Sidelined

Last night my son texted me-- root for the Chargers, he said.  I admit I root for anyone but the Chiefs... they've had enough success... not to mention the fact that their extraordinarily well-compensated stars consume as well a lion's share of the extensive advertising space. Dandruff shampoo, artificially dyed breakfast cereal-- health insurance... medications... nothing is beneath them if the money is there... and the money continues to roll in. Not to mention the women, the attention, the endorsements and 'gifts'. 

How did I get entrapped into amateur football fandom? Me-- the Bohemian rock musican/closet literary intellectual who haunted art galleries and museums from adolescence and beyond...  dismissively refusing to even watch my high school boyfriend's soccer games which I designated as absurd and sweaty and pointless? We parents must adapt to our kids' obsessions-- to tune in, so to speak.  The funny part is my son maintains this tiny corner of childhood belief that I (even still) bring him luck. 

What fascinates me, analyzing my role as audience here... is the way all sports fans seem to harbor this childlike faith that our presence-- even on the couch-- can somehow alter the game.  We yell, we root, we cheer, we groan... but we continue to watch.  Ditto-- or moreso, when our kids played competitive sports.  We absolutely HAD to be there.  Not just for support, but for this absurd incredibility that somehow we'd change the outcome.  They wouldn't win without us-- our fervent parental praying they would make the shot... holding their lucky undershirt or the little dinosaur towel I carried in a bag from nursery school onward. These tokens.

And the uniforms.  Nothing transforms a boy like his first baseball jersey...  his first pair of serious Nikes or Jordans. The mini-helmets and shin guards... the hockey skates and shoulder pads... like a superhero.  The fantasy is palpable; talent and practice are another thing-- but here-- a little piece of imitation reality and your child is wearing it. 

Some of the parents dream along. They coach, they carpool, they enroll and hire trainers.  They drive to tryouts, they pay for all kinds of leagues and venues... they take their kids to the professional arenas, no matter what the cost.  If they win the athletic lottery, the payoff is huge. Children are the second chance for many adults. Similarly, they buy them guitars and amplifiers... they get lessons and are driven to concerts.  Some of them have talent; some of them burn out before high school. 

But the dream... it's bigger than ever.  The Taylor Swifts and Patrick Mahomes's of the world.  Yesterday a 26-year-old baseball player signed a $765 million contract for doing what he loves. His agent made more in a day than Babe Ruth made in his entire career, even after inflation adjustment.  Assad was deposed yesterday; Haitian gangs massacred 150 elderly people... but more Americans were thinking ahead toward the 2025 baseball season.  Well, as Peter Pan urged us-- happier thoughts give us just that much more power. 

And without the audience, sports would be sort of a dud.  The pandemic confirmed this.  We participate, we fantasize...we bet-- another huge industry-- and we buy tickets and watch.  Those of us at home-- we pay, too.  I have to buy ESPN channels so my son can enjoy holidays here without depriving himself of football or baseball championships. Which came first?  The game or the money?  We know which, of course... but the investments roll on, the industry and marketing explodes with exponential regularity. We are, most of us, victims somehow-- willing, excited, happy victims.  Everyone seems to have their team. Vicarious thrill, sportsmanship, fandom, bromances, reality escape.... whatever... it accelerates.  It has a season-- a beginning and an endpoint.  Infinity of journalists and analysts-- biographers, documentarists... and now the television contracts for retired players-- competitive channels and entertainment platforms.  We cannot seem to get enough despite constant commercial interruption and annoying solicitations... there will be a winner.  A trophy... a ring. 

We are all of us dreamers in a way... we imagine ourselves on some field of ultimate content... and when we grow up and become ordinary, we sometimes imagine our children garnishing the rewards we once maybe coveted.  My son, who had unusual talent as a player, is very realistic and rational about his abilities.  Yes, he harbored his passion and parlayed that into some kind of career, but he humbly declines any 'could have been' scenarios.  As for me? A  part of me believed.  I support whatever he does, but I do know that he maybe once had a dream.  I remember the way I felt watching him walk out onto his first NCAA court.  It was thrilling. Now-- 16 years later... he's very even-keeled and practical... and ambitious. He still absolutely and passionately loves the game... most games... and he will find his way... and I will root for the Chargers, or whomever he wants. 

I just discovered the 2025 Super Bowl falls on my birthday. We used to have parties, when my son was little... now life is more complicated, or less so... I've learned to watch alone, as many Americans do, although they do this in bars, via their social media, twittering and posting, gambling progressively-- but most of all, we are not just audience-- we participate. Our hearts beat faster, we jump around and coo and curse and celebrate or mope... but as the industry well knows, we are 'in'. Most of us, that is. The sports scrooges among us-- and I know quite a few-- may be missing something culturally significant.  

I'm pretty sure now my acquired or vicarious passion for sports has replaced something else-- maybe my concert attendance or gig-watching.  The same arenas are used for music; at the Super Bowl they become field-fellows... part of the spectacle. Rather than climb grandstands to watch rockstars on a screen with a phone-recording audience, I see games...  young men and women in their prime physically striving for something... I see their fans dressed up and yelling their heads off like family. Partisanship and loyalty are spread among a number of available teams-- geographic loyalties acknowledged.  It seems a little more innocent and less threatening than a political competition. Dare I use the word democratic? Maybe I'm fooling myself  but in this heartbreaking election year I think I feel a kind of Sunday 'hope'. God Bless Detroit-- Buffalo-- the overpaid underdogs since the Jets have virtually imploded.  Forgive me my naïveté... but I am feeling just that bit more 'American'. Amen. 

Stockholm Syndrome

I was in Sweden last week.  There were those late-nights when nothing much was happening, including sleep, and I turned the television on in my hotel room.  Not inclined to pay for premium or anything else, I am always surprised to see what if any of American pathetic reality-fare makes its way into Scandinavian standard broadcasting.  The only thing I could find was Naked and Afraid, and a constant home-renovation network.  So it was CNN for me, to get a little home-news.  Unfortunately the big story my first day was the Harry-Meghan drama.  Right away this did not seem viable.  I can't imagine any kind of car-chase in Manhattan; it's just not feasible. But the endless hours of commentating, the speculations and comparisons and the drama... well, ad nauseam.  There was virtually no other news.  While I've given the demoted couple a certain benefit of doubt, it was a Trumpian moment for them.  I placed a theoretical bet that it would take twenty-four hours for the correction, and there it was-- the humble cab driver, with a reality check.  It made the King and his Queen-consort look immediately better.  Even Oprah might regret all that money she doled out.

Then there was the Columbian plane-crash survivor-story.  Yes, we all want to pray and believe in these miracles... but to replace reality with a fairy-tale is not only news-unworthy but fraudulent.  Still, their fate is unclear.  What is clear is the unreliability of these news platforms which in their desperation to achieve viewer popularity seem to have blurred the lines of journalism and reporting to succumb to the public hunger for drama. 

Two young men came by to visit yesterday and we fell into the inevitable recurrent theme of 'the good old days' when not only originality was prized, but we took for granted the solidity of information.  Fact checking, accuracy.  The actual version-- the truth.  It takes me way too much time and a semi-analytical brain to sort through daily accounts of events, medical claims and recommendations.  Every news platform has a slightly different version of things. Like an old person's eyes, it takes a bit of time to gain clarity.  Maybe it's the quick-firing in this internet age that encourages premature ejaculation of information before it is verified or chronologized.

One thing I'm here for, back in the US, is the basketball playoffs.  And as I've said before, the beauty of sport is there is a clear winner. There are playbacks, disputed calls, a few disparities and bad behaviour, but for the most part, they even out in the end.  Grudges and prejudices get diluted by the number of games... we watch over and over the replays and footage from all kinds of angles, and a decision is made.  Hardly anyone blames the faulty hoop or the greased ball or the score-keeper.  It's not an election, but isn't it a little pathetic that a large part of the population can't seem to process the official decision of a national political process? The electoral officiators do not seem to have the authority of a sports referee. 

My son and I had a great discussion today about the athletes who refused the vaccine.  My position was always a little controversial, but as a covid survivor who donated blood and plasma pre and post-vaccine, I still respect a decision by someone whose entire life depends on their physical health.  Part of the problem here was the lack of transparency and clarity on the science.  Once policy was determined, in a culture of personal freedom, we are not used to being compelled to do certain things.  People were still getting sick; the data was not solid.  And it shifted-- it evolved.  The virus remained one step ahead of us, and that was worrying.  

In Stockholm, aside from collecting dust on apothecary shelves,  I saw not a single mask.  Nor on the SAS crammed airplanes I took back and forth, despite perpetual coughing and sneezing and obviously ill passengers.  As long as it was not Covid, no one took notice?  The airline boarding forms, if one read the fine print, asked one to agree to wear a mask on the flight.  This was obviously ignored.  And back in New York City it's pretty much business as usual.  The East Village bars, and Times Square are packed... clubs, restaurants seem more active than ever.  People are joyful and unafraid.  Yes, I still have a few acquaintances who cling to outdated virus-prevention like a dysfunctional marriage.  But they are the unhealthy ones.  What is undeniable is the skepticism toward information-- the mistrust.  It is just misplaced.

Who is to tell us in whom we are to trust-- in God, as our money states? The value of the dollar fluctuates daily-- a few of our 'solid' banking institutions have crumbled recently; do we blame God for this?  Greed? The compulsion to amass sums of money beyond the use of any human being?  The competitive and swift transfer of multi-dollars for ideas?  The very backbone of our government is tested by the debt ceiling.  What happened to dollar-for-dollar economics?  I worked my entire life to receive a meagre social security check every month.  I put this money aside.  As a self-employed struggling musician, I paid twice what a payrolled worked deducts.  I was honest and reported and paid in.  Am I to be punished for being a 'solid' citizen?  

So I will still watch my man Jimmy Butler and Jayson Tatum competing for an NBA title-- men who are earning more in one game than I have earned in a lifetime.  More than Babe Ruth maybe earned in a lifetime.  I will watch the scores rise, and witness the baskets that make these up.  Unlike the news which comes afterward-- the debt ceiling talks, the CDC pronouncements and the stock market numbers, all of which are questionable to the likes of me.  I admire the basketball skill-- the performance-- the clarity of outcome.  Let the talking heads discuss the upcoming election endlessly... for now, at least, in Basketball I trust. 

Bedeviled

Ever since the pandemic began, I've confessed several times to a television habit-- difficult as it is to follow the war in Ukraine these nights; the footage is beyond upsetting, the awareness of sitting in a safe room processing the horror provokes a kind of shame.  This weekend, with the NCAA games as distraction, I nearly overdosed.  I swore I'd avoid the Academy Awards but found myself tuning in just in time to see a few choice moments-- including the Will Smith debacle. 

I'm sure every blogger, journalist, critic, and mouthpiece has had a go at this today.  For me, I knew little of the marriage back-story; I'm old enough that a 20-something year achievement seems unimpressive, although I'm aware that Hollywood years are like dog-ages to the rest of us.  Still, what I did gather is that Will Smith seemed unhinged.  Not just upset or motivated or protective-- literally unhinged.  More than met the camera-eye. 

Of course I'm sort of a Hollywood-hater.  I haven't fallen in love with a movie for some time, now.  Nothing seems inventive or world-beating.  The glam and prep for these events far exceeds the content.  Such is life these days.  And with the world situation as it is, although these superstars and celebrities sympathized and supported the Ukrainian cause, these productions just seem-- well, faithless.  

The whole weekend was kind of a wash-- a storm of bad news and dismay and death.  Taylor Hawkins-- for anyone that plays rock and roll-- is a dream drummer.  He's animated and showmanly, and he plays his ass off-- sings, too.  It's a shock. Of course 50 is nearly twice the proverbial age of tragic loss, but it seems young to me.  I watched over and over footage of their more recent concerts; you try to find something-- some reason, some 'key'... He often took the microphone and sang before an audience.  It takes rock and roll balls to do this, to an arena-crowd.  He had that extra-energy-- the kind that comes often from the drug of performance, but also the kind that comes from a glassine envelope.  Something was not right.  And then it was all wrong.

Saturday evening on the way home I stopped at the Affordable Art Fair.  Granted, I'm tired of my own art-snobbery and disappointment... but honestly there was nothing I wanted to afford. The people exhibiting were so nice and courteous and the gallery staff just enthusiastic and generous-- but I felt sorry for them.  This has nothing to do with art.  It was desperate and meaningless and tarted-up with visual quotes of celebrity images and familiar art memes.  I ran into a friend who was buying a photograph (one of an edition) that reminded him of another photographer whose work reminds me of a Warholian car crash.  I wanted to say to him... look at this-- look at this painting.. there is something obviously missing here... but he doesn't see... maybe even the maker doesn't see-- or doesn't care. When in any reality does a sculpted hamburger take the place of something cooked?  Somewhere there is a line.  Things begin with a line.

Last night at 4 AM I was awakened by a gunshot.  One single shot.  It is unmistakable, this sound, and in a culture and time where suicide has become trendy and topical, it is worrying.  Or violence.  22 shots, they counted in Young Dolph's body...  21 more than he needed.  99 problems...  I am trying hard to get my broken friends to stop nursing their weaknesses, counting pains and issues.  We step out, I tell them.  We pull ourselves up into some kind of presentable walking creature.  We do this.  We are strong; we walk out onstage, like Taylor Hawkins did night after night... we lift weights and carry things. 

King Richard.  Like so many of the Shakespearean royals unhinged by just the pressures of responsibility and the pangs of remorse-- fear of failure, craving for heroic adulation.  Hollywood actors crawl on bloody knees for the success so few of them achieve.  Many hate themselves, despite all the press and hype and good deeds.  It's an unsustainable situation... and it's short-lived.  I remember well cheering my son at games which are equally forgettable and forgotten, but many of them punctuated with a trophy or a symbol; a brief championship.  These show up in thrift shop shelves... or at those memorabilia auctions.  One doesn't know who will be collectible in the end.  Life intervenes and dilutes. 

What I do know is the message of violence is heinous and immature. It's a punch in the face we'd all like to deliver somewhere, but here we are condemning Putin for his war-tantrum and behavior like an upset child with the power to threaten the world.  Nothing worse than a boy with a loaded gun. Not all of us have an audience-- or even a global live audience.  Those NCAA basketball players-- some of them threw their balls up in the air and failed to see them land squarely.  They pushed and shoved a little too hard-- they are boys, and defeat is tough to handle--especially when it is so fleeting and decisive.  They foul out, they receive a technical slap on their hand. In the NBA they are fined.  

It wasn't just the violence with no rebuttal... it was the disturbing acceptance speech, as well... the selfish/unselfish rhetoric of a privileged human-- talented, no question.  But unhinged, the way many of us feel.  The tears were not right.  We were a captive not a captivated audience.  There he was with a stage and a forum to deliver something. We squirmed in disbelief as we watched a man self-destructing.   I wonder what my friend the psychiatrist would say-- the one who calls me out consistently for my inconsistencies and vapid confessions.

I am singing for Ukraine, a girl announced onstage the other night.  I am painting for Ukraine, an artist tweeted... look at me, look at me. At your highest point, Denzel (the other King) quipped, the devil will come for you.   Not to mention your lowest point-- your final swan-song, your night of carousing, your career zenith which may haunt you forever because it is the ledge from which you fell, from which you are measured.  At 53 with a massive career of accomplishments, this was not simply an act of passion-- a bad decision.  

We are not enough, we humans. We have lost the thread of humanity; we have lost the content-- the purity-- the meaning of art.  The soul. It's not enough.  It's not good enough or tough enough or funny enough and it's not going to matter, in the long run.  Most award winners are doomed to become jeopardy questions and record-book entries.  The devil is winning, my friend said to me the other night. He is everywhere, maybe... certainly in the White House at the end of 2020... but one thing is for sure; even he is unreliable.  As David Grohl well knows... in the end, all alone is all we are (repeat ad infinitum...).

G(RACE)

Saturdays have become classic movie nights in my household.  Either post-gig or not, it's still a work day and I try to clear my mental clipboard in the 3-5 AM time slot watching something from either my or someone else's past.  The television somehow offers plenty of quality films, without pay-for-view.  So last week I picked The Great White Hope.  I'd been fortunate enough to have seen that on Broadway, with the larger-than-life James Earl Jones, and Jane Alexander-- live-- in the lead roles, well more than 30 years ago.  It was brilliant-- resonant-- devastating.

Yes, I've been re-reading (the great) James Baldwin... Richard Wright-- but watching the theatre version of hard-edged racial tragedy was jarring and upsetting in a way I'd not expected.  In context of the current discussion of reparation and debt... everyone needs to go back and re-evaluate their African-American history course.  The juggernaut of the 'Me Too' movement stirred up some memory of that book title (acknowledged in a Lennon/Ono song) Woman as Nigger.  Even my laptop did not want to type out that phrase.

Now I'm a white woman with a prosecutable Me-Too incident of my own-- a life-warping, hideous, morally reprehensible, humiliating disgrace I have never brought much to light because, as we women well know, the procedural justice process can double-indemnify the victim.  We are sole witness... testifier, prosecutor, injured party-- and we set ourselves up, in the legal system, for the pillory.  Ask Robert Mueller.  But the ethnic and massive cultural wrongs against a group of people brought here as captives-- against their will--- enslaved, mistreated, and then left-- misplaced, without tools and respect in a foreign country-- unable to go back to their homeland, deprived of comfort and dignity-- and identifiable and stigmatized by physical characteristics that were interpreted by status quo as 'less-than-equal'-- well, it's a disgrace beyond comprehension. For most of us in the current culture where Beyonce is American 'royalty'... Hip Hop dominates the music industry-- fashion-- this is not simple.

Maybe the largest lesson of the Trump presidency-- and I see it as a huge disgusting presidential finger in my face every day-- is the survival of racism.  It's still everywhere.. in spite... despite.
I grew up a relatively privileged little white girl in New York... I had an Irish nanny some of the time, but like most middle-class households in the 50's and 60's.. we had a black housekeeper.  I've written about her many times-- more than a caretaker, she took me to church, sang to me-- loved me in a way no white mother ever did... I used to pray I'd turn black and live with her.  I envied the kids in the projects-- they had a community-- they hung out summer nights playing ball wth friends-- they barbecued and every night seemed like a party.  It seemed so 'safe'.  Little did I understand.

I married a black man.  My first husband-- yes, he was kind of a rockstar.  I'd never dated or been intimate with anyone but white men-- and it was different-- the chemistry was undeniable and the ceremony was like a dare.  I was actually surprised not one member of my family showed up at the wedding.  My parents had seemed like liberal democrats... no, they had no black friends; the soft boundary between me and our housekeeper made my mother nervous, I could see that;  I never told when I went to hang in her 'hood.  And as an aside-- no one in her hood ever made me feel unwelcome or different.  She referred to me as 'My Aimesy' and I loved it.

Was I trying to prove something?  I was not.  I loved the guy.  I was disowned by my family.  They clearly and verbally pronounced that they had one less daughter-- the Princeton/Harvard daughter.  Why was I surprised?  This was bigotry and racism in my own little clan.  It was real.  Was it difficult?  It was.  Even in Harlem people looked at us funny.  He had dreadlocks then and that was not part of Northern American black culture.  We went on a car trip and people in rural New England yelled out their windows at us-- 'Bob Marley go home'.  My girlfriends asked me inappropriate clinical questions about physical traits and ignorant narratives.  I learned things.  Among his people I felt comfortable-- but it was clear they would have preferred dark skin.  We struggled with the normal marital difficulties of rock musicians touring-- separations and misunderstandings... there was no communication technology in those days... just a rotary telephone and letters.

In the end we divorced... yes, we are still very, very  good friends; I am godmother to his 'black' children with his black wife.  I next married a British journalist-- couldn't have been much whiter-- and he was a 'dog' of a husband-- a cheating, hard drinking rogue who never paid a ha'penny of child support.  In the end-- a white non-present baby-Daddy with ghetto behavior.  Do I have the right to talk about racism, bigotry, issues?  To draw conclusions? I do not.

My son who is white British-American might have preferred to have been born black.  He was immersed in basketball culture and Hip Hop from an early age.  He was an incredibly talented young athlete-- was recruited and acknowledged-- and once snapped at me that he had zero chance of becoming an NBA player because of his color.  Not true, but it was his teenaged truth; he was occasionally the only white boy in the better leagues.  His friends are racially diverse in a way that should be normal here in our country.  He was raised just a few blocks from Harlem, and I often walk the streets of my James Baldwin world, remembering and fathoming.  The idea of being a cultural icon in those difficult days, where incarceration and physical threat was a constant-- where inequality and injustice was so ingrained no black person could walk safely down his own street.  Where-- then as now-- white authority represented the biggest threat of all.  Life-stopping.

Last week in the rain I went to cash a check at my bank on 126th Street.  They insisted I remove my hoodie... for the cameras.  Me-- an old white lady.  I retorted I had a hole in my head that would make the customers wretch.   In the end, they let it go.  I showed my ID.    I don't know where this fits in, but it sits there on the pile of racial profiling nonsense we all walk among in this century.  If I'd been a young black man I would have kept my mouth shut-- or I might have given the security guard a reason to put me in a fatal chokehold.  I thought about this on the way out-- how I had the freedom to make a disrespectful quip at what I found a ridiculous and inappropriate request.  

Tension has lightened a bit in the 21st century, but it's still there.  It was still there Friday night when I walked uptown to buy groceries and a kid was shadowing me on the street for whatever reason.  I apologized, in my heart, but I crossed the street.  One hour later on my way back, he was handcuffed and bent against a cop car.  Was he guilty?  Was I guilty? Me and my stupid James Baldwin and my compulsive apologies and my love of blues and black men in white T-shirts...

Angst-giving

Does anyone else have one of those friends who is always lecturing about something or other?  This week it's  'New York is the next target-- do you have your emergency water kit and your cash stash and your canned foods and gas mask and LED flashlights all prepared?'  Or it's physical fitness tips-- the superiority of kettle bells, the uselessness of cardio-- dietary guidelines, health warnings.  One of those people who lives from sound byte to sound byte, who reads one mediocre article and is suddenly an expert, who wants to convert you when he is going to be a defaulting believer within weeks-- ?….On to the next trend...

These are the same people who take offense if you reply or contradict or discuss or point out (useless-- they cannot 'listen') whatever-- and despite their enthusiastic advice, they are miserable and lost-- jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon, feeling renewed and reborn for a day or two before they realize or do not realize that they are the same clueless, unhappy, physically unfit mess they were before, during, and after, but somehow convincing you of their superior wisdom seems tantamount to having it.

If they happen to show up for your Thanksgiving dinner, they are always delivering food-channel-worthy monologues and recipes even though your other guests are busy eating and drinking and enjoying despite the annoying analysis by this person who of course doesn't contribute to your meal, or if they do, it's something completely incompatible and odd which they defend and promote by elaborating on its historic and religious and nutritional value, and how it's gluten-free and vegan and futuristic and essential, even though it looks and smells awful and remains undisturbed on every single plate at the end of the meal.  Does the maker notice?  He does not.

Every Thanksgiving I've become a little more skilled at heading these people off in advance by pleading a gig or an entire NBA team coming to pioneer a city-home holiday which I'd won in a charity auction-- spending the day at the food kitchen, a chicken pox epidemic, a broken stove, or all of the above.  I stop answering the phone a week before the holiday and tilt my head sympathetically when one sobs to me that they have no invitation, failing to consider the reason for this, and of course failing to consider hosting their own meal, because they are not a chef, but a professional and skilled guest/food-critic. Not to mention an eater.

I'm committed to the role of host, because as a musician I rarely have the time or resources to give home parties, and I do it for my son, remembering how much I hated childhood Thanksgivings at an aunt's home where I hated the food, the folding chairs at the overcrowded children's table, my uncomfortable sashed dresses and mary-janes, and the abominably unfamiliar dishes emerging course after course relentlessly from my aunt's staffed kitchen.  Not to mention the sideward parental glares admonishing me to sit up, stop whispering and playing with food, etc.

My son is allowed to binge on football, come and go as he pleases, invite whomever to our table, eat without reprimand and with joy, because he loves to eat.  No surprises ever on the menu-- food is traditional, the way he likes it, and it's a happy family day, despite the exhausting and elaborate preparation it requires.  It's a ritual in our household where there are few-- a tradition in a non-traditional family.  Our 'Grace', on the other hand, is democratic, spontaneous and loose.  There is no guilt, hopefully… just food and no rules.

This year, on each of my numerous trips to various shops and stands for ingredients, there were more than the usual number of panhandlers--- not just the calculating ones who know they get extra sympathy on the holiday, although the warm weather didn't help their plight.  But there was one man I'd not seen before who'd been sleeping by the 96th Street subway for days-- no sign, no cup, except the one I placed.  His skin was blackened as though he'd been sleeping on the subway tracks in a fire, his face was leathery and wrinkled and impossible to date with accuracy.  He smelled of stale alcohol-breath and tobacco and unwashed skin.  I watched my neighbors getting their wine and champagne deliveries in cases, their neatly boxed food orders arriving, their kitchen staff running up and down, unpacking brand new Williams and Sonoma appliances and kitchen aids… then I'd go back down the road and pass my subway sleeper… and the whole scenario began to seem to me like a bad living cartoon version of America or New York at the moment-- the have-so-muches and the have-nothings.

As I broiled and basted my turkey-- not from Pathmark this year, because my old store-- part of the Thanksgiving ritual-- the Harlem institution I attended regularly-- has been bought by the same people who have built that hideous too-thin-to-be-phallic building at 57th and Park.  What will become of the overnight shufflers with shopping carts who roll up and down the aisles until dawn, chattering and keeping warm until the sun comes up in winter?  Will 125th Street become the next billionaire's row?  I put out my food, lit my thrift shop candles, put on some cds for guests and enjoyed my warm home, which seems palatial when I considered the cardboard roof of my sleeper.

One of my neighbors this year invited herself to my meal-- she has a new puppy and it requires sooo much work, she explained, with her other dogs and her horses… but she can't leave it for more than an hour at a time… she'll be over at 7, she promised… even though my dinner is scheduled at 8-- but NO, she exclaimed! She has to be in bed at 9!  She also happens to be a Psychotherapist-- one of those people who cannot 'see' themselves because they are so busy analyzing?  I asked her if she'd bring the subway sleeper… she could use her psychoanalytic skills maybe to convince him to stop using drugs and drinking and to seek help?  Anyway, only then did she decide to forego Thanksgiving.

As I listened to various versions of 'Grace'… I thought about how this year I was a little less thankful, a little more bitter, and a little more inclined to try to focus on the 'giving'.  I served the food, tried to pacify the vegans and vegetarians, tried not to inject any moralism into a meal, but I don't feel like doing my 'leftover' Saturday dinner for my lecturer and my second round eaters.  Neither did I bring a plate to my sleeper, like a guilty Christian, because I have noticed the food kitchens are overflowing with helpers at this holiday who are all too willing to fulfill their charitable quota in this civilized way.  Then they forget.  His issue is more complex-- he is not willing to communicate or move; he does not smile.  He does not receive; he does not complain or speak or ingratiate or beg.  He certainly does not lecture, but he is teaching me something, here.

The streets seemed clean, yesterday-- the can and bottle-collectors had a worrisome day off; hopefully the overflow of extra Friday garbage would get them through the weekend.  At one UES church meal, they charged $35 to keep the homeless away.  At the annual AA marathon meal, the homeless had begun to invade… the recovering attendees were complaining… Another of my fortunate friends spent her Wednesday night at a soup kitchen, before flying off on holiday, and in the photo she emailed, with her plastic shower cap, serving the smiling needy, I swear I recognized one of my neighbors in the bread line, pointing at the creamed corn-- the one with the 12-room apartment overlooking Central Park whom I've encountered haggling with the fruit vendor on the corner.  I've zoomed in and blown up the photo several times, and I can almost swear it is this man, taking and not giving, failing to say Grace, demanding his due side dishes, lecturing.

Play Offs

I passed this gymnasium today… a court where my son used to play his league games. It was the first summerlike day and basketball had joyously moved outdoors. There were 4 balls scattered on the wooden floor in a way which so completely defined the past tense… and I couldn’t help thinking, with a stab of something like nostalgia or loss… no work of art, no sculptural accident or surrealist act could possibly have conveyed the still and perfect randomness of those balls as they lay.

My neighbor called today and was annoyed at me for suggesting he watch some Indie Swedish film which he found totally worthless. Okay… maybe I was under the spell of the strange language, the dark, cold photography, the sparse, subdued, smoky breaths of dialogue. Had I underestimated his intelligence? Well, I countered, referring to some poet he had recently praised…if you define a poet as someone who is attempting to write poetry…
And there ensued a duel of minds batting back and forth the misshapen ball of mediocrity. Actually, the perfectly formed ball of mediocrity because this is where technology has placed us… in a position of perfect reproduction, straight edges, the pre-drawn, pre-loaded, synthesized, airbrushed landscape of culture. And who is really listening…or watching?

Paper and pen which were treasured by some ancient poets…is near-obsolete. Corrections are automatic, publishing is instantaneous… everyone has a network, a preset audience, an email list. Does it matter if they are too busy putting out to actually listen or read or watch? Everything has been said, written. This, as well. Every teenager has a guitar as well as a car in the garage. Not. But the new poetry might be architecture. At least it requires ‘presence’ to be experienced. For the time being, that is.

I read some work by a South African poet today who is quite acknowledged… and full of metaphor… so full, in fact, that it passed me by. I began to spar with the poet, mentally. Is a shadow really the ‘widow of the light’? Is that not the dark, what is left behind? And he spent so much time setting the scene…describing the landscape, as though none of us readers have eyes or soul or heart or imagination… I grew angry.

Maybe I, too, am a victim of the impatience instant messaging has cultivated. Maybe I am overstimulated and sensorily anesthetized. Maybe we all need to be shot, and then to feel the pain of the wound, in order to explore our own feelings. We are ever-so tolerant of the gruesome violence and gratuitous cruelty we see on even prime-time TV. The odd thing to me is the same audience seems to flock in equal numbers to both the horrific cinematic frightfests and the pathetically scripted Jennifer Anniston/ Reese Witherspoon froth which monopolize chain theatres. At least I stay home and watch Sundance.

I do notice, though, that in the award department, tragedy beats out comedy. How many of our lives are truly marked by 9/11 moments, as opposed to happiness. Besides, that is, the births of our children, which, according to the wise poets, is the sad instant their world becomes intermingled with death.

How is it, I wonder, coming home, still in the spell of the empty basketball court, that these people who live among me can worry about the status of their prams and strollers and fail to feel something for all the starving children? That we must feel guilty if we do not buy the iphone for our kids when animals are being tortured, millions are suffering? And on TV they are asking for money for the polar bears. I can scarcely manage the quarters for my corner panhandler who I notice today is missing another tooth. Does lack of money make me more qualified to empathize, to hate the investment bankers, to ‘dis’ the late Picasso show at Gagosian, to weep over the orphaned elephants and my own failed attempts to communicate all of it?

I do know that I hate more than ever the trapped basketball in the tank of Jeff Koons which always had some perverse sexual and monetary connotation. In a Batmanesque parable of the Gotham City art world, Mr. Koons is some kind of pathetic Joker. The anti-Houdini, the lizardous creature in a tank or a bank vault who conspires to deflate the souls of all those who might give to the polar bears if only they had something to give.

I am thinking also there must be some pop philosopher-- some pensive or laid-off sportscaster somewhere, especially during this season of playoffs, who will never read Writerless, but who has observed ‘I am the basketball on the abandoned court’. Maybe he is even a Swede.