Brother Can You Spare...?

It's hard to lose myself in television distraction when the constant disturbing election ads insult our intellectual sobriety.  Both sides slinging perpetual political mud and manipulating information that warps any attempt to distinguish truth. The massive money spent on these contests that could be spent to ease world hunger or bail us out of this medical morass... new teeth for all. I can't find peace, nor any comforting scenario.  It's like watching my two least favorite teams duking it out in a pre-doomed Super Bowl that will surely end in a brawl. 

I lie in bed trying to imagine a third Constitutional Party which would represent equality and reason... but I also realize my moneyed friends are loath to give up more than a small pittance of the warehouse of gain they've put aside and invested. New York City, I am told, now represents three trillion dollars in wealth. If the banks kept their holdings in $100 bills they'd have to reach the size of the massive new Data Centres just to accommodate. Monopoly money, we called it in the good old days.  Now it's AI money, galactic proportions... 

As a longtime stubborn owner of a formerly inexpensive apartment, I've watched many friends reluctantly leave a city they loved. Rents rose more drastically than my HOA.  But now... I'm reaching a saturation point. Just a few years ago I used to visit a homey little midtown office and deliver my crumpled bar-money in an envelope to a kind man. I felt damned self-righteous and tough-- a single Mom earning a living and self-supporting my little family. Now new management requires electronic payment, sends bills with constant increases and assessments one cannot fight; no one replies.  For this automation they charge a huge fee and treat me with condescension and disrespect-- as though intelligence and wealth were bedfellows. After deducting my HOA I have barely enough to cover my crappy health insurance for which I am charged disproportionate fees while being notified once again my minimal plan is discontinued due to lack of profitability.  Health? Medicine?  That is secondary. We are a sick country.  

Here in the city we have elected a social democrat mayor but even he cannot remedy the massive discrepancy between rich and poor. Welfare is expensive here.  Most just receive their monthly benefits and shut up.  As for the low-end workers and artists and the struggling-- we are caught between extremes... the young are amassing debt and partying hard, the baby boomers often sit on family trusts, and the rest of us are being silenced. I enter my old age with trepidation and financial handicaps. I remind myself how I love to read, how my food stamps get me free access to museums, how I can still play my ass off when I get the underpaid opportunity. Lol. Occasionally the club buys one a drink and my Senior Omnicard gets me home for $1.50 where I do not dare turn on air conditioning or extra lights for fear my electric bill will be prohibitive.

I'm reading Saramago's 'Seeing' which begins with a foiled national election in which eighty-five percent of voters cast blank ballots.  It's kind of a revolutionary idea, and manages to stonewall a democratic process which, as the narrative goes on, is less and less a democratic demonstration than an opportunity for persecution and autocratic control.  It's a frightening scenario-- the sequel to his brilliant 'Blindness' which explored the societal consequences of an epidemic Oedipal metaphor. Paradoxically, the darkness of the subject is offset by exquisite weaving of language and vocabulary. One remains enthralled. 

US paper money is fairly ugly although finding a coin or quarter on the sidewalk always strikes me as a kind of sign.  Dimes are my favorite; they are so humble and unobtrusive. When I worked a cash register back in the early 1970's a roll of dimes had a special feel to it. In the final Dawn Powell New York novel one of the perpetually-broke and alcoholic characters describes the 'ecstasy' of finding a dime in the gutter. In those days, it was a 'tipping' coin.  I worked in a diner for a few weeks in high school and a cup of coffee was still ten cents. Cops left a quarter which made a generous tip. My little apron pockets were filled with dimes. Some people these days don't pick up coins; they don't want jingling pockets or excess weight... or maybe the germs we thought they carried during the pandemic.

Ironically Tencent Holdings despite the name is one of the largest media companies in the world.  Like many successful conglomerates they have interests in everything from the military to music publishing. When I was a girl my father gave me a few Japanese yen coins.  They were near-weightless and felt like toy money. Unlike our poor obsolete pennies, they are still being manufactured. 

One of the great pleasures of old noir films is watching the characters put a dime in a payphone. I remember so well the feeling of this-- how my Mom put dimes in our loafers so we could call her in an emergency. We'd walk to school and carry nothing but a small stack of books held together with a rubber strap.  I'd look down at my shoes and feel safe. The irony of this seems especially poignant tonight when I am straining to solve the challenges of this month-- the plumbing repair, the fuel surcharge, the insurance increase. I thank God I am still here--old enough to remember these tiny rich moments with which I try to feather my aging proverbial nest, from a time when a pair of dimes was all the insurance we required.   

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.

Losing It

Every so often I give in to the ghost which burrows in my shadow, and which generally rests while I play music or dreams while I sleep. But I am feeling this enormous cry coming up from him… like ominous regurgitation of some past sorrow I have managed to partition off from my current read-only-memory. I awoke this morning with it perched on my chest so I could scarcely breathe or open my eyes to face it. So I listened...and found I could no longer distinguish the compulsive annoying cooing of the pigeons on the ledge from the creaking pipes and the motors idling outside. And these muffled sobs somewhere… (could I be imagining this?) and workmen cursing and scraping metal and pounding… then further away I could swear I could hear each block's soundscape piling on the next until everything finally became a whirring blur…like all the ingredients of a life are somehow getting ground and whipped into this fog-colored mush. And suddenly I don’t know who or where I am because all the elements— air, light, walls--- have been the same, since the room into which we were born… and will be, up to the room from which we will die.

I now wonder if my Mom is faking her dementia because it’s all so much easier when nothing is expected of one—when you just let go and take the slide, even if you look ridiculous and your old petticoats are flying up around you. Because who actually cares… and who will remember?

All of us, still texting our pathetic donations, holding our rosaries, glued to the television in horror at the Haitian nightmare… do we need to compare our miserable lives to true suffering so we will feel better? Or do we actually envy, in some perverse way, these people who have lost everything… who have bottomed and embraced the terrible excruciation of severed limbs and bone-crushing agony? Those who have met our fears, who have had their hell on earth, and can let go in some way of the terror of losing that we New Yorkers seem to be afflicted with. After all, is this not why we invest our money, made superstars of AIG, assess and insure our homes…to hedge against loss?

A man who is a lifelong Gamblers Anonymous member confided to me the other day that it is not the win that jags the true gambler – it is losing. Because one can’t have or win everything— there is always more. Yet one can lose everything. And therein lies the thrill of the bet. So what does this mean to those of us who are not gamblers but addicted to horror, to tragedy, to sympathy, to loss? We are a race of losers. The House always wins, does it not? And for those of us who are ready to lose everything… are these the real heroes? Is letting go equal to losing everything? Is it not more like giving out, losing one’s grasp, as opposed to leaping into the abyss?

No matter how the media spins things, the abyss seems to have fallen onto the Haitians. So who has lost more… they who have lost everything or we who are addicted to fear? Thinking philosophically doesn’t help this aching I have to just let go and weep… in front of my children, in front of an audience, on the subway… and not one person I know has any sense of it… obviously my failure…my loss, their loss, my pitiful non-Haitian heart, my unburied rosary, the fog, the receding tide of what I have not won.

Cataracts

Tonight I went to see an eye doctor I haven’t seen in 12 years. He doesn’t take my pathetic overpriced insurance, but I remembered he was a thorough and reasonable professional and it turns out his fee for a consult is exactly the same as my overpriced insurance co-pay. Never in my 25-year health-insurance past have I spent more quality time in a doctor’s office. He prescribed 1 (that’s right) contact lens, so I don’t waste money on the other which I don’t need… and told me not to bother changing my eyeglasses because my eyes are in flux and I’d be throwing money away. Then he told me he’d mail a paper bill--- he doesn’t take plastic. I thought I was in a time-warp.

The bad news, on the other hand, is that I’m developing a cataract. Apparently I have what amounts to a yellow filter over my eyes, which affects my perception of color. Not only am I becoming the oldest rock musician in New York City, but all those years of spots and blue lights have taken a toll. When he used the word, I thought about Niagara Falls— that kind of cataract. The only meaning when I was young and invincible. Before spellcheck. I thought of the cataract-tears that fell this morning for Ted Kennedy, the ones I cried for the lost and missing children in my life, the tragic suicides of all the pained artistic souls I worshipped over the years. They couldn’t take the harsh light, couldn’t afford the prescription shades. Blink, Lou Reed.

I wonder if Ted Kennedy with all his health issues had cataracts because it seemed that he saw things with a bit too much clarity over the years. It bothers me, in some way, that his presidential timing was never quite right, and I wonder why the Powers-That-Be decided it was prudent to let the right Democrat in this time round. I watched archival footage of Ted giving that speech, way back in the Carter era, acknowledging that the average American family would have been bankrupted in a few months if faced with the Kennedy family medical bills. I watched him pledging to uphold the Democratic platform which guaranteed every American decent health care. Because when it comes down to it, what good are Constitutional rights if you’re too ill to exercise them?

That speech was filmed in an era when words were spoken live—- then televised. Not twittered, emailed, texted. Grammar mattered. Rhetoric, delivery. He suffered plenty of press and political crucifixions—- maybe more than his brothers, because he lived so much longer— and perhaps wore his tragic flaws more honestly.

Not that I have abandoned Obama. But I cannot fathom his doing business with the Bernankes and Geithners and Goldman crooks any more than I could stomach a presidential golf game with Ahmadinejad. No spellcheck there.

What annoys me tonight… people on TV who say ‘this is a whole nother level’… who are maybe the same people who say ‘how good of a pitch was that?’ What’s with the ‘of’? The careless misspellings posted in bold typeface on our Breaking-News TV caption-headlines. For a brief minute, Senator Kennedy was daed. Walter Cronkite would not have made such a typo.

But back to the Democratic ‘platform’ promise from 30 years ago. What has happened to blur the vision of Americans? Among other things, what happened was Reagan et. al. Then Bush et. al. The fact that the Dow moved up some 10,000 points and clouded our judgment. The fact that biotech and health insurance stocks were putting such enormous profits in the pockets of the Loudmouths that healthcare and every thing else for the increasing rich was affordable and deductible and the poor…well, let them eat cake anyway because their teeth will fall out before they reach Medicare eligibility.

Ted might have had a brain tumor, but he had a memory, also. His parting policy statement was a reminder about universal health care. Will this shine through his death? Or will the message be lost in the media?

Do you think he was too ill to know that Annie Liebovitz who photographed his family is now bankrupt? That her catalogue, like that of the living Michael Jackson, is in jeopardy and Goldman Sachs is now offering to bail her out of her uncompromising financial obligation? They will buy this ‘toxic’ loan like an anteater lickety splits his prey. And they will turn this around, make a huge profit, humiliate her. The whole situation sucks, but did she not see that the words ‘Art’ and ‘Capital’ do not belong together except in a world where ‘US Treasury’ and ‘Goldman Sachs’ cannot go for more than a page of text without being linked?

Cataracts. Annie wears designer glasses. I’ll bet her doctors will exchange a photo or even a Polaroid for a life-saving surgery. But don’t give in, Annie. They have your negatives but they don’t have you. I always thought you were a sell-out and I actually had your huge old coffee-table book on a pile of library-donations. I just might keep it now. In a few months I might only see in black and white anyway. My insurance won’t pay for the surgery, and no vision correction will let us see, when we pull the voting booth lever, which candidate is running on the G-S ticket.

Summer Grace

Amidst the summer thunderstorms and aural chaos of New York City, I am missing Grace Hartigan today who was still with us last summer. I am glad to have a copy of the poem Frank O’Hara wrote for her because even though she left behind all those paintings which landmarked the various episodes of a life that was larger than art, it is always comforting to have someone else acknowledge this. Just one year ago I took for granted the fact that I could go down to Baltimore and find her, still outspoken and truthful, still following her tough Anne Sextonesque heart even though her star had shone brighter when she was young and feisty and haunting the streets and bars of downtown New York with her entourage.

Last night I spent the highest quality time available in my small bigcity world with a 90 year old artist whom I will not take for granted this summer. To sit and hear her recount tales of her past, her blunt assessments of the world as it is, of me, of herself, to leaf through her new work…was worth the price of admission anywhere. She had an audience of 1, while the guy who put his United Airlines Smashed My Guitar song on youtube has now logged 4 million hits.

On the crosstown bus last night I met a young Mom and her 13-year old who had come to New York for a revolutionary back surgery. His spine was deformed and as he stood up I saw he looked like he was a shirt stretched on some cruel skeletal coat-hanger. He was handsome and funny and they were coming from the movies… and it pained me that I’m sure this woman gets welfare and Medicaid and all that and still she had the wisdom I lacked --to Discover-Card some entertainment for her son that would stay in his brain and heart for the estimated 90 days of recovery they say he will need to spend in the hospital. For a young teenage boy with a wild heart, this is a life sentence. My son could not wait 90 seconds for a pancake. I forgot to ask his name. But at 7 this morning, scheduled surgery time, as I went to bed in my twisted world, this boy was in my Grace Hartigan room.

I keep getting these emails about the Obama health plan. Nothing is changing in my life except the bills rise, my doctors fail not just me but all of us. They have some stories I wrote on their website where no one will read them. Tim Geithner gets great health care. Give, they instruct me... Give. President Sarkozy collapses and it is world news. There is a 92-year-old Jewish man in my neighborhood who made women’s hats for many years… enough to pay his bills and take a few vacations. Now he is near-crippled not just by arthritis but by bad medicine. He is a veteran and gets care through the VA. I met the guy working out. That’s right.. using machines and bravely walking upright through the weight room, offering suggestions to me who uses these machines incorrectly. His foot is so painful and deformed, he told me he begged for an amputation 2 years ago. He’s received injections, pills… and last week he was sent to a young specialist who turned and twisted his foot to a point where he was unable to walk for 2 weeks. This man who endured wounds and shrapnel and 65 years in the garment district-- all of them with worsening congenital arthritis-- as a one-man show. Whose product graced the heads of fashionistas and church and synagogue-goers through their joy and grief. Where is his medal of honor? He asked me to have a coffee. He comes to the 92nd Street Y and exercises to distract him from his pain. He says he has a coffee in the lounge downstairs and sometimes falls asleep. Then he manages the 10 block walk home which can take him 90 minutes. 90. A magic number for me today. He smiles and his great old face is lit up. He is near-deaf and no one listens to him. Thank you, he said to me…thank you for talking to me. I can scarcely type these words.

‘Behind a door a boy is listening…’ This line, the origin of which I cannot place, keeps repeating in my head like a mantra today..along with the skeletons of words from Grace, from Frank O’Hara, from the boy with the hanger-spine who is being dismantled as we speak... from the old hatmaker who is maybe struggling to place the oversized converse sneaker on his foot so he can walk to another insulting medical appointment... from my Madeleine, who is drawing careful lines on old book pages and pasting and cutting things, alone. Of all the souls who don’t have cellphones and email and broadband and maybe not even cable or any television at this point.

How amazing to have had this name spoken over and over... when you are scolded, called, beckoned, awakened... whispered and longed-for during one of those nights of passionate bedlam which was the internet-less but connected New York art world in her more innocent time. Grace.

‘Find me, find me… I’m here in this room’ someone is singing in my head. Perhaps I am mad. Surely there will be some cure for this which is not in my health plan. Or God’s own.

Ipods and Benefit Cards

There’s this guy in my neighborhood with those arm crutches. He reeks of garlic and listens to NPR on some portable radio headphones. The few times I’ve overheard him he’s speaking about politics—maybe a Dennis Kucinich supporter. He has no observable handicap I can see—in fact he seems rather robust-- works out, no hint of a limp, often carries the crutches on one arm, gives me the eye and I give it back—that two dogs passing thing—the quick growl, slight rise of the lip-- just letting the other know…don’t even think about it. A bitter radical. Just over the hill…waiting for Medicare…maybe even pulling a disability scam on the MTA with those crutches, for the satisfaction of the half-price thing, sticking it to the system…yeah, that’s it, you cheap bastard.

Why does this guy bug me? Lately Writerless is acquiring this edge. A crust. Getting old-- crisping. Rarely accepting anything at face value. Maybe a good pint of American redblood replaced by something nasty.

I had to go to the ER last weekend…test the system which at its most shining is nothing less than rotten. I actually broke my foot, although the triage and admission staff relegated me to whiney white-bitch status immediately. I could tell. So I sat-- a little miserable. Huge families on welfare with the benefit cards—babies in strollers, aunts, uncles—like a party—all laughing, trading ipods, abusing the vending machines, filing in and out while I sat. No one even offered an ice-pack. I saw the diagnosis on the computer-screen: Sprained ankle. You go girl. You could sit all weekend with that one.

My hospital co-pay will be $50 if I’m lucky, and if I watch every move, I won’t owe more than a couple of hundred all told. For this --and the privilege of being last, I actually pay out-of-pocket $700 a month. Just for myself. Kids—with my musician’s income, get some state program-- great care, no money.

But for these families— those of the 400 pound aunt who forgot her albuterol, the fat girl who stubbed her toe, the baby with a slight fever--not a cent of co-pay. They each racked up maybe $3,000 for the State of New York while the unsick of them partied, consumed snacks and beverages, talked on their cellphones, told jokes and enjoyed a rent-free air-conditioned living-room for the night. There's even a decent film on the HD monitors. Kids running everywhere, screaming, jumping around, watching cartoons and playing completely unsupervised in the Pediatric ER waiting room. Heck, if one of them has an accident, they’re home-free here. And the women behind the glass-- the ones moving at 2 RPMs-- they ignored it all.

After 9 hours I somehow bypassed the front desk and went in. They claimed they’d called me hours ago….anyway, looked surprised when they saw the clean fracture on the film…and sent me home with another referral. Seems my insurance, unlike the free variety, doesn’t cover actual treatment in the ER. I’ll have to beg and plead and get additional electronic referrals to another free clinic which is the only place in this day that accepts my health insurance for which I pay maybe 1/3 of my annual income. 1/3. And I am just one slim asset away from the free kind. But I struggle and skimp and save and wear old clothes for this privilege. My kids hate me, I can barely afford basic cable, have no ipod or cell, and of course my $50 co-pay does not include use of the hospital phones to call someone to help me home because in my state of acute pain, I didn’t think to bring quarters. Vending machines are not an option for the likes of me. While the woman behind the glass is dispensing get-out-of-work-free notes to the families, because they were in the ER.

So on this eve of American Independence Day, I am looking for the meaning of a true American holiday. My teenager will be jet-skiing with his friends, dressed like a rich person and sipping lemonade on the South Hampton veranda of a brand-new mansion with a French name. Macy’s will be spending mega-millions on a fireworks display which could have fed the entire African continent. New York City will be spending more than the GNP of an average state on overtime for the beefed-up police force. I’ll be hobbling onto a stairless stage, docked $20 for making someone else set up my amplifier, going home on the train with my $100, thinking about freedom and independence. Thinking about these fat American families barbecuing steak they purchased with benefit cards, listening to their ipods and cellphones and enjoying the other fruits of their credit card debt, free American health insurance and instant disability payments because maybe they were too lazy to refill their free albuterol prescription.

Incidentally, the therapeutic boot-thing my foot requires is not covered and costs more than Prada, so I’ll rig up some old stiff-sole arrangement and hobble painfully on.

God Bless America. And Michael Moore.