Holm, Sweet Holm

Despite my general aversion to travel, I spent last week in Stockholm. Arrivals in a new city are always a bit blurry and emotional; one sees shapes, rather than specific landscape... a kind of reverse deja-vu, rather than reality. Gradually one acclimates and forms attachments. I remember moving to London... it was so grey and lonely; I couldn't imagine ever having friends and hanging out. 

But this was maybe my 15th trip to Stockholm; it has a kind of familiarity for me.  It is friendly; I can manage the geography and move among the islands with confidence. The coffee is wonderful... the streets are navigable and the traffic, even in the city at rush hour, is near-non-existent. Pedestrians have priority; and yet, for an incorrigible urbanite like me, it is very much a city.

In any European city the history is immersive. Although New York is centuries old, we are hybrid and new; we are a conglomerate of 'others' who more or less chose to make their home here. Besides 9/11, we have not fought wars on Manhattan ground, we do not have millennia of history resonating in our architecture, in our lore. Over the years I have traveled and toured, there was a kind of fascination with Americans.  We were the authors of rock and roll, of rhythm and blues and be-bop. There seemed to be ubiquitous curiosity about our culture.

This time, I felt a little reserved.  Yes, I traveled during the first Trump presidency but most of the world seemed to pass that one off like the anomaly we assumed it was: this will be be temporary... like a reality show gone wrong. We had jokes, memes. This time, people looked at me with a kind of skepticism.  What could we be thinking? Major issues of war, NATO membership, EU unity preoccupied the news. America the hero had turned into America the selfish narcissist. In a country where social democracy and inclusivity are prized, the general sentiment was 'appalled'.

It was a little reassuring to watch the Belgian summit on Sky TV, to appreciate the way these countries stood up for one another; after all, they are neighbors, they share a continent.  But all of them together do not have the economic power of the US; their very existence could be threatened by the New World Order... and suddenly, the values I was taught in 20th century America were off the table.  There is an ocean between you and Russia, Zelensky reminded Trump who seemed irritated if anything by this observation. Between allies-- between democratic nations, there is no ocean but a bond, a spoken or unspoken promise. We grew up with this assurance.

So I found myself engaged in endless conversations about our politics. Rather than getting a modicum of respect for being a New Yorker, I felt helpless and ashamed. Along with my Swedish friends, I ask every day... how could this have happened? No, we are farther from the sounds of war here, but I no longer have faith in any kind of fatherland or protective constitutional assurance; right has become wrong and wrong is being distorted into status quo. 

Sleeping in strange beds in different time zones always produces a unique set of dreams.  For some reason  I woke at 5 AM the first night with a memory of my first Au Pair job, during my college years.  In exchange for room and board I cared for the two young sons of a writer-in-residence at my school.  After a week or so of acclimating myself to something besides a dormitory cot, I found my employer visiting me in my bed. He reeked of bourbon and was aggressive and romantic and begging. It was a pathetic denouement of a person I'd respected.  I'd considered myself fortunate to have this opportunity. What to do?  I could not cause a scandal; I was familiar with drunk episodes from my own family, and knew it was my 19-year-old word against his.  So I managed it... I got up, I resisted.. I paced... I adjusted.  I should have ratted him out; it was unconscionable and invasive.  But why did this come up, 50 years later, in Stockholm? Maybe I was confusing one of those Nobel prize films with my reality... the place, the betrayal, the strangeness. The betrayal.

During the week I was there I prayed for the Pope.  He doesn't need your prayers, my Catholic friend told me; we need his.  But still, I prayed.  I also watched the film Conclave on the plane. Pertinent and worrying. Will this Pope be replaced by someone with less tolerance? Will we care, we in America who seem to be giving up our rights on a daily basis, who will, like Europeans for centuries, perhaps be persecuted for our very beliefs and identifications?

In Stockholm my Swedish friends welcomed me; they publish my books and my cds.  I can find these in the libraries and in store windows. Although it is not their native language, I feel read, heard. Today my French friends told me they were cancelling the retirement trip they'd planned for years.  They do not want to come here now. Before I left I saw Swedes boycotting Starbucks, McDonald's, Tesla.  I brought home a pound of Arvid Nordquist Franskrost coffee-- with ecologically produced paper filters.  Great quality, inexpensive. No one wants US cash there. On the plane back I watched an extraordinary film called 'Bird' directed by Andrea Arnold.  It was both depressing and heartwarming. And it was better than anything I'd seen in a long time that was made in the US. I also brought home a case of food poisoning from the plane... or maybe it was just the stress of arriving in a city where I used to know every building and street, the familiar homeless men and the East Harlem bodega owners. The aggregate sounds of New York-- the sustain and crescendo-- have been the musical soundtrack to my life. I am no longer sure of my city, of our future, of our culture. It occurs to me that maybe I should turn around and return 'holm'. 

With Your Eyes

On Inauguration Day, the cold air like a knife seemed to split the country in half-- those who celebrated, and those who tried to concentrate on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. It was like a warning or a judgment-- for those of us who were anxious and upset, the arctic air was not reassuring. 

Unable to sleep, I watched an old film called Crisis-- a documentary featuring President Kennedy and his brother Robert handling a civil rights crisis.  It was another version of America... our leaders, presented in black and white like a home movie... having breakfast with their families-- fathers, credible men... going to work to challenge unlawful segregation traditions.  They were leaders... taking the country from prejudice and injustice into some kind of better future. It felt not just right but righteous.

The confirmation of POTUS 47 felt to me like a TV show-- from what I watched, apparently a badly produced tragic comedy of errors and mistakes, but a show above all-- and the installation of a version of America that feels eerily like the death of Hope. The promises feel like threats, and the concept of justice feels like a kind of volley back and forth between oddly distorted principles.

Seeing our 1963 Attorney General at his desk, waiting for a call... there was a solidity-- the desk, the room.  It was human-scaled.  No one had make-up or airbrushing... there was sweat, there was conversation in real time.  For me it went beyond nostalgia; it underscored this new sense of defeat I have shared with close friends.  We are betrayed, we are slipping somehow. The news is everywhere and overwhelming; the media-- rather than the message-- accompanies our life and we, it.

Continuing my interviews by telephone, I miss the heavy black instrument with the rotary dial... it somehow felt like truth. I speak to these enthusiastic and slightly nervous students and occasionally feel I am selling them a dream-- I am describing things that no longer exist, explaining realities that have evaporated into digital screens. They will never know the version of a woman who misses closing herself into a phone booth in a dive bar and making a romantic call-- a confession, an intimacy.

I've been reading Cesare Pavese. His novels are surprisingly colloquial, although one feels the tensions of fascism, of the German occupation, and the scars of WWII.  I look at maps of northwest Italy... at pictures of Turin... his places, too, perhaps no longer exist. I am listening to and absorbing the author's version of his nostalgia. Pavese suicided at the age of 41, just after he was acknowledged for his writing. Among his best poems is one (translated) line 'Death will come with your eyes'.  It haunts me. His disappointment, his sorrow, his obsession in one novella with a suicidal character-- his empathy.

My friend Elizabeth died very early Monday morning, in the dark.  In her hospice room it was surely lit, as medical rooms are.  She had not been herself for several weeks now. During her illness of five years, we became friends... she called me nearly every night for a year or two... and we gossiped, we laughed, we became intimates over the telephone.  I have a landline, still; it's necessary for this kind of communication. We'd had little in common before, but we grew together.  I miss her terribly; what we created, together, is completely gone. She deteriorated, over the years, but she was brave and never tried to escape her fate.  She was incredibly sympathetic when I had my accident; she joked that I'd ruined my arm just to experience her parallel paralysis.  We laughed and talked about men. It was like an affair... and now it's done.

For months now, I pick up my 12-string at night and play a few songs... the one that comes, every night, is the Free song, Soon I Will Be Gone.  In the year before Alan's death, at one of our back-to-back solo gigs, Alan sang this.  It was withering. I wept. Do not sing this, Alan, I warned him... and he answered me... it is a prediction, with this rare dark look in his eyes that were usually laughing.  But I've taken it up-- it's become my personal anthem that I sing every night in the dark, at 4 or 5 AM. It binds me to him, maybe.  

Tonight brought a fatal plane crash. We who will be gone sooner rather than later are shaken by this kind of news.  We are heartbroken for the fire victims, for the children of Gaza, for the undocumented Mexicans in East Harlem who are afraid to pick up their pantry items because they might be arrested. One mother told me she is keeping her children home from school, from fear they will be somehow seized.

Last night I walked home from a gig in Harlem.  An insane man on 113th and Lenox grabbed me... Read the signs, he kept yelling, with his sour breath. At last he let me go.  Shaken-not-stirred, I'd heard at the bar; it became my mantra for the last 20 blocks. There are people in this city who do not go out in the sun; they are pale and many wear black. It's sort of an unspoken cult-- some are women who with vanity preserve their skin; many are writers and musicians. Some wear sunglasses at night.  When I walk home late, I imagine they are at their sills, looking out-- blessing the dark empty streets and keeping me safe, like black angels... my witnesses.

I am glad to be home. Elizabeth will no longer phone me at 3 AM and I will no longer sit on the floor in the dark trading stories until her drugs put her to sleep. But tonight I will pick up my guitar and like a sort of trance I will sing the song... the dark anthem, the funeral hymn, the Inauguration song... 

The Sound and the Fury

I'm up to The Sound and the Fury in my Faulkner project... maybe it's the precursive reading, but I'm not struggling with the narrative the way I recall in high school. Maybe also it's the consequence of election season... the fact that I've somehow immersed myself in southern politics and culture, trying to comprehend the swing-state psychology and the way a crass New Yorker with a crooked script could appeal to it.  Rather than being dated, the Compson family seems a little familiar-- something for everyone.  In fact, poor promiscuous Caddie reminds me of my older sister who managed to smooth over her many-layered indiscretions with a colossal and expensive wedding cake which only fooled a few. The marriage was pretty much done before the cake went stale. 

Every dysfunctional family has its parallels... there are the bad eggs, the mean alphas, the deflated father-symbols, the fallen daughters... the alcoholics, the narcissists, the mentally defective and the failures.  The unforgiven.  Many of these have a nanny-figure-- maybe a nurse or housekeeper-- a paid parental figure who heroically loves at least one member, and holds them together for at least a time. Then there are the funerals-- the disgraces, the suicides. As literature, the subject doesn't get old.  We are the Family of Man. 

The thing about being over 65 is that few really fault you for being outspoken... or else they don't bother retorting. I'm subtly motivated by the residue of resentments for the petty injustices I've swallowed during my lifetime; truth outweighs courtesy when time is limited.  I am so very willing to offer comfort to the sweet and fragile who are suffering, but less so to the others who have caused as much pain as they have absorbed. You know who you are, I want to say... but 'you' don't.  These people rarely take accountability. 

The best literature shows us ourselves... it doesn't blame or moralize, it describes and shines a light on the shadows.  It observes, where there are no witnesses.  We have all done things, unseen, that have consequences. Writers take the opportunity of talent to expose their own past sins and injustices.  And we all get to a certain age... the demons and villains of our childhood are long dead... it seems almost safe to write the stories, to point our fingers.  This, we reason, is why I am this way-- why a marriage failed, or why another never had children... why success evaded us or our ambition consumed our capacity for empathy.

There are not many clear heroes in modern literature. We have plenty of those in the classics... and the more complex life becomes, the more we seem to turn to heroics and fantasy in our cinematic entertainment.  It's a little absurd-- the apparently simple thematic formulae of these blockbuster extravaganzas. 

Friday night, late, I watched that Chantal Akerman film where 95% of the action is a bourgeois woman in her little flat performing her daily chores in a sort of domestic claustrophobia.  It's long-- it feels like the day passes in real time-- but it's hypnotic and, for me, mesmerizing.  At a certain point in the afternoon, this woman who puts on a prim housecoat to do dishes turns tricks.  You can't judge a book by its cover.  But I can't imagine my son or any of his friends having the patience to screen this movie; they prefer Marvel or Scorcese... fantasy and extreme violence and gangster culture-- some horror thrown in.  This is entertainment.  

On the political front, I am too nervous to be entertained by any of the Town Halls or celebrity endorsements.  We are immune to the pleading, sick to death of the accusatory and aggressive advertising... we are manipulated and lied to by the very same device that shows us drama-- movies, comedy, sports... it is altogether processed as a form of entertainment rather than our political future. The media describes Beyonce's simple dress and Michelle Obama's suit.  Sure, their words reach some ears, but it is what they represent that remains like an afterimage... and then they are gone.

How can this be happening, I ask myself daily... a buffoon of a man convicted of both tax fraud and multiple sexual offenses,  running neck-in-neck with a seasoned and reasonable politician who stands for American democratic values?  What universe is this that there is even an argument?  The election is not a TV show... it's a major event in our history and will shape not just the next four years but could damage and distort our national trajectory for decades, if we even survive the critical transition. 

Among my friends there are those that threaten to leave the country. I did, too, after Bush, Jr was elected. But I came back.  Then there was Obama... and here we are again, at some kind of brink which feels even more worrying to me now. 

In my own city, today, Madison Square Garden.. where I saw my first Knicks game, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon... was turned into a kind of theatre of the extreme grotesque.  Hideous soundbites were used like ammunition. Some of them went home with audience members, and stayed on their tongue.  We are reduced to two opposing teams here, like a Sunday football match; there will be one winner. 

The villains in our families either pass away, grow old and defused, vanish into cemeteries and old scrapbooks. My sister hurt a number of people by her manipulative behavior and changed my destiny, perhaps. We are forced to lie for these people whose blood we share, even while it changes and destroys people. We are punished by the Jason Compsons who dominate the softer among us. Families, even when we leave home at seventeen, have a kind of co-dependent effect.  We share shadows and genetics and we all have a different take on the central narrative.  It's complicated.  No matter how good we think we are, there is residual guilt and pain in our past.  

In an election, we cast our ballot alone. We get a clean sheet--no one supposedly knows our individual mind and some of us still believe we can change the narrative by a vote. Let us hope that, pen in hand, we put aside the entertainment factor-- the contest, the game... and consider carefully not just our personal but our civic responsibility. 

A-women.

Seven Versions of Ambiguity

For as long as I can remember, PRIDE weekend in the city has been festive and colorful. It's something to celebrate and New York feels like the center of it all.  The subways are extra crowded with excited visitors and parade participants.. the level of street noise is a little higher, and the bars, especially downtown, are packed and raging. 

This year, coming on the heels of a disastrous Presidential debate, I don't feel much like celebrating.  Saturday at Union Square I noticed only the summer homeless population-- the couple who sit outside Wendy's waiting for someone to buy them breakfast-- the beggars and signboards looking for train fare, a room for the night-- anything.  A particularly stenchy person was overturning trashcans and soliloquizing in some indecipherable angry language; anyone was a target for hurled containers and cups.  A few truly afflicted men napped on the sidewalk-- their legs swollen and oozing with untended sores. Another regular wears a hoodie and long pants with gloves, even in the late-June heatwave; his face is covered with disfiguring growths and neuromas so that he can barely see.  Children point at him, and he bows his head.  

I am failing these people, I think... where is their pride, where is their comfort?  Singlehandedly I do nothing. Yes, there are those-- mostly my son's age, who cavalierly hand out a $10 or $20, as though there is a bottomless supply. Me-- I am rarely carrying cash these days; my pathetic sympathy does nothing.

There's little worse, as an audience, than feeling anxious for the performer.  I had this presentiment all week; the very first minutes of Thursday evening's debate confirmed my worst fears.  And then it just lay there-- a kind of pathetic circus of old-man caricature versus the blustering buffoon who looked comparatively solid.  

What some of America  doesn't comprehend is the innocent celebration of freedoms and alternative opinions is threatened.  It's not just a presidential election, it's a move rightward to a platform of dictatorial narcissism.  Where is our choice?  'Either/or' no longer suffices.  And yet, that's where we seem to stand at the moment.

Pride... I thought more about the deadly sin described in Proverbs as the precursor to disgrace and destruction--that which goes before a fall.  The Lord, says Proverbs 16, 'detests all the proud of heart'. Since religion- -specifically Christianity-- seems to be creeping into politics, how does one process this? The Proud Boys-- all the participants in the January 6th incident-- will be rewarded, as democracy dissolves in an old bucket. 

My generation is proud of our children, our parents who fought wars and weathered the depression.  Some of us are proud of ourselves-- our accomplishments and our success that have enabled this version of America with its bloated wealth and alarming poverty.  Some of these people forget their roots in the 1960's and vote to preserve their own bank accounts.  They resent immigrants and social welfare programs. No one of them wants affordable housing on their block, or a shelter, or a migrant hotel. 

I know there were demonstrations during the Pride march--the suggestion of violence.  A gay rabbi boycotted this year because she was confused about the perception of her Palestinian sympathies. We are people, all of us... and yet we are polarized by beliefs. Mostly there is anger... the uptick in crime on the trains and the streets reflect this.  Any excuse-- politics, religion-- to burn off steam and maybe beat someone up.  

Pride, according to several passages in the Bible, is the root of all evil.  Not the kind of pride displayed by the June parade, but the kind displayed by the presumed Republican candidate. It's ironic to me that the Red states are reinstating much of the Church-and-State intimacy which was banned in the name of freedom. We are going backward, unraveling the path of progress that made us feel safe and proud to be American.

And the majority of people just went on with their lives today-- they went to the Hamptons, they played tennis, barbecued in the park, shopped... laughed, maybe even went to church.  At a point the sky virtually opened up and poured enough to halt the baseball mid-game. You'd think one would be reminded of our good fortune here... that we are not drowning and overcome, we turn on a faucet and water comes out-- clean water. For those of us who struggle, we can get food stamps to help with groceries... for now, while we have an inclusive local government.  

I visited my 98-year-old neighbor today whose failing eyes and ears reminded me to value what it is I have.  She worked in fashion and championed models of all colors and affiliations.  While she rarely leaves her apartment now, she could teach us all a thing or two about history. In the city today, few people were listening; they were partying, parading, drinking, eating, being happy.  Not that I am against these things, but my sense of pride in all its complicated definitions and manifestations is deeply troubled. 

When my neighbor was born, Coolidge was President.  He was known for doing very little to curb business interests, little for agriculture and the poor.  He declined to run for a second term, and when he left office, the Depression followed soon after.  In the interest of our national survival-- the democratic cause, our current president needs to swallow his version of pride.  We need to figure this out before it's too late, before all versions of pride are confounded and damaged. 

It's Sunday; I could use a sermon. We could all use some old fashioned peace, love and understanding. And a dose of leadership. 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...).

What we Talk About When We Talk About Breakfast

As if the pending election news and impeachment hearings aren't enough, the sustainable food movement has now forced me to reconsider the very fundamentals of traditional meal priorities.  Contradictory to everything our mothers assured us (and we in turn indoctrinated our kids) about nutrition, it seems breakfast is losing ground as a frontrunner.

I grew up in the 1950's with cereal boxes as the morning centerpiece on a black formica deco table, sitting in a Breuer-style chair upholstered in indestructible woven yellow vinyl.  We read the box text over and over  while we shoveled in the contents, motivated by the promise of some small toy at the bottom.  Tony the Tiger-- the athletes and cartoon heroes... My mother read the paper next to me with first a cigarette and coffee,  then a single warmed doughnut.  My Dad ate toasted buttered Italian bread with 'the boys' at a Trattoria near Grand Central Station and drank mugs of dark roast.  It set them up for an energetic workday.

As a teenager, I discovered hot cereal and Wheatena... I had to get up early to walk the dogs, and cooked myself a hearty breakfast with melted butter and cream.  The box looks nostalgically identical today on the supermarket shelf but nothing tastes the way it did then-- it was just so good...

In college I had instant Cream of Wheat and electric-kettle boiled eggs.  Someone was gifted the first Mister Coffee machine which improved our lives.  Among the Ivy League boys I dated initially was a privileged one who introduced me to Sunday Eggs Benedict and Vodka Screwdrivers at a local French restaurant.  He also showed me how to produce wonderful coffee with a Chemex beaker and filters.  There was French Roast-- Kona, Jamaican Mountain... it was a new world.

My first gallery job in New York was on 69th Street.  There was one delicatessen on Madison.  One.  They provided a buttered roll and coffee for something like 50 cents.  I was poor-- a student-- and this was a ritual... I traded bus fare for morning food and walked to work.  Those were sacred days... things happened... I could smell sweet butter on my fingers as I typed and people like Andy Warhol came through the door.

When I was pregnant I craved McDonald's eggs and biscuits.  I ate multiple orders and fantasized about them at 5 AM.  As a mother, breakfast was important-- cereal, pancakes... my son was an athlete.. I tried hard to force something on him at 6:30 AM and also signed him up for free BOE morning meals.

While my son was in school, I took on extra jobs.  Once, to earn the extra cash to pay for a double bass, I painted kitchens for a contractor; I learned how to carefully finish cabinets.  My 'boss' flirted inappropriately with me... but brought the best mandarin orange muffins every morning from a place called Petak's.  I can still taste these-- how I collected any stray crumbs from the brown bag.  One day my 'boss' pulled me into a bedroom and asked me to paint his dick.  That was the end of the muffins.

Since middle age, I've been a slacker musician-- making my own schedule according to gig ETA's... staying up nights... I abused Starbucks for a while, and traded morning meals for massive amounts of coffee.  Milk, for adults, is not a priority.  On the days I'm awake early, I see most of the world brown-bagging bagels, biscuit sandwiches, Whole Foods hearty oats options... yoghurts.  Even Taco Bell has pre-11 AM specials.  While I shun food until I'm fully awake, I love the sense of breakfast-- the human coffee-and-muffin line, the scent of croissants.

Recently I bought a box of cornflakes.  They were god-awful... they tasted medicinal and synthetic.  I haven't found a muffin that compares to those Petak masterpieces from the 1990's.  I've binged on pancakes while on the road and don't have much desire except occasionally a hotel buffet of scrambled eggs somewhere feels nostalgic.  I remember having breakfast with Lou Reed in Amsterdam in a darkened dining hall...  trying to order an omelette with my first husband in Times Square where we were refused service because of his dreadlocks.

So now even Dr. Oz has conceded that the whole culture of breakfast is a hoax.  The quality of contemporary cornflakes made it feel less sad, but for those of us who grew up in the 1950's-- and my own father came from farm country where they ate leftover popped corn with milk in bowls-- this requires something of a cultural reset.  Of course I begin to suspect there is some marketing or financial reason for the 'demilitarization' of breakfast.  Steering us away from the cereal box heroes and milk-carton tragedies, somehow aiding the coffee culture to fill some nutritional vacuum and eventually sell more lunch options... to increase morning productivity by taking away the line-waiting and desk-eating.  I'm not sure.

I do know that no 2020 Wheatena comes close to the stuff I cooked in the 60's; no butter or cream has the fragrance of the small glass bottles and tubs of my school years.  And the muffins-- well, I am jaded now, and poor-- food stamps cannot buy a croissant on Spring Street.  Even bagels are a disappointment.  Every now and again I walk through Zabar's on Third Ave. and they are giving out
chunks of crumbcake or bread.  I am reminded that, unlike  Les Miserables, there is a hierarchy-- it is not simply a loaf of bread-- but there is a class system of food.  Maybe breakfast is simply too pedestrian and proletarian for our current food-fad and weight-obsessed culture.  Still, I can't imagine those workers in the old photos, sitting astride steel beams above the city with their bags open and their thermoses steaming hot.. without a hearty morning meal.  I am quite sure that drive-ins and truck-stops will be forever serving bacon and eggs-over-- French Toast, hotcakes, whatever.  For the rest-- the Dr. Oz followers and the Trump voters-- well, let them have their noontime cake.  Or, as some of the senators were served this week-- a glass of milk.

I will forever remember the funky diners with the taped-up vinyl booths where we sat smoking and talking after gigs in the 1970's until the sun came up and the early birds-- especially the loners and bachelors--  came to start their day... where the posted menu in the window, like a loyal friend, announced in bold red italics 'Breakfast All Day!'

Lady and the Tramp

I maintain my own private version of 'New Yorker of the Week' awards.  The designees get no public accolade or acknowledgment... just a silent heads-up from me...  some spare change occasionally, because most of my heroes are either under- or unpaid for their courage and humanity... but since I am a member of the economic underprivileged, I hesitate to insult them with my pathetic donations and instead offer a kind of prayer on their behalf... or literary-underground immortality in one of the poems I scatter like autumn leaves find their way to obscurity-- or maybe to some school-child's fall art-project where they will be briefly loved.  I can't help myself.

Last week's winner was a homeless man, sleeping temporarily on the steps of a church on Varick Street.  I would not have noticed him; it was late, it was beginning to rain…and the staggering numbers of men spending nights on the streets in the last few years has inured us all to the sidewalk population.  They seem to have food; their daily panhandling income, they tell me, averages somewhere between $50 and $150-- more than most real musicians I know earn for a gig.  They stay out of the shelters where their egos are filed and shaved down to a brand of humility that is more lethal than an overdose.  These places are dirty and dangerous.  Despite the rules and regulations,  possessions are not protected and sleepers are subject to violent attacks from other occupants who refuse to take their meds and experience psychotic and hostile episodes.

My man had risen around midnight-- relative calm on the streets-- to relieve himself… because as we all know, there are no public restrooms in the city after dark.  The homeless visit and even bathe in Grand Central, Port Authority, the various library branches, MacDonald's, those Starbucks stores which are kind enough to share their restroom combinations.  But at night-- well, even the parks are curfewed.  We have well-enforced dog-waste laws, but my son tells me in Soho and Tribeca there is so much human shit on the streets these days that business owners have had community meetings about this.  One store recently built an outdoor boxlike structure for advertisements and artistic displays.  Every day they had to shovel out the excrement and hose the receptacle down with disinfectant until they just gave up on the whole campaign.  Coming home at 2 and 3 AM, I have many times seen men defecating at either end of the subway platforms.

So my man squatted quietly at the edge of the steps,  and with his head bowed, stood carefully to clean himself with the pages of an old paperback novel.  I resisted the urge to see the title… but some passing young couples who witnessed his naked butt in the lamplight shadow-- well, they gasped and sniggered and pointed.  The thing was-- he was tall-- like a basketball player… and his sinewy legs and butt were so perfect and beautiful, and the grace of his rising, and even the way he pulled up his layered pants and fixed his clothing-- well, it took my breath away.  The sheer aesthetic reality of this man, trying to avoid falling into the cracks of the shelter treadmill, the humiliation and the consideration with which he waited until dark, until the traffic was moving, how he tried to avoid spectators… how his little pile of possessions was so neatly wrapped.  He was not that far from being a boy; I could imagine his mother, who loved him, or maybe failed to love him and care for him… the women he could have had, in another version of the story… an athlete-- a star… it broke my heart.

I got on the train, feeling helpless and almost guilty because I have a place to go back to-- a place to sleep and take a hot shower, where my books and my instruments, God-willing, are relatively safe and sheltered enough so I can leave them and go about my work.  Another disgraceful story on the discarded tabloids on the subway floor, with our orange-skinned Lego-President spouting more of his anti-humanitarian rhetoric.  He in his gilded rooms on Fifth Avenue, security alone costing more than the annual food budget of a small country… with his umpteen bathrooms and his tanning beds and hair-magicians… he couldn't survive a week in the wilderness.

Why is it we all pick up after our dogs-- we pamper and love them.. and have little compassion to adopt stray people… are disgusted and uncomfortable about their natural needs? Hunger is a force here… disparity is baffling, and for these fallen souls-- getting back onto the track is near-impossible in a city where so many of us are barely holding onto our homes, finding ourselves with a lower standard of living than we could ever have imagined.  I think of all those legends and fairy tales where the kings traded places with the paupers-- how it changed their worldview… what happened to this?  We are all counting our money here… me, and some of these homeless--- counting the change in our pockets to see if we can buy a slice or a coffee… and the Wall Streeters assessing the daily fluctuations in their portfolios-- pushing a button and making more money in a single trade than most of us will see in a lifetime… and they are happy to lend you credit, your friendly banker who pays you no interest-- for a mere 25-30%.  They bet on your failure to repay and they win big.

It makes no sense.  My version of this week's fairy tale has the winning Mega Millions ticket belonging to my man of Varick Street… although things don't work this way.  I do know the affliction of extreme poverty and homelessness is epidemic and chronic.  It leaves scars and residual symptoms for even those lucky few who manage some kind of recovery.  But most don't.  No sociologist or journalist or researcher into the phenomenon quite understands what it is like to be homeless and needy in a city like this, where you are chased from doorways and sidewalks of buildings filled with tenants paying $10,000  month for a few rooms… Lady, a local man begged me-- Can you let me in the gate?  He wanted to sleep in our trash alley where he will be locked safely against attack and theft.  I was reprimanded by my Coop Board for this nominal act of compassion in a neighborhood where a bakery now charges $10 for a doughnut and coffee.  Personally, I haven't bought myself a cup for years now.  Things are tight.  There but for fortune…. but that's another tale.

Today I remembered how my Mom once dressed me up as a 'tramp' on Halloween… at the time I had no clue what that meant, but I wore an old beat-up suit jacket and a bent hat and she smeared my face with coal like dirt.  I had a scarf-sack on a stick over my shoulder.  Everyone laughed and filled my sack with candy.  A man on the block told me about 'hobo' life; it seemed romantic.  I dreamed of runaway trains, of wandering, of campfires and hitchhiking…

Today I dream of a lottery for the poor-- where the billion dollar ticket gets divided among the homeless deprived angels of the street-- What was that old TV show… the Millionaire? The 21st century New York City update… that would be a reality show worth watching…  (to be continued…)

America the Reality Show

At some point during the summer, one of my friends asked me to blog for her while she went on vacation.  Apparently she is a paid 'tweeter' or commentator in various livestreams and publications for television, and apparently it is lucrative enough to allow her to have a holiday.  The catch? I had to binge-watch several shows so I could quip with credibility.

So the first assignment, and my 'audition', was The Bachelorette... regular network, fairly appalling, required reviewing a previous season of The Bachelor to get the backstory on the heroine who had been pretty well re-styled and made-over during the year, was admittedly all-American nice and gorgeous in a high-maintenance way, but likable.  I couldn't help inserting opinions on the pretty good-sized pool of racial diversity even though most of America knew she'd never cross-breed.  But what we were not prepared for was her choice of sub-par intellect, not to mention his bigoted, homophobic and misogynistic tendencies.  Is this the New America, the one that makes Kanye do the Presidential dance? My comments were disallowed.  Politics nixed.  Lovelier thoughts, my friend encouraged-- Keep it light... The only positive I could come up with was about her not-quite-as-attractive real-life (presumably) sister who was truly wife-worthy, loving and supportive, but this was not valid currency.

Next task: I binge-watched two entire seasons of Real Housewives of New York.  At least I could GPS locations... and one of my girlfriends had actually worked on some charity with Carole Radziwill... so I focused in on her.  At first she seemed relatively intelligent and independent-- dating a young chef, leading a life... but I watched her morph from a respectable, carefree woman into a botoxed, desperate fashion-hag-- a true mean-girl whose trajectory took her from top to bottom of the lady-heap.  Her clothing became ridiculous, her snide comments bitter and nasty, her constant style changes rivaled the Kardashians.  What could she have been thinking?  The reality show kiss-of-death for some who seem to compete with the kind of fierceness that eclipses character.  I sided with Bethenny-the-bitch whose real life tragedies won her the sympathy vote, and Carole fell both from grace and cast.  Good riddance... still no payment for all my television efforts, and an inability to separate Carole from my own real-life-nasty sister.

Oh, the fame-whores and phonies, the no-talent celebrities, the ass-kissing extras and free publicity opportunities.  Who are these women?  No one I would want to hang out with, except maybe Luanne-the-convict-version whose cabaret performance was entertaining in a horrific kind of way.  Some of my best friends have been in prison, rehab, various institutions...  almost relatable... but for the most part,  an entire mockery of my New York.  About as real as cartoon-Disneyworld, but not quite Thanksgiving float-worthy... Needless to say, my comments were undervalued.

But I'd been summer-bitten by the TV reality-bug.. and poor as I am, there were few evening options to distract me from the heat besides gigs.  I moved onto My 600-pound Life which is truly reality-worthy and eye-opening.  We in New York City rarely see this sector of population who are compensating for deep emotional wounds with food and essentially no more bloated than our local urban billionaires, just more honest.  Personally, I cannot fathom how they pay for all these meals; I can hardly afford restaurant or prepared food.  What I do know is the sin of gluttony seems far less heinous than the wanton greed of the 21st century corporate culture.  These people wear their weakness;  the Wall Streeters have personal trainers and plastic surgeons to keep them lean and mean while their investments balloon in 1200-ton portfolios.

Maybe the real reality show now is America... the Celebrity-Apprentice Presidential Candidate himself, with Kanye this week migrating from the Kardashian set to the Oval Office stage... flubbed his lines and embarrassed his audience but no apologies from the Trumpsters.  Protocol, ethics, intelligence, logic, respect-- all bets are off, all clarity is blurred and justice itself is on mock-trial.  Journalists and quipsters are hyper-provoked... pundits are ubiquitous and political cartoonists  hemorraghing material.  Endless dialogue and competitive commentary-- verbal bullying and misstatements are considerably more common than truth; little is unscripted except the pathetic presidential tweets...  and let's face it-- the viewer population is way more familiar with Bravo 'anti-stars' than political candidates.

In the end, I failed miserably as a TV tweeter... earned not even subway fare for all my viewing efforts, and feel a bit slimed, as though I skinny-dipped in contaminated surf.  If rap is the new poetry, 60 is the new 40, American politics is surely the new comedy... and I'm not sure where I belong.  It's like I'm looking at a chessboard with Monopoly game pieces.   Things are rigged and backward and ruined and even the weather for all our technology is less predictable than ever.   Everyone is a follower and no one is a clear leader.  I am betting that more people trick or treat than vote; however we celebrate Halloween, there seems nothing more horrifying than the Apprentice-president in the White House and his ghoulish team of clown-hearts with their golf-bags of tricks.
There are real tragedies, real victims of real disasters, real catastrophes and suffering.  Not reality shows but world events... not television entertainment but life.  May the better man, for God's sake, win.

Liars and In-no-cents

The US attack on Syrian chemical weapons facilities last Saturday garnered little viewership from the American public.  Certainly the Stormy Daniels interview had better ratings; television in general has lost its centrality in our lives.  I couldn't help thinking back to the Desert Storm airstrikes we watched from our sofas with a bit of nervousness and yet the detachment you feel watching someone else's video game.

It was a small maybe calculated distraction from the smeary smutty onslaught of the latest Trumpery-- an executive wielding of power from our clown-at-the-helm who spent the earlier part of the day bashing James Comey in characteristic unpresidential  excrement-slinging-- his usual weapon-of-choice.  Comey... with a quasi-presidential-scale faux-pas on his permanent conscience, or whatever the political version of poor judgement might be called... will have the last laugh in massive book-sales; there will surely be a seven-figure job for him out there...

Then there was the Zuckerberg testimony... the wide-eyed, studious false sincerity of a billionaire who sold out our privacy, claiming his innocence with every sycophantic reply, sugared over with
an overdose of courtesy and those huge, bloodshot deer-eyes dripping with candor, watery from his contact lenses.  It rivaled the Steve Cohen testimony... he didn't remember, he didn't know... who was actually less culpable than these Facebook thieves.  Nothing in this world can be undone.  The sins of the billionaires have shifted the axis of our political and social morality.  Nothing is free; everything is bait... and we like fish have hook-holes in our palates.  Nothing will ever be the same.  The end of the innocence, what little there was in the well-trod sites and pages of New York before the 70's, the 90's my friends visit frequently... anything but this.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the vast majority of medical and drug trials are not reproducible... that data is manipulated, cooked... so we are given medications and treatments to benefit manufacturers, and do little for our health which is nothing but a vague platform for massive financial gain.  We are the poor guinea pigs, obediently swallowing things, following instructions like schoolchildren... led down useless paths in our quest to cope with pain and the sicknesses that are byproducts of our culture.  There will be a small slap on the wrist.. and then we will go on... Zuckerberg's net worth will dip and then re-surge, as he promises vigilance, having thrown us all under the bus irrevocably.

An eight-year-old this week brought a knife to school and slashed his fellow students.  Sort of a flip-side to the story of the pre-school teacher who threatened a toddler with a slashing.  As I read the online version of the eight-year-old article, a huge pop-up ad accompanied the text-- some new state-of-the-art men's underwear in my face, eclipsing the news... like some kind of obscene big-brother shout-out-- the incongruities of this life-- the disconnects and random juxtapositions, the senseless acts of violence which seem to stem from some underlying emotional seismic rumbling-- the discontent, the warped and confusing version of democracy that is America.  How does anyone process, prioritize these disproportionate images, the flash-like brainwashing of Instagram-style imagery... pop Goddesses and queens with very little content but huge coverage-- Beyonce and her untouchable Coachella moment... the new Statue of Liberty? And it is as though she believes her own legend.  The Midas ass.

Where is compassion, where is humanity when the great God of money seems to have cast a golden shadow over us all, like the looming sky-touching penthouses which shadow and obscure our values and connections?  What is truth when lies dominate.. and win?  No longer does the tortoise come out on top.... they are choking on bad meds... while the hares are full-speed ahead with Ritalin and fat purses.  I see fewer and fewer real faces--- features altered and tweaked, bodies re-shaped-- even our most beautiful actors and actresses are compelled to make themselves more beautiful...  Television ads baffle me-- everyone is being urged to change their emotional state, their skin, their hair... Some days I feel as though I'm conducting a social experiment... trying to maintain a truthful commitment to my values, my modest goal to leave something behind in this world-- not a giant monument or a building facade, but a few songs or lines or poetry that might somehow find their way into a heart and sit there, like a tired passenger-- like company.  I am left behind... no seat for me on this bullet train of the culture which lies to me, which poses and manipulates and convinces... we must all be beautiful, we must all be young.. we must all watch this and that and have this and that... and those that cannot are angry and bitter and desperate.  All of us unhealthy... and there is contagion.

Yesterday on Lenox Avenue I collected 41 pennies between 110th and 126th... lying there on sidewalks like a trail left by some lost angel, like tiny sentries of some lost currency-- little copper discs that somehow made sense although very little cents... in 2018 terms... no one else wanted them... and I collected them.. from the damp street.. like tiny rescues... I tried to make some meaning of the small weight they became, of the cumulative purchase power... of the fact that they were free, they were gifts.. outside the Dollar store where people were hoarding bargains they mostly don't need-- piling packages of cookies and chips and frozen dinners into huge sacks... I wanted to stop them... to tell them something... but no one is going to listen to an aging woman who seems poor and powerless and maybe a bit mad.  I am mad.... I am angry-- not slasher-angry but beating-heart upset.  A penny for my thoughts here? No, actually, not even that.

Let the Games End

I don't know why the opening ceremony of the Olympics sort of gives me the shivers.  Maybe it's the color wash of pomp and nationalistic display that just seems so out of touch with the dull and miserable reality of the less fortunate population.  Puerto Rico is neglected; starvation and disease are rampant in so many places worldwide; the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots has never seemed so hideous.  The Korean culture itself--- the military parades and exhibitions of the North like a braggart's bluff-- the singing girls and the happy marchers... the reality of repression and forced obedience... the apparent moratorium on human rights that welcomes athletes from a hostile and hideous regime for what-- the spirit of competition?  I just don't get it.  It feels opportunistic and juvenile... some kind of #metoo madness.

Not to mention the pall cast over the gymnastic community which has colored yet another sport almost permanently.  Who protects those of our children who have been deemed special or uber-talented and marketable-- whose natural skills and talents have been parlayed into industries and fortunes not to mention a kind of national heroism?  As a young aspiring dancer, I could sense the thorns and perils even before I understood abuse and boundaries.  We each have instincts, but our ambitions so often triumph better judgment... as well as that of all those people on our path who close one eye when there is a huge pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.  Until the whistles blew.... and how many sports are now tainted by cover-ups, pay-offs, cheating, doping?  Does the best man/woman win?  Look at our elections.  Not only did we get the dark horse but we got a non-qualifier.  If politics was a sport our president would be limping at the starting-line with an ill-fitting uniform and no sponsors but his own sad brand.  Eisenhower might have been a good golfer but he was also a 5-star general.

What version of America shows up at these international competitions? The athletes are still young players in a kind of dream-- individuals with the drive and stamina to be the best they can be-- who put their skill on the line internationally for their nation-- but who are we?  A disorganized country with little focus except money-- an untrained leader whose familiarity with the 50 states came from watching the  Miss America pageant.  And now he wants a military parade-- this man who never fought a war or trained for one-- who throws around threats and battle-language like some kind of cartoon character.  The Monopoly president whose claim to office is an affirmation of the sad state of pop culture and the negation of human values.  We won't see his image on a bill or coin, but on a game-piece-- a gambling chip.  The man himself to me is an ever-expanding hot-air balloon-- the latest float at a Macy's parade...  to bring him down will take some strategy because he is not just a player but a cheater.  In the end, in my personal American dream--- to ultimately deflate the high-flying symbol of bloated greed and cartoon quackery will take a simple pin.

I can't help blaming the current flu epidemic on a certain emotional malaise among my American peers.  My friends and I have been mostly depressed since Election Day 2016.  Anything could take us down.  Few of us trust the medical system  to protect us against disease or to give a whit about healthcare beyond what profits the insurance and drug companies.  We do not get vaccinated; we get sick.  We are watching these games and athletics through feverish eyes, wondering at the lingering inequality of women in some sports, and worrying about the fate of the Korean cheerleaders and delegates.  Will they be punished?  Will there be defectors?  Why is South Korea so apparently recently solicitous of its evil Northern sister?

To me the two Koreas seem like a dysfunctional family; the South-- a beautiful place, ranked No.1 in the world in technological innovation-- so there is obvious talent and brilliance concentrated there-- a thing which might create envy in any family.  In the North-- repression is standard; starvation is rampant.  Students reputedly must buy their own desks and chairs to attend class, etc.  It is not a place that fosters creativity or joy... one pities the athletes who cannot possibly reap the rewards available to other nations-- win or lose.  It parallels my own sad family, in a way.... love has become impossible.. and although I neither respect nor admire my sister, she has used threats and fear to further alienate and weaken any family attachment I might have had.  She has forbidden her children to befriend me, although they have attempted defection... and now through force and might has conscripted the core and remaining fortune of my nuclear family so that even my own legacy will be withheld.  It is a game without rules; a rigged contest where the judges are the contestants, and there is one pre-arranged winner.

In this upside-down Trumped world where the jokers preside and justice sits on a bench with yesterday's stale sandwich, well... these villains will continue to steal the pie.  But for my true sisters of musical voice-- of pen and pencils and paint-- the filmmakers and innovators-- my teammates in life-- we will dance on their graves one day.  We will speak and write and sing and continue to raise our children with unconditional love.  We are out there-- on the streets-- in cornfields and in small homes... some of us coughing and barely able to board a public bus...  we wave to one another-- with some hope--  in our old clothing, with no medals or trophies but underneath it all,  a still-ticking American heart.

Where There is a Will….

The passage of relative time is a perpetual surprise for me; the pool of my past is filling so quickly with years… I can remember well when it was near-empty and the sense of  'brink' was like a permanent slow companion.  Looking at images from yesterday's women's march I remembered how I lived around the corner from Jackie Kennedy in her young widowhood.  She came in and out like a movie star, was civil but not very friendly to neighbors.  Still, despite her aura and the unequivocal celebrity status that seemed somehow to protect her, she was visible and often took taxis like anyone else.  She'd occasionally sit by the Central Park zoo with her children or a friend; people seemed to respect her privacy, from sanitation workers to other socialites.  After all, she was part of maybe the most important American story of her era… and she'd moved on-- she'd stepped outside the drama and assumed life as a regular woman.  She had children-- she had a job.

My mom was close to her age, and like all American women of that generation, she was influenced by her style: the hair, the hats and sunglasses-- her tall, understated elegance.   But what so many of them had in common was this silent acceptance of their husband's infidelities.  My own father's were not as flagrant or exciting; they were not even always centered on other women.  But there was a sort of pact these women kept-- a tolerance for behaviors that undermined and insulted their dignity in some way… and yet they carried on. They had their hair done, their nails manicured,  they met friends for lunch and took taxis to meetings.  They volunteered at schools-- they played bridge and shopped.  But they exchanged few complaints about their marriages.  They were committed, they were locked in.  My own mother feared being alone and made so many concessions I both disrespected her submissiveness and admired her stoicism.  It was the other version of #metoo:  I'm a wife and mother-- my husband doesn't treat me the way I deserve, but I have a sense of dignity.  #metoo.

In the wake of the current epidemic of accountability and blame, of revelations of abuse, I think about the variations and B-sides of the trend.  My son tells me about men-- athletes he knows, who avoid fun and flirtation because they are so targeted, like starlets, by predatory women who plot to cry monster as soon as they entrap.  It's like a reverse #metoo.  And how about the betrayals-- those of us whose husbands cheated, slept with our friends and sisters-- our beloved life partners… and we left-- we had to leave-- the pain, the humiliation was intolerable?  We were not Jackie O or my mom, but women who needed to save our children from marital tension and reinvent ourselves.  #metoo.

On Jackie O's corner, when I was 20-ish, a beautiful boy used to stand between 5 and 6 every evening. I'd return home and he seemed to stare at me.  I thought maybe he was a stalker, or just waiting for a ride or a bus.  But one day, he left me a note… a love note.  He smiled while I read it… and waved.  I ignored him... but gradually he came closer… he rode the bus with me, did funny tricks and made me laugh.  He had this beautiful long blonde hair and different colored eyes, like a huskie.  It was inevitable that we would consummate this little flirtation… it was passionate and innocent.  Without clothes, he was angelic like a boy-- it went on for weeks, until my boyfriend came back from wherever he'd been… Later I learned he was only 17.  I'd actually committed some kind of violation of a minor-- this romantic little game we'd played out of pursuit and conquest.  I could have been prosecuted in some scenario as a predator.  #metoo.

I grew up a little sister.  I followed, worshipped, loved and occasionally feared my older sister.  She was conniving and manipulative; like all first-borns, she'd been the little princess and then had to share.  I gave her anything she wanted, to win her affection and maintain her trust.  I was loyal and lied for her.  She was often in trouble and I wanted to help.  At a certain point, she turned on me-- maligned and backstabbed and betrayed.  She wanted to regain her territory and I retreated-- moved on.  It's an old story-- either fight it out, tooth and nail, or find another place.  I made friends, created my own family.  I missed my mother-- her stoicism and old-school devotion to the fictional hearth of family.  She missed me, too.  Toward the end of her life, I couldn't stay away, despite the threats of my sister.  My mother read my heart and confided her fears and regrets and sorrows.  Now that she has passed, I have to manage the harsh consequences of my lack of involvement in their legal arrangements.  I am marginalized and passed over-- misunderstood and-- again, betrayed.  It is painful to receive this, and yet I know I must 'eat the document', as they say.  I find I am one of a legion of naive family members who are the victims of competitive siblings and a kind of justice of greed.  I am a sentimental party, and I will lose my right to inherit any thing of beauty to keep my mom close to me-- around my neck or on my dresser.  There are many of us, and we seem to be women without men to assert our rights with a loud, combative voice.  A 'will'… the document is called.  It seems to have none.  A won't.  #metoo.

We've lost children, we've been sick and no one showed up-- we've survived without child support, or any support… #metoo.  We've made mistakes with our children, and we've had no one to share in the joy they have given us…#metoo.  We grieve alone, we are misread, underacknowledged and passed over.  We grow old and have to make difficult choices… we remember the victories, the losses, the insults-- the love and the sex and the confessions and the lies, the satisfactions and the frustrations, the fresh beginnings and the hopelessness of the tide running out.  And yet we are still here-- me, my friends, my work… the legacies which may or may not mean something when we are gone… another kind of will.  I do…#metoo…

For several days I have wept out loud watching excerpts of the US Olympic gymnasts describe the disturbing abuse they endured under the guise of medical treatment.  This is not a new story, but the courtroom testimonials are devastating.  The #metoo movement has revealed that the greater majority of women have been subjected to mistreatment in one form or another.  When it targets our entire life's focus-- our dedication and dreams, our passion and talent-- it is that much more heinous and difficult.  I kept silent when I was attacked and threatened by a producer who had invited me to discuss the music I wrote which he had described as brilliant,  only to find he had another agenda.  It was humiliating and traumatizing, and I carried it in silence; I paid a price, and survived.  But what bothers me in the case of the gymnasts-- they were children.  Were their parents completely unaware? Their perfect proud mothers whose dreams were being realized by the prize-winning performance of offspring-- did they fail to rock the boat, did they disbelieve?  Did their daughters keep quiet because they feared disappointing their parents?  Can children actually be raised to keep these dangerous 'secrets' with their moms?  I know I was.  In the 1960's this would have fallen on deaf ears.  My sister acted out in ways that were beyond disturbing, but no one seemed to want to take her for help.  My own father suffered from paralyzing depressions and manic periods, and no one wanted to speak.  I asked to visit a shrink-- to discuss this-- and my Jackie O-esque mom ignored my plea-- what if it went on my perfect college transcript? For the siblings, friends and parents who fail to blow whistles, who worry about consequences and selfish ambition and fail to observe and protect their children… shame on you... #youtoo.

So while I am now excluded from family money because the truth-- awkward as it might have been--was my blood sibling,  I will always choose not to ally myself with the guilty.  Attached as they were to their agenda, they not only neglected to protect, but punished me.  I forgive my mom; she herself was marginalized and disrespected often, and did not have the courage to do anything but enable.  Here we are, horrified at the testimony of these young athletes… and failing to protect so many children in our midst.  We elected a president who is not only abusive to women but ignorant, bigoted and hateful.  What message is this sending?  My mom reached out to me late in life-- she confessed and apologized, opened her heart.  I will love her and miss her forever.  As for the rest of them.. there is karma, but there is also great injustice in the world; we can only try to leave a legacy of truth and compassion going forward… #metoo... our work has only just begun.

Hollow

Monday morning my television was left on, after a fantastic 5-hour World Series game… I was half listening to some evangelist rambling on about holy water and salvation which sounded absurd enough for me to take a look.  Here was one of those fake ministers whom I could swear had been indicted and mortified in another decade--- back on-screen with his bad hair-weave and dye job, a surgically enhanced blonde wife reading letters and testimonies with the emotional presence of a talking doll.  He was throwing away crutches, walking wheelchair patients around a huge room, choosing person after person to come to the front, cast off their pain and praise the power of the monthly sum they commit to this shyster for the promise of some God-backed pay-off.  How is this legal, and how are there numbers of people-- not actors, I assume, willing to participate in this scam?

It is Halloween.  The day dawned with a chill wind… children awaking with energy-- dreaming about their costumes.  Classes will not be so bad; teachers will forego homework… townhouses in my neighborhood are decorated with ghoulish puppets and spiderwebs-- a haunted real-estate fantasy.   Most everyone has their carved pumpkins and candles out, and piles of candy ready at the door.  Then we had a mid-afternoon incident… the city takes a bullet.   For the victims, who began this day innocently-- maybe even taking a personal day since we all get involved in trick-or-treating festivities, the parade-- this was a catastrophic synchronicity of geography.

I can't help wondering who these people are who execute heinous killings-- whether they are heartless ethical mutants passing as human beings, or maybe lost, confused children wearing a costume of evil someone has loaned them or given them like a kind of armor with which to manage the world.  Indoctrination-- brain-washing, initiation… creates monstrous murderous machines which have only physical human resemblance.  Like the tales of science fiction, they walk among us, drive cars, buy groceries… and then, the switch is thrown and their image is on all our screens and devices.

Our president, of course, as he does, used personal tragedy to promote his own bizarre agenda.  The man couldn't protect us from a mosquito, let alone the threat of terrorist-driven violence; this particular murderer is not even from one of the restricted countries on the Trump list, although he would have us believe this.  He has not a clue about psychology, about deep-seated resentments and human suffering, about children who grow up without proper protection, without dreams, exposed to horrific acts of war and often without any kind of stable home or haven.  He is a tiny man in a larger man's costume.

On the airport bus in Sweden last month, I sat behind a calm young couple on their way to some honeymoon or vacation junket.  She was wearing a powder-blue coat-- haven't seen or heard that color described since the 1960's…  he in a button-down and tie.   They were chattering and whispering-- like coloring-book illustrations of perfect good Swedes talking about the weather-- friends, new clothes-- innocent and so clean… the crease of his shirt, her pristine coat-- giggling and acting like grown-ups-- the epitome of normal-- the golden-rule standard.  Struggling myself with a tape-reinforced old carry-on bag, worrying about getting through customs with my home-made sandwich-- flying on the cheap-cheap-- no luggage, no meal, no water…  an old black-haired odd freak in my thrift-shop denim… I felt like a blot on the milk-white paper of homogenized Stockholm.

I imagined my perfect Swedes in my city taking the Circle Line tour, going to see Kinky Boots and staying at some Times Square Hotel. They'd visit Brooklyn, eat soul food at Sylvia's in Harlem, walk the High Line… and suddenly, pulling out my dog-eared James Baldwin and my notebook-- I started to pity them.  They are just people-- like most of us-- with jobs and little houses and furnishings and a coffee maker and maybe a dog… wearing the costume of normalcy.  All dressed up and nowhere really to go, because it occurs to me now, in this culture of Trump and Instagram and Twitter--- that we are all followers and post-its-- the subjects of our own blogs and photo-albums, but very few of us really know who we are.   So busy are we looking at  Facebook and dumping out on the galaxy-sized digital garbage pile, very few have taken the solitary and tough independent time to dissect and analyze ourselves old-school.

How did my generation evolve-- listening to the words of men like Martin Luther King who urged us to drive out hatred with love, to shun violence and to feel the oppression of others and stand up for their dignity when they could not?  Believing his words-- that we are all one, we must not be silent, we must think and care and do right, we must protect those who cannot protect themselves.  But he also encouraged us via action to become better people.   This is religion for me-- love and truth and compassion… not praying for a shiny new luxury car, or executing an act of human violence in the name of some distorted version of God.

On the sidewalks at dusk, throngs of children went on with their ritual--- ghouls and monsters, super-heroes and princesses, witches and wizards… terrorism did not stop our Halloween.  I wonder how many of these kids become their costume-- try on their character, melt their own little soul into the persona that is already formed and clear.  Tomorrow they will just be children again, although many of their parents will continue to wear the costume of hair-weaves and plastic surgery, having learned nothing of the lessons of my generation-- of the inside shining through the outside…of beauty of heart beating out the skin-deep kind.  We are judged these days by our instagram image, by our facade… the quick profile… and so many of us have lost our own judgment.  Witness the president we 'chose'.

My person-of-the-night award goes to the little Mexican girl dressed as a Pilgrim; with her orange plastic pumpkin-basket, she explained to me how Thanksgiving is about celebrating the immigrants, how she is learning to read even though her parents cannot, and how she will grow up to be an important American woman.  Her mother's shy ambivalent smile said it all.  I wanted to hug this girl, and to cry for her future among the Trumps and Harvey Weinsteins, among the privileged UES botoxed ladies and the corrupt hierarchy of American economics.  Be true to yourself, be kind to your sisters, I wanted to say, and you may still be a victim; you may be deported and disrespected and very poor.  In my permanent costume of poverty and human sympathy,  I went back upstairs to watch baseball.

Physical Graffiti

I'm feeling like one of those cartoon characters, hoisting myself onto the ledge of the deep well of September, having clawed my way up walls with no footholds, no light… the tarry residue of recent events stuck to my skin, matting my hair, coating the bottom of the pit with the purgatorial sludge of beyond-my-control.

For those of us who have been watching the PBS Vietnam documentary, we are somehow haunted by the resonance of the messages-- or the absence of message-- in those events which both brought us together and split us apart.  History and hindsight are crucial to understanding.  Lack of transparency, skewed communications, mixed motives all contributed to the catastrophe that was this war.  These lessons are surely not absorbed or understood by our current Lego-esque president who is tragically under-qualified for most any position of leadership.  We saw various styles of politicians; were often betrayed by those we trusted most.

Besides the personal losses of recent days, the political climate, natural disasters and tragedies have made our lives that much less 'safe', our nights that much more sleepless.  Despite the news that the average American's income has risen, I find my artistic friends more encumbered than ever with impossible rents, dwindling income, constantly inflating everyday expenses.  I have down-sized virtually everything-- buy nothing at this point except cheap food on sale at varieties of markets.  It requires vigilance and time to glean the necessary information, and miles of walking to achieve the smallest victory over the relentless threat of poverty like an enemy ambush, waiting to take me down.

I do not miss the tiny luxuries-- a coffee in a cafe, occasional sushi box, new boots-- and manage to find museums and exhibitions without fees, but in this time of desperate global need I feel humiliated that I cannot contribute.  I'm no longer young and able-bodied enough to be part of some rescue or rehab coalition, and I have little to offer but my cheap grief, no matter how heartfelt.  'You ain't changin' no lives here, baby,' my local homeless man reminds me when I sacrifice an occasional quarter into his cup.  It's humiliating.

So I'm especially offended by the grotesque luxury culture that seems to be a sort of status quo among way too many Americans, whether they can afford it or not.  Because I was gifted a privileged education, I did rub shoulders and trade licks with some of these people in my past.  They make fun of me and occasionally offer me money; when they show up at gigs I buy them a drink.  I do accept payment for my books and cds.  But last week one who happens to be building some new residence of palatial proportions called me up and told me he's thinking about buying a urinal.  'You mean like the Duchamp, I asked in utter disbelief, realizing that for a split second I registered 'unicorn'?'  'No,' he replied, 'I'm not that sophisticated.  But for my billiards room (contiguous to the cigar bar)... I thought it would be a hoot. '  So I laid into him… about how I knew plenty of guys I could get to provide poolroom atmosphere and men's room grit, who would grind out their cigarette butts on his mahogany floors and stink up the place with street-sweat and the poetics of ghetto-slang and give him credibility.  Not to forget the gender ramifications, etc.  He can always rely on me for a 'dressing down', as he called it.

I hung up and in my head began to rack up the unpaid debt people like Banksy owe Duchamp.  For me there was one urinal.  He did not keep on repeating himself and was incredibly clever and inventive.  I remembered walking with another friend, passing one of those exquisitely quilted walls layered with various random graffiti souvenirs and posters-- rippings and peelings that rival any great Ab Ex museum painting for beauty and depth.  My friend wanted to remove one of the particularly brilliant postings and have it framed for his collection. We argued.  Next day I went back and sure enough, it had been skillfully excised like the work of some plastic surgeon.

It's not enough that these people have made LVMH and Ferrari massive billionaire brands… that they own and own and renovate and build and collect.  They now must own what was made by and meant for everyone-- especially the poor among us who don't have the same access to visual artistic stimulation.  Basquiat has become the quintessential collectible of these inner sanctums and massive living rooms.  The Basquiat I knew who threw his gut and brain onto old doors and walls… is now the ultimate status symbol.  Duane Hanson used to make facsimile sculptures of homeless people-- like his wink to these collectors.  In my old art dealing days I placed one of his Museum Guards in a huge Park Avenue foyer.  A sort of joke, but with another meaning that boded ill for private art fantasies.  A version of Jean Michel is rolling in his grave, while the worse version feels flattered.  Andy, too.  Fortunately for me, there are so few museum shows I really regret missing lately; it seems these institutions have bowed to the culture of Instagram and popularity.  Art galleries are filled with stuff that seems amateurish and shallow.  But I'm a cranky old no one.  What do I own?

On top of my plate of cheap rice this week has been the disgraceful intrusion of a lone hater with a fake name, hiding behind a pretentious Facebook profile and slandering and posting accusations and falsehoods.  I play music… I go home.  I write books and columns, I give my poetry away almost daily.   I worry about how to pay my monthly maintenance; I stretch dollars and perform tiny economic acrobatics.  It is distressing and discouraging.  For three days I cannot shake the image and repeated accounts from the Vietnam documentary about the hills-- the bloody, senseless military operations to occupy a hill-- causing massive casualties and deaths… and then… the hills are abandoned-- like a wicked game, like the ultimate Sisyphean war tale.   And then my stalker-- attempting to level the tiny reward of my creative inner conflict, like a grenade of hatred.  I am haunted; I am angry.  I own this.

The 18-hour series ended with the anthemic 'Let It Be' playing over the final credits.  Somehow this infuriated me.  Let it be?  A message of apathy and concession after reliving the whole disengorging saga of the 1960's?  The Beatles?  Let Puerto Rico be, as President Lego would do?  Let Mexico be? Let the rich eat cake and the poor starve?  Let the current pop culture undermine history and prioritize sacred museum space with the products of fashion and commerce while they discard the true foundations and sacrifices that constitute art?  Not me.  I will fight.  I will resist… old and weak as I am, I will try to express my contempt for what is morally hideous and grieve for the poor under-acknowledged saints and martyrs of this abysmal culture whose memory grows shorter and shorter, dimmer and dimmer… fade to black.

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.