Reel Fiction

A friend and I were reminiscing about our first records... not the ones we shared with our parents, not our adolescent rock-obsessions but our very own early-childhood albums.  Mine was Funnybone Alley.  I played it over and over on my machine-- with the switch and the heavy rotating disc covered in some kind of wool or felt-- the metal bullet in the center. There were silly songs and dreamy songs-- marches and sad ballads. Just for children. I inhaled these... memorized every melody, every lyric. One step more sophisticated than the little colored plastic sing-along rhyming discs, it sang to me, this album.  It changed me.

My first book-- the one that was really mine.. was A Fly Went By.  I was already a pretty good reader at 5, but this was a gift. I devoured it-- over and over.  'A fly went by...he said oh, dear... I saw him shake... he shook with fear...' I could recite the entire text now, 60-something years later. The color blue on the cover was perfect.  The little freckled boy-- unlike the drab boys in my pre-school-- he was adventurous and independent; he was there for me, whenever I picked it up. He was my friend.  The boy.  No names, these books. Likewise A Hole is to Dig...  A Hat for Amy-Jean... these were my companions, my confidantes-- my familiars.  They never abandoned me.

Lately I've regained the habit I once had of reading.  I've been through Dostoevsky, Murakami, Eliot, Musil.  The depth of my library never ceases to thrill; I will never finish. I also frequent the library for discovery.  Coincidentally, I live on a street rich with writers.  My neighbor's son recently wrote a novel.  It was pretty decent... but I couldn't stop looking at his picture on the back sleeve;  I knew him. The book won an award, and now he wrote another one.  Again, the photo.  You feel close, like you have shared some intimacy... this time he divulges his masturbation fantasies, he dissects his father's flaws.  It's fiction but you know better.  He passes you occasionally on the sidewalk... for you it's like seeing an old lover.  He has no clue, of course, that you applaud him for craving his father's approval while giving him the finger.

In college there was a famous Physics professor.  Or maybe it was Philosophy.  There were rumors... he'd written a bestseller and his boyish profile with the shock of hair on the backcover-- the loosened tie and open collar... sold books.  Not long after I graduated he let my college advisor know that he'd had a little crush on me. Flattered, I agreed to go on a date-- intimidated but somehow reassured by the familiarity of that image on the book-cover.  I knew him... the way his fingers absentmindedly held the piece of chalk-- the way he gestured with his hands, and pushed the shock of hair off his forehead. When he came to pick me up, he told me he'd often thought I had the legs of an extinct running animal.  I'm sure I wore a very short skirt; we all did in those times. As we walked he calculated the number of shades between the whiteness of my skin and the black of my hair.  I was a little speechless... out of my element.  He took me to the movies-- something almost embarrassingly pedestrian like Rocky.  The smell of popcorn and urban movie-theatre didn't quite fit in with that disheveled young professorial silhouette.  I wanted him on the cover. That version. Somehow I felt humiliated when he left me at my door, as though he had put me back in some inferior student slot.  I thought about the comments he made... Liar, liar, pants on fire I said to myself over and over in my apartment, like a 5-year-old, to console my ego.  

Since the pandemic has completely disintegrated whatever skewed temporal reality I once had, I often stay up and watch films-- great ones: Godard, Almodovar, Fassbinder, Kurosawa. I am transformed by the better of them-- the way I was when I took my first course in film in boarding school, and was shown Truffaut and Fellini and Bergman. They seep into the cracks of me-- the ones that haven't been filled by novels and text.  They haunt my dreams and my strange daily existence which is at least five degrees more separated than it once was.  Sometimes I feel as though I've been transferred into another human form.  I am married to my solitude; I have said this many times, and it has been a wonderful and attentive husband.  

Tonight I ventured out to witness the Philharmonic on the Great Lawn-- this annual event I'd attended so many times-- with husbands, boyfriends, schoolmates, babies... I stayed on the outskirts like an eavesdropper, with a book to fill the intermissions.  At the end I wandered back along the reservoir-- my daily habit... and pausing to watch the post-concert fireworks... I was nearly alone-- not even the ducks were awake-- waiting, except for two large dogs who are normally prohibited there, but it was late.  Suddenly I began to sense there was a couple embracing in the shadows... it was awkward; the dogs eventually forced them to address me. The girl was familiar-- I'd seen her on the way to the park with her dog...  beautiful like a younger, prettier Natalie Portman... and sweet;  she smiles at me often with true kindness.  The man was older--- boyish and familiar... I recognized him hours later... an actor... anyway, it became apparent that I was somehow inserted into their story-- or film.  We made a little smalltalk.. and then the actor came over to me and began speaking-- nervously-- soliloquizing... mentioning his little sons.. how one of them was terrified by fireworks, their sleep habits, etc., etc...  It was a moment of intimacy he opened and I suddenly realized they were meeting illicitly there... he, perhaps, had a family-- a wife.. but the two of them were so magnetically attached, there on the path-- watching their dogs play... touching, waiting to touch... and there I was, the unanticipated witness... maybe the only witness. I am safe, I did not say... you are safe. 

Once the fireworks ended, I took off down the steps of Engineer's Gate... they waved from the wall, and recalled the dogs who followed me for a bit.  The night could not have been more perfect... one day past the Strawberry Moon.  I have plenty to grieve this year-- the loss of friends, relatives-- the absence of my former habitual performance schedule-- the closing of so many beloved shops and venues.  I am a shabby aging writer/musician... a dying bohemian breed with barely enough income to cover the most basic expenses. Apologies to my late mother, I pay little attention to my wardrobe and appearance; she who was proud and always groomed would surely pass me by on the street, the way she publicly ignored me when I was going through my grunge phase.   

And yet I am still in love with New York-- the silhouette, the stones and sidewalks, bricks and facades... the graves and plaques and benches which memorialize so many vanished writers and artists and composers and heroes. The faded narratives and unseen films-- the diaries and heartbreaks. I will be gone one day but tonight I participated in one of those random urban tales of intrigue and passion and some kind of longing... and it felt like closure. My own little movie-- no wardrobe, no lines... just me, the intruder and the witness, who altered the narrative just that bit-- left my tiny mark on the city. 

Red, White and Blue

On July 4th I took an uncrowded 4 train to Brooklyn to hang with my son.  Solitude and quarantine have muffled the sounds of freedom ringing; just a few short weeks ago the pre-sunset curfew was downright penetentiarial.  I craved the sight of bridges and water and the Jersey shoreline-- the sense of distance, of space that is not measured out in six-foot lengths.  I thought the trip might help stir up some holiday spirit.

Walking to the subway was like an audio land-mine... firecrackers and street-caps exploding everywhere... Roman candles and sparklers whizzing by, blasts and M-80s and rockets threatening my old damaged ears.  I was jumpy; the station, even with the heat, was like a quiet refuge.  On the train, pretty much everyone wore a mask-- except the guy by the rear door who was smoking a joint and pointed out to me several times that I was the only white person in the car.  Certainly I was the only person without earbuds-- a captive audience to his rants and raps and disgruntlements.  When he pressed me for a response, I confessed I didn't feel very white, thinking about my unbleached laundry still drying off in the permanent humidity of my bathroom.   It seemed to satisfy him-- he offered me a toke and I turned it down, touching the mask.  In the relative calm of train noise, I felt safe.

In Brooklyn my son treated me to tacos on the roof of a cool Mexican place-- seemed appropriately a-patriotic for American Independence Day.  I had my first drink of alcohol since that last horrid glass of red at Parkside -- when Alan I toasted the proverbial end of the world as the downtown music scene hit the fan.  It burned a little-- like I was somehow disloyal for drinking without him.   A few couples socially distanced at tables seemed subdued... as though they were waiting for something; a young family with a cranky toddler reminded me of how exhausting the relentless claustrophobia of family can be-- how my first quarantine was like a numerical sentence-- me, a baby, an absent husband and the thick walls of early winter dusk that closed tightly around a mother who was accustomed to barhopping and rock and roll nights.  Sometimes I tire my son-the-man with memories and reminiscence... mostly I reduce it down to a general apology for my learning-on-the-job parenting style.

I insisted we check out the view from the Brooklyn promenade-- magical on any night, but the 4th held some promise of pyrotechnics and sky-entertainment, although nothing like the dazzling light-show of 2019-- the crowds, the buzz, the noise. The Statue of Liberty seemed to have shrunk... like someone picked her off and replaced her with a facsimile-- Liberty-Barbie with the green robe and the crown... and what reason had she to stand tall anyway... sham that she became in this administration with her baited false message of welcome to immigrants, the racially charged symbol of white freedom-- in a harbor with few boats, in a city where residents must mask their face and fear their neighbors?  She, too, seemed subdued and ironic...

Where is my freedom, I wondered?  Is it here... on a promenade by a river I've known most of my life, looking at an altered landscape across a bridge I used to watch from my childhood pram-- the one that haunted my dreams for years-- even still?  On my birth certificate which identifies me as female and white-- a citizen of New York City where I find myself tethered-- despite my youthful wanderings and yearnings... ?  What has become of my city-- a scene of emotional wreckage and the slow attrition of all that I loved most?

The post-4th evenings are quiet although I read in my audio manual that the city ambient sounds have a significant decibel presence.   My dusk runs are still punctuated by heart-stopping random firework explosions.  I have become more intimate with Central Park than I ever expected...  I recognize the routine joggers and walkers-- the babies growing and the Boxers getting their mojo back... My egret has disappeared; surely she is somewhere in the city.  The ducks and geese seem to have a certain purpose... recently a few of them line up on the tiny rock island in the center of the reservoir; they have an order-- they do not seem to compete.

In the distance of dark there are few sirens now; the traffic is subdued and tame.  There is an occasional quiet roar from a pack of demonstrators but even these have become less frequent.  Fewer airlines pass above... fewer traffic helicopters.  My windows are always open; I live without air conditioning and maybe hallucinate from the heat. When I was small I believed in a country (my country) called Tizovthee-- sweet land of liberty.  I squinted horizon-clouds into purple-hazed mountains and transported myself there, land of the pilgrim's pride.  Of 'Thee' I sang-- its nickname...  halfway between heaven and Oz.   The mountains paint themselves nostalgically into the sky behind the towers of the El Dorado.  They stay with me as I type into the morning hours, as I waste time and dawdle with books and memories, go from guitar to text.

But there is another component of these nights-- it is a sort of cloud that hovers-- blankets and beckons like a scent... a few of my friends have been captivated and succumbed... I read their names
in the obituaries, on Facebook pages and Twitter posts.  It is there as the sun sets in its fiery death throes of pinks and golds, as the morning sky threatens to replace the black with its electric blue magic... deceives, taunts me into a new day-- or to the edge of sleep.  It sings to me--  of the bloodless cool of breathlessness, of the enchanting nightmare of fever, of a slipping away--a letting go-- of the girl who is lost in a lake tonight or adrift in an untraceable boat-- in a plane with a cut engine, a receding surf and a wind.  For some of us there is another kind of freedom that beckons-- that makes us safe, but offers solace when there is none.  I am learning to forgive those who cannot resist... I understand... there are bells... and as I misheard the song when I was young, without lyric sheets, perhaps the sound of freedom laughing.