7A (You-logy)

My upstairs neighbor passed away this morning. The backstory here is deep and the echo of her absence will resonate.  She was a great, strong woman who broke ground as an editor and a fashion executive. When I moved into my apartment she was about the age I am now; I was a young single mother and as the coop Board president, she took me under her political wing.  For over twenty-seven years I felt protected.  As she aged and became a widow, we were just two women sharing stories and inspiration.  I trusted her wisdom. Last week she turned 99-- a milestone for anyone, and for those who think they want to live past 100, well... it's not easy.  Trying to process this today, it is quite a life-- begun in the 1920's, conquering the city, managing a marriage, career and family, and hardest of all-- witnessing one's own decline and deterioration into old age.  I participated in the last quarter of her life; the rest was a narrative I treasured.  

This morning the courtyard pigeons were in a state.  A woman claimed there was a white dove on the roof,  as though escorting her spirit. I'm not sure of these things. For me this day was long and rough.  We dread the absence of certain people... and it comes for all of us, no matter how we resist. We interpret signs, we pray, but we are not certain.  She herself was not religious; in the end I'm not sure what remains of one's spirit aside from the memories we carry. Most of her accomplishments were achievements, not product. There are no grandchildren to take her legacy forward-- no judgment at this moment. 

For several years she handed me down various articles of clothing-- vintage Prada, iconic expired fashion symbols.  Some of them-- the black ones-- I wore onstage until they almost disintegrated.  It occurs I have a pair of her lace-up boots that barely fit; the discomfort of wearing them this week will feel like a hair shirt, like a slightly painful reminder of mourning. She was not sentimental.  

We shared a passion for literature, and of the New York School of painting which she'd witnessed first-hand.  She knew many of the artists whose work I admire and who passed on long before I got here. Recent years robbed her of her sight, and her hearing was challenging. She tried her best to keep up with news and museum developments. The current fashion world had forgotten her nearly entirely; her generation had mostly disappeared, but in her day she was on the A-list of events like the Met Gala. 

Processing the breadth of a life like this is overwhelming. Nearly thirty years behind her, I already sense that I have entered a kind of era of obsolescence. Despite the weight of what I've seen and done and read, my existence has little present impact.  We are daily fading into the past.  Some of us have our wrinkles injected and our skin renewed, and maybe delude ourselves with a kind of narcissism that we are still relevant. Not that simple.

I've had a recurring dream... set in the long corridors of a building like the Vatican... an empty museum or a kind of mausoleum. I wander these temporal hallways--  the abandoned niches in the wall stripped of monuments and medals. I can almost smell a kind of familial dust, as though the air is thick with cremated moments. Where are the people, I am wondering?  Where are the sculpted images and painted altarpieces? The emptiness is palpable; it is like an architectural enigma.

Demonstrations yesterday were comforting in Manhattan.  They were peaceful and the solidarity and diversity of the crowd was reassuring. I felt nostalgic and safe, despite the menacing presence of armed policemen everywhere.  The thousands of handmade signs and messages were creative and passionate and human. If something happened to one or many of us-- well, our lives had a momentary meaning, a mission. I felt lifted and hopeful.  

Back uptown I ran into a woman who confessed how lonely she was; she'd never found a partner, shunned online dating apps, and just felt passed over. I tried my hardest to encourage her-- to volunteer, enlist somehow, not to sit and wait for life to disappoint her.  My aging neighbor was a graphic reminder of how precious our moments can be, how difficult the latter part of one's life.  Rage, rage, I wanted to urge her. But the news of this one sole death seemed devastating today. For each of the plane crash victims-- the Iranian, Israeli and Gaza casualties-- there is a hole in a loved one's heart.  One day soon we will all become the hole in someone's heart... or at least a brief obituary, an alumni memoriam, a Facebook post. 

My neighbor lived in her apartment for over 60 years; she was married here... her children were born and grew here.  Inevitably the place will be stripped of the medical aids and the old books and vinyl-- the furniture, the charming improvements her husband crafted.  It will be emptied and renovated and a new family will move in. I was once a young family here; I've moved up the ranks to become one of the senior tenants. Time moves on, and as I commented in a piece long ago, New York is like a Grand Hotel-- people move in and out, and we can't hold onto our personal geographical souvenirs. 

I suppose the ultimate lesson of death is the value of life.  We get a huge grace, most of us... we waste time, we squabble and complain and pine.  Some of us are gone too soon; some of us linger too long and become the burden of others.  And some of us, like the man in 11A, are granted an epiphany-- a near-miracle. How to solve these things? To live and die more or less of 'old age' is another lucky variation of the plane-crash narrative; we all end up the same.  I know my neighbor loved life enough to hang in through the challenges of aging-- the aches and pains and indignities... I, too, love this life too much.  Just to sit in the park and watch people-- to see the sunset across the reservoir... yesterday's bagel and a home-made coffee-- a library book.  To sense the passage of time and its irreversible cruelties and kindnesses-- it's more than I deserve, I think sometimes, but I'm determined to earn the privilege of staying and not quite ready to leave, God willing.

Crossroads

I began this blog in early 2007.  I'd been ghost-writing cd reviews for a time, pretending to be a cynical teenaged harsh critic of music, and a British 'zine was paying a bit for my wallfly's-view of the post-mortem New York City scene-- the death of culture as we knew it, and some personal venting pieces.  The 'zine was bought out by some online publisher and by the time euros converted to pounds then dollars, I actually owed my bank for the wire.

A friend of mine at the time suggested I enter the online word-army: you'll catch like wildfire, she assured me, and before you know it you'll have book-deals and industry followers.  So here I am... I began with a bit more humor, ended up pleasing myself occasionally, accumulating readers-- sharing on Facebook-- peaking out at something like 1,000-1,200 a month.  No, I did not allow advertisements or cheap add-ons.  It's clean-- no web-pollution nor even the stock self-promotion and hyper-links I am constantly advised to weave in.  I sat down and fired off every two weeks or so.  I felt briefly 'completed'.  For close friends it was like one of those newsletters of which you send multiples at Christmas, but more frequent.  They could 'check-in' at their leisure.

This month, after a few early-November flashes of inspiration, I've been dragging my feet here.  I have always used myself-- my brutally honest self-- to gauge the barometric reading of the general public.  Admittedly,  I can almost feel the cold shoulder of viewers and on the rare occasions I check analytics, there are days where they log single-digit site visitors.  It is not lack of audience but the sense that I am burdening my readers with an adult version of homework.  Admittedly, my early pieces were more like stand-up routines-- funny and a little cruel; anonymity was the signature and I slogged quite a few mud-pies behind the disguise, to my own amusement.

Now I'm quite the confessed author of these 320 posts.  I own them, for better or worse.  They've become personal and emotional-- autobiographical and adult.  My life bleeds through the pores of these essays; perhaps it is the winding-down of my activity-career, the increasing ratio of rumination to action that has slowed their trajectory. Maybe they are simply weighted by this elephant of aging that has dogged so many of my old partners-in-crime and turned them from stage-divers to front-porch rockers.

Between the impeachment hearings, the democratic debates, the million-billion television offerings, mountainous piles of even decent literary output and journalism-- there are not enough seconds to eat, breathe, have a coffee... let alone pursue the kind of human drama that used to propel us.  My family has grown up or died off; I have few obligations there, but many friends who have become needy and solitary.  Our days, as my peers well know, seem to fly by; I am far less efficient and rarely make it through my lists.  I am easily side-tracked and actually enjoy the distractions of phone calls from ex-husbands, high-school classmates; I listen to the gossip of neighbors and the petty heartaches of schoolgirls.

Incidentally, the friend who suggested this blog turned out to be a lying drug-user whose sobriety I'd defended in court.  She was not only a husband-swindler but a pathological kind of manipulator who when I quietly distanced, inserted herself in my own family and created all kinds of bizarre twisted scenarios.  Needless to say, her prediction suffered the same fate.  She, I'm certain, has reinvented herself and managed to use the internet and the 'industry' for her own monetary gain.  Not so the victims of her treachery.  No worries, as my son and his generation reply to almost anything from an excuse to an apology to a car crash.

Will anyone miss me if I delete myself from this site?  If I propel myself into obsolescence, or simply extinguish the tiny LED match-flame that has become a bi-monthly stop-off for a dwindling few?  This year has been tiring; perhaps I am just weighted with the reality that my enthusiastic little projects receive little remuneration-- that I must hire marketing specialists in order to see my investments returned, that there is a formula:  You must pay to play, my dear...  when I thought that people would simply come-- even a few... and it would be all right.

No one promises anything in this life... it's not that I'm disappointed-- we're well beyond that.  It's just that I feel apologetic simply posting these things, and the last thing I need, in this phase of my life, is to be sorry to any version of 'public'-- to 'beg' for audience, as people do-- to Instagram myself onto some stage where people have agreed in advance to applaud.

So forgive me if I fail my commitment here; nearly 13 years is respectable... and it could be a phase; it could just be the moon or the cloud-cover that prevents me from observing tonight's meteor shower-- me who looks for signs on sidewalks and hears melodies in train wheels, who feels tonight as though I'm merely exercising some writer's muscle and occupying stagnant space rather than shooting across someone's horizon like a star. Maybe it's okay to just close your eyes.

T Wrecks

Has anyone taken the train at 4 AM lately? The population is a pretty accurate socio-economic profile of New York. There are the few Mexican restaurant workers brown-bagging it on the way uptown from their below-minimum-wage restaurant jobs; one or two homeless black men monologuing away; the token Untouchable shrouded in hefty bags with various carts chock full of cans, bottles, rags, newspaper and garbage asleep in the safe florescent warmth of an MTA semi-private-- several square meters space around him for the stench. Next but not least, there are the straggling, drunk, xanaxed club girls--- Balenciaga shoes, Prada bags-- slumming it on the 1 or the 6 train up from ecstasy to their parental-sponsored apartments on the Upper East..cellphones misplaced, wallets lost. Loud they are, these girls… either from the habit of talking on cellphones over the music, or just drunk. Some of them have jumped turnstiles--- the cops will just smile…because their credit cards are scattered on some dance floor like a post-modern collage. The train is an adventure. They are bold and unafraid. They have been date-raped and live to tell.

Oh— of course there is yours truly, the observer-- diligently dragging my guitar and whatever the chef could spoon into an aluminum take-out container for late-night sustenance— protecting the girls, representing the disappearing working class-- entertaining myself with the homeless mime-acts which are at least original compared to whatever is waiting at home on late-night cable. I prefer my reality MTA-TV. Last night this guy was actually sticking a toothpick all the way into his ear… and then checking it for… God knows. Much itching and scratching and hair-picking, shoe and sock removal and muttering about B.B. King. How could he have known? The random psychic synchronicities at 4 AM. Trains stop at this hour for long minutes; no one seems to complain; the girls twist their hair and remove their Balenciagas. Between 59th and 96th no one boards. We ride on; the toothpick man applauds each stop...has learned not to take motion for granted.

The rest of the regular New Yorkers are home passing their Ambien-laced troubled hours dreaming about collection agents and looming mortgage debt. About how to get their kids a reasonable education, about bedbugs, their dwindling pensions-- the consequences of corporate takeovers for the mere padding of these club girls’ family fortunes. About the looming comfort of suicide when middle age is lowering their earning capacity like Bear Stearns share-values. About getting through the next day.

So here we are in New Year’s Eve. I’m off tonight while New York parties on. I’ve asked a few casually what their plans are….of course the parents of these Prada girls are off in St. Barts’ so the apartments will be well-stocked with stumbling young adults. The upscale restaurants are full, the tourists are having a last hurrah. The cute kid with dreadlocks who works at my gym is thinking about his new baby, and how he can move from cleaning bathrooms to getting enough schooling to learn how to use a computer. The Africans who work at my neighborhood thrift store… they’re doing the overnight, taking inventory and re-plastering the leaking ceiling. Smiling. The doormen on Park Avenue… they’ll be reaping. They compete for these nights. It’s warm… I should take advantage and go see the ball drop —one more time. That phrase gets me.

I miss the old East Village. I miss the artistic psychos and the trend-setters and dirty brilliance. Edgy film-makers were not red-carpet-ready but wearing smelly jeans and scuffed motorcycle boots. Drugs came in rolling papers and needles… alcohol in brown bags and barely-washed glasses. People were painting and singing things. Using coins to call their boyfriends from phonebooths and slamming heavy receivers in emotional pain.

My son is out--- his first legal-drinking New Year’s Eve. He is in that small window where suddenly he is old enough to screw the Victoria’s Secret models and his future is like a department store free-for-all. Where he doesn’t realize one post-partying day he’ll wake up and this year’s model will look young and maybe his own face looks a little puffy and his hair is losing that teenage shine.

Four hours to go in this year. I feel like sitting it out and feeling time. Watched the eclipse last week in the cold air… took a while, but that old moon came through unscathed. Like nothing. No scars, no memories. For us here it’s all running together now… the acceleration of the future, the boulder getting bigger, rolling downhill breakneck and you can’t stop it--- you can maybe only comment, yell Happy New Year out of the rear window as the 2011 train comes speeding by and almost takes your breath away heading for 3000, 4000…no brakes on the present-- only you and I —we are already relics of the new year, ruins of the old… our photos on pathetic Facebook while those assholes bank our loneliness, our pasts trying to reconcile with the present, losing the future, eclipsed.

To all those who died at 27: you fooled no one. Still, we salute you, we the sad scanners of our own obsolescence. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Or would we?

Auld Lang Syne.