I Want the Angel

This season, as in so many previous, the operative human engine seems to be an evolving kind of empathy.  Zelensky's congressional address, like the star on our dysfunctional American political 'tree', seemed to mobilize some kind of national emotion.  Reading World's End, as I am, steeped in the harsh realities of WWI, it had extra resonance.  His small Napoleonic persona, in his sweats, also referred to the Battle of the Bulge; my father earned a Croix d'Honneur that day, and took home the wounds and scars of things we no longer see here in America.  We are much mired in Twitter controversies, the debt ceiling, the crypto implosion... and some of us-- well, only our social media and shopping.  We needed a televised reminder, another reason to care.  

The World Cup for many of us provided a happy reason to wake up-- the games were thrilling and the global celebrations and disappointments were compelling; we forgot about the needless deaths and prevailing bigotries of Qatar culture. We marveled at the modern stadiums and held our breath as country fought country on the field. The stellar final left a hole; for the depressed among Americans, and statistically there are millions, they are back to wondering what now? Football for six weeks. Some of my friends search television for inspiration, like religion; they embrace old Law and Orders, Sex and the City episodes... anything to remind them of their heyday, their moment in the sun-- the way things were, even when they were shitty. 

Personally I will watch any Truffaut, Antonioni, Fellini... anything with Benicio del Toro... seasonally the versions of Kings of Kings-- Jeffrey Hunter, Max von Sydow... and especially the DeMille silent one, where He emerges to doves and lilies... and prompted me to ask my Catholic nanny so long ago who washed his robe? Our housekeeper once told us, so we would shut up during her programs, that the people on television could see us.  Like Jesus, I used to ask? Something like that, she answered.  But I felt known.  I behaved-- for Jesus, Santa Claus, the actors on Days of Our Lives and the Man From Uncle.  I felt responsible... 

Reading World's End, discovering the big-business machines which drove wars-- the economic windfalls amidst the devastation and killing... I can't help but draw parallels with Putin's war.  It's worrying.  And while there are geographic boundaries and definitions, we are all involved somehow. We post on Facebook, we raise money, we carry flags-- we worry.  It's a distraction from the usual narcissism and voyeurism of social media which occupied maybe the most massive portion of our attention during the pandemic isolation.  

Sometimes I think rather than just friendships, commonalities... we seek our double on Facebook.  We want to find someone with an equally cruel father or abusive husband-- a cancer patient with exactly our diagnosis...  someone else who has lost all their belongings in a fire and is now laughing in a bar. Or someone who loves cats, or who hates cats and loathes anyone who likes them... some of these pet-haters have admitted this to me and also confessed that they spend hours on YouTube watching videos of ravaged animals being lifted from sewage-soaked gutters, placed in a filthy blanket in someone's car-trunk and nursed back to some version of poverty-life.  It exercises their capacity to feel-- to empathize.  

Anyone who takes the subway especially in early morning or late-night has witnessed the relentless parade of beggars and story-tellers-- addicts, sad-sacks, mentally deranged... and some simply out-of-everything.  The percentage of people who even engage or give is shameful.  I, too, am guilty... I go to pantry, try to distribute food, try to convince the homeless to at least get a daily hot meal from a shelter rather than the garbage.  I do see kind people leave things in bus shelters... on benches... are they safe?  I don't know. They don't know that I am safe, for that matter-- with my sad face and surfeit of empathy-- who returns to a warm home feeling guilty and disturbed, primed to distract myself with a classic noir movie.  

There are other iniquities... among the pet-lovers and animal empathizers among us... a pair of homeless men-- identical twins like an old Arbus photo I often see in front of the HRA on 14th street-- both in need of medication... they talk at one another; last week someone had shaved their heads-- maybe lice or scabies... they are either underdressed or bundled in layers, generally in the warm months.  They do not ask, they do not beg.  They are not appealing. Also on 14th Street I have seen an exasperated father screaming abuses at his mentally-challenged son who grasps onto him and talks without cease, hits himself in the head... makes noises.  Surely this would try any parent or caregiver but the maternal in me feels wounded.  I do no good with my endless private sorrows and foodstamp economizing.  

I have friends who give massive amounts... run organizations and charities.  We follow the billionaire narratives--- we know their loves and their homes, and their likes and dislikes.  I have spoken often about the 'generosity ratio'.... there is plenty left... does this make them less good?  I don't know.  Then we have the monstrous financial fairy-tales like the Sam Bank-Man Fried (as in the past participle) story.  I can still hear his pretentious interviews on Bloomberg, waving his crypto-wand, summoning investments from an audience who maybe admired or envied him? How do these people function, who could have lifted many of the world's poverty-veils with the massive wealth they swindled?  And even post-conviction.. his quality of life will be considerably better than the average flood-displaced Pakistani.

Empathy hurts, for some of us.  Playing music-- or the better part of it, is empathic; we listen and feel one another.  For audience it is often a kind of narcotic.  A sad song can take us into a nostalgic reverie that feels like pain.... or lift our heart.  A great lover is empathic... the way they give, the way they understand what their partner needs.  And yet many of us when we are most happy get up and break the heart of the person who lies beside us... as though we are drawn to the ending, do not trust bliss, feel the tourniquet of guilt.  

World's End reminds me how the earth absorbs blood.. how the theater of this war was cleared and rebuilt.  My friend discovered years later there had been a brutal murder in his apartment... the renovation left no trace of the victim.  And here we are-- the shootings, the hit-and-runs... the bloody sidewalks of New York City. Perhaps hardly a square yard that has not seen some violence or injury... 

Fortunately or unfortunately this empathy, this stray animal or shadow-- will follow us into the new year.  Our best celebrations will be dampened by sad news-- by illnesses and this terrible war... pandemics and crises world over-- the hungry and displaced... the waves of immigrants coming into a freezing city in T-shirts, being handed a blanket.  How do we process this? Where are we? Commercials for anti-depressants, for Jesus, for suicide prevention. Look in on your neighbor, they urge-- and still, for the parents among us... the ones that ask do you know where your children are?  they still stab.  

I am wrestling with these issues... like Jacob's angel... or believing the Jesus on television can see me... yes, some days I am joyful... watching the sun set across the Central Park reservoir, feeling the golden light on my face.  Other nights I absorb my friends' sorrows and discomfort and am a hare's breath from a deep pit of suicidal horror. I write a poem... or a song... and it's sometimes like throwing the coals on a freezing evening fire... sometimes.

Last night at the end of my subway platform there was a man kneeling... close to the edge.  I walked over-- with my bass and my protective mask and my helpless empathy; perhaps he was praying... perhaps he needed a scarf or gloves.  As I got closer I realized he was quietly vomiting into his hat.  A Christmas tableau.  I did nothing. Prayed... went home.  In my head I heard Jim Carroll's haunting lyrics...'I want the angel/whose darkness doubles/absorbs the brilliance of all my troubles.'  Empathy.  It might have killed him. Music. Sometimes it saves us. Amen.  

Roe is Me

Okay.  I was born in the 1950's, when we wore white gloves to the theatre, when our mothers cautioned us about how to sit, how to cross our legs, spread our skirt just so on our seats, to place our hands correctly, to button up our blouses and even how to curtsey-- yes.  

As a teenager in the 1960's all bets were off.  We were free-- we fought for civil and feminist rights-- we wore overalls and workboots or flimsy gauzy dresses with no bras and shouted and shed clothes and celebrated our bodies.  We had access, as minors, to Planned Parenthood and the clinics; we embraced sexuality and took the consequences.  Many of us as young women were disrespected by the men around us-- teachers, bosses, our friends' parents, pederast uncles-- priests, rabbis...who took advantage of generational boundaries, the fact that few of us discussed intimacies with parents. But even my mother, who blushed at the word 'sex' and never discussed it with me, who was horrified by feminism, volunteered at Planned Parenthood.  It was the 'right' thing to do. 

The fact that abortion is a legislated issue at all seems not just absurd to me but a little medieval.  Until covid and the onslaught of online medicine, we were protected against sharing privileged medical information.  This was private-- exclusive... our own unique medical profile.  Who has biological control?  We do.  What happened in my Ob-gyn office stayed there.  My personal doctor had written a 1970's book called Healthy Sex which laid out without judgment the various sexually transmitted diseases-- risks and how to avoid these pitfalls.  A pregnant college student was treated as she requested... respectfully, clinically, safely.  From the age of 15 I've shared confidentialities with my Gynecologist.  He knows me for more than fifty years; I trust him. 

Any woman who has had an abortion knows this is not an easy decision.  It's a painful choice, an unhappy one; there are risks, yes... complications for some... and a post-procedure emotional response that is unpredictable.  I remember paying cash for my procedure in the 1970's.  Whether that was an indication that it was a deliberately undocumented choice-- I may not know.  Birth control, I recall, was out-of-pocket and could be procured at free clinics.  

The Affordable Care Act ensured basic contraceptive rights were protected and covered.  Unfortunately Obama-care became the targeted symbol, for the Republican conservatives, of everything that was wrong with the Democratic left.  To go back and attack the issue of birth-- to unravel 20th century logical human progress-- is not just absurd but twisted. 

The so-called moral majority that emerged in the late 1970's began this strategy of weaponizing religion for political ends.  They helped Ronald Reagan to get elected and planted the seeds of what America reaped in spades in 2016.  It was beyond ridiculous that these people were ethically or morally motivated.  Especially when the heinous abuses of the Church were revealed as their movement gained in popularity.  Trump couldn't be farther from a believer, and yet he managed to suck in a whole electoral population who suddenly became more aggressively religious as they found themselves with unprecedented power.

This country was founded on religious freedom-- on separation of church and state.  Where are ethics, morality, humanitarianism and kindness?  How is religion turning the Supreme Court on its own head? It's as though the undermining of American institutions has become a contest-- like Donald Trump's golf games and financial hocus-pocus maneuvers.  When did a major court decision simply leak out, for political reasons?  When did the word of a Justice nominee become disposable?  

For me, it began with Anita Hill-- the bravest woman I recall in American history. She bared her humiliations before the American public in the interest of saving the Court.  Day after day I watched that testimony... listened to the heinous descriptions of a man who abused his personal power and disrespected her dignity.   I read about her polygraph tests, and the ones Justice Thomas refused to take. This man-- who is now part of the Supreme Court backline-- gets to deliberate the fate of women, to unravel the process of justice and autonomy every person deserves, by dint of our Constitution, if nothing else.  I often wonder if the Me-Too movement had taken hold in those days, could any man accused of these transgressions be allowed to sit on a revered and powerful bench? Even one year later, the tide began to turn for women.  So is it any wonder that thirty years later we are handed our fate by men like Thomas?  And others who owe their career to political obligations and promises which belie the mission of their office?   

A friend of mine was violently raped in the 1970's by a high-profile man.  She agreed to testify in court, despite what it did to her career-- despite the humiliation her family suffered.  They were southern and judgmental and disowned her for her courage.  With no DNA testing in those days, her attacker was found not guilty.  He was maybe socially ostracized for a few months.  She, on the other hand, was blacklisted by her industry-- married badly, suffered depression and other physical ailments... decided not to have children. 

Anita Hill was born a little early.  We witnessed her intellectual and emotional lynching in a public forum-- we learned that honesty in a politicized justice system rarely pays.  She and so many of us had to cull our strength and go on with our lives while these men took office.  Then there was Donald Trump, the ultimate Disrespector of women who ties the Evangelical movement to his rear bumper like old cans on a bridal getaway car. 

We are born with bodies; we are not Gods.  We have brains and we think.  We have choices, and we are not constitutionally compelled to think one way or another.  We can worship as we please, and follow whatever individual beliefs we choose, as long as we don't interfere with another's rights. We protect these bodies from harm, from ourselves and from others. What we put inside ourselves is personal. The medical decisions we make are our own inalienable right, assuming we are in compos mentis.  To remove our ability to decide is tantamount to taking away the right to vote.  

Anita weighed in on the Kavanagh confirmation; beside Thomas, he looked like a choirboy.  But it was like a memo-- the past will come to bite you.  Already the sanctity of the court is broken by this leak. Personally I have lost respect for the Institution. Two of my classmates-- both women--  sit on this version of the Supreme Court. I have been proud of their thinking and their careful deliberations. Both have exercised their right not to have children, and beyond this fact, their choices are none other than private and personal.  Barack Obama saw the writing on the wall.  He did what he could to write into law certain protections.  He tried to appoint a reasonable Justice, to guarantee these assurances, but was prevented by the conservatives who were hungry for revenge. No better pathway for Trumpists  to undo the Affordable Care Act than pro-choice issues-- the ultimate wolf in the sheep-costume of evangelism.  This is not what Jesus meant.  Personally,  I always thought the courts were there to protect our rights, not to remove them. 

Mrs. Jones

Sunday marked the second anniversary of my poor Mom's passing.  My son and I went to visit the gravesite, to pay our respects.  I dread these visits; they are unbearably sad for me and I am reminded by the military footstone which marks my father's adjacent resting place of her lifelong uncomplaining 'curtsey' to his rigidity.  We walked over the grassy hillside where she had been laid to rest presumably for eternity, where she has already endured eight seasons' passing in the loneliness of the deceased.

The cemetery upstate is like a city of tombs; it reminds us how the dead far outnumber the living in this world.  On the day we visited it was late afternoon and quiet-- no funerals, no steam shovels, no cement-laying, stonecutters or even gardeners.  We brought a bluetooth speaker and played some Frank Sinatra for my poor old Mom who'd begged to be cremated, because she couldn't bear the thought of being in a box.  While I tried my best to fight for her final wish, I was overruled by petty family tyranny.  After Frank, we played Billy Paul's 'Me and Mrs. Jones'...

In 1972 my Mom was still elegant and beautiful.  I'd come home from college and she'd be baking a pie or pulling some magical concoction of cakey lightness from her old 1940's oven.  The gardeners and workmen would hang around hoping for a slice... they loved her, and she flirted in a tiny way with their reverence for her kitchen skills.  When she was alone upstairs she'd sing along to the radio-- 'we've got a thing going on'... the song seemed to be in extra-heavy rotation that summer-- and she'd blush when I caught her.  She even bought the sheet music and tried to play it on the piano.  My Dad was always darkly burdened and serious.  They didn't use the word depression lightly in those days, but he suffered and she never complained.  That summer she was still young enough to understand longing, and passion.  She was a wonderful wife-- an enabler and a team-player... but the Billy Paul song, and the daily workmen's coffee breaks were her little window onto some kind of womanly heaven.

For some reason the bluetooth got stuck and kept repeating the song over and over--- loud and resonant over the hills.  No one came out to scold... and after three or four plays even my son's mood lightened.  I buried a few small trinkets, as I do-- an old Egyptian scarab I bought as a child from the Smithsonian Museum, a button from my son's prep-school blazer-- things to comfort her.  'Is Grandma a skeleton?' my son asked, as though he were in grade school.  It made me shiver.  I'm not sure how they dressed her when she was buried; my sister had the purse and called the shots.  I wish I could have had the closure of spreading her ashes in the places she'd loved, and not the deep remorse of being unable to carry out her final private wish.   Such is life--  and the relentless tide of death which carries us all out to the darkest depths of some universal sea where we are all theoretically 'one'-- infinite grist for some cosmic mill.

I remember my mother assuring me as a young child: God takes care of things in your mouth.  I’d fallen and split my lip open… a few days later a teacher sent me to the nurse—it seemed my bottom teeth had poked through the gash… no, I did not blame God… but maybe that was the first broken promise.  What are promises anyway?  A marriage vow?  A prenup? Like my college honor code agreement-- a kind of contract which by its very existence assumes it will be challenged or violated?

This has obsessed me lately-- walking the streets,  relentless monologue in my head, the confessions and titles-- a hurdy-gurdy monkey cranking out lyrics, pulling on my ear... filling in the spaces.  Jesus-- give me structure--a blank-line stability-- a simple page.  On what can we rely? In my Mom's case not even her last request was honored-- or, more likely, she lacked the strength to demand such a thing in the context of her old-fashioned view of male-dominated decisions and one-way unconditional love.  I was her daughter; it was not filial love she really craved and I only wish I could have witnessed her in that cafe being indulged as Mrs. Jones. 

We are growing old now, my friends and I.  No one is going to kneel down and cup our face in their hands and reassure us that anything is going to be okay.  We ricochet from day to day, from narrow escape to close call-- entering medical offices to be handed a grim prognosis no matter how hard we have worked, how we have either abused or cared for our bodies.  My facebook friends post and celebrate-- and suddenly there is some ominous news or shock.  First it was our parents; now we ourselves.  A few have moved from the city-- retired, escaped, become sustainable farmers and nature-worshippers in some enviably remote agrarian paradise-- and suddenly they, too, are asking for help, for donations.  Nature  has no favorites; we are all at her mercy when she stretches her limbs or opens her global mouth and lets us have it.

The denouement is not nearly as interesting as the build-up; life gets thin and brittle as we age as do our longings and desire.  In the end it is 'missing' that so often replaces love.  I miss my young Mom-- the one who baked and sang and dreamed.  It is that version I choose to imagine buried with her passions and memories on that hill waiting patiently for her daily romantic rendezvous long after her great grandchildren are gone.

Pocketful of Wry

Yesterday on the sidewalk two small birds were having it out-- a bonafide squall... a few others flew in for the entertainment; two extras got involved in the fray.  It was like a game of 3-card monty... squawkers and gapers and rooters and much flapping around.  Finally I got a glimpse of the prize-- it was a chicken wing-tip-- like a discarded piece of Kentucky fried bucket-stuff on the sidewalk.  Hey, hey, I shouted to the sparrows-- not even pigeons who have no shame in this town-- that's your cousin there you're tearing apart-- what are you, cannibals?  Or maybe the processed stuff which passes as meat at KFC has no authentic bird DNA.  They dispersed, only to return when I got a few feet ahead... to peck it out until death....

I thought about Aesopian philosophy-- mocking bird humor-- an Ogden Nash or Edward Lear would surely come up with a limerick.  A Wall Street parallel?  A dog-eat-dog kind of thing?  What occurred to me is the fact that people have lost sight of the 'prize'... they will duke it out, compete, race and grab out of some instinct... kind of a Donald Trump thing-- going all out for a political campaign when you have no idea of what you might do if you actually win.  And, as we suffering Americans have learned well, not only does the best man not win, but the worst man wins, the best men stay home, the race ends in a brick wall collision-- no trophy, no pride, no victory-- just a kind of sick realization that you ruffled your feathers for some kind of cannibalistic irony...  a bad joke... fuel for all the cartoonists and comedians and late-night talk-show hosts.  I'm not laughing this week.

Last Saturday school kids led the country in a meaningful protest against gun-violence; they spoke with emotion and pride-- the mourners, the victims-- the girl vomiter who displayed her facial wounds to millions on international broadcasts, while the president-- the Commander-In-Chief whose worst pain is from a hair transplant procedure-- played golf or watched shark-week TV.   The demonstration totally eclipsed this year's NCAA tournament and imparted another ironic meaning to  Sweet Sixteen.   Brackets lost their edge anyway; the hype this year seems larger than the competition. Wth the exception of the first round, the winners seem less appealing-- no dreams, no legends, no compelling stories.

On the train this week I sat beside a homeless girl-- Maria from Panama who came to New York for her boyfriend-- shining and bright-- having won hands down her high school talent contest, she hoped to become a star, but had to sell her violin and saxophone for food.  Where is her joy of winning? What harsh lesson has she learned here?  I wanted to take her home with me, but I can no longer do these things.  I can no longer saddle myself with more causes and sorrows and sicknesses; I am worn from not even three months of the new year; my shadow is dense and dark-- daylight savings time seems ill-omened and premature.

One of the workers in my building complained to me about the way some new tenants have treated him-- with disdain and disrespect; these people who have bankrupted old Wall Street firms with their greed and shenanigans, their margin-trading and derivatives manipulation.  Here they are, the criminals and crime-masters of finance, buying weighty shares in my coop, throwing their power around like the entitled brats they are, tearing down walls and wrecking old fixtures as they move onward, losers become winners...  You are a good woman, this man told me, with his thick accent; you will be rewarded by Jesus; I believe this, he said, pointing to his heart.

My friends question the existence of a God who countenances childhood cancer, these senseless innocent killings... I do not hold Him personally responsible;  I know this is not the way the world works.  There are no Superheroes who catch falling infants from burning buildings, but firemen and people who reach out and sacrifice themselves for others.  We honor them, we decorate their graves and donate money to their families... but who are the winners here?  I don't know anymore.  All day the nursery rhyme has been going over and over in my head-- the Trump-as-King is in his counting house, counting out his money, the Queen is in the parlor (Trump Tower) eating bread and honey; the maid is in the garden hanging out the clothes...along came a wing-eating blackbird and snipped off her nose.  It seems the poor and the good are being punished here; they are shot and homeless and suffering from asthma and cancer and poor medicine while the losers have become the winners.  Crooked men are we, the new Americans, with our phones and selfies and downloaded lives-- broken brackets, crumbling White House, obscene coffers and man-made poverty; we are no longer dreamers but streamers.   Maria in the church basement cradling her empty violin case like a baby, waiting for her sad supper on a paper plate, singing a song of sixpence...

Hark the Herald Angels

Like my father before me, I often watch Bloomberg television in the overnight.  I'm fascinated by economics, the way they graph and predict and analyze what seems the bizarre and illogical behavior of current financial markets.  It's also a little comforting, in the thin hours where late-night dissolves into dawn, to know that across the world people are awake and bustling, when you are just home from a gig  that isn't quite what you wanted it to be, and sometimes considering life-alternatives.

Apparently, according to the financial pundits, it was a healthy Christmas.  Retail in-store sales were up, despite the anticipated online shopping dominance.   Personally I didn't really buy into the holiday spirit until I met my son in Herald Square at 5:45 PM, Christmas Eve.  Everyone should have this experience once in their life; it puts capitalism in some kind of warped perspective.  To be honest, there was less panic than I'd have predicted… and we managed to score the last pair of black Timberland nu-bucks in his size.  They were more than I could afford, more than I spend in two years on my own clothing-- but he wanted them.  He wanted the same ones in 2004, but I didn't bring that up.  It's imperative to buy something I can't afford; especially something that rappers seem to endorse universally.  Of course, he'd really like a Rolex, but he'll have to wait until he can buy it himself which is imminent, I sense. As for me, I've given up the ritual of exchanging gifts with everyone else… I can scarcely manage building employee tips and they all know they earn more than I do, but it keeps us on some kind of level ground of courtesy.  God knows the value of courtesy in this city.

My son always buys me a tree-- my only wish-list; this year he gave me a phone-- for emergencies, Mom, he explains to my idiosyncratic luddite head-shaking-- an extra line came with a huge discount in his bill, and a free phone… so I had to concede, even though I will not carry it.  He  knows me well; I have a history of wondering at the yearning of most people for what they do not have, and not often wanting what I get.   My childhood Christmases, after initial dismay that Santa did not leave me a horse, were not materially memorable.  I spent long days shopping, wrapping, and crafting things for everyone with my babysitting income.  I loved the giving.  Presents for me were generally the little-sister version of whatever my mother had selected from my sister's hefty list, which included prices and sums.  My Nana knew me best; she gave me boxes of scraps and spools of thread for making doll clothes-- rocks and old stamps for projects.  These were my treasures.

One year my Mom gave me Judy Collins' 'Wildflowers'.  It was the first record album that was designated mine and not communal like the scratched and dog-eared Beatles and Stones in the hifi bin, and it was like a coming-of-age joy-- one of those moments that let me know my Mom really 'got' me.  I loved it to death.  Sisters of Mercy.

Another year I remember tonight: I must have been 18, planning a summer trip to Europe with my boyfriend, and I begged for cash.  Christmas morning there were the usual piles of gay-looking boxes and bags, and not a thing for me.  In the toe of my stocking, something rustled: it was a $1.  Fuming, I took off-- skipped the traditional pancake breakfast and ran downtown.  The city was deserted and I was sulking and in desperation hopped a bus back to college.  It was a day like today-- frigid and unforgiving, and when I reached my empty dorm, I found there was neither electricity nor heat.  I wept in Christmas solitude and called my boyfriend in Boston from the house-phone who consoled me and directed me back to New York.   Anyway, trying to sleep that night under piles of blankets, I heard a strange noise-- found a flashlight and discovered one of my eccentric roommates in several hats and coats in her bed reading the novels of Jane Austin.  She'd stayed behind, intellectual that she was, and not buying for a second into either the holiday or home-sweet-home.  I'd never have really known her,  had I not had this little learning excursion which also taught me that I was an adult, and had to rely on myself if I wanted something-- that home was where I was, not some kind of story-book picture.  I thus weaned myself from my sweet Mom for the second time.

I've been thinking about her all this week-- my first motherless Christmas, the first time I wrapped no gift for her.  I remember how she understood me, even though she disagreed-- how she had to align herself with my Dad and refuse to sanction or even witness my artistic and romantic ambitions, but how she'd send me something like some candy bars I loved taped together, with no card-- or an old ribbon.  How she called to cry about John Lennon when he was shot that cold December day… how she tried.  I suppose death is the final weaning.

There's a Code-Blue out tonight in New York City.  It's so cold they've directed the police to round up homeless people who are at risk outdoors.  I was in Harlem at dusk; on the steps of a familiar church where a population beds down, two cops were trying to coax a sleeper to a shelter.  I don't mind the cold, he kept saying, but I mind the shelter.  After they left, I asked if he needed something.  Plastic bags for my feet, he said, and asked about my dog.  My dog has been dead for years… but he seemed to recognize me.  You gave me a sweater one night, he told me--- you were on a balcony and it was raining, and I was digging through restaurant trash… and you brought me a blue sweater.  I remember this… I did… and I remembered seeing that sweater in the trash bin the next morning, like a dis.

It's hard for me to believe this was that homeless man whose face, I confess, I don't recall… I keep thinking he is some sort of angel or apparition; his voice was soft and resonant and musical,his leathery smile so kind.  He also gave me a bag of socks to wash; I threw them into the machine at 2 AM when no one would be there to judge.  I will take them back to him tomorrow evening even though I wonder if he will be there; it is my foot--washing opportunity-- a real Christmas gift and I resisted the temptation to buy him a new pack, but executed his wish, as he presented it.   Clean socks.  I will sort and fold them in the Christmas spirit I failed to embrace this year until now.  If he is not there, I will leave the bag along with a candle for his night, and a prayer.

This is the sort of thing my Mom frowned on; after all, she was a lady, and didn't understand this is my version of rolling bandages for soldiers as she had done in her day.  In the scriptures, the woman who washes Jesus' feet with her hair, no less, was a sinner.  I've sinned plenty, as my Mom did not, and maybe you must be a sinner to want to serve the homeless.  I'd like to think it is compassion, not guilt that compels me.  But maybe some of those smug Bloomberg guys need a bag of dirty socks left under their tree with the Rolex boxes and the new-car keys.  How about putting that on your billionaire-list, Santa? For the naughty or nice, financial sinners all-- the ones who drank the Trump tax hand-out just as happily as a Christmas egg-nog.  From your warm golf-courses and holiday Caribbean hideaways, may you dream of some human foot-washing in the arctic cold as you kneel before a man who has maybe never seen the inside of a an airplane, or a decent restaurant, or a lovely warm home, but who is closer to some version of grace than all of your graphs and statistics will ever be.

Amen and Happy New Year to all.

Keep the Change

It's been a banner flu season.  The weather fluctuates from 16 to 70 degrees arbitrarily, robbing us of a proper winter (no one complains, really).  Our current administration doesn't believe in climate change, despite the science and all evidence, and is supported by a significant sector of the population that maintains that God controls weather anyway. He apparently created man about 5000 years ago, despite the fossils and relics in the Smithsonian; he had Noah build an ark and board two of every creature.  Even I, in Bible School at the age of 6, asked, 'Where did the dinosaurs sleep?' and got sent to sit in the hallway.

I shun vaccines and get my immunity from sharing microphones and water bottles with my fellow musicians.  We're exposed to so much coughing and sniffing and germ-swapping, it seems to keep us going.  I let my baby boy eat plenty of dirt in the NYC sandboxes; he didn't miss a day of school until he began willful truancy-- another story.  My ill friend won't eat ice cream or drink Gatorade when she's dehydrated, because she thinks sugar causes cancer.  She has stage 4c advanced metastatic disease that is so bad the tumors surely weigh more than the little that is still woman.  The pain is off all charts, the doctors avoid her, the nurses speedwalk in and out of her room, recommending things for which there is no technician available.  The drains are not functioning, her intestines are blocked, her ribs are on the verge of cracking and it's tough to breathe in most positions.

Being an actor, she watched the Academy Awards the other night; she still votes as a SAG member, and it provided some distraction.  I do not watch these things, but she told me about the envelope at the end-- how it gave her some hope that maybe she has been misdiagnosed.  We both love Idris Elba.  Was he even on the show?  I have no idea because I haven't seen a Hollywood movie in years.  I pray now that her TV won't break down because besides the morphine and oxy's, this is the main drug.

Tonight I am making her chicken soup.  I am a little happy because she craved it and it's something I can provide.  I am whistling inside; we had a great talk this evening in between her induced sleep cycles, and she can manage a few spoonfuls in the morning if I strain it carefully.  It's as though we're in the midst of a massive California brushfire in our tiny log cabin and I am outside calmly throwing glasses of water at the wall of flame.  These are my dreams.

In the world outside her disease, there is this metaphorical political American cancer.  Forget the influenza epidemic.  It's as though people in this country went to the polls and decided-- well, here we have the common cold… and here we have-- well, whooping cough or something.. .and then here we have-- yes, cancer.  Let's try cancer for a change.  It's really only a diagnosis… which my friend had at the beginning, when her laugh was still boisterous and theatrical and her red hair bounced around when she bartended.  It was like a script… a drama?  I'm not sure how she processed it, but she did omit some of the difficult choices that were recommended because reality is a strange scenario for most of us, and despite the nomenclature, nothing is real for most of us until it is on-fire/in-your-face.

When you are suffering and ill and even your dreams are blurred with medications and pain, the world is difficult to understand.  You become narcissistic not-by-choice and unable to think.  You occasionally lash out in bitterness and agony and it's difficult for those of us in the room, when the elephants begin to rage and stomp.  My friend is a staunch Democrat, as are most of the more artistic and talented people I know.   In her moments of clarity, she rants about the current President and administration.  Life in America is less appealing, we agree.  Despite all the negatives, despite the unbearable worsening existence to which she is sentenced, day after day, she refuses hospice care; she has an incorrigible belief that somewhere, somehow, there is going to be a way out.  Someone is going to find the key to this door of the house of terminal hideous illness.  It is a kind of belief and if Jesus were here, he would wash her feet.

I have just published a new book of poetry.  My friend has no interest in this, finds my lyrics depressing and would rather watch TV or talk.  The book is under an indie umbrella and we all have to foot the bill for these projects.  I am forced to do an amount of promotion to pay the debt.  My friends know that I live far below the radar of any economic level.  I don't know what a vacation is.  I have no practical containers for the chicken soup because I don't get take-out, ever, on my food budget of $20 a week total.  On the way out, I ran into a neighbor who looks quite a bit like Trump, and surely voted Republican.  He has the mannerisms of a self-made non-charismatic man whose money causes people to treat him with deference.  So, he says to me, I hear you have a new book…. should I buy one?  I shrug.  I happen to be carrying a few to the Post Office. He puts his hand out… opens his wallet as though he is tipping me.  I have a $50, he says, is that okay?  It's $20, I answer, without emotion, looking down so I won't see his billfold even by accident-- with the black and platinum cards and the fat wad of green.   I don't have any small bills, he announces… So why don't I slip it under your door later?  I shrug again… as he rolls..ROLLS my precious book like a newspaper, like he is going to beat a dog with it… my precious lovely book with the expensive matte-coated cover which cost me close to $20, each one… I resist the urge to cringe, and mumble the Post Office, time, deadlines, whatever...

So I get home…is there a bill under my door?  Somehow the guy seems to recall (he did smell a bit like he'd had a cocktail or two) that he'd given me a $50…. So there is a note…no envelope.. a note… which  says.. 'Hey I read the first poem-- about the Chevrolet-- good stuff… Keep the change.'  Trumped I am.

Pentimento

I met this medical student in my gym-- speaks Australian English.  He told me he's from Nepal and honed his accent by watching tons of Australian TV.  You can close your eyes and swear he's a native; he's never been there.  What is the meaning of this sort of thing?  Like Madonna when she returned from London?  I lived in London and remained an American.  Sure, when you walk through mud your boots are going to track some dirt in your house, but you leave them at the door.

My friend is dating this guy who just doesn't seem right to me; something 'off', something vaguely dishonest.  Not criminal, but-- like the Nepalese boy-- sort of a forgery.  People who say they went to Harvard when maybe they did go-- to a football game, summer school-- whatever--  but we know what they think we understand.  Things are not what they seem… and in this culture of texting, massive information networks available to us… it baffles me that there is more deception and personal airbrushing than ever.

In my parents' generation… it was name-changing, erasing the edges and accent of your ethnicity, to 'blend'.  The beginning of plastic surgery-- nose jobs to hide your heritage, hair straightening and whitewashing.  Beyonce takes this to a new level-- the Kardashians.  Dye jobs, waxing, lasers… transgender transformations.

Maybe it's my super-Aquarian nature, but I've always been a truth seeker.  In college I studied art history… I obsessed about discovery, attribution.  My degree required a museum colloquium where the final exam was deciphering fakes, comparing signatures.  You had to know.  These days I can't rely on  experts and committees-- too much money to be made by the discovery of an un-catalogued Michelangelo or Rembrandt.  A manuscript-- like the Harper Lee which would never have got past my editorial desk.  The Jean Michel Basquiats.. .the ones he did, the ones he didn't do… as long as they have a certificate, it all seems to be okay.  As though it is 'belief' that is bought and sold.

I've always been obsessed by the story of Jacob and Esau-- how the birthright was switched by a swindle.  How history is changed by deception, by forgeries.  How we sometimes believe what we are handed… because it is too difficult to argue-- and how can we question everything… the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we are served now, the vegetables in the grocery store.. are they organic? Genetically altered?  We must pick our battles.  Jesus as the Messiah would have a terrible time in our culture today-- he'd have to be managed by Jay-Z or marry Kim Kardashian.  We believed in Milli Vanilli.  Jesus would not be able lip-synch or have pitch-control.

My first truly traumatic moment was maybe at the age of 3… I was going up the escalator at Grand Central terminal, with my Dad; it was maybe rush hour-- -there were masses of people-- and I reached up to take his hand, and realized after a few seconds that it wasn't my Dad-- it was a total stranger-- and for a minute or 2, I was lost-- completely up-ended-- like I had to rely on my own instincts, for the very first time… and fortunately, the substitute hand belonged to a kind man who helped me find my Dad and I was probably smacked for who knows what-- my Dad's own fear, his perilous failure to watch out for me because he was always walking too quickly (something I have inherited).

My niece told me a story about how she had a first date with a guy, fell asleep on his bed, and woke up with his cousin.  There are movies about these kinds of things.  I would like to think I can feel the person I love-- blindfolded.  I would know his scent, his touch-- in a nano-second.  But we've all had these moments-- sometimes we reach for the wrong person, we turn to speak and there is a stranger.

When I was maybe 23 I went to the wedding of a classmate's brother.  They were from one of those super-wealthy New Jersey communities with the grand house and horses and grounds and servants… 21 bedrooms.  I'd actually gone on a date with the groom, although his brother was more my type-- the lost tormented poet/hippy who lived with a dog.  They had matching paisley scarves, he and the black lab.  He was shy and silent and would sit near me in the library and smile with some kind of passion but never touched me.  Anyway, his brother was a preppy young banker-- aggressive and obnoxious.  He spent too much, drank too much, played golf and dated debutantes and bragged about it.  He took me to the opera and made no headway afterward.  We scarcely spoke and I was vaguely surprised to have been invited to the wedding but it was great to see his sweet brother who had been traveling with his dog across the Northwest.  We all stayed up late… there was a pre-wedding night of partying and drinking and drugging…

Anyway, I went to bed in my wedding-guest room with the old lace-trimmed linens and piles of fine down monogrammed quilts… and awoke to find the groom in my bed.  Yes, he reeked of whiskey and dope… he was aggressive and it required some adrenaline and self-defense skills to get him off me so I could turn the light on… was I tempted?  He was disgusting.  Did I believe his sheepish explanation that he really thought it was his bride who was way more padded than I am?  Of course not… and in some vague way, did I wish it had been his soft, lovely dreamy brother who never actually touched me?  Yes, I did.

I never told on him.  He danced with me at the wedding, and with all the other women, with  irreproachable manners.  After all, he was a banker and was to become a hedge fund master.   Did I feel a tiny loss of innocence because I believed somewhat in the magic of weddings?  Do I disbelieve the facade of these power couples of New York?  I did.  I do.  I was the single bohemian Mom at a prep school where once or twice a very married father tried to test the waters after a school function.  They confessed and complained and one of them even sobbed his misery.  Those days are so over for me… all of these advances always threw me; I never expected attention… I am not the conventional bait, but I had more big fish than I deserved.  And I generally threw them all back for canned tuna.  More my style.

Last month I looked over a collection of art; one painting stood out-- I'd known the artist from my first gallery job.  The signature was completely wrong, and so was the painting-- I told them.  Last week I saw it come up for sale at one of the major auction houses.  Do they care?  No.  In the larger picture (pun intended), it matters little… it is a painting.. at face value.. does it matter that it isn't as attributed?  To me it does.  It's sort of a lie-- an insult to the artist who was from the generation where truth mattered, where art was a kind of truth or it mocked itself.  The truth is important.  It is important that we can decipher facade from structure, even though 90% of reality is part of a virtual cloud-- a digital, non-palpable image.

Tonight I walked down Malcolm X Boulevard, or Lenox Ave, where I can still feel the oppressive Sunday vibe of James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain.  Many of the storefront churches and stoops have been replaced by the Harlem Shake Shop and other upscale enterprises-- but a few old barbershops and liquor stores remain.  I try to listen to these buildings, wonder if the gentrification has disguised their voice.  Some of these Harlem buildings were originally the grand homes of rich Jewish businessmen; the church at 120th Street was a former temple.  The 'I' that came here to find James in the 1960's is no longer recognizable… my facade has changed.  No one is chasing me down any streets to get my phone number.  I remember in school how they showed us an original Picasso composition, visible with a black light beneath the surface painting.  I wonder now which one is more real…for that matter, which one is me and which the ghost of myself?  Truth is that time will  bury us all.

Never the Twain Shall Meet

When I was maybe 28, I ducked into an upper east side bar to avoid some creep who was following me home.  It was about 2 AM; I think I'd been at JP's-- one of those late-night rockstar hangouts where occasionally you'd see a seriously magical gig-- people like Robert Plant or Bowie doing a jump-up.  Things like that-- the near-perfect synchronicity of low-profile and high-profile-- happened then; today instagram and twitter ensure a mob-scene within moments.

Anyway, way back on that night, I talked to the bartender for an hour or two, and left when the coast was clear.  I worked in an art gallery in those days; his brother-in-law had had a gallery at some point.  We must have exchanged first names and some nominal details because weeks later a colleague told me some guy was calling up every gallery in town looking for someone with my first name.  Inevitably he showed up, and yes, it was flattering that he'd embarked on this journey to find me, and yes, I had a boyfriend but he was always on the road, etc.  He had a new job, downtown… one night I gave in to impulse and went in --alone; he remembered my drink.  I had plenty of time to watch his hands, his mixing grace, his profile with the perfect hair falling just-so over his eyes… his body.  He was tall, like an athlete.  We left in a taxi, hardly spoke, ended up in his west-side apartment-- one of those perfect spontaneous anonymous encounters where you confide everything you are, without words, because he is a stranger, and that was safe in some way, and he'd passed some kind of test of desire making all those phone calls.

It went on this way for maybe a year-- my guilty pleasure.  I'd show up, late; sometimes he'd whisper something to another bartender, fold up his apron and we'd be in a taxi within minutes.  Other nights I'd sit-- listen to music, watch the ice melt in my drink, indulge in the indescribable calm of these hours where I'd abandon everything in my life for something unfamiliar and undemanding that just felt so safe.  We were intimate in ways only strangers can be.  Sometimes we'd watch TV and eat… we'd laugh and lie there, like husband and wife… and then I'd have to leave.  Sometimes my boyfriend would be home and fail to ask me where I'd been, fail to recognize the scent of passion.  I began to resent him for this-- a sign of his apathy-- failure.  I'd shower and dare him to interrogate me; he never did.

One night-- and it was inevitable-- the bartender was magazine-beautiful-- he walked into a club with two gorgeous blonde women.  I tried to run out, but he'd seen me; I took refuge in the bathroom…. he was banging on the door, the blondes were drunk and laughing, and I exited through the window, ran home feeling humiliated and scolding myself-- really, what did I expect?  That I could prolong some  temporary moment in my life indefinitely?   I'd already stretched it way thinner than any version of reality.  But I was hurt.  My own boyfriend provided little consolation.   Still, it felt like the magic of New York had been zapped into dullness… the glitter had washed away; here I was, on the curb beside my smashed pumpkin fantasy.

Of course, a year later I'd met my husband, and these New York adventures began to recede into some archived anthology of dreams-- something to take out and look at on a night when I begin to doubt that this version of me really existed.  Love is enchanting-- in all its forms; it transforms us, and the dream of it-- the strange dream of unqualified desire-- floats somewhere above us and behind us.

Today I walked through the park with my son-- the son I could never have imagined in those old magical New York days.  I listened to his struggles and angst, his relationship doubts and anxiety, his career concerns.  His style is so different from mine-- he's kind of a millennial hipster-- well-dressed and confident, with an army of accessories that seem to constitute success at his age.  His context is so foreign-- his needs, his ambitions-- and I love him with a love I could never have imagined.  He is of an age where I am now able to see him as a man-- anti-maternally.  And I began to realize-- here he is, making his own New York tales-- with cell phones and texts and workplace flirtations-- but unable to bring any of them to any kind of emotional closure.  We stopped by my favorite uptown church-- St. John the Divine, where the Poet's Corner always provides an appropriate message… something he can send his girlfriend.  The one he usually picks is Mark Twain-- 'There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth'.   He has always been a bit of a truth-evader; his first girlfriend put a poster of Pinocchio on his door.

What I do realize is that my tales and experience are a little dated and useless for him.  I no longer bother to offer these; after all, I can't keep him from his mistakes and bad decisions, from his penchant, like so many young men, of mistaking his dick for his heart, which I suppose is preferable to the reverse.  But there we were, in this sacred Church, with the soaring Gothic space and the passion of truth and the spirit of God and the heart wrenching sadness of Mary and her tragic beautiful son… people praying, an organ practicing hymns… and here is my son…. losing his religion--  his religion of trust that love will come and it will be happy and good and fulfilling, and he will be saved and safe in its clarity.  And this is not the version of life as we know it.

As for me, I will never again feel that total abandon and passion and paradoxical safety of a strange lover's bed.  I have learned what I have learned, I have felt what I have felt.  Love is sacred, love is painful, love is searing and ripping and confusing and wrecking and is maybe never safe, except the love in our hearts that we hold for our sons and daughters and even our lovers, even though there is no guarantee they will return or honor this.  Love--like a heart-- can be bloody, and dark.   Love is Gangster.  Guns and Roses.  No one punishes and goes unpunished like love lost.  The death of love is like no other.

My son swore he'd never get hurt again, or hurt anyone else.  But that is impossible, I don't say.  Every single hurt is at least as bad as the one before, and unfortunately, if we are honest, we will hurt our loved ones.  He will revise his wisdom, time and again.  Hopefully, his path will be straighter than mine, less cluttered with mistakes and detours and regressions.  Because I loved all these mistakes and heartaches and diversions.   Everyone who loves must be hurt…but they will go on… they will mourn, they will create and redeem memories, they will leave little souvenirs like stones in a pathway so they will not forget, or for some of them-- they will forget.

On the way home, we passed a huge bag of basketball trophies outside a tenement building.  For me it felt sad; I kept shelves of these in my son's room.  He was relatively unsentimental, like the person who'd discarded these: after all, it wasn't about the trophy-- it was about the man.  So our Sunday afternoon walk, like all things happy and sad, came to an end.  A little maternal advice, a tiny gift for his girlfriend, and he went home with his truths, and I with mine, stretched or not.

Hunters and Collectors

Like most writers, or maybe preachers… there's a running sort of monologue in my head… I walk, I ride subways… and this undervoice, this commentary… usurps my ear, and occasionally escapes in a snide remark that I swear I am not responsible for… my 'writerless' companion, my simultaneously better and evil twin.  I am a collector-- of voices, of snapshots I will never take-- and she is the critic, the mouth--even when I look down at the sidewalk, she reminds me, she spooks and taunts me…

I still pick up change… tiny treasures on the street intrigue me-- someone else's accident that intersects with my random existence-- the cosmic coincidence thing.  Something I've noticed: people in Harlem don't pick up coins.  Like that woman on the train that brushed herself off when she realized some silver had leaked out… and yet, these Fifth Ave. eccentrics in my hood-- with doormen and drivers--- they will stoop for a dime….maybe not a penny, but a dime.  That's their boundary.  Me?  I'll investigate a worthless earring, an old book, a penny.

For some reason on my walk today I thought about the story of some artist in Chicago-- a Henry Darger type--- or maybe it actually was Henry himself who was a hoarder of great renown, and the quintessential undiscovered artist.  Anyway, he saved up bits of string, and wound them into a ball which eventually, like some Magritte fantasy, dwarfed everything else in the room, made it impossible to enter or leave-- essentially 'ate' his world.

Henry died of stomach cancer; among the thousands of items in his apartment-- including the incredible, magical artwork and writings--  were hundreds of empty Pepto Bismol bottles.  He was a collector.  Most artists, I have noticed, are collectors.  We find treasures where others do not; we create art out of people's leftovers and leavings.  We see heaven in an empty bottle, Jesus in a synchronicitous song lyric, relief and comfort in an old poem.  For some of us, there are levels of discretion-- a bit of filtering that maybe true geniuses like Henry lacked.

On the other side of the field there are those who give things up-- those for whom loss is simply a non-notable occurrence--- like a meal.  In fact, these people probably couldn't tell you what they had for lunch.  I admire their lack of sentimentality-- their efficiency.  They are like a cup with a hole--- everything passes through, they acquire and delete in equal measure, they do not mourn or notice the things that keep me awake nights.  They try not to feel; some of them are extremely successful and clever.  Maybe they have figured out how loss is the end product of this life, in a way, and have learned how to manage this.  Waste management.  They are like dogs, in a way.  They wag their tale when they are being acknowledged, but they don't worry about their death-- or yours.

So I am a collector-- an intellectual hoarder, in a way.  I am obsessed with people like Henry Darger who died in abject hoarder-poverty while art collectors today fight over his fragile artwork, because he had the passion and imagination to create a bizarre and unique world in which he apparently 'fit'.  I pick up coins because I am intrigued by the cycle of life and possessions and the fact that maybe my dead ex-boyfriend might have once held this 1959 penny and used it to buy cigarettes he smoked in bed with me while we laughed and lived in our series of strange tableaus which have become now like an old photo-album that never existed but I am able to browse without technology at any moment.  These thoughts inform my life and my beliefs.

Last week I was offered a job.  Not a gig or a session, or even a writing assignment-- but a curatorial job, from the old life for which I was highly trained.  This corporate collector-- with maybe a billion dollar stockade of contemporary art--- had decided in a crisis that nothing he acquired over the last twenty years had any value for him.  He had decided to turn back the clock and sense his art the way he used to, when paintings were important, and not valued as investment-- when he used my guidance to buy younger under-acknowledged artists (like Henry Darger, at the beginning).  Of course I refused--- me, the starving musician/poet, the poster child for under-consumption, the author of the virtual and incredible guide to NYC on $4 a day.

So the guy calls me back, asks me to meet him for dinner, which I turn down, because I am so inappropriately clothed for the kind of places he frequents.  A coffee, maybe, I agree to-- -and he wants to come to my apartment next-- to see my 'stuff'… and he is now offering me what any normal person could not refuse-- I could fix my teeth, and buy a new apartment with this kind of money.  The job description: to sort through and find the true gems, to disperse the hundreds of useless overvalued works of art, to start clean with a Disneyland budget and buy whatever I valued.  And for all the women I ever advise-- if you want a guy to fall in love with you, just ignore him-- he'll go nuts if he's a narcissistic egomaniac-- the guy is now laying out offers of seven figures…. and I swear, it not only doesn't tempt me--- it makes me kind of sick.  I am terrible at Waste Management, I explain…. and the very reason I am a commodity for him is also the explanation for why I can never do this.

Okay.  I admit it was a little flattering.  It was a little tiny bit affirmative and really who can I confide in except my writerless companion who was making all kinds of obscene dissing remarks about the guy none of which made it past my throat, but maybe made the vision of that cash a little more suffocating.  Having to walk into galleries and watching the calculating Directors of Art Madness suck up to me in my used jeans.  Having a kind of power.  Having desperate artists with eviction notices beg me… but most of all, the fear of losing my voice, of losing my Dargeresque ambition.  Having been baptized into the religion of poverty-- and it is a kind of religion-- it requires faith and strength and compassion and charity and resistance… I just couldn't sell out.  Not for sushi, not for my teeth, not for whatever  costume or bejeweled truffle soup the art world has become.  I can look, I can think and feel and listen and collect what wanders irresistibly into my world where I am King and slave and secretary and CEO and have just enough discipline to know when my emotional ball of string is beginning to block the view.  Amen.

Overdressed

Exactly 25 years ago I went into labor.  I begged the gods (and they obliged) to give me a one-week respite.  The concept of a lifetime of wearing costumes for a themed birthday party was unappealing… and something about Halloween, for the more literal among us, is confusing.  Some of us talk to angels every day-- and trolls and devils.  We fear painted-on smiles and puppetry, while we see Death among the faces in Times Square, Jesus in a slice of toast, and find our pot of gold in a leathery-faced man with a thrift-shop guitar.

Especially since I have long passed the midpoint of my life, I avoid holidays which celebrate and mock death.  I am grateful not to have to commemorate a birthday with masks and pumpkin heads.  Coming from the kind of family where you were responsible for your own costume,  the experience of listening to strange door-tones and smelling the leafy fall night air were my best childhood souvenirs.  Conversely, I wouldn't want to die on Halloween.  My best friend was buried in a designer black dress with her dark-henna hair clean and shiny...and her face still and pale in full Goth make-up.  All dressed up… the way she used to watch the Rocky Horror film when I wasn't playing a gig.  Her image comes to me every October 31st.  All dressed up, the way her remains would be if someone dug them up.  It's eerie.  It seems wrong.

Last weekend they held the pre-Halloween memorial for my beloved adopted stepmother who took her own life in July.  She expressly forbade ceremonies, funerals, etc.  This gathering was intended to celebrate her brief foray into experimental film-making from the 1960's which won her more hipster-cred than her maybe 1-200,000 hours of dedicated drawing and painting.  It was held at a small theatre; I received a hand-written invite.  So I took the subway, on a Sunday afternoon, $2.50 out of my daily spending allowance of $4, and was delayed by police activity at 14th Street.  I arrive 15 minutes late; the screening has begun, and I am asked for $20 contribution.

Well… backstory---I have sold 40-50 of her drawings over the years,  in my former capacity as a gallerist…  placed her work in some wonderful collections, never took a cent of commission, since she lived this very frugal lifestyle.  I assumed she was poor.  I am poor; we tread lightly around others' financial handicaps.  So I spent hours taking notes, arranging her books, cleaning her house, organizing her life, mailing letters, bringing her hand-made gifts and cherished visitors.  But apparently she had loads of money, and half a townhouse, and had some estranged nieces and sycophants who in the end were 'there'.   And somehow,  my mother or grandfather had given me this notion that it's not appropriate to take credit cards to a memorial, and I'd come, in my one blue dress and leather jacket, with only keys and a metro card.  No cell phone, of course; nor would I have texted any of the guests with my pathetic issue.

Okay…so the smug girl at the booth with the trendy haircut seemed even more composed when the tears began (I am so uncool at times).  After a useless attempt at negotiation,  I left like a humiliated gatecrasher, and wept all the way home on the bus (free X-fer, small consolation) with wet mascara stains running down my dress.  I'm not even sure what the moral here is, because apparently I was the only one who saw the irony in paying admission to celebrate the life or death of someone I had loved, whose films I'd watched umpteen times without the company of the hipster audience who knew little of her soul or her underdressed, no-admission life-- this woman who, outside of her under-fulfilled desire for artistic fame, was my hero, my confidante and mentor for so many years.  Except that she might have ignored me, had she been there.  She might have preferred these nouveau, well-dressed film-fans to the full but cash-poor heart on my worn-leather sleeve.

There are several blocks in my neighborhood which literally compete for Halloween bling.  Private townhouses are swathed in webs and lights and witches on broomsticks suspended above ghosts and monsters and vampires.  Some of them even speak and groan and howl.  The pumpkins are catered… faces are carved with the finesse of a Kara Walker.  I cannot imagine the calibre of candy these people hand out.  It is beyond me.

By midnight, the rain had basically chased away the trick-or-treaters; lights were out, the web and fibrous material was soaked and sagging and sad; the vampires and witches looked a little cold and bewildered.  On our garbage pails were several discarded pumpkins and some party trash… orange cups and candy wrappers.  I took one of the pumpkins upstairs and without thinking, I opened a can of Benjamin Moore and painted it black.  There it sat, my pumpkin in disguise, like a punishment-- like a souvenir of failure and mourning and aborted Halloween.  Like a giant ridiculous mark of punctuation on my day of shame, day of the dead, but not for me who lacked the price of admission.

We are all ghosts and spirits here… we are walking shadows.  When the lights go out we disappear, we are leveled and costume-less and skeletal.  We masquerade and we dance, we make films or music and we cry and we blink and we love and we die.  My pumpkin and I are alone in the dark; I light a candle and through the night rain I can still hear the looped mocking deep digital laugh track of the mechanical Caped Man with the Skull who is waving his scythe back and forth at the top of the steps on the $10-million townhouse on the next block.  Someone forgot to turn him off--- or they cannot, and a lyric is going around in my  head, between the laughs… the one Bob Dylan borrowed from the Bible, from the hymnals… and the first one now will later be last.  

The Tracks of Someone Else's Tears

It always seems my girlfriends eventually sync up their short-term relationship tidal clocks.  Things rise and fall, and suddenly they're each and every one slammed and up all night, and it's either a bottle or the phone.  Meanwhile I'm writing a song, and it's versus interruptus.   The words of Joseph Brodsky come to mind: if there is any substitute for love, it is memory.  Not, as they seem to insist, an online-arranged quickie or even a candidate from a  genuine husband-fishing site, or a blind date.  Really, nothing helps.  Memory, at this open-wound point, is painful and punishing.  Maybe notes for later, a revenge-blog--- a tear-producing contest, some really bad television-- okay, a couple of glasses of whatever you have on hand--never music, nor ex-boyfriends, films… not until a couple of layers of new skin have 'set'.

For those of us with some perspective--e.g.,  long-term serious heartbreak,  ribbon-worthy emotional challenges, kids who have had issues, family deaths… any kind of life seems preferable to the devastation of which we have had a peek.  I am no longer fussy about what I eat, and although I draw the line at fast-food coffee, most nights I'll say grace to a minimal plate, and pray for a hot shower and no muggings.  I occasionally wade out into relationship low-tide, but if I'm going to swim, I wear a rubber suit and bring my own oxygen.  Just saying.

Parentally speaking,  I'm way more unhinged when kids are upset-- for whatever reason.  It may be co-dependence, it may be hyper-mothering-- but there's that extra-sensory ghost of guilt hovering whenever our own offspring are flirting with the language of failure.  Every love relationship has a sort of death-throe-- even the healthy ones shed a skin and eventually morph into something less passionate and desperate; but when our kids are in flux, somehow the smoky nightmare of a child's suicide haunts me.  They are so fragile-- so unprepared, and it is my fault for sending them out into the world with plenty of warm sweaters and a decent education but an underdressed tender heart.

So I listen, and I empathize, because I have now let this little thread of fear weave itself into my night--- the kind that makes us prick up our ears at the sound of a siren and dread the local news.

Two stories that diluted my girlfriend-empathy and haunted my weekend--(besides the Weight Watchers poster-boy governor who had the amazing idea to handle his bridge and tunnel politics with the same solution his personal GI surgeon used on his gut).  One was the uptown oncologist who maybe let go of his son's hand for a second--- a split second-- and we all know how boys hate to hold hands especially when they've just been to their after school sports program or a peer playdate…  and the other was the 4-year-old boy who by some utter lapse in the system was helplessly left in the hands of sick sadistic monsters who were ironically paid by some agency for the opportunity of torturing this child literally to death and who had managed while still alive to remark to a witness that ' he's not sure about God'.  And still, being starved, burned, beaten and abused--- no one, including his birth mother and her posse band of lawyers--- was protesting until the cameras were turned on and the little coffin was being prepared.

Personally I remember 2 incidents that really threw me: once, I left my baby boy with his Grandma for about 2 hours and when I returned, she was weeping and blurted out---'he's not going to make it…'
I quickly realized she was referring to her 80-year old cardiac-compromised brother.  But for a brief moment, the bottom dropped out of my life and this simultaneous self-loathing and matricidal passion came up like a tidal undertow.  The second was one of those middle-of-the-night phone calls during rough teenage years, with a teary voice on the other end (my son's best friend) hysterically sobbing 'I can't tell you--- it's just too bad…' and me collapsing on the floor in grief and shock… and then barely hearing the next most beautiful words I have ever heard '... in jail'.  Still, for those seconds, twice--- I felt I could almost know the devastation of this very worst parental punishment.  But not quite.

We are each the center of our universe and for most of us our own personal grief is larger than any empathic sorrow we can feel for massive devastations and tragedies.  There are fires and typhoons and mutilations and war and genocide and earthquakes.  And here we sit in our little for the most part warm rooms-- worrying about stock portfolios, arthritic pets, bills-- crying over a broken relationship.   On the news disappointing retail sales numbers get slightly more time than these 2 children-- one well-cared, well-dressed and carefree-- the other a victim of suffering and abuse-- both innocent-- both just here-- 4 days ago-- -and now gone-- irreversibly, devastatingly, terminally and hopelessly absent; one leaving a father forever damaged, and the other leaving all of us with a hopeless sense that we have failed.  And I sit here, grateful that my own has survived another day, that this siren waxing and waning outside is not   for one of 'mine'-- not yet, anyway…  and feeling somehow guilty and sad and slightly fortunate at the same time.

And somehow, in some horrific version of television irony...I clearly hear, from my machine which is now airing some early morning repeat of some 'Pathetic Reality' show-- because this is what they are, these endlessly regurgitated variations on a revolting cheap theme-show yawn-- a woman saying 'Girl...Jesus might be okay as a companion, but you can't fuck him' (bleeped, of course--- but not so that you can't hear it).

I am a so-called rock-chick.  I have seen and done many things that have made my own mother compelled to distance herself.  So what misplaced, disinherited genetic morality trait has brought me to feel today like I have been sliced in half and dared to throw my lot in with some Solomon who has failed to step in to tell me or anyone else in this culture what to do about it?  Come back, Joseph Brodsky, and give us another option.

Mirror Images

Digital time has made it difficult to rewind.  We can't stop clocks and we can't straddle a moment the way I used to think I could.  My web post will register in 2013 or 2014 depending on when I press 'save'.  But I deliberately began this one in the old year and left it in edit mode so I could actually finish 'from the other side'.  My 2013 self could be looking back while the 2014 me is looking ahead.  Or vice versa, which would mean my two selves are facing one another on this digital border, like mirror images.

Mirrors have taken a back seat these days.  Most of us are looking at phone images, taking selfies, monitoring hair and make-up with photos.  Girls know exactly which way their eyebrow slants when they are blinking, they know how white their teeth look and exactly which strand of hair should fall over their forehead.  The old 4-frame photo booth strips which iconicized our relationships and helped us ID the ones that were awkward or doomed-- well, they have been replaced by thousands of technicolor digital seconds.  For those of us who aren't famous, we are our own relentless paparazzi.

My gym was recently renovated and they removed the mirrors in the cardio-rooms.  I could care less… but I notice the girls looking at their phones… I remember having teenage face-offs with my reflection--- tormenting myself, asking questions, trying to 'see' something I couldn't feel, trying to analyze and decide how to advise my inner self--- how to manage my outer self--- who I appeared to be, who I was, who I could become….how I looked when I lied about things, when I tried out things I wanted to say to my boyfriend.

Despite my middle-aged complacency and 'acceptance' mode, there are still people who annoy me.  I should be above this by now but I'm not.  There's an annoying grey-haired woman named Martha at our gym.  She wears a shredded fanny pack and taped-up Keds on her feet and she goes from machine to machine, stands and plays with the screen, wastes everyone's time, converses with anyone who will listen, and apparently has nowhere to go.  She carries these plastic grocery bags and I've seen her stealing rolls of toilet paper and towels in the locker room.  She chatters.  I hate chatterers.  She's constantly changing clothes and showering and drying her hair and sometimes I think she is homeless.  Once someone gave me flowers and I left them in a locker and they disappeared and turned up in hers.  She asked me in September if I have a problem with her and I do, but of course I said no.

The day before New Year's eve she left the gym behind me… chattering as usual, telling me where I could work out for nothing on New Year's Day.  Then she asked me what religion I am.  This is a question I find invasive and highly personal, but for someone like Martha, admitting you have an opinion is like a segue-way into a new chatter-detour.  I need to be vague here.  Christian, I say.  I'm Christian.  So what is that, she asks…and tells me she's a Roman Catholic and doesn't understand what Christian means.  Well, I say, I was married in the Anglican church.  My son attended an Episcopal School.  This church we're passing right now is Presbyterian.  But Roman Catholic-- she tells me.  She knows where she stands.  Whenever she finds some lost headphones or a sweatshirt, she says, she turns it right in.  She puts it in the reception desk drawer, because she knows how some of the night cleaners disrespect the lost and found.  They throw stuff out.  They keep stuff.  But she's Roman Catholic.  It doesn't matter that she's Dominican and American and has several pilfered boxes of kleenex from the locker room,  not to mention all of my missing headphones.

And she keeps on--- all the way up Lexington Ave… trying to back me into some corner where she can enjoy some metaphoric pathetic victory, but I refuse to bite.  I'm determined to be non-judgmental and kind.  I'm good at defense; I return every volley in a non-aggressive way.  I use minimal replies.  Something about me bugs her.  She knows I know and she's set on somehow steamrolling it out.  Finally I tell her I need to catch a train.  I duck underground.  Moments later I see her in the grocery store, lurking around and trying to talk to all the managers and stock boys who obviously have experienced her.  I see her stash something from the shelves.   Where are the security mirrors?  Where is Martha's mirror?

I go home and try to forgive myself for my lack of compassion for Martha.  I love my home--- the things--- nothing is absolutely great, but everything is good.  From the kitchen one square of a painting is reflecting some eerie light.  Like a cross.  Shining.  A sign.  My niece is being raised Jewish.  Maybe it's easier; Jews don't see the face of Mary in a croissant, or a pieta in a potato.  They wouldn't feel the urge to cross themselves because I feel maybe Jesus is watching me from my wall, making me look at my intolerance.   The mirror of Jesus.  Christmas light.

My niece told me when she was Bat-Mitzvahed she blew out a candle and wished she could become anorexic.  It was such a perfect teenage literary moment.  A Catholic-worthy confession.  She's struggling.  It is what it is, my friend the psychiatrist tells me.  I hate that expression.  It isn't anything.  It was.  Even that has no peace; they change the truth.  Someone slept with the dead man; the dead man raped someone and owes people money.  There was a guy in the subway today, begging.  He had an amputated leg and it was unwrapped.  It was the worst surgical mess anyone had ever seen and we all donated generously even though he was exploiting his own deformity.

Christmas.  New Year's.  Scams and schemes and begging and Martha from my gym stealing biscuits in a roll at Pioneer.  I am not going to make her feel guilty.  I am going to avoid her.  I am going to try not to cross into the New Year with these old cans tied to my ankles.  Things are good.  I can be good.  I can jump from one year into the next.

But here I am--- the digital seconds relentless--while I played a song, while I waved goodbye to old endings, while the mirror of 2013 for a split second faced the mirror of 2014 and I am wondering if maybe they traded places because here I am, on  stage, in a black dress, toasting a moment, and my friend is yelling over the music that she is leaving because 'these are not her kind of people' here,  and she fails to see the irony, or the failure, and I don't dare scold or judge her tonight of all nights, even though I know better, even though I have a mirror and maybe it simply is what it was and that will be that.

Black and Blue Friday

I can't quite remember the first time I heard the phrase 'Black Friday'. Surely I would have thought it was some Catholic designation for one of the days preceding the Crucifixion.  Something terrible.
As a teenager it was a day after the huge tense family dinner.  Parents were hung over and kids were punchy and overfed.  Breakfast was black coffee and a cigarette for my Mom.  Maybe cold stuffing for me with hot chocolate and some dirty looks for whatever I might have said or done the night before.
It was quiet and cold outside.  The air smelled of bonfires and rotting leaves.  It was a day for huge library books and blankets on the porch while my father slept off his angst and the meal.  It was claustrophobic.

On break from college it was a reunion day.   Homecoming for my girlfriends and sometimes a movie and a local bar.  Phone calls and yearbook reminiscing.  Comparing our new boyfriends and nasty roommates.  Dogwalking and getting high in a sort of innocent way.  No one shopped in our household.  We hardly spoke.

Once I played in a band, Thanksgiving meant a turkey sandwich in a diner or Chinese takeout after the gig.  Friends showing up with girlfriends and wives, looking sheepish and disgruntled.  It was a day you'd evaluate your own family; usually things didn't measure up.  As a musician, it was a relief to come home in early Friday.  You could sleep it off and here was a regular weekend.

My first marriage meant excommunication from my family.  I was banned from their Thanksgiving.  The gig was the Lone Star-- the original one on 13th-- and I remember feeling a little non-Texan and isolated.   I was writing Black Friday songs in my head without having heard the expression.  Once I had a son I began my own dinners-- we were usually destitute and someone would either donate a bird or we'd manage to collect enough scraps for a feast and it felt good.  I lit candles.  I bundled up my baby boy and went to watch the floats getting blown up at 2 AM and drank hot chocolate in some diner.  On the Friday we'd go see Christmas lights.

One Black Friday I remember having one dollar.  One.  I decided I'd buy a couple of bananas and 2 rolls for 25 cents apiece.   My son and I went out looking for the best deal on bananas and on the side of the road I found an envelope with some cash in it.  $550.  For me that was hitting the lottery.  It was groceries for a year…. baby clothes too.  It was amazing… visions of Christmas trees… toys… going into a diner with my son and letting him order something besides chocolate milk.

But that $550… it was someone else's winning lotto ticket.  It was someone else's loss.  Some poor cab driver or laborer had taken out his savings and lost everything… a cancelled vacation … whatever.  Why is it that I can never accept good fortune without considering the B-side?  So I gave much of it to homeless people, to charity.  Yes, we bought an Ernie and Bert Lego set… we shopped Toys R Us like royalty and we picked out Sesame Street Action figures and a plastic house.  We saw Santa and ate burgers and fries in the Herald Square mall and looked out at the Empire State Building lit up for Christmas.  My son was singing with his little red corduroy hat on.

I learned about Black Friday from my son when he was a teenager and muttered vicious maledictions at his loser mother because everyone else was getting their new Sevens for All Mankind and Timberlands.  
It was humiliating and sad.  I was unsympathetic and he was angry.  He stayed out until 3 AM and came back stinking of alcohol with a black eye.  A black eye is actually blue.

This year Black Friday apparently started on Thursday.  Stores were open-- kids, including my son, had to go to work at midnight.  People stampeded and fought over merchandise.  Rain checks and bracelets were handed out, internet sites extended their sales through cyber Monday--- but there were stabbings and blood.  What do you call this kind of violence?  Retail-rage?  It baffles me.

I haven't spoken to my older sister in maybe 12 years.  She likes it this way.  Absolutely no competition and she can malign me until the cows come home and no one will disagree.  It has been so long our enmity is like a Thanksgiving float of some kind of nasty cartoon thought-balloon.  I imagined their Thanksgiving--- my parents, the tense old family facade like a toothless old leather-face.  I still cringe when I think of my father; he still hands over the phone like a hot potato when he hears my voice.  The Pilgrims and Indians sat down together, but not my original family--- not any more.  They have invented a new tradition which is now older than the original.  My chair has been long filled by grandchildren.

I loved my Thanksgiving guests this year; each one was so special.   I loved my home and my unmatched dishes and funky seating.  No one thought about shopping.  No one discussed things or clothing or new apartments.  We listened to jazz and indie rock until the early morning and then I cleaned my oven.  When I am content and grateful that way, I worry about Jesus--- but maybe that is Good Friday.  Everything seems to be running into everything else-- I mean, what difference does it make--- corn, chocolate hearts, colored eggs, fireworks, parades?  It's all the same thing-- every holiday is cause for celebration and cause for sorrow.  I hope I don't die on Thanksgiving.

While I cleaned, which is somehow a not unpleasant part of my tradition, I remembered.   While I scrubbed my floors and dried glasses--  I remembered the great love of my life, wasting from stomach cancer and deemed 'nil by mouth' his final Thanksgiving…  asking me to describe the smell of my turkey, the texture of my stuffing… we stayed on the phone until he finally slept on Black Friday morning.   I was relieved he'd made it through the day, but it was the last time we spoke.   It has been so many years now, I can't even cry; I light a separate candle for him, on the table, and remember driving back to school after break, on the black turnpike, in a blue car, listening to Cinnamon Girl on the radio, with the heat on and Friday on our mind.

Guest List

I am having a fucked-up day.  Not the day, exactly, but me.  Yes, the cold air was a stern memo that Thanksgiving is closing in, and that huge meal-- -with the guests you haven't even invited-- is looming like a turkey-flavored noose in your kitchen that needs new plaster and paint, suitable lighting, and a functioning oven.  Calls have backed up on voicemail--- your usual dinner companions with that slight impatient edge in their tone which could either mean--- what's up with the delayed invitation?-- or maybe, gee, if you're slammed this year, I could go out to the Hamptons with my co-workers….I almost regret the timing of my broken wrist this summer; it would have been the perfect excuse.  Maybe I'll be diagnosed with something hideous and this will be the last supper… or none at all.  I hate myself when I get this way.  I really enjoy entertaining, I am in general such a terrible friend these days that a single festive dinner can be a great purging of hostess-guilt.

But suddenly it seems as though last year was just a few weeks ago.  Like instead of looking forward to holidays, they are tracking me.  They stalk me with accusatory ribbon-clad fingers and they ring bells which are out of tune with my tinnitus B-flat.  Maybe it was the Mexican cashier in Asssociated today who when I asked him which were the pears on sale looked me right in the eye and said 'they're not here'.  No apology, no courtesy--- a kind of resentment that he has to ring up groceries for people who are as poor as he is, and who remind him that his debit card is overdrawn with things like cans of coke and snickers bars.  Or maybe it's that I'm out of rice and didn't feel like hauling another 20-pound bag onto the counter so Juan-Carlos can give me Mexican attitude.  I just dumped some tomato sauce on oatmeal.  The God's truth.

Turn back the clock---I used to get that brisk fall air electric feeling--- sex is great under blankets, and Christmas parties were amazing…and the Mexican cashiers fell over themselves to pack my bags and begged to deliver.  Pears?  Take these--- we'll just throw them in-- no charge.  Men asked for your number in the aisles, women exchanged recipes and admired your shoes, even babies held out their arms.  A trip to the grocery store was an adventure.  It was also necessary leveling.  You felt like a wife-- a mother.  The rest of the day?  Men held doors for you, stuck notes in your pocket.  You were shining.

And so much of it is my own fault.  My girlfriends and men friends tell me I make no effort--- or make an effort not to make an effort.  I'm too tired of myself to consider this or its alternative.  I skip calls, fail to RSVP, spend way too much time on the internet when I'm supposed to be learning how to use Logic Pro.  I am writing-- -that is there--- it's just the execution, the recording--- the directions and effort seem so tedious and impossible.  I'm chronically under-published and unsung.  Tonight someone I actually knew spent $142,000,000 on a painting-- -someone with a lovely wife who makes an effort--- and I am sitting here considering the Warholian irony of introducing Francesco Rinaldi to the Quaker Oats man.

I'm here in layers of old sweats, my coagulated meal in a bowl that looks unwashable, and I actually, rather than sparring with the help screens of my Logic, type in 'what do you do when you feel messed up?'  And I am taken to some website that tells me I must accept that Tinkerbell is dead and let Jesus in.  Okay.  A small stage laugh, here.  But I never particularly liked Tinkerbell….what I did like was the relationship… that a wild flying boy and a fairy had this intimacy… it made me feel better about life.

Last night my first husband called me to tell me he's getting married.  Or maybe he's already married…to a 29 year old six-foot-tall model whose picture online is somewhere between a Victoria's Secret angel and a stripper profile body-shot.  Of course she is using him for his rockstar connections; he is 66 and unwell but still gets royalties and has a free pass to the few stellar recording studios on this continent.  There is a youtube clip of her getting thrown offstage at the Apollo amateur night just a few months ago.  To be kind, they only allowed a mini-second of actual singing…and who really cares because her legs are amazing and she rocked the lace camisole and the hair weave.  And he sounded so happy…. and really, he came to me in my 20's after meeting backstage--- with a ring and a proposal.  We scarcely knew one another.  It was exciting--- it was lovely and passionate and magical.   So why begrudge him a bit of senior happiness?

The thing is…everything ends.  Your happy marriage, even if you stay together, generally ends.  Your passionate affair.  Your first night.  Your first love.  Your ballet career.  Your second love.  A great film.  Your third love.  Songs.  Symphonies.  Your best gig.  Even Proust ends.  There are no more pages, at a certain point.  I suppose you can be pragmatic and spend your life preparing for the end, like financial advisors counsel us, but there is no emotional pension plan.  You can wait until your husband tells you he doesn't love you, or you can take off the first night you feel the slightest inclination to turn over and sleep facing the wall.  That was my style, I guess.  Maybe it was fear.  I'll never know.

What I do know is that you can't really control the end.  You can prepare for it--- you can even become isolated and accustomed to solitude… but then you miss so much fun.  Pleasure and pain.  It's hard to recognize the midpoint between your youth and your old age.  Not everyone goes out like Lou Reed with a loving intelligent companion and a disease which lets you slow down until you've stopped, and the world mourning your loss and acknowledging your value.  And not everyone loses their memory like my Mom who isn't sure whether she's a child or a grandmother.

Memory can be painful.  Good memories--- bad memories… Last night my ex-husband told me he loved me 'like a thirsty man' and never forgave himself for turning gold into brass… and me for failing to see him through his wild years.  I couldn't stand the anticipated end and I made my exit.  Trust me--it felt equally as bad as being left.

So 30 years later, he has that feeling-- a wedding feeling-- and I don't have the heart to tell him--- he is crazy and blind, and the coming hurt will kill him, maybe.  He is fragile.  The girl has friended me on Facebook and wants to have coffee.  I will give her a gift.  I will go to the Tinkerbell website and type in 'what do you give your aging ex-husband's sexy child-bride as a token of your support?'  Let Jesus in, it will say.  Even though you are a fairy-murderer,  even though you are a cranky old loner who talks to insane jazz musicians and ex-husbands at 4 AM.

So I am wondering… whether Jesus prefers mushroom or chestnut stuffing, and if he'd like to bring a date.

To Text or Not To Text

New York City can be divided into two sociological groups:  people who text, and people who don’t text. 

The concept of telescoping information and response into an incredibly limited format is ancient; the current version unfortunately lacks the impact of a telegram sent, say, in the 1940’s or 50’s, when abbreviated language was more like a huge zipfile of meaning.  It seems now that something is completely missing.  It's cheap, like verbal fast food.  Of course, people are different now—people don’t understand things that I take for granted.

Repetitive, useless motion has certainly damaged our brain and occasionally wrists and hands… but at least I’m moderately aware that the ability to reply 40 times in a minute can dilute the message.   I’ve also begun to believe that I am some evaporating breed of dark brooding guilty emotional wreck that is on its way to extinction.  I'm sure statistically fewer people suffer alone in dark rooms; they now take drugs, and beat their landladies with wooden beams.  They OD on massive amounts of mind-numbing medication or they binge drink and crash vehicles. 

There is a blind man in my neighborhood;  I see him at the library and we speak.  I feel this enormous embarrassment in his presence—me with my free coffee refills and 20-year-old boots—for what I don’t lack.  Is that the inverse of entitlement?  My kids are pissed off that they don’t have a trust-fund-sized allowance.  They despise my refusal to carry a cell phone and my Luddite habits-- my appreciation of old, used things, of kindness.   The fact that I listen to the old neighborhood Polish holocaust survivor for long minutes,  the same incredible stories over and over—how she jumped from a plane, crawled through animal tunnels, hid under feed-bags, starved… and how no one writes her memoir.  I am nearly compelled to volunteer--- and then the conversation inevitably reverts to her complaining about her daughter who had no children, after heroically managing to survive the concentration camps so she could pro-create, now her progeny has no wish to respect this.  I’m sure her daughter texts. 

People who text--- a theoretically silent thing--- tend to be loud.  I notice this at the gym--- older people are quieter; they read the Times, watch MSNBC, ESPN, Law and Order.  Younger people have the screen on—usually the Kardashians, if I took an actual poll--   their ipods going, and they are tapping wildly at their smartphones.  Occasionally they answer calls--- frowned on, by notices posted everywhere—but who reads these? The people who already knew this, of course.  So they speak—loudly--- didn’t their preschool teachers program them to use their ‘inside voice’?  Apparently not.  When their friends come, they converse—so that it’s hard to ignore--- about their problems, about the market, about their weekends, their hangovers, their eating patterns---who they love and hate.  I try to love them.  I forgive them, the way someone in some supermarket is forgiving my own kids for their habitual tasteless narcissistic ‘loudness’. 

I think about the blind man--- how embarrassed I am that he must witness this behavior--- like he’s some superior sensitive being, because he's aware that he annoys people enough by his disability… but I’m still sure he listens and smells things with more perception than I.  And he’s probably irritated by my excessive politeness and guilty kindness.  Maybe he’d like to punch me. 

Looking around on the C train downtown this morning, I could pick out the tourists.  Some of them look less mean.  Some of them are dressed differently or wearing new items they mistake for New York ‘Style’.  Some of them have old-world charm and you can feel their inherited sense of family.  New Yorkers are always darting their furtive eyes around, looking at their phones, checking each other out or making a huge effort to appear too cool to look.  But you can feel their competitive gleeful flaunting of whatever it is they are wearing or reading or texting on. 

I am in such tight financial straits, I can’t imagine even carrying an ipad on a crowded train where someone could steal it.  How do all these people afford their iphone plans?  Their shoes and multiple bags?   My rich friend gave me a gorgeous designer bag and I still carry my $10 one--- the expensive one looks a) comically out of place with my thrift-level clothing choices b) pretentious and c)like maybe I bought it on Craigslist just to carry on the street.  Truth is, it’s heavy.  And I don’t need to be wearing my sins and savings in public simultaneously.   

The other truth is, my resistance to text is annoying to others.  They don’t want a pay-phone call, and they have little sympathy in fact for middle-aged people who are not fashionably dressed.  For aging rock musicians who get on the crosstown bus with a gig-bag like they are trying to act like a kid.   I mean, when you’re young and carefree and hot, you can ‘affect’ the down-sizing style of grunge or vintage mix, and the guys in Starbucks will still compete to take your order, will flirt and ask you about your music, will show up at your gig and look at you with those eyes the romance novels have made a cliché.  Your messy hair falls on your face in that charming way that makes everyone want to brush it back, just to touch you.  I stand patiently and invisibly in line now, and remember that person as a kind of fictional character in a favorite book.

So my new prayer is ‘please God, don’t make me have to apologize’.   I don’t need to be cute and admired, or even served with respect.  I just want to avoid accidents and serious injury and maintain a compassionate demeanor.  I don’t want any false pity or attention.  I want to hold back the tears, politely excuse myself from over-intervention in the lives of the tiny subset who are less fortunate than I am and sense my excessive empathy.  I don’t think I’d ever punch anyone because they’re callously annoying and intrusive, and I don’t want anyone to want to punch me because I’m a nasty old library-user who too often confuses kindness with guilt.  I am going to try not to find myself navigating the streets, uttering ‘sorry’ like a verbal tic to texters and phone yappers who are walk-weaving like drunkards.  I feel like a polite old British grand-dad, and curse myself for this repetitive, useless act that is undoubtedly wearing away at my edge like an arthritic joint.  Please.  Jesus, even that is annoying.