Driving Mr. Madden

Throughout my life, my father was something of a mystery to me.  He had very rare moments of joy or lightness, but mostly he brooded-- he paced, he fretted, he lay awake at night.  Of course in the 21st century one would have recognized the classic symptoms of post-war PTSD, but in the 1950's, retired soldiers were expected to re-acclimate to civilian life-- to have families and jobs and be 'normal'.

Whether or not he was CIA, as some of my curious boyfriends were convinced, he'd had a challenging military enlistment punctuated by wounds and acts of great heroism. As many soldiers will attest, the accolades and medals do little to assuage the deep psychological trauma that went mostly unaddressed in those 'happy' days of the 1950's.  Many self-medicated with alcohol or prescriptions, but they were mostly on their own.

At some point in my adulthood, my mother tried to soften the emotional walls I'd created to shield myself from the effects of his moods and disapproval. I was referred to as 'the one who works in bars' with a kind of built-in question as though not even that description was apt. Anyway, during one of his more difficult depressive episodes, she related a story to open my heart  a little. As his enabler and life partner, it was rare that she divulged anything, especially to a daughter whose natural inclinations toward the arts and free speech made her suspect and outside the realm of trust.

During his European service, my father as Captain of the 101st Airborne had a driver. Besides his military field heroics he also participated in some dangerous undercover intelligence missions.  His driver was a black man from Kentucky. They became close. The driver made him promise if he was ever killed in action, my father would go to his family in person and deliver the news.  He did not want his poor mother who could not even read to have one of those terrible telegrams she feared.  So they made a pact.  One day during a risky maneuver, they were attacked and a grenade blew up the jeep.  My father was wounded but not critically; his driver, attempting to shield my father, took the brunt and was instantly killed.

After 9/11 my father was given a hero's license plate which allowed him to park anywhere in the city.  For some reason he seemed a little lightened by this recognition.  While he still experienced periodic deep depressive episodes, he began to attend weekly Old Guard meetings. Being too macho to submit to psychiatric treatment, these meetings were therapeutic.  I guess he was able to pull this story from his memory...  one of the terrible guilts from which he suffered. Most of them were unavoidable-- the consequences of following military orders.  But this was a personal debt he'd left unpaid and it ate at him, decades later.

Why he never attempted to contact the family is a complicated mystery, like most of my father's narrative. For me who goes to great lengths to fulfill even the silliest of promises, this is baffling. But recently it occurred to me that among the landmarks of my life that most irked my father, I married a black man. Perhaps he saw this as a painful reminder and criticism of his personal failure. I don't know; he so rarely gave me a kind look or an embrace; I both feared and hated him.

Last week I read the Count of Monte Cristo... a classic I had written off long ago as a 'boys' book.  It was in my son's teenage library, untouched. And it was fantastically entertaining. Adventure, intrigue, conspiracy, murder, romance... everything one would want.  But most of all it was a story of not just revenge but the resolution of deep irreparable damage from the miscarriage of justice, the way one envious man can turn against another. The unlikely resolution of one man's trauma results in further damage. 

Today as a kind of personal dare I have begun the daunting Divine Comedy. Dante, like Dantès in the Dumas, had been wrongly accused, and the writing of this was a kind of retribution. Whatever the motive, I surely read it in school-- the Longfellow translation which is maybe not the best but I learned today how HWL faced this project just after his beloved wife was killed in a house fire. He, too, was wounded in the inferno. A double dare.  

As we age, the issues of guilt and anxiety weigh on us.  We look back and try to re-interpret our past as though there is a moral there. Sometimes we find understanding-- forgiveness. I tried hard to forgive my father, and have done so, to the extent that I have forgiven myself where he has not. We don't have an enlightened guide like Virgil to guide us through the layers of narrative, to shed light on the good and evil of our present which seems, like worlds past, to have confused the system of punishment and reward.  The life which seemed so easy and simple in the 1950's has become cluttered and confused. One wants to write a guidebook to take us through these times where there are literally millions of digital answers to whatever question we pose. A definitive contemporary Divine Comedy.

In the end, we are each of us responsible for not just ourself, but someone else-- maybe one other person-- fulfilling the promise we made, or explaining, or listening to the man on the bus who looks ill... or the lady on the park bench who stares, day after day, who leaves her lunch untouched on the seat. I am sure that my father, to someone else, was a hero-- was perhaps kind, and understanding. And I hope somehow that driver's mother-- now long dead, certainly, was able to find peace.  After all-- no one's presence could really have relieved the pain of losing her son.  Maybe my father knew that. He was a believer, I think. Maybe at the end, he finally forgave himself.

What We Think About When We Think About Snow

During one of my random online reading jags which can involve tangent after tangent, winding up in some dead-end cul-de-sac in a country whose name-change has confused me, I somehow got to Joan Didion's list of favorite books. It's been widely circulated, this list, as Joan is fairly universally admired for her clarity and seriously earnest writing. A young writer with less brilliance and direction would want insight into her formula.

I was vaguely reassured that not a single title on the list had escaped me. Remembering I had a small interview published-- years ago, during which I was forced to commit to my own 'desert island' list of novels. Novels, yes... they have always entrapped me, although I wonder now, with my mental timeline diminishing, if I would devour Proust the way I did at twenty-- or Dickens (I think I would)... or why I currently find Thomas Mann's religious novels so satisfying. On and on...

I take great comfort scanning the shelves of my library at night... maintain a fairly rigorous schedule of reading, although I digress. Nor have I been led too far off-course except for the recent discovery of a few forgotten Nobelists and some brilliant contemporary Europeans (nothing in 2025 came close to 'Solenoid' by Mircea Cărtărescu). But lately I've begun to wonder who I was when I read George Eliot or, like Joan, Ford Madox Ford. So I looked further to see when the Didion list had been compiled and for whom.

Snow... today... a sort of blessing, especially weekend snow. As a winter baby, accumulations were a gift. Also the frequency of postponed birthday celebrations... or childhood illnesses... someone always had chickenpox or measles... in those days of nominal vaccinations. How life has changed. My winter reading mostly Jack London or Sigrid Undset... cold American pioneer novels... later, Thomas Mann. And nothing like the Russian winters of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn. As an older adult-- Laxness, Høeg, Fosse... on and on...

So much chatter today about where one was in the blizzard of 1978, or 1983, or 2006. A kind of weather-nostalgia and of course in New York City the snow transforms our landscape-- softens the verticals and rounds sonic edges. I distinctly remember reading Mark Twain as a girl while my father watched football in our jalousied porch room with the Venetian blinds drawn at dusk.

Like many Americans today I binged on football to distract from the disturbing confrontations around the globe. At a point, after hours of football, I get this sort of nausea-- like psychic claustrophobia. My father had his first major nervous breakdown during a blizzard weekend. The panic of being shut in with his young family-- the responsibility, the claustrophobia... the scent of whiskey in that room with the newspapers strewn around and the snowy visual noise on the TV screens in those days-- black and white, the muffled roar of the crowd from the rear console speaker... the tiny athletes like toys on a static screen.

Maybe I've inherited the football syndrome from my father... shut in here... although me, I pick up a bass and let my fingers wander, and scan walls thinking books do not just furnish a room, they have become my family. Unlike my father's daughters, they require no upkeep; they do not ask questions, they seem to understand how the narcissism of this media-obsessed culture has cornered me into a sort of cork-lined analogue stubbornness. They witnessed the process, they populated the years and the memories and will outlive my small-minded existence, will go on to furnish other rooms.

The snow will melt-- eventually, after it acquires the grey five-o'clock shadow of city soot. For now, we are a bit graced-- pardoned, dismissed...postponed. Plenty of city people sleeping off hangovers in the cold morning... regretting or rejoicing the upcoming Super Bowl contenders... dusting themselves off, absolved, a little blessed... a little taste of Arctic innocence. Forgiveness, like many things, will sadly melt away and we are left with what we inherit from our own mistakes. No Super Bowl of life, of country, of existence. In Kiev and Minneapolis and Iran there is no melting; the ICE of another composition and cleanup is not simple. God help us to figure this one out.

Summer Interlude

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Catch Me

My daily running ritual came to an abrupt end last week when I found myself hurtling through the air, wondering whether I should give in to physics or fight my way to some kind of survival.  It was one of those moments where time literally hiccups and allows your brain to review various scenarios.  In the end, it wasn't quite the Humpty Dumpty thing, but enough to shake up my runner's denial of clinical age... with blood, a knee-dislocation and general banging.  Like a piece of bruised fruit I limped home, realized I needed some x-rays and reluctantly checked into the ER for an inordinate time.

Of course, in a medical institution, one must be patient and polite-- grateful for a simple chair and an icepack, uncomplaining that the overnight queue for an x-ray seemed absurd given staff appeared to vastly outnumber us-the-sick-and-wounded.  Plenty of time to mull over the well-documented shortage of supplies and simple drugs-- the astounding poor quality of the small accessories they provide, while thanking Jesus I was able to think and move my fingers.  

As though life had not slowed enough, it's now snail-ish.  I am well aware the running thing was like some kind of illusion of speed-- an antidote to pandemic reality, not to mention a kind of meditative salve.  We are profoundly changed, many of us... yes, the covid years aged the ageless rockers, deprived us of our lifelong passions... dethroned our heroes, even took away our sense of smell, as though fading vision isn't quite insulting enough.

But there are people-- some of them friends-- who buried themselves in the pandemic-- crawled into its salty covers and hid.  They dressed in its camouflage, the way narcissists and drama queens slip unnoticed into parades and march and sing without rehearsal in the uniform of histrionics. People who are dangerously gifted, prone to isolation-- they wrapped themselves in bedsheets of nostalgia and their past, binged and fooled themselves on Facebook.  

And now what? Like Rip Van Winkles they sit at their windows, their long beards the only hint of existence-gap.  Procrastination, not cancel-culture; our physical age has for now become the tortoise that beat the hare of creativity and production.  We arrived-- disheveled, unshowered and like bewildered dogs without scent--  at some unmarked finish line.

We have grieved, we have lost-- directly or indirectly-- Alan, Buzzy, Ian, Howie Pyro, Andy Storey... Naomi Judd whose three weeks in the same nightclothes didn't faze us at all.  We were right there with her, a whole race of unwashed people wrapped in our own stench, baptized into the comfortably numb by the new religion of covid. 

Not to mention the climate of unsettled mistrust-- the fear and skepticism we have acquired from following bad instructions.  No wonder crime is up-- there are few outlets for public screaming... the protests have for the most part died down... across the ocean, the horror of war has far eclipsed covid.  We feel helpless and guilty-- lucky and cursed at the same time.  We wait for directions... and no one seems to agree.  

A couple of generations ago, I wrote a novel-- a post-911 narration in the voice of a teenage girl.  Last week I was sending it to a friend and I noticed at the opening of a chapter... 'so it just happens that the first years of the 21st century are turning out to be the Age of Personal Mediocrity-- no punks, no graffiti, no more Nirvana, no elephant-shit-smeared Christ-images at the Brooklyn Museum, no presidential blow-jobs.  Like those terrorists have taken the edge off us, scared us into a round corner.' 

It felt like a refrain.  How profoundly changed we were by the 2001 political climate.  We happily engaged in wars that made no sense and gave up our personal privacy in exchange for the sense of protection.  But where are we now?  As if the endless rippling of this virus wasn't enough, we have shooters and-- Curious George disciples, we-- monkey-pox.  We line up to have sticks stuck in our noses and receive the gifts of Big Pharma in our arm-- again and again. We want to be safe, and are anything but, we who have honed only our procrastination skills and are about as sharp as an old butter-knife. Of course a few of us leaked ink from hearts, gushed lyrics on the telephone, but for the most part we remained as we were, which in the language of physics translates as traveling backward. 

As I tripped and spilled and waited for the final verdict, I thought how close the words falling and failing--  undoubtedly lifelong neighbors on the dictionary page and to the average clouded senior eye virtually indistinguishable.  I will heal, I suppose-- a little worse for wear, but our culture-- my context-- my heroes... too many have stopped answering phones and hearing doorbells.  On the streets people are smoking themselves into a kind of oblivion.  This summer will have no landmark title... I will name it 'another'.  

There are days when I almost believe we must go back to the past to go forward-- to find our old vinyl and remember how we watched these oracles spin on repeat until we were changed.  And then there are the nights when I find the prayer of poetry and swear I will walk-- maybe even run into some future.  Amen.

The Suitcase

On the eve of my own birthday I find myself testing mixed waters of introspection, gratitude, dissatisfaction, nostalgia--  a murky pool or some kind of strange episodic soup.  Sink, swim, stir... ?  Things I never expected have been served up against a human landscape that is both familiar and ominous. Whether we thrive or survive used to be a choice; I'm not so certain anymore.  

Over the past few days I've had deep conversations with my girlfriends that prompted this state of ruthlessly self-critical reflection.  Of course the pandemic has forced many of us backward into a sort of Plato's cave of stagnation; I for one am truly disoriented.  I've been forced to distinguish between what I believe and what is true.  There used to be more clarity and confidence.

When I was a girl, my father kept a packed suitcase in the coat closet.  Not that he used it, but it was kind of a symbol-- for him, an escape hatch; for us, the threat of consequences if we weren't good children.  For my poor Mom, God knows.  So many of us girls have held onto relationships where one or the other keeps a metaphorical suitcase on some shelf... past, present or future.  My friends remind me periodically about the poor choices I've made in my life.  Choices, yes.  Poor? I'm less sure about that.  

This morning I read a Facebook post which mentioned a song I hadn't heard since I was girl and recalled how I received the record as a birthday present, so long ago.  It was the Who Knows Where the Time Goes album from Judy Collins.  In those years I listened closely to folksingers-- rock and roll-- anything that took me out of my teenage existence and into some atmospheric zone of music and daydreams and hope.  I'm not sure I fully understood the meaning of time; things often seem so drawn out and boring when you're a teen--  you long for things and they are at the other end of a school break, or downtown in the city where you are not allowed at night.  Time was often your enemy. 

All these decades later, the accumulated experiences are maybe more than I can fathom.  I felt so wrung out at 24-- I had achieved nothing... felt so worn and useless and 'old'.  I know that girl.  By the light of my laptop keys tonight the person I am now-- the writer-- has waded through miles and years of people and places- experiences, joys-- births, deaths, griefs, passions and emptinesses.  But I still know that girl.  It occurs to me that she was missing some kind of belief-- that the father with his suitcase was so absorbed in his own difficulties that he forgot to teach his children how to love themselves.  It was confusing.  

On the same album is a heartbreaking song called My Father.  I played that today... I remember how sad it made me back then.  I used to pretend someone else was my father-- someone kind and happy. Mine was so often dark and disappointed by life.  Unable to experience joy.  I failed him too... in his limited parameter of what children should be-- the acceptable journeys and small successes of life-- I had no place.  

I have friends who still, in their 60's, resent parental shortcomings, family dysfunctions.  It's not exactly that... I mean, we all have to find our own voice, but somewhere we also crave for those we love to be happy.  For my father, this was impossible.  I understood little his war experiences and heroics.  Medals and awards did not compensate for the horror he witnessed, for the guilt of survival, and maybe this inability to embrace life.  People didn't have therapy then, or it was taboo.  Even now, plenty of veterans live on street corners and beneath bridges- unable to process what they saw, unable to integrate petty daily life with the scale of violence and terror of war.  

I've been forthcoming about expressing my dissatisfaction with the relationship I had or did not have with my father.  I was relieved, in a way, when he passed.  I'd tried many times to make some kind of amends, but he was not having it. He hated everything about me, or I felt that.  Maybe, one ex-husband postulated, he was envious of my free spirit and my unconventional decisions.  It made him bitter... reminded him of what he missed.  Whatever.  I failed him... and somehow I suspect he processed this as his failure.  But listening to the song today, I cried my eyes out.  I'm a grownup-- beyond that.  I was hard on him, as he was on me.  But I should have forgiven him.  I couldn't possibly fathom the hardships he lived through and I was relatively spoiled.  So what if someone doesn't support your 'platform', ignores your work and product?  Being a musician, it's rare anyone really listens.  Not many buy my books and fewer actually read.  And I'm not any stellar example of thwarted or underserved talent.  I'm an independent woman-- a mother, a friend.. and forever, despite death, a daughter.

In honor of the song... rather than blowing out an unmanageable number of candles tomorrow, I think I will light one for him.  I know my mother was overjoyed on this day so many years ago... she celebrated me with home-made cakes and hand-knitted sweaters over the years.  As a grandmother she loved my son with all her heart.  Her husband? I don't quite know where he was... but he provided for us... he never used that suitcase; it might have been all he could manage, and for that I must be grateful.  

So I suppose the blessing of this birthday is that of forgiveness.  It won't come all at once, like a cleansing wind, but I will resolve to soften my heart in that direction.  I lecture people all day long about how the gift we give to others is the most valued we can receive ourselves.  Music is an amazing thing-- these soundtracks of our lives still have things to teach us, messages we can still hear, as long as we keep listening.  

Tarkovsky Unbound

As the snow began falling last night, I watched Andrei Rublev in its uninterrupted magnificent entirety, grace to TCM which like a kind of benevolent media-goddess allows me to view spectacular things in random offerings at 3 AM.  Reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in winter months has been a kind of life-habit for me; the concept of war in frigid landscapes-- the freezing soldiers and the blood-stained snow-- is uber-horrifying.  Given the tensions on the Ukrainian border, the vicious attacks of the Tatars and Russians seemed poignant and relevant.  How greed of all kinds has scarred the dignity of mankind... 

Coming up from the 6 train at Union Square this morning, it occurred to me that it was a day like this when the beloved Charles Otis slipped on the subway stairs at 125th Street and broke his neck.  No battle, no attack... just a random tragic accident that ended his drumming and shortened his story.  No responsibility from the city; apparently, when a snow event is ongoing, there is no accountability for a fall.  Be cautious, drummers and musicians, I whispered under my breath; we cannot afford to lose another.  

It was another day like this that my young father, closed in behind the French doors of the den, covered in newspapers and heavy with the burden of a young family, drank himself into some kind of hospital-worthy state.  I remember piling up some record albums as a step-stool, peering in through the glass door windows at my handsome Dad sprawled on the sofa, high-ball glass in hand, football on the TV console.  Don't bother him, my Mom warned; I was concerned.  My father's parents came from Russia-- one from Ukraine... they settled in upstate farmland and weathered the tough winters with stoicism and bitterness.  Maybe their genetics affected his dark winter heart... they were long gone by the time I was born. 

The blessing of snow, like a consecration-- like temporary forgiveness-- of course reminds us of the joy of cancelled classes, of pond-skating and hill-sledding on a weekday afternoon... hot cocoa and mother-love... bundling up my own son to stand among Christmas trees on Park Avenue and survey a silent city-- the drifts and piles untouched and inviting.   In those days, children prayed for snow.

My older neighbors are more shut in than ever.  They fear falls on the ice, do not navigate well in the crosswalks.  My younger friends fear for my safety.  I am thinking about Ukraine where a friend tells me most of the people are just continuing life obliviously, while I am somehow on high alert.  Part of my sleep-deprived head is still in the medieval monastery with the noble Andrei who refused to speak and paint as penance for the murder he committed, albeit to save an innocent.  

The concept of religion-- the passion and the commitment-- is at heart this allegiance to cause.  The issue of sin seems archaic and irrelevant but our whole culture functions on a level of human blasphemy that is appalling.  The disregard for consequences-- the institutional disregard for the less consequential... when everywhere we are reading about massive financial accumulation, bloated celebrity trivia... it goes on and on.  What did I do after the film?  I watched tennis.  Guilty.  But Andrei, as a symbol of the impassioned and oriented artist, broke my heart.  I had to bring myself a few centuries forward.  

Like so many things, our urban snow episode will have a mere proverbial fifteen minutes of fame before it is blackened and annoying.  Not so on the Ukrainian borders where it will persist and fail to deter the military threat.  I wish Putin could watch Andrei just once this week... I am not sure if these world leaders have permeable hearts and care about art beyond the massive monetary value and national prowess of the Hermitage treasures.  I am not sure whether the churches and frescoes move their emotions the way the old painters intended.  The Botticelli Man of Sorrows achieved 45 million dollars at auction this week; some funds at least will have to be moved.  Was it competitive greed for a prized trophy or true passion?  Tarkovsky gives us long minutes at the end of the film... where he lets us  see the images, in heavenly color... to leave us with some kind of message, some kind of epiphany-- a warning, about killing... about God and man and art and vision.  It seems so simple-- faith and beauty and the choices we make.  The living.  The snow. Amen.

Co(vid)-dependence

Part of my winter ritual includes interviewing prospective freshmen for my alma mater which becomes more and more beloved to me as I gradually become a little too old to be informationally useful to these young hopefuls.   It's incredible to me that it's been more than fifty years since I entered those academic rooms, with trepidation.  Some of us are brought up by parents who praise and bolster our visions and ambitions, but many of my generation were born into families that had narrowly escaped some form of hardship, and banked their future heavily on children.  So while my grades and tests were okay, the passions of my heart-- music and art-- were very little valued.  I entered college feeling sub-par, a bit useless and untalented.  

Face-to-face interviews were always standard, but the pandemic has prohibited meetings.  Personally I choose now to interview 'blind', by telephone without images.  God forbid these students (most of whom are scholarship applicants) should feel pressured to create a zoom 'set' for the likes of me.  Audio-only just seems more democratic and elicits a different set of responses.  Many of the names are difficult to pronounce; their origins and ethnicity, in the current climate, have become part of their currency, and predictably it takes very little time for them to reveal their affiliations and sources of pride.  I notice the Afro-American students are very Black-Lives-Matter confident.  They are involved and active-- they display healthy awareness and explain readily how they are going to integrate academics and community.  

But this year I have maybe selfishly tried to have a real dialogue about the challenges of the last two years.    I generally speak with many Asian students and once they begin to relax, they reveal things. Many of them use the word 'introvert' to describe themselves.  Their families are close-knit and often crowded into small apartments with multi-generations and new fears about the elder's vulnerabilities. But they spoke also about the hate-crimes perpetrated in their neighborhoods; their families were more protective and less permissive; one of them had a relative who was shot.  

So here are urban teenagers who two years ago were the most sophisticated-- now living a sort of claustrophobic, a-social existence. Many had been sophomores when the quarantine began-- just beginning to sprout wings and relationships... two years later they have been deprived of normal teenage rituals, and the natural intimacy of classroom camaraderie.  No one brushes their hand as they pass on the stairwell, slips a paper note.  There is no one to imitate-- dress, behaviour-- to envy, to dislike, to crush on.  I remember when my son was a teenager the operative word was 'random'... everything was 'random'. In my life, so many of my encounters and epiphanies were these privileged random moments and meetings-- this is why we live in a city of millions of intersections and concurrences.  Today-- this year and last-- nothing is random. While former life glided by on a metaphorical ice-rink, now we are slugging along in weighted deep mud. Two of my interviewees actually used the word 'depressed'.  Yes, we are having a major mental health moment here... and children are the most fragile of all because the present is everything for them.  They spoke in the third person but this is a crucial point. 

My son is so positive.  He never complains or worries me.  He's tough and goes forward, no matter what.  I am so impressed, especially coming from my single parenting as an open-hearted but honest human with flaws on display and worries.  Paralleling the not-always-accurate rapid tests, there is an epidemic of this sort of false positivity.  No worries, these people say.  Even the late-night hosts... they joke about roombas and their grooming lapses, etc... but they don't see the home of one of the girls I interviewed who wakes up in a one-bedroom apartment that houses 7 people... and tries to find a place to set up her iPad... no privacy, but also no companionship. The dignity with which she simply described, without a hint of complaint. 

Today I saw that Princeton has cancelled communal dining for now; meals are grab-and-go.  I could feel the anxiety of a first-year student who is shy and often a little isolated.  They don't always communicate insecurities because they are in a challenging environment and they are pressured to keep up.  I know my own first semester I often lingered over lunch and dinner, enjoying the company of others.  It is where I met my future roommates and boyfriends.  I felt connected.  It's probably part of the explanation for the well-documented weight-gain of new students.  Meals are their sanctioned down-time and they prolong it-- rationalized procrastination.    

Children are incredibly resilient.  They adjust to moving, to new siblings, family upheavals and even illness with amazing flexibility and courage.  Snow days, cancellations- for some these are new and fun.  They have time with family, time with social media.  But for others, it is like a punishment-- a sentence to be confined in a non-nurturing household.  Some of them are fragile and alone. Personally I would have gone crazy.  

Even now, among my adult circle, there are many who have adjusted with that positive facade to solitude. They post and write and play and sing.  Others are more shadowed.  Some have confessed their depression and sadness to me.  I share mine... the sort of crippling effect of 'less'.  For older people social interaction is harder.   I see friends who have become a little too comfortable with the curtain of quarantine, like a kind of life-mask they may never want to remove. For most of us musicians, we miss so terribly the casual real-time conversation of our instruments.  What I see on Facebook and on television for the most part is diminished... uninspired.. the tributes and re-makes... I am disappointed, mutually uninspired.  It's an unfortunate downward cycle from which I hope we will recover... but I have lost confidence. I am not like my son, and wear my broken heart often on my raveled sleeve.   

For these newly-labeled adults, I hope their worlds are not permanently set back by this strange vaccinated world order. I hope the institutions realize there is more discrepancy than ever in the lives of young students.  It's harder than ever to evaluate the potential of people who have been thwarted in their very sensitive growth years.  I pray for them... I feel their pain, even when they conceal it.  For my friends,  I am here-- a little useless with my open heart and my inadequate output, but still here, thanking God for the ones that remain.

Mrs. Jones

Sunday marked the second anniversary of my poor Mom's passing.  My son and I went to visit the gravesite, to pay our respects.  I dread these visits; they are unbearably sad for me and I am reminded by the military footstone which marks my father's adjacent resting place of her lifelong uncomplaining 'curtsey' to his rigidity.  We walked over the grassy hillside where she had been laid to rest presumably for eternity, where she has already endured eight seasons' passing in the loneliness of the deceased.

The cemetery upstate is like a city of tombs; it reminds us how the dead far outnumber the living in this world.  On the day we visited it was late afternoon and quiet-- no funerals, no steam shovels, no cement-laying, stonecutters or even gardeners.  We brought a bluetooth speaker and played some Frank Sinatra for my poor old Mom who'd begged to be cremated, because she couldn't bear the thought of being in a box.  While I tried my best to fight for her final wish, I was overruled by petty family tyranny.  After Frank, we played Billy Paul's 'Me and Mrs. Jones'...

In 1972 my Mom was still elegant and beautiful.  I'd come home from college and she'd be baking a pie or pulling some magical concoction of cakey lightness from her old 1940's oven.  The gardeners and workmen would hang around hoping for a slice... they loved her, and she flirted in a tiny way with their reverence for her kitchen skills.  When she was alone upstairs she'd sing along to the radio-- 'we've got a thing going on'... the song seemed to be in extra-heavy rotation that summer-- and she'd blush when I caught her.  She even bought the sheet music and tried to play it on the piano.  My Dad was always darkly burdened and serious.  They didn't use the word depression lightly in those days, but he suffered and she never complained.  That summer she was still young enough to understand longing, and passion.  She was a wonderful wife-- an enabler and a team-player... but the Billy Paul song, and the daily workmen's coffee breaks were her little window onto some kind of womanly heaven.

For some reason the bluetooth got stuck and kept repeating the song over and over--- loud and resonant over the hills.  No one came out to scold... and after three or four plays even my son's mood lightened.  I buried a few small trinkets, as I do-- an old Egyptian scarab I bought as a child from the Smithsonian Museum, a button from my son's prep-school blazer-- things to comfort her.  'Is Grandma a skeleton?' my son asked, as though he were in grade school.  It made me shiver.  I'm not sure how they dressed her when she was buried; my sister had the purse and called the shots.  I wish I could have had the closure of spreading her ashes in the places she'd loved, and not the deep remorse of being unable to carry out her final private wish.   Such is life--  and the relentless tide of death which carries us all out to the darkest depths of some universal sea where we are all theoretically 'one'-- infinite grist for some cosmic mill.

I remember my mother assuring me as a young child: God takes care of things in your mouth.  I’d fallen and split my lip open… a few days later a teacher sent me to the nurse—it seemed my bottom teeth had poked through the gash… no, I did not blame God… but maybe that was the first broken promise.  What are promises anyway?  A marriage vow?  A prenup? Like my college honor code agreement-- a kind of contract which by its very existence assumes it will be challenged or violated?

This has obsessed me lately-- walking the streets,  relentless monologue in my head, the confessions and titles-- a hurdy-gurdy monkey cranking out lyrics, pulling on my ear... filling in the spaces.  Jesus-- give me structure--a blank-line stability-- a simple page.  On what can we rely? In my Mom's case not even her last request was honored-- or, more likely, she lacked the strength to demand such a thing in the context of her old-fashioned view of male-dominated decisions and one-way unconditional love.  I was her daughter; it was not filial love she really craved and I only wish I could have witnessed her in that cafe being indulged as Mrs. Jones. 

We are growing old now, my friends and I.  No one is going to kneel down and cup our face in their hands and reassure us that anything is going to be okay.  We ricochet from day to day, from narrow escape to close call-- entering medical offices to be handed a grim prognosis no matter how hard we have worked, how we have either abused or cared for our bodies.  My facebook friends post and celebrate-- and suddenly there is some ominous news or shock.  First it was our parents; now we ourselves.  A few have moved from the city-- retired, escaped, become sustainable farmers and nature-worshippers in some enviably remote agrarian paradise-- and suddenly they, too, are asking for help, for donations.  Nature  has no favorites; we are all at her mercy when she stretches her limbs or opens her global mouth and lets us have it.

The denouement is not nearly as interesting as the build-up; life gets thin and brittle as we age as do our longings and desire.  In the end it is 'missing' that so often replaces love.  I miss my young Mom-- the one who baked and sang and dreamed.  It is that version I choose to imagine buried with her passions and memories on that hill waiting patiently for her daily romantic rendezvous long after her great grandchildren are gone.

#Chasing-the-Dollar

I had kind of a shitty day today.  Maybe it's just the September back-to-school seasonal dread... it persists well into adulthood where you are forced to acknowledge that mixed in with the old fall apprehension was a sprinkling of anticipation-- new people, new challenges, new teachers, new tasks.  Hope, I think it was called...  a little excitement-- an opportunity to use your new pens and notebooks-- a clean slate-- resolutions... and somehow always some new boy in your class you'd never noticed who gives you extra motivation to wear your new fall wardrobe.

At this point in my life, I've given up Halloween.  The natural indignities of aging are a sufficiently terrifying disguise; if I don't have a gig I quietly avoid my apartment-- leave the candy bowl by the door.  While I do enjoy seeing children in costumes wandering the streets,  I don't really need to supply my rich neighbors' kids with goods they're forced to discard or donate.  Let the homeless eat cake and sweets: God's Love We Trick-or-Treat.

I divide my girlfriends into two groups these days: the go-getters who travel and eat out and socialize and jump around at the gym... and the ones who isolate and sit home passively waiting for old age to seep in like slow-rising floodwater.  The former group-- they go to meet-ups and class reunions because they have never been thinner, or richer, or more (or less) single; they wear make-up to the grocery store and subscribe to dating sites.  The latter have stopped trying to look seductive; many of them were formerly beautiful and have nothing to prove.  They had some richness in their life (or not) and no longer want to advertise.  Both groups have used or use drugs-- recreational or prescription-- Group 2 with limited benefits.

One thing they have in common with my male friends seems to be Facebook.  Group 1 posts meals and travel-logs and happy group-shots of family and friends celebrating.  They use emojis and abuse exclamation points. The latter group members comment and 'like' passively;  they look forward all week to Throwback Thursdays,  spend way too much time on the Manhattan-Before-1990's page, and observe all new deaths with personal mourning posts.  For the Goth sympathizers, the Plath-ites and Genet-lovers, grief is a comfort zone.  We are in our shadow-years... and yet all of us are shocked by deaths among our peers.  There is an epidemic of disease-chronicles, treatment logs and Go-Fund-Mes because baby boomers often failed to heed the ubiquitous and ancient warning that youth is not forever.  Many abused their bodies and failed to squirrel away money for a rainy sick day.  So they post... they confess... they cry publicly... and we look and sympathize and occasionally help.

Both groups are political pundits and animal aficionados, chronic chronologists and nostalgia nurds.  Within categories they find sympathizers and like-minds; they join pages and compare breeds, refer and recommend books, art and music. And they lie.  The first group maybe more than the second-- they lie to themselves and they lie to us.  They photoshop and post old pictures as new; they 'like' things they don't like, out of reciprocal courtesy.  Some of them post happy pictures of themselves with children who have not spoken to them in years.  They pass away-- some from sudden accidents or medical anomalies, some from chronic disease they did not disclose, some from the illness described in great detail in posts-- and some-- just suddenly-- suicide, hours after a non-loaded comment or observation, a wonderful meal-- an event.  Their friends are horrified-- that is, their Facebook friends.  Their real friends-- well, where were they?  Watching their page as though it was life, failing to read between lines (i.e., posts)...  and how much time is left, after our social media binges... to listen to friends, to reach out?

Part of what disturbed me today is the fact that despite all the public presence we have, there is a huge lack of truth-telling and genuine, soul-to-soul communication.  I was horrified by a friend's failure to disclose things which are very pertinent and shocking, in a way.  And I was provoked into providing an opinion by a couple who visited me-- throwing out queries and remarks, and expecting facebook-style comments rather than a conclusive, solid discussion.  I let them have it, my dose of reality... and I suspect I will not see them again soon.  Do I feel badly?  I do.

One trend that bothers me is the exchange of money on facebook-- the Go-Fund-Mes, the campaigns and gifts-- the charity birthday apps which are admirable... but how many of us pledge before a cyber audience, to emoji  accolades, and fail to 'see' our unfortunate neighbors and homeless who lack the organization to even ask... or who ask and ask and are chained to the poverty treadmill of hopelessness?

Today on the way to my afternoon job, a dollar bill literally floated by my head in a small wind, like a cartoon. I ran after it; like a playful child or a bird, it would land and then take-off again, flapping and cartwheeling in the cool air current.  I persisted, to the entertainment of pedestrians until I captured it under my shoe.  I waved it in the air... no takers... well, I guess I'd earned it.  Not my dollar, I wanted to announce... Not my president-- 'Not the planet I signed up for', my bandmate says at least five times daily.  But I pocketed it anyway, knowing-- not unlike the moments and events on our timeline, it would be spent and re-spent... given away or received... valued and appreciated or misused and wasted... but would not remain for long.    

Ad Lib

A late-winter snowstorm gives us all a chance to breathe-- and even though I knew this one was going to be a let-down, I still took the vacation day and binged on TV films.  On the heels of International Women's Day, I've thought a lot the past week about women in the arts.   So my first choice was Within the Whirlwind-- the autobiography of Evgenia Ginzburg, a professor of literature who was sentenced for 18 years to a gulag in Siberia during Stalin's reign of terror.  Ginzburg, played poignantly by Emily Watson, managed to survive inhumane conditions of extreme cold and starvation and-- a little like Patty Hearst, I couldn't help thinking-- fell in love with the prison staff doctor.

The other film was from 1975-- an early Chantal Akerman work called Jeanne Dielman--  a nearly 4- hour masterpiece showing 3 days in the minute-to-minute life of a middle-class Belgian woman.  Without much dialogue or drama we follow her tedious daily routine--  hours of washing-up, meal prepping, shopping, shoe-shining… occasional baby-watching, and brief daytime prostitution with the same prim, emotionless attitude and clean-up as the housekeeping.  By the third day, subtle small things begin to go awry… and unexpectedly and without drama, she kills her afternoon john.

Evgenia eventually wrote her memoirs which were published abroad and which document her heroism and bravery.  Separated from her sons and her husband, she used her survival instincts; not least of these was her beauty, which appealed to the doctor and earned her better treatment than some of the women inmates.  She was nevertheless selfless and compassionate and courageous.  The film, written and directed by women, celebrates her intelligence, her art and her strength.

Watching Jeanne Dielman, I couldn't help seeing my own mother-- with the perfectly coiffed hair, and the lipstick… the well-tailored skirts and nylons and elegant shoes--- putting on aprons, gloves--- delicately scrubbing the stove, cutting vegetables, setting the table, pouring coffee, straightening papers, emptying ashtrays…  the daily shopping trips dressed in fashionable coats and scarves… the relentless claustrophobia of domesticity that made me swear every single day I would never get married.

Obviously the act of murder was a kind of emotional breakdown, a disconnect… a shocking climax to a drawn-out hour-by-hour monotony with very little insight into her psyche or mental state.  It is hard to even feel sympathy for her…  and then it ends,  with the heroine sitting quietly at the kitchen table, fresh blood on her hands and mouth.

What we are capable of-- we women, what is expected of us-- it is a different trajectory than that of men, no matter how equal or even superior we may be in so many ways.  We have children, we clean up, we care for sick friends with much more frequency.  We rebel and rock and roll, but so many of us inherit these expectations from our mothers, and we carry out these chores with or without resentment-- because it's simpler to do it than to ignore and feel incomplete.  It's part of being a woman, to let things go sometimes--- children are watching or listening, and we learn to gloss over with silence things that should be argued or protested.

I visited with a woman today who is clinically depressed, who is young and lovely and intelligent and cannot seem to accept being on the brink of middle age… even though her husband is devoted and loving, and she is 20 years younger than I am; she is blind to what we see, and unable to find her footing.  For some of us, life events intervene and force us to appreciate whatever years we have as a gift-- as luxury.  We stop obsessing about our own image and find our context.  For others, the mirror is their confidante.  They scrutinize and compare, worship physical beauty and attractiveness as their gauge of worth.  The culture seems to encourage this.  It also encourages people who are apparently blind to their own image, and deaf to their personal noise.    I watched a photo shoot in Harlem on Friday-- a woman dressed in a blue fur and a blonde wig with way too much make-up… voguing and pulling up her dress.  What version of beauty is this?  What role model for the young girls passing with their schoolbags and plaid skirts on the way home from the Sojourner Truth school?

I am old enough to realize I now am what I do, what I create.  The 'I' visual is no longer relevant or iconic or memorable.  I am one of the army of women who try to find meaning in their life and leave something behind for our daughters and little sisters.  Chantal Akerman suicided in her mid 60's.  She was depressed; perhaps she'd run out of ideas-- she'd been teaching in Harlem.  Today I long to speak to her, but can only find her work.  It seems important that I watched Jeanne Dielman and that it was shown without commercial interruption on a free television station.  It is difficult to explain to my young friend that these things are enough for me-- that the slow snow day of solitude and black coffee and rice is fine, but maybe not enough for tomorrow when I will resume my place by the typewriter, by the window of my brain and the weather of my ambition, where I will avoid the feminine prison of domesticity and self-devaluation by forging my own path forward, scripting as I go.