was to relieve humans of the burden of constant work, to free us so that we could have the time to create, self-educate, invent-- and enhance our connection with the world around us.  Currently, people are ‘working’ more hours than ever—technology and web activity literally eat leisure time and blur boundaries between work and play.  It used to be considered rude not to look into the face of someone with whom you have a serious conversation: it was part of the process of face-to-face communication which had a place in the hierarchy of exchange.  Now, nearly everyone has their face perpetually in their mobile device—emailing, texting, image-capturing and posting, facebooking, comparing, researching... connecting, disconnecting...and it is not just socially but on-the-job acceptable behaviour.

I watched people on Sunday browsing an art auction--- they data-search each painting and judge its quality based on comparable values.  They pass on, they do not look; like a carefully built resume, there is so much competition, and so little time--- everything and everyone is now a kind of advertisement, a 'deal'.  It used to be, we received a telephone call--- it was a rather obvious event for anyone present--- they even left the room, to give the speaker privacy.  Your husband could call from anywhere and lie—no caller ID… just an opaque mysterious plastic that sat in its own corner, attached to a wall, and had the power to change your life with one ring. 

Last night a guitarist friend emailed me a plea from some fan who had apparently been to 60 of his shows, now has his own band, has played for 25 years, is even receiving some kind of award--- and wants to come ‘sit in’ with the guitarist's band.  It would be ‘meaningful’.  Does it matter that the guy is an absolute clueless internet-educated musician who feels entitled to play with Cream because he memorized the tab versions of all their songs?  But wasn’t it the current Metallica bassist who came from a tribute band and had played note for note each of their albums for years?  Does anyone know the difference?  Does anyone decipher ‘I read it on the internet’ from actual truth, actual history as it was lived by some old World War II vet whose version has undoubtedly been diluted or distorted as well?  How many versions--real or photoshopped-- of ‘me and Elvis’ or ‘me and the Beatles’ do we see now on the internet?  How many combinations of romantically involved people, celebrity bikini romps,  public displays of violence, black eyes, smashed cars, emergency room entrances and exits… whatever?

You can literally have the world in your phone now…you can get the accurate population to the minute of Auckland, or see if your make-up is smeared on facetime, without anyone knowing what you are doing. You can, as one of our mayoral candidates has shown, be sending photos of your penis and obscene messages while you are in meetings, running for office, or having dinner with your lovely wife who for the life of me I cannot fathom why persists in humiliating her lovely self by appearing with this creep of a version of husband.  Is that the message?  She is smart and dignified and lives with a mistake so we all should follow suit?  I don’t get it.

I’ve always, on the other hand, been a Spitzer-ite.  So what if he’s narcissistic and obnoxious?  He’s smart enough to know that any woman you consort with is going to cause a scandal in your life, so why not keep it purely business—no pregnancies, no blackmail, no policy leaks, no expensive dinners without happy bedtime endings, no trips to Harry Winston or whining--- just in and out.  Why was it all so newsworthy… because every heterosexual middle aged man was salivating?  And because Wall Street was trembling?  Steve Cohen is an innocent baby compared to the crimes being perpetrated by JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and our own fed.  Like disqualifying an athlete for an allergy pill—making it front page news when half the MLB is PED’d out of their minds and original bodies. 

100,000 now dead in the Syrian violence--- catastrophes all over the world… I can understand the fairytale appeal of the Royal baby--- but all this Drake vs. Chris Brown, Kanye and Kim (not easy to find a baby-Daddy with the right initial and a huge penis),  and goddamn Anthony Weiner all over it like rancid icing.  He needs to be—the ultimate punishment in this culture—‘ignored’. 

Back to music.  I’m not a huge Clapton fan, but admittedly Eric has paid some dues.  Still… I watched an amazing video of a Count Basie performance…man, these guys could play.  Every single one of them—with technique and style and precision and swing—and originality.  Do more than 800 people know all of their names? Did the guitarist get 600,000 for just one instrument at auction while he still has 400 at home and unlimited freebies?  These guys scarcely paid the basic bills.   Then the 60’s came, and there was for a brief moment some correlation between quality and success—even in jazz.  Now that concept is nearly extinct. 

But at least Eric Clapton doesn’t have to call up some asshole on craigslist and explain to him that his $300 guitar is not worth $800 because it has a badass bridge and heavy strings. In fact, because he is an asshole, it is worth maybe $270, but because yours needs a fret job that costs more than replacement, you need this and you need it now, and you may have to pay $350 which means no groceries, and he is comparing it on his iphone to all 30 which have come up on ebay in just the past 9 hours and none of them have actually sold except maybe one which was vintage—a prototype in beautiful wood, and untouched by human hands for 40 years… but he is an asshole—a Weiner, and you are without a mobile device and without the will to even speak to this guy who now says---‘okay. $400 if I can sit in with your band’ and you are absolutely going to walk out that door no matter how much you need this guitar for tomorrow.  

In the end it’s not about politics it’s about music and where does that leave the undead, impoverished, IT-deficient, IQ-endowed minority-even-in-my-own-home?  Without a working guitar while at any given moment about 766,000 are listed on ebay.  Another million or so on craigslist.  Another cool million in vaults and storage of billionaires (the good ones), another million smashed and burned on and offstage (the real ‘Guitar Heros’), another billion being misused and misplayed by assholes, and a few thousand singing in the hands of real players who do not look at a mobile device and really play at the same time.  Or write worthwhile music, and not the cut and paste kind we mostly hear these days.

I wish I could rest my case, but tonight I’m a trainwreck—yes, a terrible and inappropriate analogy today for which I apologize, but sometimes you crash and burn by failing to reach even the minimum speed limit.  

Non-election

I’ve been worrying lately about how anesthetized I feel about this election.  I wonder if it has something to do with age… so many voting opportunities--- I used to get this choked-up sense of importance--- of power and personal freedom, of being part of a political movement… we could do something here, we could change things… in that old voting booth with the levers that clicked, behind the heavy curtain that felt like an x-ray shield--- like protection from something lethal...

Lately I notice I’m content to pick up a book—Emerson, Yeats.. .anything--- and just read a fragment.  This seems to be a habit of older people who always seemed to me when I visited-- non-linear---the conversation, the teas-- and they’d inevitably  have a pile of worn books--- like old friends… which they’d visit, I imagined, in the dark lonely overnight hours.  My shelves are dense with books I used to feel I had to start at the beginning and plow through…  but now I’m content to just be there, in a chair-- and listen for a minute.  Change my life. 

This kind of listening seems to have become obsolete… all the texting and attention-deficit hypocrisy that seems to pass for contemporary conversation.   Like permanence… young people here seem to be moving all the time… I worry that my son will never lie in his bed and night and feel the ghosts settle in the walls, the memories seep like black smoke underneath his door and surround him, the little panic buttons that will remind him of what he has lost.   Or I worry that he will.  

We separate… we become separate… this is a kind of lesson for death.  There is no easy way to die and there is no easy way to separate… not really.  That feeling of your first child--- you have just given birth--- and there is a separate little body there in the room… a body you will fear and fret over—whose every little pain you will fear more than your own.   And you are alone—and you could lose this small person—which would be unbearable… but here you are on this first morning, his actual birth-day, and you are still awake, nothing has really changed, except you are writing lyrics on the pastel-colored Babysitter’s-Reminder pad that came free with the crib linens, even though you know you’ll never have a babysitter because that’s not you.  And you still won’t be able to read your own handwriting in the morning… so you reassure yourself that nothing has changed.

So I am thinking today… this morning--- waking up and trying to read the lyrics I wrote in the middle of the night… and seeing something I wrote maybe years ago, on a night when I was keeping watch over a feverish child-- and delirious from exhaustion, and the only company I had maybe was that longing… that unbearable, desire-drenched deep-wounding thing that was part of some kind of innocence. 

But at least it reminds me of last night--  lying in bed—thinking about all the strangers I’d had this bed intimacy with… and there is this body next to me… with a penis, like all the others, like all the strangers in your life with whom you’ve become physically 'intimate' as my mother refers to it-- and what you don’t know about him fuels the night… takes you forward like a drug… and maybe you think making new memories will keep you safe from the old ones… but they don’t.  And you turn another page… farther away from this… another fragment you read… you ingest this moment, you adopt it.  It is yours, you can claim it... and still it doesn’t feel that way anymore.

But this other memory comes into my mind--- maybe because I read last night yet another story about a boy-molesting football coach—this one closer to home… in Brooklyn-- a school which tried to recruit my son-- and I am thinking-- -what has changed… is the innocence just unraveling?  So I had another memory fire-off… of maybe freshman year, in some beat-up old Buick, in the back seat driving down some country road.. half- conscious from drugs and alcohol... and happy, so happy… the way you were in those days… just to be in a car—because it is always the beginning of some great story….you are still at the beginning of everything-- and this unmistakeable sound…  tooth by tooth, the captain of the football team.. unzipping not your zipper but HIS… and you are high, in the back seat--- listening… and this is no mistake…he is going down on your drunk boyfriend who thinks it is you, is saying your name--- over and over, and this makes you happy… he is so innocent.   And you don’t want to interrupt his pleasure… and you never tell him… the football guy-- Mr. handsome/macho/future JP Morgan power broker with the perfect wife.  But now, 2012, you’d like to call him up and tell him, because the Football Captain—he looked just like Romney…. And you want to laugh, but you can’t wake the guy in your bed now who wouldn’t understand. 

And you still can’t read your handwriting in the morning…

And no matter how many times it wakes you, the panic button… and you try to understand it, to write it, to smother it-- you know you're on the other side of some bell-curve of this longing....and you try to convince yourself... to understand what it is that you are losing, or not losing.  And you make a point to remember some guy from the gym or maybe that painter you fucked on the roof so many years ago… the one whose love you felt… you actually felt… because he wasn’t afraid to lose you.   That one. Yes.  

Oh Well....

For those of us with insufficient air conditioning in Manhattan, the first summer heat wave comes with an extra sense of suffocation.  Atmospheric claustrophobia.  People who live in smallish apartments tend to share dreams of opening a closet into a barn-like studio space, or an unexpected ocean view revealing itself through a secret window---or the ceiling suddenly rising...  we've been here before.  95 degrees and above is like an inversion of this.  You close your eyes and feel the collapse.

I've been reading a Murakami novel in which the protagonist, having listened to a terrifying tale of a soldier trapped for weeks in a deep narrow well, has taken to lowering himself for prolonged periods into just such a neighborhood well, where all sorts of fears and revelations take him into a new strange dimension of existence.

I do personally wander into such holes-- some emotional, some philosophical-- for whatever dark reason, and have become recently fascinated by the concept of minimal existence.  Economically speaking, this is a way of life; but physically--- well, vampires shut themselves into coffins... and some New Yorkers, according to a certain interior design blog, reside and flourish in an actual closet space.  I suppose this is the ipod-nano version of real estate-- appealing, as is minimalism in general, but I wonder, like the million songs trapped inside a tiny plastic rectangle, whether our intellects are as compressed as the tiny nano digital music files...   life in a cheap download, zip-filed virtual space.  What is going to happen when those virtual 'goggles' become as common as iPods, and we are all able to exist in a palatial environment, in our own tiny closet-beds?  Will Manhattan property values decrease?  Will my neighbors leave me alone and credit me for starting the trend of downsizing well ahead of my time?  Will the spatially obese see the spatially anorexic with new eyes?

We may be legislated into giving up our super sized drink cups.  Does this mayor not realize some of us economically challenged parents  buy these to distribute among 4 or 5 kids?  Is this yet another indignity to distract the already-punished from peering into the monster garages and liquor cabinets of the J.P. Morgan boys who have lost more money in a week than some African countries have seen in the entire 20th century?  Why not limit the size of allowable personal bank accounts, instead of hiking subway fares for us poor schmucks?  Trim the mountains of economic fat the bankers have not just scarfed up but hoarded.  10-gallon-sized cups of liquid gold that is poisoning their hearts.  Let them all eat precious-metal cake at $1,600 an ounce because they have health insurance.  The expensive kind.

I took a walk down Fifth Avenue Sunday and the crowds of eager shoppers were like nothing I've seen before in Manhattan.  Lines to get into Abercrombie which rival the Christmas Santa lines at Macy's.  For what?  The privilege to stand on line to buy mall-quality merchandise in the most expensive real estate in the world?  I don't get it.

Then again, I still don't have a cellphone.  "How can you live?" a young man asked me the other day.  How can you live without stacks of books and art and Beethoven and Leonard Cohen records and an old leather jacket, I wanted to ask him in return, but I shrugged.

My son called last night with new romance issues.  My niece, too, was waiting for a text from a boy she likes.  Personally, I can live without immediate answers.  The guy in the well took his watch with him, but couldn't actually see the time without light.  I like this.  So..."Does he like me?" my niece wants to know, while she is texting another person and reading an incoming message.  The nano-affair in the nano-phone screen... 3 texts and it's sex... 3 texts and it's over.

I don't know if I would want to know about love anymore.  I don't really always want to answer the phone in my house... I don't want bad test results and I don't want to know if there is really salvation at the end and whether it will hurt when I die or how much money I have in my bank account.  At least I want to filter when the answer comes.  I want to open the letter slowly, by candlelight, or let it sit on the windowsill for a few days.  I want to admire the stamp and feel how fat the letter is-- -whether my lover has taken time to explain things, to confess.  I want to feel the space of time because there is little time in the space I occupy here, and the long summer days are feeling just so short and precious.  I don't want to know how hot it is or what time the sun will rise, or how many scorching days I must endure in my darkened apartment with old things in it which have seen many, many lifetimes and are patient.  'Well...'..I said ominously to both my son and my niece who have no idea I am reading Murakami in this heat with the Mogwai soundtrack in my head and cavernous dreams without walls waiting for me in my existential bed.

The Bear Stearns Crash Diet

So whatever happened to American justice? Are rich people just worth more, the way the heavier populated states have more delegates? What if delegates were allotted according to the proportion of money generated by each state? Hmmm…..

Seems to me the punishment should somehow fit the crime, that being caught selling a joint to your friend for $2 shouldn’t be equated with selling several thousand kilos via a network. Magnitude. Restoration. Seems to me these Bear Stearns bastards should have to pay, maybe do some prison time, be fined and stripped of their goods in direct proportion to the damage they caused. What kind of example is the Fed setting here? Or is this deal, as Rogers commented, ‘welfare for the rich’? How is it that hundreds of employees have lost their jobs, while the true criminal minds have been airlifted to safety?

My teenage son has been guilty of much rule-breaking at school, has not taken seriously the onus of detention, the threat of suspension. But at the same time, the principal at his high-profile school does not want a negative statistic on her record. He knows this, and continues to cross the line, whereas at the high-school across the river, poor kids are tossed for less than this.

Another parable: the overweight kid who, for his own health, must be forced or encouraged to exercise. But he refuses. So, his overpaid nanny bribes him with a cookie. He does a few jumps and hops, returns to the bench. Another cookie. Ups the ante. Until the whole box—every day— just to get him on his feet. By the third month, no way is he giving up the cookie habit. He’s fatter and fatter…blood sugar rising. Doctor orders ‘cold turkey’. But now, the cookie company will see a downturn in daily sales. So do we secretly cut a deal? What now?

Fat people do not like to have their plate taken away. Alcoholics do not like it when the bartender pours coke in their shotglass. And investment bankers are not willing to give up their excessive cookie money, no matter how many employees and American communities they must ruin to keep their bellies padded.

Have any of you seen this film ’Body of War’? The defense department, Dick Cheney, George Bush and John McCain should be strapped into a straightback unpadded chair and forced to screen this repeatedly. For that matter, now that Prince Harry’s been shipped home, how many boys in these wars gave up seven –figure incomes for the privilege of fighting? How many Bear Stearns sons are fighting in uniform? Why doesn't the Fed show them the money?

A protest was held in the Bear Stearns lobby yesterday. A journalist friend of mine described the demonstrators as ‘poor people’. This pissed me off. I think these Bear Stearns guys should be lined up and made to put their money in a pot. All of it. Then their lines of credit, their stock and gold shares, their overpriced condos. They can’t give back the holidays in the Caribbean, the private school tuition, their wives’ plastic surgery expenses. But they should be held responsible to the extent they profited from their bad behaviour. That word again. Accountability. These guys don’t like giving up their million-cookie ration. Instead they like pointing their finger at Eliot Spitzer and tormenting the tenants of my building and taking advantage of the rules and then burdening us with lawsuits so their kids can have more cookies than all the kids in China and Africa put together, in 10 lifetimes.

At least in the UK the judge shamed Heather Mills for her greed and gall. And Paul McCartney didn’t wheel and deal and steal for his billions. He made something. These bankers make nothing. They borrow and lend and squeeze and then legislate and manipulate, eat all the cookies and sit on the bench with the Feds. They con the rest of us out of our own and refuse to give them back.

I smell the smell of American sewage. I smell the smell of BS. This is a rotten state of affairs. The only hotseats here this month are those of our former and current governor whose middle-aged sex lives seem to sell more papers than the biggest scam of the year.
These guys have made off with all the cookies. And in case the cookie-makers are bankrupted, the Fed and JP Morgan will make sure they have plenty of cake. Brownies.

Want to know where to find the money to quell the housing crisis? From the bastards that caused it in the first place. Let’s play the film in reverse and make them give back all the commissions. But first to the wounded vets and their families. Then to the wounded middle class. And just to show them how justice works? Let the Bear Stearns executives earn minimum wage while they clean up the mess. I’ll sleep better. And while they’re figuring out how to pay for the family’s pizza and coke on an average American salary, they might remember how to do real math.

Women and Children Last

Bianca has mold, the Helmsley has bedbugs, and I’ve got Bear Stearns in the house. Like green slime, these investment banking types have seeped through walls and usurped larger and larger apartments in my building. Surreptitiously, like a growth—they wheeled and dealed, wined and dined the gullible and naïve among us, flipped mortgages until—lo and behold, hocus-pocus three-card Monty—they have a majority, have voted themselves via secret blackberry-driven bloc onto the pivotal seats of the board of this old venerable co-op and now sit there like shiny new Porsches in a used-car lot.

And they are hungry, these boys. They are hungry beyond what is humanly possible to consume in a lifetime. It is hard to imagine what happened or didn’t happen during the adolescence of these people…because where most of us move on to a life and some semblance of maturity, they are stuck in that infantile phase where one cups one’s hand over the testpaper and looks over at the desk beside. Just checking! Or those furtive sidelong locker-room glances. The rolled-towel smack to cover it up. Hmmm…

Good thing we had that nasty Eliot Spitzer scandal to distract us from the version of 3-card Monty played by Wall Street, the Fed, Bear Stearns and JP Morgan who appeared like a fairy godfather to wave their wand over the whole matter. While America downloaded the latest Girls Gone Wild video and rated the Emperor girls alongside their NCAA brackets.

But what really happened? That $2 a share price. Well, seemed like a good deal to me. Apparently only for the bottom half of the totem pole, the meat and potatoes of the firm-- those in operations, salaried workers with pensions who are now unemployed and reeling from having their bear-rug pulled from beneath them. The ‘caviar’ of the firm? The players? The ones who cheat the government by claiming an on-paper salary of $200,000 and receive 7 and 8-figure bonuses even when the billions of dollars is loss? They cut a deal with Uncle JP. Not only were they not punished, but to console the poor humiliated criminals…they received huge bonuses and awards of Morgan stock to seal the deal. In other words, they threw their rank and file under the bus so they wouldn’t miss a single 5-star meal. And of course the stock has risen. God and the Feds smile on JP Morgan.

In the good old days of true corporate spirit, everyone shared. Everyone took a pay cut. How about Bloomberg at the helm of our city ship? He takes nothing from the till. One has the feeling that if his companies and holdings were bleeding out, he wouldn’t be pouring Drano into the holes the way these Bear Stearns executives did. Can you imagine their version of the Titanic? Fuck the women and children! Save the traders. A little submarine equipped with wireless service and sushi and vodka would have appeared to take them to safety. Of course… because they would have been the beneficiaries of the insurance policy, would have sold the ship the insurance in the first place—no backs! Etc., etc. They may even have been filmed by TV cameras contributing to the Titanic memorial fund once safely onshore and dry, with sad TV faces.

Well, at the moment these peg-head crooks are at the wheel of my building, my home. They don’t even know the place— they just got here. They don’t have a home, they have ‘homes’. They trade real estate and sometimes roost there long enough to turn a profit. When they are bored on Saturdays they smoke a cigar together and plan how to take over the building. Like a merger. First they will bankrupt the small shareholders. They will vote in expensive unnecessary improvements and services. A gym. Yes, a gym, because many of the older tenants are handicapped, have had a stroke, and can scarcely make it to the elevator. A yoga room! A play room! They will even hire their architect friends and receive commissions! Pocket money! Don't forget expensive faux-furnishings for the lobby. Oh such fun to run up a bill the old homesteaders won’t be able to pay. Compulsory manicures? No, that’s silly. That was from one of the attractive wives who is on the nouveau decorating committee. Can she tell real wood from fake? Of course not, silly! But they can also cause massive service inconveniences and refuse to compensate. They can flood and drill and crack old walls and install air conditioning vents in windows of the poorer apartment-residents, so eventually, if they are not dead of stress, they will give up and sell their shares for $2. Just like the corporate model!

They say the meek shall inherit the earth. Well, these are the nouveau meek. The old guard has been driven to a sorry state by this corporate bedbuggery. And this building is a corporation…it is illegal for the government to interfere with the ‘will’ of the corporation, no matter how the old majority hands have been bilked and tied and our mouths gagged. How come the Feds come running in to bail out the banks and no city agency will witness the criminal and reprehensible behaviour of these insatiably selfish people? We couldn't even get a crooked inspector to do battle with the slime because they had already been paid to not return our calls.

My old building had a lending library in the laundry room. When there was a strike, we all manned the elevators, bagged up the trash. When our finances were low, the richer of us bought paint and painted. We cooked for one another and shared Christmas cheer. The green thumbs planted the garden. We babysat and borrowed and loaned our children.

Good Friday. I stopped by the Morgan Library tonight…thought about old JP and looked at some of the Books of Hours on display. Thought about all the great old masters he could have bought instead of the Bear Stearns pretenders. I also thought about justice. “JP”, I said, to that great portrait—“these people belong in prison, not on your staff! They are Judases and Enrons. You know what they’re up to! Sam Waksal is a schoolboy by comparison.”

On the way home I gave my change to anyone homeless even though I scarcely have money for bread tonight because of the pretentious hideous faux-furniture for the lobby which no one will sit on. And has anyone noticed the price of eggs these days? Forget about gas and oil—it’s Easter.

The lobby as I enter now looks like a once beautiful woman in drag with garish make-up. You want to leave it behind as quickly as possible. But there is a God. I know it. His son was crucified on this day. Unforgivable. He rose and forgave. On the other hand, I am not a god. But the Bear Stearns 'heroes'? On Easter these people will eat Godiva bunnies. They are praying to St. Bart's. I will be looking at my drilled out bathroom—the one my new neighbors-on-the-board apologised about and promised to fix the next day, and now basically tell me to shove it. I have the status of a share of Bear Stearns stock. I remember my old building…in my bathroom… ‘Andy was hear’ on the wall. I miss him. I miss everything great. Everything real. Even Andy-style real. I hope Andy rose, God.

Does anyone remember several months ago there were bedbugs in Spitzer’s father’s building? Was this an omen? A plant? An ironic parallel to the bugs and wiretaps on his son? Come back, Eliot. Next to these people, even you are a saint.