The Ground Beneath My Feet

For maybe seventeen years, from my 27th birthday on, my home base was a modified studio apartment in a converted factory building.  I call these my bachelorette years, despite the fact that I was married (twice), changed countries, became a mother; somehow this was where I ran, came back to roost, escaped, convalesced. When I first moved there, part of its charm was the Mobilgas  flying horse directly outside my front window.  Like a magical hovering hallucination, it witnessed and blessed my love affairs, my joys and sorrows, guested at my parties and celebrations.  At a point the horse was removed and a multi-plex theatre was built.  So there was still the rear window, where a sapling tree had grown tall enough to graze my sill and bring morning birds to sing to us in bed as we slept against the cracking interior brick wall of an old chimney. 

It was a cool old building, and because the apartments were like small lofts and recently re-purposed, it was mostly populated by young singles-- artists, several fashion models, a pair of Rockettes, a stripper, two drummers, a hair-stylist... photographers, drug dealers. My motley friends and rock musicians were comfortable hanging out there, crashing there, getting high with the English hipsters down the hall, smoking on someone's balcony or sunbathing on the roof.  It felt in a way more like a dormitory than a building.  We had the best parties that often spilled out into the hallway where neighbors were only too happy to open doors and spread the cheer.  

On Wednesday I went down to that neighborhood to preview an auction of great old rugs in what used to be a loft space but was now tarted up like a department store.  I barely realized I was in my old neighborhood-- the street was stacked with multi-storied new constructions that looked crowded and crammed and airless.  My old back window would have been hemmed in-- our little sill-sparrows, the maple tree-- would have been displaced.  I walked up to Second Avenue-- the old supermarket-- A & P, then Sloan's, I think it was, then maybe Pioneer-- and now a sprawling Chase bank.  My son's old school was sheathed in scaffolding and netting... even the movie theatre called Beekman was being demolished.  I remember there was one huge modern apartment building which stood out... now it looked a little aged and dated-- dwarfed.  Back then there were cyclical recessions; money was a little different.  Yes, there were some affluent couples... but their luck changed and at our state-sponsored pre-school we were often all in the same boat-- crumbling marriages, unfaithful husbands, Visa problems... buying each other cheap bags of chips or sharing ice cream among the kids.

I remember sitting on a stoop with an English woman who'd had two babies in rapid succession.  The children were adorable, but I was shocked to see they lived in this pricey high-rise with almost no furniture and a mess of clothing, toys, dirty plates and cups everywhere.   I remember the toddlers so well-- Harley and Alison. Almost like twins... they were unwashed and wild, tough and spirited, and their mother seemed to have aged twenty years in three.  Her husband had lost his job... one of those things... we young mothers spent long hours sitting on sandbox ledges, pushing swings, exchanging woes and intimacies.  Where are they? Who will remember them?  It has been some thirty years since I sat on the wall outside that building, astonished at the reality of what I'd imagined to be a charmed, rich life.

Forward to the rugs-- old, handmade things of great beauty.  The online catalogue was spectacular and shining.  It always touched me that the makers-- not just artisans but artists-- colorists-- took years of their life to create something that would be walked on.  The metaphor of hand-woven carpets is a kind of poetry. So I wandered through the newly-renovated space like an explorer... hung and lined with yards and yards of these patterned wool tapestries... and somehow, without the online photos-- they became what they were-- just rugs.  They were living, used... old, walked on... things of beauty but humble and quiet.  The price tags were obscene.  If they could speak, they would have been ashamed.  

At some point in college my boyfriend and I decided to make a rug-- we would design and execute a hand-knotted creation. We looked in museums, bought a book from the Cooper Hewitt.. and I spent many nights turning pages, inhaling the colors and patterns.  It was difficult; we were overwhelmed with studies and jobs and we abandoned our project.  But in my 120 year-old apartment, I have one of these rugs of similar vintage.  It was owned by others before me, and it occurs that it will go on living when I am gone.  It is a thing of great beauty and soul-- the colors, the small discrepancies and mistakes woven in intentionally by a person who lived perhaps in a colorless landscape without flowers or trees, and yet created a rich, rich tapestry of floral and chromatic mastery.  These rugs I assume were the gardens of desert cultures-- their windows and decor.  

During the pandemic, I occasionally took a photograph... and a piece of my rug would appear, like a magic vision. It is always, unlike me, photogenic; it steals the stage, even in a tiny corner.  I know all of its regions; I imagine the maker.  When I write it is here.. when I play music, when I turn out the lights... it is still here.  Unlike a garden, it asks for nothing and never fails me.  I do cringe when my son visits and occasionally spills a little whatever... but they are resilient, these old things.  Organic and uncomplaining. Voiceless, perennial... humble, rich, quiet and like a magic lamp maybe replete with more story than I can ever write, in this room we share-- my witness, my companion, my elder, urban floor-garden.

As-salted

It's been a cranky week for Writerless... annoying editing setbacks, difficulties transferring analogue files... the older I get, the harder it is to move on from technology to technology.  Things get technically easier, but across the board, quality suffers.  Nothing like home-made pie, reel-to-reel recordings, dark-room printed photographs... I found one someone made of my son as an adolescent-- it was like a cross between a Calvin Klein ad and a Rebel Without a Cause handbill. Shot on the old roof of my building which is now divvied up among the rich for their air conditioning outboard equipment, it was timeless-- powerful... it had a vibe.  Things today don't seem to have a vibe.  Go pick up your new KAWS Uniqlo T-shirt... be a walking cartoon ad...  I see the same tattoos on people, over and over.

Last weekend was my 45th college reunion.  Did I go?  Have I ever? I am a lifetime committed absentee.  But Thursday and Friday night I played (again) at the (44th?) Max's Kansas City Reunion Extravaganza.  It was in a different venue this time which didn't quite feel right... besides, the bar portion of the club where you enter is a late-night hang-out for the young nouveau LES high-renters who have only just discovered the eighties.  Hardly anyone over 30; as opposed to the Max's performers and audience on the 'venue' side who were pretty much 50 and up.  On the way in I pass 2 young couples engaged in a little drunken hysterical repartee and this tall blonde spontaneously throws her drink in the air-- maybe unintentionally... christens me everywhere, except fortunately my old motorcycle boots shield me from the broken glass as it shattered on the hard floor.  So she looks at me-- points... Are you gonna buy me a drink?  I let her have it, verbally.  Are you going to buy me a new shirt and jeans, I ask her? Getting into full-armed Princeton bitch mode... I stared her down accusatively...until she backed off... but it changed my 'vibe' (that word again) and that was on her.

After a week of gigs--- subways, walking-- not a single purchased drink or bag of chips--- I earned $50.  Yes.  That is the deal.  Either you play in tribute bands, club dates, do Broadway... or have a job. I remember way back as a young bassist someone in a punk band told me I played like I had a job.  I did-- have a job, that is.  If you wanna really play, he said-- quit your day job.  So I did.  He was right... there's a difference... but looking around the room at the Max's reunion, nearly everyone played like they had a job--- or a husband.. or a trust fund, or an inheritance... except the few of us who stood around without drinks (for playing for no money, you get 50% off at the bar which is still out-of-reach) waiting to play like our lives depend on it (they do).   Of course the few bands who were successful from the old days were not there (Blondie, Television, etc.)  Or passed on (Lou Reed, etc.)... or decided to have a job, become a doctor or lawyer.

Anyway,  Saturday I worked all day at my friend's gallery to help make my monthly apartment payment.  I had no sleep, no lunch... some free coffee... but at 6 PM on the way home I had $2 and besides a hot dog, there isn't much you can do with it.  Union Square market is so pricey... no samples out at that hour, stands are packed up for the day and despite the advice from the HRA that you use your foodstamps at greenmarkets, they want your credit not benefit card.  Then I see the Martin's Pretzel truck.. loading up... remember they have those $1 plastic baggies of broken pieces... get a little energy buzz... until the vendor guy says to me-- nah.. no more... all packed up... except in a barrel waiting for loading are a bunch of bags that look about to become trash... How much, I ask?  $5 he says.  $5... for a small sandwich bag of crumbs.  I look sheepish... How much you got, he asks?  I show him the contents of my poor wallet... $2... okay, he says, as though he is splitting his steak dinner with me and while I eagerly tear into the bag because I am on the verge of passing out, he points his finger in my face and says... like you would scold a misbehaving child... Remember that, next week.  I wanted to spit the pretzel at him... they are stale and hard enough to break a tooth-- another unaffordable... but he had my $2 and I'm not that stupid.  I had no choice except put him in that mental box with the drink-spiller of the previous night.

On to the 4 train which is backed up and local and messed up and everyone is cranky.  There is a pre-Puerto Rican day crowd and demonstrators from another parade and the car is packed.  I am sitting next to a fat asshole in a tank top with cheap tattoos and shorts and he has his phone angled so he seems to be photographing the strange-looking crotch of the guy crammed in over us.  He gives me a sideways look and shuts his phone down.  We are stuck at 28th St... and a girl across the car seems to be freaking out... she is cursing under her breath and scrunching her face and slapping her knees... but she is a knockout... maybe 27... black hair, pale eyes... white skin and this look of punk exoticism from another planet.  So the fat asshole is maybe trying to flirt with her... and he asks.. What's your problem? She answers-- and she is tough... I'm pregnant and I'm sick and I need to get home.  Me..I offer her a pretzel... but she is getting into it with the asshole who calls her a cunt and other things...and she stands up and starts ragging on him... until some crazy old woman (my age?) takes the stage waving her handmade flyers and shouting at us all because we are cruel meat eaters.

Anyway, the fat asshole is now standing up in his shorts which are disturbingly short and enough to make us all sick.... and I gently grab the pregnant girl and walk her down to the end of the car.  It's not worth it, I say. You have to protect your baby...  which I can't really see, because honestly she doesn't look pregnant to me... but who cares?  Anyway, after a few minutes of the fat guy ranting about women some hefty black girl built like a linebacker walks over to him and screams in his face and makes a fist and all hell is about to break loose but the guy realizes he's like a Trump supporter in a small crowd of democrats and Gay Rights Activists and Black Lives Matter supporters and he sits down... then a young black kid with dreads goes over and rags on him, too, calls him a mother----er and c---sucker and other things... and the car is cheering him on... but the pregnant girl and I are by the rear car door and the train is finally moving and now her eyes get red and she is worn down and starts weeping on me.   I remember how a train accident caused me to lose a baby once... and think... here.. this could be the one, the girl that has my baby's donated organs-- and she is really hanging onto me now-- letting it go--- and here we are, like a religious pastiche of Mother and Weeping unidentified Daughter...  and finally it is my stop and she says she'll be okay.

The black guy says he'll make sure she gets off safe in East Harlem... and now I am on my way home where I can strategize the $1.82 left on my benefit card until Tuesday and I'm nearly safe.  I'm weeping myself, wet with the pregnant girl's tears which could be DNA-simpatico to my own, the taste of the stale salt pretzel on my tongue like a bad communion wafer, and the stench of that spilled drink still in my nose because I have on the same old jeans.

The phone rings as I come in and it's an ex-boyfriend driving back from Nashville, lying his ass off as usual about how he misses me and about a phantom divorce except he doesn't know I know he's not so secretly married and he makes an excuse he has to fix something in the car when it's another call from his wife, because these stalking spouses have radar for when their men call ex-girlfriends...  but then I turn the ringer off... and I remember it was he that took that great shot of my son on the roof... kind of a good souvenir of a bad relationship... and I also realize someone found my missing guitar strap and the evening sunset is just so warm and the city is almost quiet up in my hood... just the car radios and the Puerto Rican flag wavers yelling as they pass...  and I can still play bass like I don't have a job, which I don't, except for playing bass... and for now I can close my front door and rule the world. Que vaya con Dios, I pray to my pregnant daughter-- another orphaned dream in the urban mix.

Looking Down

Lately I have been looking down as I walk.  I find things in the street--- sometimes a quarter or an old penny-- last week an iPhone 6, someone's keys (another short story here, for another time)--something satisfying in returning lost items to their rightful owner.  Occasionally, as with wandering dogs and cats, things or pets have been 'deleted', let go.  Not everyone has that defective gene that makes us believe objects have a soul, that they emit some kind of emotional radar-- some vague longing and belong to us.  I am burdened.  I collect souls and sorrows and stories like missing children.  I found a stray dog once-- years ago.  I lived uptown, near Harlem-- was determined to find a good home for him, left him with a friend in Soho while I went on the road for 2 nights.  He'd only known me for 3 days.  I came back to the city, found that he'd escaped his soft collar and leash while tied outside a bar on Broome Street (ah, my friends' priorities…)… and there he was, curled up by the stairs of my old building, more than 100 blocks away.  He was mine.

Most things in my life have not been that clear.  I find it hard to recognize new shoes, the 'right' apartment, lunch.  Love.  But that's another novel.  A few weeks ago I read an account of a blind man who was injured in a subway accident.  When the train came in, it said, he was looking up.  That had all kinds of resonance for me-- religious, spiritual-- irony.  When you are blind I suppose it doesn't make much difference where you look.

My increasingly solitary day trips have an inner soundtrack.  I do not carry an iPod or a phone, but I maintain an inner commentary--- it's unstoppable, my voice.  Like my own personal Walt Whitman.  Of course, it began as personal encounters-- observations, mental photography.  But lately the flotsam and jetsam of objects in the street and gutters speak to me. Harlem, where cleanliness is not consistent, is a virtual Pandora's box.  Block by block---gentrification alternates with the random and spectacular pairing of oddities and tragedy.  On Lexington and 122nd, there is a men's shelter.  Sunday summer nights the tenants are chilling on the street, sprawled across those strange new metal sculptural seating installations that line the curbs there… some in pairs, some talking trash, some quietly staring off, smoking, hitting me up for a dollar or anything.  Many of them know me by now--- they know I'm not just a tourist, and I'm walking back from Pathmark where I spend my meagre food allowance as carefully as possible.  They don't bother me.  One of them always shares with me that his favorite color is black-- I like that.  None of them are looking up.

On 119th Street, by the basketball courts, a young couple is having a discussion.  The girl wants an accounting-- a reconciliation, maybe.  Her boy is not looking at her.  I could tell her, spare her hours of circuitous conversation, start her healing.  He's gone.  He's not coming back--- maybe he'll fuck her, out of boredom--- once or twice-- but he's not going to be looking.  I can always tell with guys.  I even know before they know.  This drove my husband crazy.  I was waiting, he said… I was setting a trap for him.

I do remember the way he looked at me, my young lovely husband.  I remember some woman at an art auction coming up to me---a stranger-- and saying to me-- If any man in my life ever looked at me the way that man looks at you, I would die happy.  I took things for granted then.  Love-- passion-- candlelight.  Dinner.  An endless supply.  Looking.

I also remember my baby boy.  The surprise of him… the way he looked at me with those serious eyes-- with complete trust.  So many of my girlfriends forgot to have children… and it wasn't on my priority list; it was a random act of love.  Maybe I should never say something like this, but I pity any woman who hasn't carried the weight of life and experienced the colossal pain of birth and the utter miracle of giving life, of having it look back at you.

I am sitting in Starbucks to escape the indescribable traumatic building sounds that accompany the word 'renovation'.  For us day sleepers,  the endless New York City real estate boom market has become a challenge.  I have a recurrent dream of earthquakes.  I am running, the columns are crumbling around me, the ground is trembling.  I awake and my bed is literally shaking.  9 AM promptly.  Ironically a song is on the current playlist here--- one of those indie dreary bands but something unpretentious and slow-- Everybody's looking up… and I'm looking down…  I don't know or care who it is.  Somehow this tough-kid phrase from my middle school years comes into my head-- I'm gonna fix it so you have to look up to look down.  

Everything changes.  Neighborhoods, love.  Brigitte Bardot turned 80 this week.  I watched Le Mepris a few nights ago.  Saturday night I was lucky enough to play in a concert at Lincoln Center.  The singer, a formerly gorgeous and sought-after vocal star,  now lives in a kind of homeless hotel.  Her life and story was a revelation.  She performed one of my songs and it was amazing.  The room was so quiet-- I could hear my bass notes and I played with a fragility I had previously not experienced.  Two hours later I was in Bay Ridge playing raucous garage music to a mostly drunk and rowdy audience which included a large Down's Syndrome woman who charged the stage at regular intervals during every single song.  Was one gig worth more than the other?  I don't know. I was paid exactly the same for both.

It's a bi-polar world, literally speaking.  At the risk of stating the obvious, I guess Down must be the new Up.