Memory, Pane

At the East Harlem grocery store where I often shop there's a boy working there... a high school boy. He was huge-- medically obese, it is-- but gradually, over the course of the year, he's been put on weight-loss drugs and he's been shrinking.  By summer he was at some 'Ideal' weight, ironically the name of the market.  His face-- from a bloated, swollen balloon-- had become so handsome it was hard not to stare... utterly chiseled and beautiful.  I commented... he always gives me a silent greeting... on how completely transformed and wonderful he looks. It's extraordinary-- like a Cinderella thing.  The manager moved him closer to the front glass doors, as though like a 'host' he brought business in.

But lately, reminiscent of one of those reverse spells, or that movie where the De Niro character becomes communicative and intelligent and then reverts to catatonic incoherence, he has begun to grow again.  Oh no, I want to say,  because I relish seeing his beautiful face while I check out.  But it's becoming more and more apparent-- as though he accomplished something and now he's going back to his old silhouette.  Not much I can do or say... he knows, I know.  He could still play football, although I suspect he doesn't.

Seeing my friends age in this culture, it shocks me to see the facility with which people transform themselves... most for the good, or for what they think is improvement.  I mean-- I remember that age-- post-adolescence, maybe... when suddenly you see yourself-- a photograph or a reflecting shop-window-- and you think.. oh my, how did this happen?  Like the ugly duckling/swan syndrome... only some of us actually fall in love with our own image, or the power it creates, and tip to the edge of vanity or even narcissism.  It makes growing old that much tougher-- saying goodbye to our preferred version, like a kind of death.

On the rare occasions I confront a mirror it's near-impossible now to find that innate beauty I once took for granted. It's also difficult, at certain 'edges' of age, to recognize friends and neighbors.  An article recently proclaimed that one doesn't age gradually-- that there are two critical points at which one 'turns'. Of course there are variables.  

At the nursing home where I visit my neighbor there's a woman who sits at the threshold of her room in a wheelchair. She's quite old but her hair is professionally maintained and enviably luxurious.  While completely demented, she has the mannerisms of someone glamorous and elegant. Her hands move like birds; she often holds a towel which she twists and waves like a scarf... it's fascinating. What is going through her head? Somewhere she is in her prime, preening for an event, or attending a dinner party.  She literally bats her eyes occasionally, and then she is 'gone'... lost in some reverie.

More than my physical attributes, I worry about my brain.  It is apparent to me that I 'lose' names or titles or search for words with much more frequency than some years back.  My mother had a form of dementia that reduced her world to a kind of slow 8-ball, in my analysis, where occasional phrases would appear in the small octagonal window of her brain.  Most of these made no sense when she repeated or responded to their cues.  

Christmas windows have always been the highlight of the season for me.  Across the street growing up was a building with a large paned picture-window through which I could watch the family congregate or play cards or relax. They were Italian... they had a melodious four-syllable name in contrast to our American one... and they decorated for holidays with great fervor. Their backyard was filled with devotional marble statues of saints and angels and at Christmas the nativity scene spread across the front lawn. But each child-- ditto the neighbors, like me-- was allowed one of the 'panes' to decorate-- with Glass Wax-- you could stencil or draw or put glitter and streamers... the result was both garish and fantastic.  I'd wave to them at night... and pretend the window panes were a living advent calendar.  

This year I'm wavering-- decorate or not? I'm not fooling anyone here... I entertain rarely, and although I love my tree, it's an ordeal to get it in and take it out. Still, I feel as though I've let someone down, in a way. I watch these neighbors and friends desperately alter their faces and bodies.. for what?  To live the life they want?  To be the person they were in the 1980's now at this moment?  Some of them pay therapists-- even still, at the edge of 70-- to help them. They read books and hire personal trainers and visit estheticians... and still they seem to be missing something crucial. 

At this point, I can no longer really manage to renovate my apartment; like old bodies, we replace what is broken and essential... but to imagine I am anything besides ordinary suddenly seems pretentious. It is the content-- what I have placed here, what I collected-- that matters, as the content of my aging brain seems to increase in importance as its volume no doubt diminishes.

As a girl, I'd go across the street on Christmas afternoon to sample the exotic Italian edibles-- huge cookie-like cakes in the shape of animals with eggs inside, sometimes... angels and baby-Jesuses.  But being there was not nearly as enchanting as watching through the panes. That felt magical. 

Last night I watched The Great Beauty, an absolute masterpiece from Paolo Sorrentino. While my friends talk almost exclusively about the past, the film reminded me that there is nothing inherently terrible about nostalgia... as long as it comes without dementia, which for my mother was like a boat from which she could no longer gauge the distance to any shore. 

Things have surely gone missing-- people, some memories, undoubtedly, although as an exercise I lie in bed at night and name the students in the rows of desks from my third grade class, or all of my science teachers, chronologically.  I can no longer name the fifty-three Trollope novels I read in the 1990's.  We change, we atrophy, we grow... our past has so far outweighed our future it is like an ocean surrounding the tiny rock-island we are.  Personally, I have fallen in love with this life... whatever it becomes, what it has been, the enormity of what I have not seen, will never see. I was genuinely grateful on Thanksgiving for what I received versus what I gave.  It was enough, and God willing I will continue onward into the full holiday season, tree or no tree, to embrace the new personal analytic of being more observer than observed.

Hollow

Monday morning my television was left on, after a fantastic 5-hour World Series game… I was half listening to some evangelist rambling on about holy water and salvation which sounded absurd enough for me to take a look.  Here was one of those fake ministers whom I could swear had been indicted and mortified in another decade--- back on-screen with his bad hair-weave and dye job, a surgically enhanced blonde wife reading letters and testimonies with the emotional presence of a talking doll.  He was throwing away crutches, walking wheelchair patients around a huge room, choosing person after person to come to the front, cast off their pain and praise the power of the monthly sum they commit to this shyster for the promise of some God-backed pay-off.  How is this legal, and how are there numbers of people-- not actors, I assume, willing to participate in this scam?

It is Halloween.  The day dawned with a chill wind… children awaking with energy-- dreaming about their costumes.  Classes will not be so bad; teachers will forego homework… townhouses in my neighborhood are decorated with ghoulish puppets and spiderwebs-- a haunted real-estate fantasy.   Most everyone has their carved pumpkins and candles out, and piles of candy ready at the door.  Then we had a mid-afternoon incident… the city takes a bullet.   For the victims, who began this day innocently-- maybe even taking a personal day since we all get involved in trick-or-treating festivities, the parade-- this was a catastrophic synchronicity of geography.

I can't help wondering who these people are who execute heinous killings-- whether they are heartless ethical mutants passing as human beings, or maybe lost, confused children wearing a costume of evil someone has loaned them or given them like a kind of armor with which to manage the world.  Indoctrination-- brain-washing, initiation… creates monstrous murderous machines which have only physical human resemblance.  Like the tales of science fiction, they walk among us, drive cars, buy groceries… and then, the switch is thrown and their image is on all our screens and devices.

Our president, of course, as he does, used personal tragedy to promote his own bizarre agenda.  The man couldn't protect us from a mosquito, let alone the threat of terrorist-driven violence; this particular murderer is not even from one of the restricted countries on the Trump list, although he would have us believe this.  He has not a clue about psychology, about deep-seated resentments and human suffering, about children who grow up without proper protection, without dreams, exposed to horrific acts of war and often without any kind of stable home or haven.  He is a tiny man in a larger man's costume.

On the airport bus in Sweden last month, I sat behind a calm young couple on their way to some honeymoon or vacation junket.  She was wearing a powder-blue coat-- haven't seen or heard that color described since the 1960's…  he in a button-down and tie.   They were chattering and whispering-- like coloring-book illustrations of perfect good Swedes talking about the weather-- friends, new clothes-- innocent and so clean… the crease of his shirt, her pristine coat-- giggling and acting like grown-ups-- the epitome of normal-- the golden-rule standard.  Struggling myself with a tape-reinforced old carry-on bag, worrying about getting through customs with my home-made sandwich-- flying on the cheap-cheap-- no luggage, no meal, no water…  an old black-haired odd freak in my thrift-shop denim… I felt like a blot on the milk-white paper of homogenized Stockholm.

I imagined my perfect Swedes in my city taking the Circle Line tour, going to see Kinky Boots and staying at some Times Square Hotel. They'd visit Brooklyn, eat soul food at Sylvia's in Harlem, walk the High Line… and suddenly, pulling out my dog-eared James Baldwin and my notebook-- I started to pity them.  They are just people-- like most of us-- with jobs and little houses and furnishings and a coffee maker and maybe a dog… wearing the costume of normalcy.  All dressed up and nowhere really to go, because it occurs to me now, in this culture of Trump and Instagram and Twitter--- that we are all followers and post-its-- the subjects of our own blogs and photo-albums, but very few of us really know who we are.   So busy are we looking at  Facebook and dumping out on the galaxy-sized digital garbage pile, very few have taken the solitary and tough independent time to dissect and analyze ourselves old-school.

How did my generation evolve-- listening to the words of men like Martin Luther King who urged us to drive out hatred with love, to shun violence and to feel the oppression of others and stand up for their dignity when they could not?  Believing his words-- that we are all one, we must not be silent, we must think and care and do right, we must protect those who cannot protect themselves.  But he also encouraged us via action to become better people.   This is religion for me-- love and truth and compassion… not praying for a shiny new luxury car, or executing an act of human violence in the name of some distorted version of God.

On the sidewalks at dusk, throngs of children went on with their ritual--- ghouls and monsters, super-heroes and princesses, witches and wizards… terrorism did not stop our Halloween.  I wonder how many of these kids become their costume-- try on their character, melt their own little soul into the persona that is already formed and clear.  Tomorrow they will just be children again, although many of their parents will continue to wear the costume of hair-weaves and plastic surgery, having learned nothing of the lessons of my generation-- of the inside shining through the outside…of beauty of heart beating out the skin-deep kind.  We are judged these days by our instagram image, by our facade… the quick profile… and so many of us have lost our own judgment.  Witness the president we 'chose'.

My person-of-the-night award goes to the little Mexican girl dressed as a Pilgrim; with her orange plastic pumpkin-basket, she explained to me how Thanksgiving is about celebrating the immigrants, how she is learning to read even though her parents cannot, and how she will grow up to be an important American woman.  Her mother's shy ambivalent smile said it all.  I wanted to hug this girl, and to cry for her future among the Trumps and Harvey Weinsteins, among the privileged UES botoxed ladies and the corrupt hierarchy of American economics.  Be true to yourself, be kind to your sisters, I wanted to say, and you may still be a victim; you may be deported and disrespected and very poor.  In my permanent costume of poverty and human sympathy,  I went back upstairs to watch baseball.

Skin Deep

When I was young, I had perfect skin.  It meant nothing to me-- in fact, it had absolutely no currency in my life, was sort of an albatross that made it nearly impossible for me to become a punk-rocker outcast-type.  My older sister had acne.  She also had a slew of boyfriends and hiked her skirt way up when we left the house for school.  I wanted her skin.   She hated me for mine, and I would have traded in a second.  Acne would make me look older-- as would braces on my teeth, I thought.  People commented on my skin-- aunts and cousins--- the doctor.  When I went to buy make-up, even as a woman, the cosmetics salespeople would remark-- why do you need make-up?  You have perfect skin.  Lloyd Cole had a song about this.  I did nothing to deserve it-- ate plenty of chocolate and fries and smoked cigarettes-- but it remained, as it was.  Beauty's only skin deep, my mother used to say, and despite my flawless facial surface, I still believed my sister was way more attractive.

In the office of my Primary Care physician, a woman sits at the front desk and does intake.  The right half of her face is horribly deformed, as though it was burned or blown off in an explosion.  She is in her late 30's and it's tough to look at her.  She has no functioning eye or mouth; the left side is marked with some kind of warty growths, but somewhat normal.  Her voice is steady and courageous and sweet; if I were blind I might imagine her as beautiful.  I commend my doctor for hiring her because she is unsettling, physically.  As for her dignity-- I cannot say enough.  She is well dressed and stylish from the neck down.  Her hair is neat and pretty; her hands are lovely and efficient.

When my son was born, he was adorable and perfect.  I couldn't stop admiring him, especially since I felt I didn't deserve to have this baby; I hadn't planned this, and my lifestyle for the first 3 months of pregnancy was a little crooked and a-maternal.  His infant skin was so tender he couldn't tolerate any animal products-- wool, fur-- anything besides soft natural cottons.  It was as though his surface was a metaphor for my heart; here I was-- a new mother-- a protector-- and suddenly I felt stripped and raw and on the verge of not just tears but utter emotional collapse at the slightest hint of tragedy or sadness.  Maybe this is what they call postpartum depression.  I was a single mother and utterly enchanted with my baby; there was absolutely no room for self-inspection or analysis.  I was too busy trying to remember all the little infant things I had never learned and too absorbed in managing his care while I worked and kept my life on the level.  But in caring for another being, I learned the depth of compassion.

As a young woman I fell in love with a black man.  Our attraction had nothing to do with color, and his strangeness had more to do with cultural rather than racial differences.  Sometimes at night, I awoke and admired the beautiful contrast of his dark, strong arm draped across my body.  His skin had a different feel and smell and taste.  In those days, some people in some locales didn't appreciate our marriage and our presence as a couple.  The differences fascinated me; in the end we separated, but we both learned things about appearance and acceptance.

My skin is no longer perfect; few things about me are pretty; we enter the autumn and winter of our lives and our human foliage begins to fall away.  Many of my women friends fight this process with injections and treatments; their medically-enhanced beauty is truly skin-deep and temporary, but it suits them, and it doesn't bother me.  Nor does the economic ability to do such things.  Money, I have discovered, is a little skin-deep as well.  It is temporary and may create a sense of security, but people still get ill and have accidents and mishaps, and while they may be comfortable and well cared-for, their lives don't seem to be more valuable.  They do give more to charity-- as do people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, etc… but this kind of billionaire philanthropy seems a bit skin-deep and cavalier-- it is acknowledged and rewarded, but do they suffer or sacrifice to do this?  They all seem to drive expensive cars, live in enormous houses, collect things and wear rolexes.  They do little more than balance their tax burden, while being applauded for stunning generosity.

As for my friend who is ravaged by cancer, she grows thinner every week.  Her skin is translucent and stretched over the contours of her face in a way that is startling. She resembles an anorexic; her once long, graceful limbs are spindly and twiggy;  the bones of her knees are knobby and prominent beneath her loose pants.  I feel I can see through her skin into her soul; her veins are greenish and sickly.  She is skeletal and taut-- both old and young, like an underdeveloped fetus.  She walks with bitter resignation, daring anyone to comment.  I told her she looked pretty the other day; she had on a purple knit cap and her features were feverish and her skin was flushed from the cold.  She was furious and screamed at me… this is not a word that applies to her physical or mental state, she warned me.  Do not use this language in my presence.   I wept-- I am not tough-- I am permeable and fragile.  I wear my heart everywhere; without tattoos, my skin betrays me, my tears are ready and I am unarmed.  I will not tell her again that she has acquired this sort of porcelain-doll facade-- and while her eyes have lost their spark and are glazed and empty from pain and the drugs, there is a kind of quiet holy dignity in her long-suffering expression-- and after all the treatments, the side-effects and the rashes, ironically-- she has perfect skin.