Summer Interlude

July humidity is a uniquely oppressive phenomenon for those who are economically committed to all-urban summers.  Nothing-- animal or material-- escapes its wilting inertia; we slow, perceptibly, like a musical command... and offer an opportunity for things to penetrate. If we took a personal inventory,  I think summer memories would dominate.

After the massive Nersesian novel (thank you, Arthur, who individually thanks an impressive litany of his East Village neighbors at the end), I took up some late Roberto Bolaño who never lets me down, even at his least luminous.  A summer vacation diary-- with deaths and mysteries and World War gaming minutiae... but the heat... the damp, the summer rain.  It stuck to me like my clothing.

And then Soldier's Pay-- to cleanse my literary palate, so to speak-- with early Faulkner.  So many of us read Faulkner in school-- before we were able to absorb his language facility-- well, it's worth going back after all this time.  One wonders where Cormac McCarthy would have been without him.  The imminent summer is palpable... and the way he is truly in love with not just words but the way people speak them... and the descriptions drip vocabulary like wet rain.  He over-saturates but it's young and utterly world-shaking. 

It occurs to me that old writers become more sparse and bitter, as though they are slowed and dulled by their own self-critical ghosts. Maybe, as we age, we spin off enthusiasm and joy like coats of paint-- and we are left, in our later years-- wiser but hampered by our own hesitations.  Rarely does one see a senior kick up his heels on the sidewalk. Later novels tend to be more careful.

Evenings I still circle the park; one of the highlights is the 110th Street drum circle.  Africans of several countries meet here and sing and dance-- some in T-shirts and jeans, some in colorful native dress. Beats and chanting fuse with the denser landscape up there into a ceremonial soundtrack.  There is joy in the circle-- camaraderie and affection... but overall there is this pall of homesickness-- of these transported people into the harsh summer reality of Manhattan... and I feel sad for them.  

Among friends, many are crippled with a kind of depression which seems less justifiable in summer, but nevertheless persists.  I speak to them because they know I'm awake at 3 AM when they are haunted.  I empathize, and I refuse to cross their boundary of despair.  Some of them hide in their apartments-- I, too, am a little guilty of anti-sociability-- but they assume these Facebook Fred personas-- they post and converse on social media... it's an anodyne, I suppose.  Many of them describe and display their surgeries and illnesses-- their recoveries and badges.  It's wonderful-- but what about those of us who toughed it out-- no  addictions, no drugs, no 12-step programs? We changed diapers and bailed kids out of jail.. we did the daily penance with no one but a vague Jesus beside us to listen to our prayers. No award.

Some of us cannot see what we have become.  Some of us work hard at filling in wrinkles and lifting saggy jowls-- at coloring our hair and camouflaging reality.  The depressed and vocal do not see how they have become narcissistic-- a black hole into which they draw their friends and anyone who will listen.  It's like a kind of emotional quicksand.  

As we add more and more to our life scoreboard, the losses ironically mount disproportionately.  Some of the losses are more memorable than the wins, although in this Olympic season, we barely remember even the medalists.  We love doing some things in life... others we dread, but we are glad that we did them.  I thought much about that couple who set out to sail the world and were found dead in a lifeboat.  Even they would not have had regrets; somehow we know this.

At a certain point we begin to give things away-- we realize what we got is not really what we wanted, and conversely, what we wanted is not what we got.  Some things happen to us... and they are not good, but I also often wonder that life has not been even more tragic-- that the good has outweighed the bad, that five mediocre novels do not change the one brilliant one; it is only the writer who suffers.

Tuesday at 5 AM I watched part of Bergman's Island... the original documentary which is Bergman at 80-something speaking about his life, filmed on his beloved Fårö.  He is consciously at his productive end and has always been clear about his films-- their meaning, the brilliant intertwining of his life's personal narrative with his work. But it seemed so simple-- the landscape, the genius himself in his fleece slippers, sitting on his fireplace, looking and explaining.  He was so utterly candid-- so honest.  His fear of death, his failures, his memories. It's extraordinary-- what he accomplished and how he of all people was able to see himself.

Dawn seems to come quickly in summer.  Evenings are slow... I feel certain, on the cusp of August, I will sense the season being sucked from the room.  It's another goodbye.  Whatever the summer has brought, whatever it has meant,  I hate goodbyes.  I will miss my sticky fingers on the keyboard in my unairconditioned apartment.  I will log my summer reading and console myself with the knowledge that these months are a smaller and smaller fraction of my lifespan. But I also think, after all these changes, I do know who I am.  And despite the relentless over-saturated cloud of grief no one measures with daily weather and air quality statistics, I belong here.

24 Carrot Old

New York City absorbs summer like parched soil getting the first rain in months.  There's always a quick premature teaser--- and within a mere few days, we've got hoards of tourists in shorts and  outdoor concerts in every square, air conditioner exhaust, that sweet garbage smell… people letting it hang out.  Girls and boys baring skin… some of it pretty, some of it not.

On the upper east side women with hats, designer sunglasses, umbrellas to protect their dermatologist's hard work… and on the subways… you get it all.  Scars, bug bites, rashes.  A guy sitting across from me today on the C train-- some hideous disfiguring skin disorder everywhere… and he's just letting all his secrets out.  Contagious?  Who the fuck knows?  In a way, you have to admire the guy.  It's a kind of dare-- just the way these 2 giggling 19-year olds are giving me way more visual information about their their butts and waxing habits than I want.  And the way you see these guys with the quarter-sized holes in their ears, covered with tattoos and piercings, and bumps underneath that give me shivers… after all, once you have covered virtually all of your skin… what's next? Do they envy the natural amputees and the genetic oozers?

When you travel in poor countries you see plenty of disabilities and weeping sores.  Here in New York City the homeless occasionally flaunt their deformities.  People are sometimes more generous when you are a true untouchable.  Then again, some just cross the street and keep their nose in their phone.  There's plenty of hideous stuff going on underneath our clothing-- just some can afford plastic surgeons and some can't.  Some are just lucky.  In my day, beauty used to be a random event-- the luck of the draw-- look back through your old high school yearbook--- everyone looks a little funky-- 1 or 2 genetically fortunate-- the obvious king and queen of the prom.  Look through your kids' yearbook--- or even their Facebook pages… and everyone is airbrushed, altered, hair treated, nose fixed, teeth white and straight--- who are these people? 

People used to tell me I had perfect skin.  I had no idea what that meant.  As a teenager I actually wanted acne; I thought it would make me look older.   My hair was naturally long and smooth.  There was no cure for frizzy hair then.  No Pro-activ.  No one advertised anything on TV but aspirin or cough medicine and food and cars and cigarettes.  Soap and shampoo.  It's so complicated now.

My son lost his job.  Yes, one of those internet startups that dangle the carrot of phantom stock options and the prospect of a Facebook-scale payout at the end of a rainbow which is really a tunnel of 15-hour workdays without overtime, an occasional perk in the form of celebrity investor/visitors; but mostly they are sweatshops which squeeze the new-college-grad spirit and goodness until the next crop comes in, desperate for work, offering free time for the privilege of resume-affiliation with a 'cool' company.  And then there is the carrot, again--- this year's model.  Anyway, at some point, during one of those private pep-talks the well-paid bosses give the kids, one-on-one, to let them think they are special, that they are being taken into the inner inner circle--- my son met the boss's toddler boy, who loved trains.  Do not fall for this, I warn… he is just trying to get a 17-hour day for under-minimum wage.  This is a snake in Comme des Garcons T-shirt.  But my son boxed up our vintage, hand-made Brio set… the bridges and the tunnels and the switchers and the locomotives… collected over generations--- one by one, lovingly cleaned and drooled on and slept with-- for generations… and delivered to the executive office-- -the black room with the buffed matte $50,000 stainless steel desk… and nothing on it but an always-open macbook air.  I cried.

I want my trains back.  I am thinking about going up to his perfect office with all the beautiful 25 and under-year-olds at their perfect matte tables, with their noses in their phones and computers… and the circles under their eyes barely visible because they have perfect skin and the boys all have that unshaven look which is compulsory… and me, in my funky thrift shop jeans with a guitar strapped on..  

with my former perfect skin and my rock and roll ravaged dyed-black hair wearing all of the wounds and realtime life of generations, letting him know exactly what I think of this airbrushed sweatshop of perfect educated kids-- mostly rich, because who else can afford to work 80 hour weeks and weekends for this pittance-- so he can go home to his 20 million dollar condo with his trophy wife who may or not be a genetically natural beauty-- and tell his private sushi chef exactly what exotica his personal trainer will have for dinner.  

I am not buying.  Not their 'brand; not their bullshit.  I want the million hours back that enabled my son to incur more debt than he had before, and duped him into pouring his life and his heart and his unspoiled ambition and belief, like a slave with the prospect of freedom-- into this asshole with a phantom internet company concept--- an app, a hocus-pocus-- a spin artist of the heinous 21st century Wall Street variety who parties with rappers and has a bodyguard because he's weak.  Because this is what the American dream has become.  Not even a company that makes something you can drive or build your house with.  Another swindle.  Another IPO.  Another Nasdaq listing at $20 that gets pushed up by his 'boys' to $40 so he can cash out his options.  Maybe even a buyout.  

But I will look him in the eye because I am not afraid of this guy who is an asshole and I could take him on with my rock and roll energy.  I am going to forget about the cool Hess firetruck I let go for the toddler brat's birthday present.  But I am going to look him right in his eye and say 'Give me my trains'. 

Mybe I should make him deliver them.  But no---I might take a couple of Duane Reade bags in there and load them up.  I'm going to make a lot of noise.  Maybe I can get the guy with the hideous skin disease to come in with me and touch things.  In his boss's office.  Send him a few articles about those laid-off postal workers who come in with guns.  Anthrax envelopes.  I know for a fact the guy is a total germophobe.  He'll surely have his bodyguards remove me.   Besides, I'm not a vengeful person.  I write.  I want my trains.  4 words.  And the shopping bags.  Maybe one of the club bouncers--- the kind with the gold bulldog around their neck and the quarter-sized holes in their ears.  Go ghetto on him.

As for my son, he will not be willing to share my dinner of white rice and black coffee.  Regrettably at 24  he will have learned the harsh lesson that no one has your back.  Trains or no trains.  No one wants your pathetic sentimentality these days.  It's a disease.  Hopefully it's not genetic.  Hopefully he'll nip it in the bud because I don't see him staying up nights writing poems and channeling melodies from dreams.  He has near-perfect skin and just the right hair.  He'll get another job.  He'll learn to hate carrots.  He already does.  He knows now in the new version of Aesop.com the hare is always on top and there is no finish line.  It gets moved to wherever the hare is.  That is the new game, the new 'fair', the new internet-startup black.







  

Midsummer Pentimento

Teenage hell has me back at the Psych office which requires an early morning start, no sleep. Another UWS apartment-- museum posters on the wall, leather chairs, the kind-faced woman who listens while I weep like it’s Pavlovian….the therapist encouraging me to come, come…she is willing to accept my pittance for the magical challenge of unraveling why a talented person like myself is touring on a luxury unlimited monthly metro-card and traveling across town to celebrate dysfunctional high-school graduation alone in the rain with a $1.25 pretzel which are getting harder to find but worth the trip. This kind of thinking is keeping me in a sort of cage, she explains.

In the elevator down, a kind older woman comments on the Linden trees, obviously noticing my red eyes. They are in bloom— but her words-- from some old poem…resonate, provide comfort in a way the therapy will not. We walk a few blocks. She faces forward so I don’t feel self-conscious…remarks all over the city she sees weeping women every day. My favorite Picasso personification ever—in the Guernica, and out… the Weeping Woman…the one he may have glorified in his painting—as a symbol—but the one men hate in reality.

I acknowledge this woman, agree there are women crying everywhere, with the perfect faces. Reluctantly I leave her-- do not embrace her as I am inclined—do not ask her if she will take my $20 weekly and walk with me-- pretend to be my therapist, my angel, my mother. I need her.

On 79th and Broadway there is a guy with a cart—maybe Hispanic—clean, clean. $1.25 for hotdogs and pretzels. Beneath his khakis on this humid summer afternoon, the guy is lean and hard. His skin looks buffed, his smooth tattoos are approaching middle-aged blur. Facing his cart always with the line, because people in uniforms—the laboring kind—are willing to wait to save a few quarters…will tip the guy the way they never tip the 2-buck vendors. Plus he takes his time. He focuses. He has this routine— 8 shakes exactly of the dogs as he pulls them from the liquid—the perfect slice open, mustard back to front, ketchup same…five shakes of the sauerkraut. Then he asks if you’d like it wrapped…calls you honey—the fresh-mouthed black highschool girls, the John Does, the nurses and Filene’s employees. Doesn’t look you in the eye. His cart is immaculate. I get a pretzel, bagged with the same technique, the same care. I trust this guy. The food feels ritualized-- blessed.

On the bus home savoring my pretzel not just because it’s cheap, but it’s good… I remember last night on the 4 AM crosstown…3 women, like a Chekhovian mini-play—one showing me a yellow jacket she bought for $3, admiring my shoes, $10. The third woman removes one of hers, we name our favorite thriftshops, we laugh and tear up a little—we embrace. Brief sisters, the way my real ones never are these days. Open hearts, no malice. I’d have given my shoes to either of them. So this is my daily therapy— the weeping women of New York— the ones who don’t botox out their life, their sorrow, their joy. Random women on a bus who help me forget, for a moment, the ripping ache of teenage single-motherhood, the missing ex-husbands and estranged lovers, the unpublished manuscripts and unsung songs. Or maybe they help me remember.

Poised we are, midway through the midpoint of the year. Pivotal days that pass, tip the balance of the past into the future. If I got a tattoo it would be the weeping woman, crying tears that spell the name of my cruel son...a tattoo of the hot-dog guy, with the tattooed arms. But I won’t. I’ll spend the required $20 on another useless prescribed therapy session and hope to see the Linden tree lady in the elevator next week.

Number 23

New York City summer. Hot enough for you? This is the topic of choice. Everyone in the city complains, whines. Always something. The Second Avenue subway, taxes. Wall Street is shaky. I vacillate between wanting the glassy towers of hedge-fund driven wealth to topple and knowing it’s us poor bastards that pay for it all in the end.

On my way downtown last night, one of these welfare mothers napping on the train. 5 kids all under the age of 6…two strollers, 3 huddled on the metal bench in cheap polyester basketball jerseys and shorts, chilling in the subway AC. Boys, all of them. Mother not more than 21—like a girl, pulling a hoodie over her chest. Maybe another life starting under the thickness of her over-stretched T-shirt. The middle-child of the huddle—the boy, maybe 4, his thumb in his mouth, stroking his other hand up and down on the back of his brother who serves as his pillow. The little miniature Michael Jordan, wanting a little affection—the sensitive one, needing the touch.

I caught some footage the other day of that orphaned hippo who’d chosen a 130 year-old tortoise for his mother…The whole world is moved by this…that giant amphibious toddler caressing an old shell with a shapeless heavy head, licking the rough hideous turtle-face with that massive baby-tongue in the dry Kenyan turf. Another one—needing the touch.

On the late-afternoon Upper East Side streets, an endless parade of nannies between air-conditioned spaces-- picking up toddlers from playgroup. Corporate types who never missed a well-dressed beat for pregnancy and the mess of childbirth-- coming home to their Chinese-born youngsters in designer toddler-wear—so far from home. What will happen to these privileged children with the perfect haircuts and SAT scores? We’ve not yet seen the adopted American-Asian population in rehab, collecting DUIs and ex-boyfriends and prescriptions. So far they wear their Spence and Chapin uniforms well, do not struggle with their weight. They excel at drawing, play their ½-sized violins with finesse. Their parents wear this well.

At work I keep thinking of the boy in the huddle—the one with the soft heart—the one that maybe cries more, gives his young mother a harder time, the one with the enormous thirst who pulled a short damaged straw. His little shaved head…his shiny brown-black little arm soft and smooth and needy in the little knot of brown limbs and red polyester. Maybe after a few years of unfulfilled hunger he’ll start to act out, look for the wrong kind of attention. Maybe he’ll be a rapper, be adored by millions; maybe he’ll put his passion into ball-playing. Maybe he’ll confuse his needs and become obese. Or maybe he’ll be a sex-addict. Maybe he’ll have to sell himself for the touch, fill his hole with a needle-ful.

Oh God, I am thinking—give this little boy a guitar-- something. All these people on the stage with me here.. using volume as their art…the Lost Boys of rock and roll. Up here—with the audience, the women, the affection… doing Summertime Blues for the Budweiser-saturated.. .. You Can’t Always Get What You Want ..and they forgot what it was they wanted in the first place. All dressed up, all wired…and nothing to say.

So as I ignore all the hustlers on the way home—all the hard-luck stories…the exhausted sweaty subway-guitarist who’s played ‘Landslide’ more times than Stevie Nicks… I keep my little Michael in my pocket. My prayer of the day—please God, or Oprah...let someone feed this child, let him weep…give him an ear, an extra pat on the head, a copy of Harold and The Purple Crayon.

Jesus. I think the heat’s getting to me.