Closed Captioned

For years I exercised at the Y... mostly nights when it was underpopulated.  There's an older woman... maybe 90-something now...  although she seems much younger.  I'd seen her for years, just before closing, dressed in street clothes, on a seated stretching machine... usurping this sole piece of equipment.  Maybe she showered there--- I'd noticed people that slipped in and out for various hygiene rituals; I avoid locker rooms.  But perhaps at home they must share a bath... they don't clean... I don't know... but back to the woman... her name is Lois or Gloria-- for a time she had a male companion who waited for her on a bench, with a newspaper... at 11 PM... but he must have died. 

She often tried for some reason to speak to me... as though we were old friends... would offer her 'place' on the little machine... once gave me Carnegie Hall tickets she wasn’t using (she is a habitual concert-attender)... and I think I didn’t go… it was useless trying to explain I was working… impossible to converse… she's absolutely stone deaf-- has a sort of shortened language, like verbal stenography... with gestures.  Otherwise she spoke to no one... only me... as though we shared something; she'd look at me with this sort of anticipation-- the way children look at their new teacher at the beginning of a term-- with innocence and trust, as though she has something to do with their fate. It was uncomfortable. What had I done?  What did she believe? Once or twice I'd say something and she'd muster some total non-sequitur, some bizarre inane remark to assure me there was no conversational understanding whatsoever.  

When my fiancee was deported, years back, I briefly began to swim at the Y... laps, ovals... crawl then back-stroke, staring at the ceiling, weeping, unseen.  There is a swim-culture among older women-- I absorbed this and it stopped me... but no Lois or Gloria in a bathing suit.  Just the street clothes with the oversized track shoes the way older women cater to awkward feet.  

During the pandemic nearly every night, like grief therapy... I ran the upper Central Park loop, most of the time counter-clockwise, finished up on the reservoir.  I'd soliloquize, weep, talk to Alan wherever he was... When I looked east on the final lap, she’d be there, at 90th Street, perched on the stairs, watching the sun set behind the El Dorado across the water... among a small crowd mostly with phones, taking pictures… but she just looking… hands in pockets... alone. She’d wave.  I must have logged 500 sunsets by now… she, too. Most old people stayed home from fear, but she was out there… winter, summer… like a human landmark… like a mother, like a ghost.   I kept my distance... waving distance.  Masks make lip-reading impossible— not that she ever did much of that, either.

On Thursday I wrecked my finger... the sort of injury that will most likely heal but it was a random kind of bad luck thing.  To distract myself I circled the park as usual, wearing a new splint and ran into another night-time Y exerciser on his bike.  We walked together until way past dark... and just as we parted company, there was Lois-- on my block this time-- giving me that raised-eyebrow childlike look... I tried to introduce the two; they had zero mutual recognition and there was obviously no dialogue... she making those broken-word non-sequitur comments and gestures... just an odd intersection of three. He's a writer; I sketched her verbally for him, like a Dickens character.  Twain. Maybe she'd been on the reservoir, late... dawdling on her way home to no one or nothing.  

I worked at my gallery job today… still fucked up about my damn finger… went to Chelsea afterward to see a (great) show that was closing… stopped in Tribeca downtown, then remembered some friend sent a ticket to his show at Damrosch Park… (the injury sidelined my fragile 'plan'...) so I’m on a 1 train and realize it’s 8 PM… passing Columbus Circle… I get off, walk toward Lincoln Center.. there are lines, people waiting… but they usher me right in.. and suddenly that woman… Lois or Gloria...is yelling my name… jumps the line… says she’s with me… and sure enough my ticket is for 2… they have these reserved ‘pods’ of 2 seats… so I take her in… I’m alone.. and she wants to move up… she can’t hear... she’s telling me about the performance (?) … and the music starts… it’s completely my friend’s gig… she has no clue.. she’s deaf as a stone… sitting there… WATCHING the music, gesturing to me… it’s insane… was apparently on line for something that didn’t exist... But the night is beautiful… I'd played there a couple of times… the sunset, the buildings… guests at the Mandarin Oriental leaning on their windowsills, people on balconies… acoustics are crazy… sound carries… and a woman selling merchandise comes over to greet me… Lois gestures that she can’t hear a thing… waves her away… but keeps looking at me as though she’s waiting for a dialogue… something...

Anyway, after two musical pieces I started to think I was hallucinating… I'd been up fretting (the emotional kind, lol) all Friday night.  Or dreaming... she was like a human hawk sitting there… like a shadow… like a symbol.  It started to freak me out.  I’m reading Álvaro Mutis… contemporary women on ships sleep with Napoleonic colonels… ghosts… so I left.. took a crosstown bus and I guess she stayed in my pod-seat.  

On my block the streetlamps were turned off; it was dark... it's late summer.  I feel 'omened' by her, although I suspect my hand will be fine, and maybe she is a kind of angel.  Maybe I was really alone at Damrosch Park.  I kept looking at the stage set-- a kind of wavy cloud-like sort of backdrop.... it looked so absurd against the expanse of evening sky, like a tiny moment in the context of infinity. She'd been annoying me-- just her presence, her childlike 'anticipation' as though she wanted me to look at her.  Coming inside I remembered how I'd get home after working at night when my son was little... and just sit there in his room, inhaling the scent of children... I wondered if anyone had ever sat at her bedside, radiating that mother-love.  Maybe it was mean that she creeped me out and rude that I abandoned her but I am also reminded that finger or no finger, the world at my age is beginning to wind down-- or grow, I'm not sure which-- and suddenly the 500 evenings are like an old deck of cards... plus one, because without a plan, we'd apparently shared another sunset.  

Endgame

I'm sitting in Starbucks… the forced change of scene is necessary sometimes… I isolate with my computer… like a priest living inside the confessional I begin to lose connection.  Even the soundtrack… a dark, early John Lee Hooker now… it grounds me here.  At home I might be ricocheting from youtube suggestions into some pathway of black nostalgic meandering, following some poetic fork in my mind always down, these nights… no bio-rhythm, no sleep pattern… just a kind of palpable emotional exhaustion, like a padded velvet room with a sense of dampness-- evaporated tears.

Death has become a companion; we can only make friends with his presence at this point; he is not going away, but is going to continue to intrude, hang around like mold in old buildings.  Behind new renovations these things exist-- like previous tenants whose obituaries are archived in the hearts of their children who are themselves forgetting in assisted-living communities.  Time is not kind in the second half of your life.  Moments flood into my bedroom, like tides… I am soaked and compelled… the wash-up version of these deja-vus are often weighted and poignant.. or damaged.  Things seem so fragile-- possibilities I'd transformed into life-choices; marriages-- my first husband--was an instant-- an attraction in a way-- nothing more-- but then there he was, months later, coming to New York-- walking side by side for two days while the summer humidity transformed us into animals with a twisted fate.  I believed in the moment then.  Sex was a version of religion-- a kind of dank purity-- or maybe ignorance; it was irresistible and terrifying and the moment was so important.  Nothing was regrettable-- even children-- that incredibly random fragility of unpremeditated chemistry-- like a brilliant solo-- Miles, Coltrane-- at their most fucked up, tangled moment-- with an epiphany.  I can remember conversations-- long distance calls-- as though things were inside the phone-- dreams and words that remained there for years.

Here in a public place-- a store-- people share themselves,  whether we like it or not: their tragedies,  their stories- their likenesses or differences-- some of us because we are so desperate in our loneliness--we pretend to listen, to find a thread-- we try to belong even though we don't belong to anything anymore.  Our descriptions seem pathetic-- we use colors and they are so often pale shades of grey which give me a glimpse into the paint-world of Van Gogh who maybe realized this and filled his work with pigments that lived and fought against the dulling wash of memory.

My father's passing is processing itself with no effort from me.  Those in his life who were parts of his inner circle have chosen not to eulogize him-- not even a public obituary.  The world is a mystery-- we cannot control loved ones and personally I can't control who I love or don't love; it just seems to happen.  I am wearing my Dad's shadow along with my habitual black-- the least pretentious color, I always sensed-- along with the invisible torch of mourning that is maybe the most inspiring aspect of life.  We are here; we are not here.  When my first love died, I was young enough to be unbearably distraught.  He was the most magical human I'd ever encountered; maybe it was drugs and the time, and my emotional innocence-- but I still feel his messages and signs.  I woke up with his scent… balloons in my house would wander into the bedroom while I slept and hang beside me, unmoving.  I talk to him-- I write his songs, I play for him.  But my father?  I feel so little-- a sense of relief that he no longer has to file his 1040 and other things that caused him stress.  He was never just a person for me-- always a kind of symbol of ill-fitting authority and unwanted paternity.  He hated me.  He hated himself… I understood that and he hated me even more for my insight and candor.

At these times of maybe enhanced introspection which is my euphemism for mourning--- we writers are hyper-sensitive to messages and signs.  For me, that makes my day overwhelming even before I leave my apartment.   Last night-- I was at the YMCA.. and I went into a bathroom.  There was blood in a toilet-- maybe one of the young gymnasts mismanaging her monthly issues which gave me a pang of inappropriate compassion-- teenagers are so delicate and at the mercy of hideous parenting, sometimes; or maybe it reminded me of a miscarriage I'd had, in my first apartment in New York-- alone and desolate and left with a souvenir of a passionate night I was unwilling to serialize.   Maybe just a sign of life-- of the least common denominator of us all-- or of death… of wounds, and pain, and the bizarre thought that no matter how much purple Prince ingested, no matter how ill he was, how beautiful, how radiant and costumed-- his blood would look like all of ours.  Ditto my father's, who created no world-shaking solos, no anthems-- my father of the hero's deeds and the bloodshed and the purple hearts.

In the yoga room I peered in for a brief second--watching all the graceful bodies desperately contorting to find peace and some kind of physical meaning.  Just observing this was a kind of violation of the rule-- I am an outsider… a voyeur.   I am just passing, looking into rooms-- not participating but hearing things other people don't always hear, seeing things other people don't see.   When doves cry-- when the soul of an infant wakes in the night--fusses, maybe bawls-- and eventually finds sleep once again, even though no one has come to relieve or comfort… I am listening.  Such is my life.

Last night at 3 AM I was stuck on a train with a tall black man-- the obvious physique of a basketball star-- that quiet loose power I've grown to love especially,  having had a point-guard son.    He was coming from work at the men's shelter downtown-- his job.  He'd had a tough few years, he told me while they repaired track… played in the Final Four, recruited by the NBA, sat on a bench and eventually played in Europe while they negotiated-- went up for a dunk, and came down one night with just a few degrees of torsion… and ripped some ligament in his knee… had a bad surgery, another one… and he was ruined.  Some anger and frustration issues-- drugs, petty gang stuff-- his Mom died.   His voice cracked a little when he mentioned his Mom.  I tear up easily these days.  I've learned from my son not to give into my instincts to touch people or hug them-- I'm an old white lady, he reminds me.  Anyway, he was recovering from addictions, trying to manage his injury… glad to have a job and a place to sleep.  A familiar story… because for every rockstar and athletic miracle there are thousands of random parallel tragedies… a massive infantry for every general.

But somehow, among the Prince videos we are all obsessively watching-- among the Bowie footage, the quiet Lonnie Mack brilliance, the Kurt Cobain and Nick Cave-- the Coltrane and Clifford Brown-- the achingly beautiful crumbs left us by the godsmacked mutants of the human mistake--  there are these unrecorded moments which haunt me.  The grace of my basketball player-- coming down in slow-motion Hi-Def black and white like a dancer, like a genie-- like a diver breaking the water-surface after a triple-pike… or a jumper from some impossible bridge, hitting the current like a bomb… I play it over and over-- his non-existent youtube moment,  his mime of greatness, of perfect athletic prize--this man who hugged me with strength and restraint so that I could feel his heart, at 96th Street… who is lost to me in a kind of death of a moment.  For you-- the former Nike star with the cheap size 16 sneakers now--- I am carrying your torch along with all the others, in my private graveyard of moments, of lives seen like fragile starlight, of the incomprehensible ever-mounting statistical infinity of deaths which will always overshadow our lives in a sort of morbid quiet combat.. where no matter how hard we play and cry and write and love, silence is coming to wash away even the last of memory.

American Tourister

When I graduated high school, my parents gave me a set of luggage.  It was a curious gift-- not anything I'd ever thought about.  Maybe it symbolized my coming-of-age Bon Voyage.  For me, I couldn't think of anything I had to put in there.  They seemed like things that adults had-- practical things, and felt like a sort of unfulfilled promise I'd made, accepting them.  In those days they hadn't invented wheels-- these cases were heavy and cumbersome. But I had no choice.  I packed one for college, and it was a pain to stow in our tiny crowded dorm rooms.

My college boyfriend gave me a puppy at school--- she grew up to be this graceful deer-like German Shepherd mix who followed us around, slept outside my classroom buildings, etc.  In those days there was a whole hippy culture of campus dogs.  Anyway, one day she was kidnapped by a hideous character who crashed parties and stalked girls.  I followed her trail of blood to the parking lot where he must have let her out, after slashing her.  We desperately tied ripped up sheets around her wound and tearfully hitchhiked to the nearest Vet who promised to cure her, but didn't.  Her violent death haunted me for years.  We collected her cold body, wrapped her in my coat, and buried her inside my blue suitcase at the Jersey Shore.  She'd loved the surf, the beach; she was so beautiful and elegant, and had used my case as a bed on many occasions-- curled up in there, with the blue satin lining.

Sometime during college I met the great love of my life--- that breed of bad angel with a jagged halo and a guitar who steals your heart clean.  It was a wrecking and passionate story… and in the end, each of us went our separate ways--me to New York, he to his childhood girlfriend who heartbreakingly stood by and suffered his indiscretions.  Once I'd seen her--- she begged me-- I couldn't bear her sorrow.  Anyway, the night before their wedding, he showed up-- drove down from Boston, with a packed suitcase in the trunk.  Let's elope, he said.  We'll get married and take the Canadian railroad to Vancouver.  The suitcase was half empty.  I was overcome.  We sat up all night in a diner, drinking hot chocolate, planning our lives… and in the morning, I said goodbye.  He was late for his church wedding, but he showed up.  All that next week I kept thinking about the suitcase; we'd always thrown our stuff into the back of the car, like gypsies… but that suitcase was so new-- so 'adult'-- I felt the same burden I'd felt  at my graduation.  And thinking about the suitcases he no doubt had left with his wife… packed with what might have become relics of the death of marriage… things she would never have been able to open… This helped me find some sort of sad closure-- and besides, I had New York to explore…

My husband was a British journalist I'd met briefly who flew over to see me on a whim with no suitcase at all -- just the suit he had on, and a couple of books.  He brought flowers and came every weekend to renew his proposal.  One of my older and wiser woman friends remarked that if her husband had ever once looked at her the way this man looked at me--well, she'd die happy.  So I gradually let him pack up my things and carry them back to London, piece by piece.  I followed, with no suitcase-- and married him, had his baby, as I promised.  My last night in London involved his tossing my packed case from the window of our perfect flat, after a typically alcohol-fueled soliloquy about my going on the road, my imagined indiscretions--- whatever.  A lorry ran it over, and I flew PanAm from Heathrow for the last time.  After a few more dramatic episodes, he exited the marital stage, final act.  My son has not heard from his father in 20 years.  I left everything in the flat, including empty suitcases.

For years I used to see this old scruffy man with a beat-up cheap guitar in the subway.  He had one of those little portable seats and a red-plaid suitcase with a zipper--- the kind you'd see in a Hayley Mills movie from the 1950's.  He had piles of cassettes, hats, scarves, papers in that suitcase which he also used to hold the coins and dollars people threw in.  He sang like a saint, with this sandpapery edge in the lower registers, and his eyes watered.  The last time I saw him,  gaffers tape was holding that suitcase together.  His eyes were cloudy and his face looked drawn and hollow.  I wished I knew where he went at night, with that suitcase and his guitar… he didn't talk much.

There is something sad for me when I see people with luggage… coming, going-- saying goodbye, leaving something or someone behind.  Traveling is happy for tourists--- but for me I can't help thinking I'll never see these streets again, these buildings, this airport… I hate packing and I hate unpacking.  I hate endings.  Maybe that's why I seem to stay up all night until the morning--- so I know the light has come, and I'm safely into tomorrow.  Today I helped this Italian girl find the room she is renting in New York City so she can pursue her dream of becoming a singer.  She was so filled with hope, with her heavy suitcases and her new shoes.  I left her in front of the YMCA; I watched while they frisked and searched her things for some long minutes before they finally showed her the elevators to her overpriced little cubicle-cell which I hope is not too depressing, where she will unpack her dreams and hopefully find her way.  She asked me for my number, to have a coffee, but somehow I couldn't bear another New York City heartbreak, another sad ending, another unfinished story on ragged old papers of memory stuffed inside a suitcase.