Hail Mary

There are days in which I have little to offer, although it is hard to keep one's mind silent when the autumn sun is clear and shines effortlessly on those of us who are not in the midst of hurricanes and typhoons.  Even in those ravaged places, we know, the mornings after are cruel and calm and show unspeakable damage with blue clarity and the watery whisper of a quiet sea. Our well-dressed reporters and journalists with furrowed brows survey and film, photograph and interview.  We check our social media and breathe a bit easier... we give a little money-- we gasp and sympathize, we go on with our day. 

Yesterday I went gallery browsing-- the theme being indigenous Australian artists.  It rewarded in a way that contemporary American has not, in recent years.  Inherent soul and story-telling-- these young artists inherit the myths and beliefs of their cultures, and even without explanations, they manifest.  In their presence, one surrenders.

Earlier in the week I visited a few of the sick and aging among my friends who are imprisoned in an existence they can't have imagined or foreseen. As time goes relentlessly on, there are many of these... no solution, and my presence gives merely a tiny atom of distraction to a cavernous lonely discomfort. There is no companion for pain and suffering; I find myself always walking home from these visits... as though I need to remain in a kind of prescriptive sentence of solitude to process what I have witnessed.  A few of these people might return to some kind of disabled living situation; deterioration is part of life... it's just that we childishly don't imagine it will really happen to us. Yes, we take care of our health, we take the recommended exercise and precautions-- some of us too late-- but we cannot avoid the reaper's overture.  

One of my friends has reached a point of collapse. She has bravely suffered the utter inexplicable indignities of a brain cancer which gradually absorbed her beauty, her grace, her keen mind and now her body.  Sitting by her bed, her head turned to one side, it was like speaking to an injured fallen horse whose life and fate displays its pride and sorrow in one eye. She breathes, occasionally sighs... I could swear I saw a tear.  Music, I said... makes one sad... and she seemed to agree.  I walked the seven miles from North Bronx to my apartment, trying hard to supplant this vision with memories of her vitality.  It will take some time; the dull and needy neighborhoods beneath the train tracks provided a kind of visual accompaniment to these souvenirs. And suddenly... there is the bridge over the Harlem River... the sunset... the glory, the antipodal irresistible reality.

For some, memorials and rituals are important.  The pandemic era made this less so, in a way.  The pomp of services was disallowed and one grew used to mourning in a kind of vacuum.  Death-- the death of others--  is the portal through which all grief expresses itself. Tragedies are often measured by its  statistics.

Australian indigenous art is permeated with narrative... and as in most cultures, these narratives often interweave with death.  It makes the art more compelling and true-- more universally articulate. There is also a kind of hope or rebirth that permeates all religions.  This is our deepest wish-- to return to some kind of life or afterlife. As though the sad material of human beings had a value... still, we believe this.

In the aura of what I witness, I return to my computer and come across a feature-- about how contemporary artists deal with concealing their under-eye circles.  While I truly hope this is some metaphorical piece about the omnipresence of tragedy in art, it is rather a cosmetic piece. Irony noted.

Maybe my epiphany of the week is how some kind of narrative (or the utter opposition of it with philosophical content) compels us-- from the Bible, classical art, indigenous painting, to modern literature... and yet we struggle with the absurd human inability to decipher our own.  While we control and change direction and envy and pity and weep and laugh, we rely on anything that is not our own. 

My son, this week, is obsessed with the baseball playoffs.  It's an American thing and, surely, the love of sports brings more people together than politics. It's a finite thing, too.  There is a clear winner and loser.  Not so even in elections, with the electoral college nuances.  It's confusing.  With baseball-- barring happenstance-- the final teams are pretty surely the best.  One believes-- one hopes. This seems to be the common denominator-- hope. Millions of people in stadiums and bars put on costumes and make the prayer sign. Even I, for the sake of son, root and cheer.  We read the stories of each player and feel connected. It is giving us a viable distraction in a difficult month. 

Walking into a church for some instant spiritual support, it occurs that for most women, no symbol will eclipse the Virgin Mary.  If we could reinvent her... but we cannot, and her meaning has been manipulated and distorted.  We have tried-- the Barbie Movie, etc... but no.  She is the suffering mother, the comfort, the grace, the vessel and the very epitome of grief.  Even the athletes call on her. In every culture-- we are born with some sense of belief... it connects us-- makes us human, and gives us the courage to hope-- despite all odds, despite my ailing friends being down 3-0 in the series, or not ever having made a single playoff... or even a team... there is this thinnest thread that in an impossible narrative just might lead to a miracle.  

A-women.

The Vanishing

 I've always been subject to a little claustrophobia. It could stem from a series of early childhood experiences locked in a closet but that's maybe too simple.  A couple of malfunctioning elevator episodes didn't help.  But the root of it feels deeper-- almost genetic. I've mentioned before that my father kept a packed suitcase in the closet at all times.  As for me, in the deepest, most tender sweet spot of a promising relationship... at the very crux of mutual intimacy, I get the urge to run.  It's a serious flaw; it's caused pain to others and I've paid a price. 

Analyzing, I used to pout as a teenager and warn prospective boyfriends not to wall me in with their expectations.  I even tried a psychiatrist who had the usual theories and a few more, but no cure. Of course, raising a child on my own, I easily laid aside my angst and put his priorities first.  But these days there's nothing I love more than the sense of a new day like a blank canvas-- no calendar, no appointments-- just a wide open time-field waiting for my footprint. It's a sense of security for me-- perhaps a small reassuring exercise in personal freedom.

Last night, at the close of a fairly non-scripted day, I watched a late-night film called The Vanishing-- the one from 1988, in Dutch, based on a book called The Golden Egg in which the heroine suffers from a recurring nightmare of claustrophobia.  In the film, she is part of a couple on a trip-- driving. They argue a bit; she vanishes at a gas station where she is abducted, unobserved, by a villainous character and never seen again.  Newspapers publicize her disappearance, her boyfriend spends years trying to figure it out.  But eventually the abductor begins to contact him.  He will reveal the mystery, he says, if the boyfriend agrees to the very same fate. The obsession for truth overcomes him and he agrees-- is chloroformed and wakes up in the dark where his lighter reveals he is in a coffin, buried alive.  Absolute horror.  Double horror.

For anyone prone to claustrophobia and film-empathy, this makes for a sleepless night.  Coupled with that, I learned of the death of a friend.  In grief, I cannot help but explore afterlife theories.  At least one member of the deceased's family is a devout Catholic and takes great comfort in the assurance of a heavenly transition. I, on the other hand, am not sure, have entertained all possibilities.  

My mother who was interred above my father in a double grave feared burial and begged me to have her cremated. My older sister thought otherwise.  Still, after six years, it haunts me.  Although we know logically the dead do not think or feel, I regret that I was outvoted and could not give her this simple last relief.  

In case we choose to ignore our age, the mailbox periodically reminds us with funeral options, cemetery real estate offers and hospice information. It's wearying and worrying... and while the ultimate choice remains to our heirs, I wish I could make some kind of peace with my ultimate destination.  I find funerals-- while comforting in a way, also appalling.  One of my friends was given a wake with a dramatic presentation in an open coffin. I kept hearing her implore me to tell people to fuck off and stop looking at her.  Some of them she openly disliked.  It was so unfair...  as though here is our final worldly act and we don't get the last word.  

My father the emotional claustrophobic had spent much time in the trenches during WWII.  In the end he lay in his simple coffin, draped with the American flag as a hero, and seemed to embrace his fate in the same manner. It was as though death had been a kind of relief to a life as a 'tough-guy' with its anxieties and unvoiced issues.  For us who have been raised with at least the illusion of free choice, the nightmare is being overruled-- told what to do-- held against our will or tied down or up.

I often wander through the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum.  I must say, the custom of buryng the dead with their possessions-- with some space-- is appealing.  Not practical for us Americans here.  Even to name a fraction of a bench in Central Park for my Mom was impossible. They are taken... no waiting list for the dead... they are permanent.

Anyway, I will continue to struggle with my philosophies and ideals-- to weigh logic against belief, to pray for my friends, to deeply speak to God, to thank Jesus often, and nevertheless to wake up periodically in a nightmare of captivity, of immobility.  Imagination? We get up, walk around, open a window, breathe.  For now.

Rain of Kings

There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend Tyrone often announces.  Categories change from day to day, from monologue to monologue.  He's a curb philosopher-- a wise-man without an address, and I'd just as soon get my instructions and remedies from Tyrone. Today-- it's all about the weather: Tyrone and I-- well, we don't dread the rain.

In younger days I often walked along the East River promenade with a baby stroller, my little boy gleefully pointing at boats on one side, me crossing myself as we passed the daunting Cornell hospital buildings on the other-- imagining patients trapped inside... how beautiful sunny weather made them feel ill and ashamed of their confinements, but the rain made them feel safe... convalescent. Today I have friends embedded in hospital rooms-- sentenced to a random but cruel diagnosis.  Who of us expects to be invalidated, incapacitated?  We dread these things, but like rain on our wedding day... well, they don't quite seem real until we are helpless and alone in a dimly-lit room with terrifying machines and digital screens which blink our fate. 

Graveside funerals are so much more poignant with umbrellas... even when I was small, I felt God was grieving from the sky. When I moved to England and married my son's father, the chronic damp sunless weather -- day after day-- embraced my young bones like a dark premonition.  I dispensed with umbrellas and took it, straight up and grey, with the clouds of our failure hovering inside and out.  There will be a royal funeral procession this week-- perhaps the weather will comply.  London rain is epic-worthy.  

Endless essays and articles about loss swimming in my current digital libraries... memorials, obituaries, confessions and prayers...  And then there are the annoying optimists-- the positive, cheerful, grateful Pollyanna's of Facebook and Instagram-- the meme-writers and quoters of happy-faced human emojis.   For the chronically and terminally sick there is little here to celebrate with pain and discomfort the only really constant companions.

I am the useless sympathetic friend.  I want to do something and I really cannot.  Grief and illness counselors have their programs, their suggestions and prescriptions-- none of it comforts the way seeing rain outside one's hospital window might, knowing perhaps you are missing sightly less.  I've been there; the fortunate among us have been there-- paid a bit of toll, put some body parts on layaway to keep the wolves at bay.  

My Irish nanny told me once that the world needed a break-- that rain meant the sky had a sort of cold-- it needed to rest the sun, to cry-- just like children.  I can't remember where in the Bible God created rain... but He certainly used it to punish mankind.  And likewise, it rewarded.  It nourished the land-- sometimes brought biblical miracles--manna... and in places like Louisiana, fish have actually fallen from the sky; frogs in the midwest.  

No miracles are expected with today's rain, although it is my most welcome soundtrack and visitor.  Somehow it connects me to my 'people'; I know they are wet or pensively looking out at the traffic and umbrella congestion-- maybe just a bit melancholy.  Things have happened in rain that would not have happened-- you have run through streets with some person... and because you are wet, you undress at his place and end up drinking from a strange cup by his window in the soft laundry-scented cotton of his clothes.  It becomes a sort of home for you.

I can't recall my mother ever looking 'wet'.  Her hair was always  'done' and she was umbrella'd from door to car and back.  My father-- yes, he was wet.  He played tennis and walked dogs in storms.  My Mom kept her head above water when she swam.  We all had rubbers and galoshes.  I don't remember hers.  I picture her grave in the rain... her coffin and the six feet of earth will have kept her dry... but despite the multitudes of deceased surrounding her, the soft mound where she lies seems desolate on these days. 

For my ill friends-- I am aware my cloying sympathetic melancholy helps not at all.  Nor do shaking my fists at the sky, begging doctors and nurses, telephoning and weeping, rosaries, novenas...  We are not remedies for one another.  Neither of my friends seems to have had a great satisfying love-- a man to lie across their bed and suffocate them with sorrow.  The parting, with romantic drama, is a little more 'post-worthy'... the mourners step into the spotlight... the widowers and wounded lovers.  But in the end we are left with a statistic... an empty bed, the imprint of weeping... a memory of pain, of regret, and then the rain.

Light Sings of Wear

The cost of shipping has increased.  On a personal level, the cost of mailing has become a burden.  The art of letter-writing has certainly fallen into a sort of category of eccentricities.  I have tried hand-deliveries where I can; to include a tiny memento or scrap in an envelope raises the financial bar and punishes me with a kind of fine.  Postal rules are confusing and discriminatory-- they favor neatness and conformity; I am interrogated at the counter with queries which, if you are a poet or  outside-thinker, scrape at your deeper conscience.  We are condemned to technology.

Tomorrow would have been my mother's birthday.  I know that I loved her, despite her flaws and bigotries, her failure to understand things.  She fell somehow outside technology; even to see her driving a car seemed unnatural.  I grew up loving the number 27; it was sacred and while the presence of my father on weekends could ruin my day, I only knew I could not live without my mother.  The excitement of Halloween always included plans to surprise her.  One thing I am grateful for: she appreciated my handmade gifts and actually wore some of them.  My father seemed uncomfortable even opening a box from me.

Adult Halloween is another anomaly.  Of course, when your children are young, you fuss and carve, you bake and pile, hold little hands on the sidewalk or stand guard at your front door, cooing over neighbors and schoolkids in disguise. If you are a musician, you put on a mask and witch's hat-- a cape and fangs--- then you watch other adults in fantasy-outfits winding up on a dance floor, becoming characters for a night.

Thirty years ago, I went into early labor.  I prayed I would not give birth on Halloween, knowing how children feel gypped being born on a holiday.  I lay on a hospital gurney, watching the heartbeat of my son who had clearly outgrown his womb-home; I had ghoulish bruises on my ribs from the size of that baby.  Happily, they sent me back home where I waited until Election Day... but coming back that night from the old Lenox Hill Hospital, I felt 'costumed' as a mother-- more prepared to remove than embrace it.

In the early difficult months of single motherhood, there were several deaths in my circle.  Having no budget for caretakers, my baby sat or slept through several funerals.  He even had a little outfit-- people gift you these things when they are born-- which was dark and serious.  It was sitting at the back of St. Vincent's, reciting the Lord's Prayer, that I began to feel the enormous comfort of holding an infant-- the bond, I suppose, that forms despite all of your confusion, your lack of preparation and the awkward intrusion of 'schedule' on a musician's life.  It was there-- listening to the sounds of grief, sensing the permanence of loss, that I lost my disguise and became a mother.

My son will soon turn 30; my mother would have been 95 tomorrow.  95--  one of those numbers she loved to see on my school papers; I often brought her that pleasure, as a good student, but it only created the sort of expectation that parents in those days held like a gun to our heads-- the one gun I did not fear.  I have a new book now; the last one was published just in time to place it in her long-fingered hands and see maybe a small glint of recognition at the cover photo.  Maybe not.  We hold these personal myths closer as our future grows shorter.  No one is there to 'grade' our adult work... even criticism has become something one buys into; marketing has replaced the art of reviewing and prioritizing.

Last night I read some Kafka.  The myth of the tormented genius sometimes exceeds the work.  I often think Franz in this culture might have been a gaming addict.... but surely the technology would have distracted and diluted the passion to create-- allowed people, as it does, the illusion of connection in the reality of isolation.   Here I sit at a keyboard in the dark, backlit by the strange blue light my mother (and Kafka) never knew-- the ease of publishing, of sharing, provide a certain comfort.  Still my pile of library books on the old farm-table, candlesticks and wood, lined pads and ink-- an uncarved pumpkin of possibility in my pre-Halloween solitude, with the city in my window like the massive bag of tricks it is-- the pack of dogs-- the never-ending parade.

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.

King of Hearts

About a year ago I found a fat envelope in my mailbox from a man in rural Pennsylvania.  He is 88 years old and enclosed a cover letter explaining he is an artist and wants a gallery show.  Then there were maybe 20 small drawings, collages… he tried everything-- abstract, Miro-esque colors-- even a few erotic line drawings like Picasso-- a Calder-ish piece…  "Hurry up," his note urged-- "I don't have much time left."

I've been meaning to write him, to acknowledge how I appreciated actual paper in this digital email universe, and that among the 'samples' I really could frame and enjoy one or two.  I have yet to do this.  After all, this is not the response he wants.  He wants to be acknowledged, to be known, like so many in this world of cheap fame and public narcissism.  Or maybe he wants to be loved, and he is 88 and this is maybe a path to some kind of invitation.  And like so many artists and musicians in this culture, he is prematurely exhibiting work that has yet to find a purpose-- he is promoting a passion that has not quite matured, and offering goods that are half-baked.  He'll figure this out-- or he won't.  He may be a member of that majority of Americans who walk into MOMA and say their kids are better artists than Pollock or de Kooning.  He can't see the process or the soul-- he can only see his own need.  
And there are just so many examples of contemporary artists whose fame far exceeds their merit-- anything I write him would be a little useless, so I still struggle with this task, see the envelope on my desk every month or so-- worry that his obituary will precede his exhibition, and hope he has found a more productive occupation, or a wall somewhere.

My father died last week.  I should say 'passed away' but he was not an easy man and nothing was peaceful or smooth.   He seemed to have inverted his life in a way; he was a true decorated hero of WWII-- one of the Band of Brothers-- Captain of the 101st Airborne, awarded silver and bronze stars, several purple hearts-- led his troops on the beach at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge-- suffered wounds, took bullets-- and in the end refused to self-aggrandize for the television journalists, knowing the true heroes went to their graves, and for the survivors-- no matter how admirable their victory-- it's not military macho-ethical to bask.

Then he married my Mom-- a true love story-- 75 years together, 70 as husband and wife…had kids-- and somehow suffered in silent stoic self-denial the post-traumatic stress of his heroism.  He didn't like me much.  I was slated to be the ivy-league hero of his version of the fairy tale.  But I took a hairpin turn.   Not exactly a rebel-- just an independent thinker-- someone who learned from watching the parachute of his life become a claustrophobic soft-fall of personal angst and a kind of failure.  I mean, military accolades and medals--presidential commendations at 25-- like starting out playing Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center-- where do you go from there?  Having some kind of fame or acknowledgment too young can fuck us up-- all rock and rollers know that-- it comes with guilt and regret and self-doubt and success is not always good for ambition.

In my generation failure became a kind of cult.  The alternative-- the nerds-- the skinny girls were suddenly beautiful -- the confessional songwriters and Leonard Cohens went straight to our hearts.
I watched my father, witnessed his tough love, his disapproval of my poorer decisions.  He never forgave me for rejecting a Harvard Law scholarship-- I guess to him that was a version of his military medals-a curt and potent reply to the question How is your daughter?  Action that speaks.  And here I am-- farther and farther from his paternal dream… the Princeton girl playing in dive bars, struggling home on subways,  having a baby in a public hospital, raising kids on my own-- wearing used clothing and eating shitty food.  It infuriated him, disrespected him, humiliated him.  I'm a woman now-- a failure, in his esteem… no closure, no accolades that he could comprehend… no house in the country, no husbands he could play tennis with.  He did love my son… an apple that fell just far enough from the tree to please us both.  Then again-- I don't expect kids to fulfill my dream-- I pray only that they fulfill their own.

My artist/'stepmother' who took her own life 2 summers ago at 96-- craved fame.  At the end of her life she had an acclaimed show which could have been a vanity exercise-- we'll never know-- the gallery owners simultaneously took over half of her coveted townhouse, so it was complicated.  But as they say, it didn't suck… and then there was the aftermath-- the future which inevitably comes with more speed than ever, these days… and last month's darling is next month's crumpled flyer.  Her work was difficult-- her physical discomfort at 96 was not conducive to execution and she suffered, more than anything, from a kind of denial of loneliness-- fear of death, fear of losing control--  it obsessed and compelled her to suicide in a sort of elaborate ritual.  She was angry at me at the end.  So was my Dad--
not for anything I did, I must remind myself-- because this is painful-- but because I failed to enhance their personal version of celebrity.  I tried-- I tried hard… but I failed both of them.  After all, as I said-- I embraced the cult of failure long ago.  It is kind of an oath you take when you commit to your own work.  Above all, you must be honest and you must dedicate yourself to finding your truth.  But grieving for these people who are supposed to be your role models and heroes-- is difficult when you have failed them and know that you are not an honored presence at their burial.

On the day my father died I'd planned to attend another funeral-- a waiter I'd known at BB King's for years-- a proud African with a world-beating smile and a sweetness that oozed from his shining skin.  His hugs were healing and wonderful; he never failed to ask about my son; he was playful and affectionate-- had known him since he was a boy.  Anani got cancer and died quickly; I was only notified after his death.  We knew little about him-- he had no family here, a sole brother in Africa.  He lived in his Jersey City church and the small service was held there.  I received the news about my father that morning; somehow I felt disloyal attending another's funeral and my tears might have been duplicitous.  But at my father's spartan burial, I realized I hadn't loved him; I mean, I honored him and respected him as a daughter; but I had never for a moment felt loved.  Me, who weeps over a fallen bird, and finds lyricism in a key trapped in asphalt.  I failed to love my Dad.  Dropping the shovel of dirt on his grave, I thought of Anani-- the lovely, loving human who was so alone and gave every single one of us so much of his heart.   But I also forgave my father for not loving me.  I apologized for my choices, and thanked some God-- not his-- that I had followed my passion because we can never make anyone happy in this world.  We can love-- we can give generously-- we can comfort-- but for happiness we are on our own.  

When my stepmother died, she was so angry at me for not furthering her career that it was easier to let her go.  I have learned to protect myself when someone withholds.  I am no longer the girl that falls hard for men who cannot give love, like my Dad.  I love easily-- I love strangers, I love my band members.  I looked at my son during the burial service and I know how I love him, but how I would never put a price on that.   I love my nephew and my niece, even though they are cautioned not to trust me.  My Dad was a military man; he chose sides and he chose my sister.  I don't see things that way, but I accept her enmity and do not waste my heart.  We were once children and I had her back and now is now.  I know too much.  I think I have his brain, but as for the rest, I feel even physiologically allied with my Mom.  She has lost her mental capacity, but I know she loved me.  I love her as a daughter and as a woman.  At the lovely cemetery in the country, I looked skyward for strength on a cold and sunny day.  How many deaths were being celebrated and mourned that day… so many… even right there in that place-- they were all around us.  Happy families-- sad families--  widows and orphans--life goes cruelly and mercifully on.  In the sky above formations of birds were providing a silent funeral dance-- visual music.  They fly in unison, these birds-- a kind of harmony we humans must learn and practice.  So many of us do not find comfort in our own kind or kin… but that is okay.

When I got home I cooked dinner for my older upstairs neighbors and some newer friends.  I love my friends.  I felt loved and I felt better.  It has been a week now; I've worked and written and found a version of closure.  Tonight I put one of my pen-pal-artist's pieces in a frame.  At least he will have a private exhibition here, he will be quietly acknowledged, wherever he is, among my home collection of celebrated and uncelebrated artists.. .and that is more than many of us will have.  My friend came by and noticed it-- I love that little collage, she said, and who did that?  I gave his name, without the history… and now Mr. Aubuchon is having his quiet Warholian moment.

A few extraordinary things have happened this week.  Maybe in some version of the story my father will become my angel, my advocate from the afterlife.  As I thought that thought today, the word angel appeared on my screen from elsewhere.  I am remembering going to work with my Dad, having breakfast with him at the Trattoria near Grand Central, and him showing up for Grandparent's Day at my fatherless son's school picnic.  This is progress, this is better.  I will always have my stepmother's lovely paintings on my wall--- the best of these are the ones she liked least.  They speak to me with clarity and strength; they inspire me.  Anani, I will never forget you.  The King, your commemorative poster at B B King's called you… because you had a royal soul.  You were an angel in life and death; there must be some medal for that in heaven-- a gold heart?  Amen. A-women.

Overdressed

Exactly 25 years ago I went into labor.  I begged the gods (and they obliged) to give me a one-week respite.  The concept of a lifetime of wearing costumes for a themed birthday party was unappealing… and something about Halloween, for the more literal among us, is confusing.  Some of us talk to angels every day-- and trolls and devils.  We fear painted-on smiles and puppetry, while we see Death among the faces in Times Square, Jesus in a slice of toast, and find our pot of gold in a leathery-faced man with a thrift-shop guitar.

Especially since I have long passed the midpoint of my life, I avoid holidays which celebrate and mock death.  I am grateful not to have to commemorate a birthday with masks and pumpkin heads.  Coming from the kind of family where you were responsible for your own costume,  the experience of listening to strange door-tones and smelling the leafy fall night air were my best childhood souvenirs.  Conversely, I wouldn't want to die on Halloween.  My best friend was buried in a designer black dress with her dark-henna hair clean and shiny...and her face still and pale in full Goth make-up.  All dressed up… the way she used to watch the Rocky Horror film when I wasn't playing a gig.  Her image comes to me every October 31st.  All dressed up, the way her remains would be if someone dug them up.  It's eerie.  It seems wrong.

Last weekend they held the pre-Halloween memorial for my beloved adopted stepmother who took her own life in July.  She expressly forbade ceremonies, funerals, etc.  This gathering was intended to celebrate her brief foray into experimental film-making from the 1960's which won her more hipster-cred than her maybe 1-200,000 hours of dedicated drawing and painting.  It was held at a small theatre; I received a hand-written invite.  So I took the subway, on a Sunday afternoon, $2.50 out of my daily spending allowance of $4, and was delayed by police activity at 14th Street.  I arrive 15 minutes late; the screening has begun, and I am asked for $20 contribution.

Well… backstory---I have sold 40-50 of her drawings over the years,  in my former capacity as a gallerist…  placed her work in some wonderful collections, never took a cent of commission, since she lived this very frugal lifestyle.  I assumed she was poor.  I am poor; we tread lightly around others' financial handicaps.  So I spent hours taking notes, arranging her books, cleaning her house, organizing her life, mailing letters, bringing her hand-made gifts and cherished visitors.  But apparently she had loads of money, and half a townhouse, and had some estranged nieces and sycophants who in the end were 'there'.   And somehow,  my mother or grandfather had given me this notion that it's not appropriate to take credit cards to a memorial, and I'd come, in my one blue dress and leather jacket, with only keys and a metro card.  No cell phone, of course; nor would I have texted any of the guests with my pathetic issue.

Okay…so the smug girl at the booth with the trendy haircut seemed even more composed when the tears began (I am so uncool at times).  After a useless attempt at negotiation,  I left like a humiliated gatecrasher, and wept all the way home on the bus (free X-fer, small consolation) with wet mascara stains running down my dress.  I'm not even sure what the moral here is, because apparently I was the only one who saw the irony in paying admission to celebrate the life or death of someone I had loved, whose films I'd watched umpteen times without the company of the hipster audience who knew little of her soul or her underdressed, no-admission life-- this woman who, outside of her under-fulfilled desire for artistic fame, was my hero, my confidante and mentor for so many years.  Except that she might have ignored me, had she been there.  She might have preferred these nouveau, well-dressed film-fans to the full but cash-poor heart on my worn-leather sleeve.

There are several blocks in my neighborhood which literally compete for Halloween bling.  Private townhouses are swathed in webs and lights and witches on broomsticks suspended above ghosts and monsters and vampires.  Some of them even speak and groan and howl.  The pumpkins are catered… faces are carved with the finesse of a Kara Walker.  I cannot imagine the calibre of candy these people hand out.  It is beyond me.

By midnight, the rain had basically chased away the trick-or-treaters; lights were out, the web and fibrous material was soaked and sagging and sad; the vampires and witches looked a little cold and bewildered.  On our garbage pails were several discarded pumpkins and some party trash… orange cups and candy wrappers.  I took one of the pumpkins upstairs and without thinking, I opened a can of Benjamin Moore and painted it black.  There it sat, my pumpkin in disguise, like a punishment-- like a souvenir of failure and mourning and aborted Halloween.  Like a giant ridiculous mark of punctuation on my day of shame, day of the dead, but not for me who lacked the price of admission.

We are all ghosts and spirits here… we are walking shadows.  When the lights go out we disappear, we are leveled and costume-less and skeletal.  We masquerade and we dance, we make films or music and we cry and we blink and we love and we die.  My pumpkin and I are alone in the dark; I light a candle and through the night rain I can still hear the looped mocking deep digital laugh track of the mechanical Caped Man with the Skull who is waving his scythe back and forth at the top of the steps on the $10-million townhouse on the next block.  Someone forgot to turn him off--- or they cannot, and a lyric is going around in my  head, between the laughs… the one Bob Dylan borrowed from the Bible, from the hymnals… and the first one now will later be last.  

Death Without Interruptions

I am trying to make friends with Death.  He has been flirting with way too many of my friends and his recent moves to consummate a few of these relationships have forced me to rethink my strategy.  While we are generally reassured that these incidents come in threes, there was yet a fourth last week.   Admittedly, my 'stepmother' the artist did take her own life.  She cheated Death, in her way, and he did not like that.  He expects to beat you at his game, not have you put yourself in checkmate and deprive him of his victory rush.  So he pulled another trick?  The fact is, he lost count, long ago.  He has way too many fingers.

If you've been reading my essays, you know that I've seen him in Chelsea.  Summer heat doesn't phase Death; under wraps his cold breath gives him away.  He likes the galleries; he's rather vain and is sure to see himself in a painting or two on any given day.  Andy liked to include him-- a shadow, a symbol or a doppelgänger; maybe it pissed him off.  He's in all the trendy fashion houses, in one form or another, and as we all know--- he has great taste in music.  He is a patient lover: he can be violent and cruel, or he can be gentle and invisible.  But he will eventually come to all of us, whether we embrace him or fear him, whether we court him or evade him; he will come.

Personally he fucks with my head.  I feel responsible; I feel guilty and inadequate.  He reminds me of my father who try as I might, does not love me as a daughter.  Okay… my cousin was old--- he was ill and had come to a boundary; his passing was a blessing.  My stepmother?  She feared her end.  She was an artist and she wanted an audience, she wanted recognition; she wanted a guaranteed choir of mourners.  Death taunted her-- held a cruel mirror before her vanity.  She'd once painted for her lovers and now she'd outlived every single one.  I was a lone voice for her; my love and admiration was not enough.  She was cranky and bitter in her last weeks, and the truth is, I was avoiding her.  She scolded me; I reminded her of failure.  Even at the end, she left a small pile of envelopes, and I waited in vain for mine.  No sentimentality; her only request, as always, is for me to disperse her art-- to find collectors, to enhance her legacy.  I am the designated 'sweeper' of her leavings.  Nothing more.  I could have pimped for her. Maybe she would have stuck it out.  Sometimes Death makes you a star; sometimes you don't even make the New York Times obituaries unless you pay.

My lovely drummer who passed…. he used to bring me small trinkets from his trips-- purses, tiny elephants from Thailand, cloth fans and memorabilia.  At some point last year I cleaned my closet and donated bags of these things.  So now I feel guilty.  I searched my closet for a souvenir--- nothing.  I somehow brought this on, with my callow attitude toward his sweetness and sentimentality.  After all, he was young-- who could anticipate I would outlive him?  I am guilty.

And that woman in Chelsea--- it was serendipitous that we had met through a mutual friend.  Who could have conceived that she would chase her dog into the arms of Death in the form of a garbage truck? Her dog?  I forgot to ask.  I doubt he feels guilty.  But I do.  I wish we'd never met.

At my cousin's funeral his children remembered poignant moments.  They were loved, had wonderful lives with and without him.  It was perfect.  I wept.  I thought of my own father-- -the one who can't bear the sound of my voice, the mention of my name-- -for Death knows what reason.  I can't think of a single tender moment.  My sister methodically stole my packet of M & Ms every day for years.  I willingly gave up my toys, my allowance-- I took the blame for every bit of family mischief.  She has the birthright-- whether it is fair or unfair, I am glad to stay out of the family spotlight.  My father owes me an apology.  Besides marrying rock musicians and turning down a Harvard Law scholarship… what did I do to him?  I offended his legacy.  I failed to enhance his family with suitable accomplishments.  I work in bars.  I was a single mother.  This is the 21st century.  But he is ashamed.  I did what I could; I paid him back.  I gave them the art I'd lovingly collected through my friends.  I paid my sister and her husband and put her kids through college while I took an oath of poverty and devotion to music.  I am a Goth nun.  You'd think I blackmailed them.  They have weddings and parties and exchange gifts.  My son got a check for $100 for his combined 21st birthday, Christmas and college graduation.  We have many nights gone hungry  Not even a card.  A folded check in a small envelope.

I have dedicated songs to my father; I post his military accolades on my Facebook page.  I honor him in the only way that I can.  None of this matters.  He will take his hatred to the grave and I will not have a seat at his funeral.  Whatever he thinks I did, I did not do.  Death-- tell him.  Whisper.  I go to funerals, I take care of my friends.  I'm guilty.  I give money to homeless people and split my last-dollar hotdog today with a hungry man in the street.  I never stole from him or lied to him or cheated.  I won all those awards.  I even bought him a computer once with money I won and he complained.  So I give up.  Death, compared to my father, is just.  He spared me a few times-- he's whispered in my ear and sat on my bed through a couple of nights…and mysteriously as he entered, in the morning he was gone.

I finally got the nerve to visit my stepmother's apartment; the very room where she put a plastic bag over her head and inhaled lethal quantities of helium several days ago.  Kind of a stagey exit, but painless and effective.  It looked exactly the same; the bed was made, the Saramago I loaned her on the nightstand, the smell of helium was nowhere.  Death had vanished-- no wagging fingers, no morbid reminders.  Just the art, like an albatross--- like guilt mirrors around the room.  But I'll rise to the challenge.  Death has no wish to participate.  It's too late for dying young, he coolly whispered to me as I lay awake the other night… and then, dressed like the 1961 Elvis, he left the room.

9/11 (The Fireman's Lover)

I suppose 10 years ago this date was unimaginable. We had just settled into the Y2k thing and the day was so hopefully crisp and clear. We’d had a false alarm in our building that summer and one of the cute 30-something firemen left me a cute note and came back out-of-uniform to inspect my apartment. September 10 he’d shown up at my gig (he loved music) and, well, I’d suspected he was married— but my friend didn’t seem to care. They spent the night. He left her early-morning; she called, he called... then we both went to bed, at dawn— slept through the burning towers, awoke and watched the horror over and over, not in real time. Neither of us ever heard from him again. We didn’t know his last name.

Of course everyone in New York City had some connection--- but mine, aside from my cute fireman and the geography, was much like the rest of the world-- emotional. The democratic rug had been yanked beneath us and America lost its virginity. My son couldn’t manage to process the victims and the jumpers. We went down to the site and inhaled human and non-human remains. People wanted to die.

My friend and I searched all the images for our fireman. We mourned him--- she more deeply than I. I kept the note. Maybe his family is among the celebrated mourners today--- his sons are undoubtedly strong and athletic; his wife has maybe re-married. He was a good boy with maybe a 7-year-itch. He loved the music. I’m no longer in touch with my friend. She stalked firehouses and events for a while, seeking a replacement. She was among the single women in New York who watched Sex in the City and empathized with women who lost their husbands but pitied herself for NOT having anyone to have missed. For all I know (and pray, with all my heart) our fireman is just fine—he would be 40-something and the trauma of 9/11 cured his itch.

For some of us New Yorkers, we hate what our culture has become. We hate the technology, the slickness that is Manhattan now. The new monuments and towers may satisfy some, but personally I would want a cemetery and private grave where I could lay my face on the dirt or stone and weep. I’m sure some of the families have taken that option, in a quiet way.

There are also, this being New York, the scams and fakes-- -the insurance payments that went to the wrong survivors, the drama queens who moaned and beat their breasts for loved ones that hated them, that rarely spoke— messy divorces unconcluded on 9/11— cheater boyfriends who suddenly spoke on podiums and seduced sympathetic beautiful women who would never have given them a look. I remember meeting a man— he asked me out shortly afterward--- spent an entire dinner explaining how he’d lost his soulmate on 9/11, how she’d been a concert pianist but they’d lived in a studio apartment and she worked at an insurance firm--- he kept touching my knee under the table until I stood up and asked him if he loved her so much, and since he accepted the 1 million dollar payment he had to hire a lawyer to get, why he kept her in a tiny apartment with no piano. It was mean, but it was my personal tribute to her.

Not a single one of the victims has grown cold in their grave. Anniversaries--- like holidays--- give us a window. I used to believe Christmas was the day that Jesus just might show up. Only Christmas. September 11 is the day on which we think--- God, just those years ago... at 7 AM... everything was as it was. The way on September 11, 2001 the disbelief made us keep rewinding--- last night at this time we were here, having dinner, watching television... the look-back thing... if we could only return--- we remember, we mark another anniversary, we are forced to accept that an eyeblink removes us from the moment, and the door has closed forever-- -time will stop for no man, no tragedy... there is only ‘that side’—before... and ‘this side’—after. The date just reminds us painfully of the ‘After’. All the rest is lost, gone, permanent.

I am tired of the endless replays of a moment which doesn’t ever seem to lose its edge, a gun that shoots endless bullets, a horror scene that never dilutes. The commercials--- now it is Eva Mendes, not Eva Longoria---promoting their hair product....but the documentaries are the same. No one wants to see anything but the vintage actual footage. We have learned little, our economy and lives have been drastically altered, America is no longer even worth being a target for terrorism. We have bad dreams, we wake up. For some of us life is still a bad dream.

I don’t know if I could have accepted the murder of a husband or child. I find these things so hard. One of the fathers I knew who lost his son – died on September 18, 2001. He died of grief. His wife mourns both of them by living.

Some days I wish I’d slept with the fireman. It would have personalized the whole thing— I could have felt more justified as a woman to grieve, even though there would have been no pew for me at the funeral ceremonies. I’ve heard my former friend has become an eccentric republican and hoards cats.

People are watching television. People are playing music. People are making love and conceiving children. People are dying and not getting hero’s funerals. Dying and suiciding and overdosing on prescription pills. People are getting married and flying and betting on football. Robbing buildings, raping and mugging old people, putting out fires.

At my son’s school there are 2 model towers and students hang a chain on them; the number of links you choose represents the degrees of separation from a victim. Our chains are getting longer. The years are each a link— for those closest, the days and minutes are a link. The distance is a painful ocean of links from lying beside your child, your husband, your lover--- a galaxy of never-ever. The memory, as this day reminds, has zero links. It doesn't recall or commemorate or 'remain'. It is.

Full Stop

My father’s old adage about lying down with dogs and getting up with fleas is no longer valid in Manhattan. And for some of us who rarely lie down at all these days, the prospect of paying $4,000 for a non-warranteed bedbug treatment is daunting.

My neighbors downstairs have been 'diagnosed'. The required letters have been sent--- far too late, I suspect—and the nagging fear of another unpayable bill for a sort of biblical-aged plague reminds that the meek will not exactly inherit this hideous economically-driven civilization, but they will annoy us like hell. And despite our blackberries and high-tech lives, we have nothing on these critters. Not to mention cancer.

One of my closest friends died a hideous and inhuman death not because she chose to smoke, but because –well, for no reason I can find. Her absence leaves a hole I cannot seem to describe, and while the wake was impressive and the Mass sombre and meaningful, the finality of the coffin is unbearable when you love someone. Death, in this culture of greed, insurance, inflated hospital bills and lawyers, brings no relief. There is no etiquette or law that prevents the vultures from descending on whatever remains, and one either spends endless sums and precious hours planning for after-death, or just throws in the dice and lets one’s family and creditors duke it out.

I prayed for her to die on an odd-numbered day; it seemed appropriate--- but this didn’t work out either. And the morning of the funeral was crisp and sunny and beautiful. Cruel, it seems—the ‘life goes on’ thing. We weep, we kneel, we pray, and then eventually we go home and eat a sandwich.

For 2 weeks I continued to dedicate songs to her— the same ones she requested while she lay in bed, worrying about her husband cheating on her and too exhausted to argue with her kids. I would fall into a shallow sleep, awake with the sensation I am suffocating— my personal way of grieving— and then pace around my room. One such night I jumped out of bed in the dark and whacked my arm so hard on the door, I saw stars and got that feeling of overcoming nausea true pain elicits. When I could breathe, I swear I felt this rush of cool air in my sweltery August room... and I could almost hear her voice saying--- Watch out, you lucky fuck-- just feel that pain and stop the drama queen bs.
AFter an hour of ice packs, it was only a bruise and not a break... I went back for a dreamless desert sleep. She crossed over. I let her go.

The next day it poured. A record accumulation. Punishing rain, someone must have once said, because it jumped to mind like a cliche. Like delayed mourning. Thank God no major celebrities died and invaded our despair... no huge front-page world disasters...the unbearable quiet parade of photos from Somalia, the heroic children slipping away without a wake or a funeral mass. Amy Winehouse’s father was handing her clothes to fans... good man that he seemed to be. Okay...we had to witness her worst druggy performances on the news... but we will remember her for her talent, in the end... her style, her conviction, the person she was.

Another acquaintance had a massive heart attack in his sleep last week. Another death, like taking a lover after a heartbreak, punctuates sorrow...frames it, in a way. He didn’t suffer--- at least not for long... but there was no closure, no deathbed handholding and promises we may or may not keep. I will keep mine, I know that. I also do not have the task of taking her clothes from the closet, of changing her sheets. I have called her phone so many times, just to hear her voice...it still kills.

One night in a morphine stupor she was ranting on about how much she hated facebook; her daughters had made her a page. We went on about pathetic it was that middle-aged adults were signing up like some kind of social security. And what happens to your goddamn page after you die? People you couldn’t stand posting histrionic messages of grief for their own self-promoting pity parties. How I’d sworn not to tell anyone she was ill, how I knew in my heart that once she died her private life would be spilled onto some social diary page like the contents of Elvis’ stomach.

I woke up last night and called her cell. Someone finally shut it down. Maybe didn’t pay the bill. So I turned on my computer and looked at old photos. I cried. I destroyed another pot on the stove as the coffee charred to black tar. Before I went to bed in the 5 AM haze and the stench of burned Starbucks, I searched for her on facebook. No photo, all info private. I friended her.

31 Ways To Say Rice

Something about snow makes me crave white rice. Hot, steamy...
Of course I’d prefer sushi rice or even pedestrian Chinese rice--- but mine is cheaper and maybe because measuring things seems absurd late at night--- it always comes out American and institutionally pasty anyway.

I looked out my window at 5 AM; even in the courtyard the airconditioners and sills were iced like Christmas wedding cakes. A silhouette backlit by a flat-screen was looking back at me--- unmoving, creepy. For those of us who are normally walled in by the night, it is a switch to be whitewashed, avalanched.

On the way home from my gig I couldn’t help noticing 3 wrapped and cardboarded bodies tucked in against the 3 huge doors of the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, like horizontal shrouded niobids in a tryptych. Sculptural and symmetrical, dusted by white like some kind of forgiveness for the tattered huddled corpses they are forced to inhabit, wrapped in every piece of material they could scavenge. These are the lucky ones— they got there first. Seniority. Was there a moment in time when these churches were unlocked? When it was not a sin to provide shelter and warmth for the Manhattan Untouchables? We bleeding hearts who cry for stray dogs and donate for mistreated pitbulls?

Downstairs in the 96th Street C station another human creature wrapped in newsprint, old comforters and black plastic at the end of the platform, by the dumpster. Three large rats romping around her things--- a paper cup, a few bags and salad containers. A woman-- must protect herself--- a youngish woman with braids.
"Do you need something?", I found myself hypocritically blurting out, feeling ashamed and stupid....
"No", she answered, in a quiet voice, refusing my pathetic $1-- "I don’t need nothin’...I’m fine."

Fine, she is. Doesn’t need. On the tail of the storm—- 5 AM, I consult the television God. Bloomberg has called off school. There’s no 4th term anyway, so who really cares that the weather has eroded his ratings? On the other channels--Celebrity Rehab— yet another histrionic but entertaining episode; I Used to be Fat— well, I'll pass---My Secret Addiction which documents a woman who eats chalk and another who can’t stop licking household bleach. A Medical Mystery show about people who can’t stop eating—one who has been forced by a gastric band into bulimia because her eyes are literally larger than her stomach. Another who just shovels it all in until she weeps with despair... then wakes up and starts again. Needs. The food budgets of such people. The woman in the subway can ill afford these problems. What makes them need this way, these television people?

I thought about my father when I was small-- French-door-shut into his den on a snow-day behind white chintz curtains, J&B-ing himself into blackness. Wondering which of the 30 some-odd Eskimo words for snow would be used to describe that scene. Which would be used for the Manhattan storm which came with thunder and lightning and gave us all an excuse to stay in, to drink, to sleep, to listen? The rice is quiet. Orphanage rice. Prison rice. Homeless Shelter rice.

In my email tonight a notice that a guitarist I know vaguely has suicided. He’d been depressed; I was snotty to him the last time he stuck his head in the door while I was playing. Jesus.
I can imagine it was the snow--- the relentless muting effect of this miraculous stuff which ought by rights to be gray or dirty like ash--- and instead it is un-urbanly pure, perfect, a-worldly. When you have smoked and drank everything in the house, you have no gig, your wife is across town with your kids who are learning to hate you not for what you did but for what you didn’t do... and here are the veils, the fake forgiveness, the trick blessing. Mother Nature with her finger to her lips...the painful bridal reminder for some of us who don’t ski but who sit on a cold windowseat in an old hoodie, smoking our last cigarette, making promises.... Eleanor Rigby in our head....rich enough for shelter, too poor for a view, our guitar leaning pathetically against the door like a patient lover... the rice in the pot on the stove... rice on the church steps, snow on the cemetery grass...silhouette in the window... the dark lightens, the relentless snow lets up, your last fucking thoughts are nothing but cliches--- snowblind, fade-in, whiteout...
the winter rice in the pot... spreading like white ash... all fall down...