Handicapped

I recently overheard my neighbor and his friends discussing their golf handicaps.  I've heard this term used re: horse racing and it always confused me.  When I was young, the phrase 'Hire the handicapped' was bantered around. There were also ranks of parking spaces designated exclusively for these so-called unfortunates with the wheelchair icon painted on pavement.  More recently the word has been designated insulting.  Even 'disabled' is used with great care. 

It's a weird word. I remember reading somewhere it came from 'cap in hand', a reference to street beggars in older times who often displayed (or faked) disabilities to collect alms in a hat.  Whatever. It's become distasteful.  It's used with a kind of irony among my friends who are suffering the indignities of illnesses and aging.  One friend not only copes daily with the devastation of a brain tumor, but has lost the use of her hand.  Another has not quite recovered from hip surgery... another wrist surgery; then there are musicians' hand issues, drummers' spinal woes, general anxiety and depression... cardiac problems. We are an aging generation... we have used and abused ourselves in various ways.  

I am sympathetic; I've been lucky to survive and recover.  Two weeks ago I had an accident-- not life-threatening but enough to limit my usual freedoms. I've become, in a temporary way, handicapped, as my friends joke... and it's jokable, not permanent, unworthy of a special parking space or license plate-- or hopefully not.  

But I've been watching a good deal more television.. football, taking in the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce phenomenon which I'm sorry to say makes me less fond of the Chiefs.  I'd like to see an underdog in the Super Bowl, despite the political and social media feeding frenzy this celebrity serendipity has caused.  I mean, if she changes the election, like Oprah did in 2008, well and good.  But for me it's enough-- the money, the endless athlete's endorsements and influencing... the massive payments in addition to the fortune they are paid to play which makes the heroes of my era look like middle-class losers. 

And these endless boring game shows-- with second-rate celebrity hosts and guests and absurd criteria and rules... who is watching this stuff?  It just seems desperate and forgettable.  

I'm reading Septology-- the seven-part masterpiece of this year's Nobel-winning author, Jon Fosse.  He's quintessentially Norwegian and for the last decades I've considered Scandinavia my second home. I've left my heart there-- a couple of times, not to mention a beloved bass guitar waiting for me to tour again. Anyway, it's a wonderful winter read. The snow... the small towns of Norway-- the fjords, the boats, the childhood reminiscences. The narrator is a painter-- a loner who has suffered losses, but manages to find a kind of redemption in his work which I can almost see, somehow.  And his quiet obsession with religion, his daily coming to terms with what is God-- in his art, in his simple way of life.  It's sublime.

My temporary injury and this novel remind me of what has been lost-- and how we go on, we find our lives and our meaning day by day, reinventing our path to accommodate the normal indignities of age, the diminishing exterior 'light' of our presence as the years pass.  And still, we find some spirit-- some determination-- we befriend the present and reintroduce the past like an old boyfriend who was amazing but no longer serves.

For many of us, this reveals and highlights our so-called handicaps. Some of us become defined by this alone.  But for others, we begin to see the less inspiring narratives of our culture as the true handicapped-- the banal, silly, petty, appearance-obsessed, botox and Wegovy-dependent overpaid housewives, non-achieving but omnipresent celebrity image-makers whose contributions are well celebrated but are anything but world-changing. 

Today I pray for my distressed and disabled friends.  For me I have the blessing of choosing the option of rehabilitation-- of acceptance, of continuing to exist with some kind of muse pulling me along, coaxing and cajoling.. a deepened sense of what remains, of God in my small universe, whatever that means... of life... cap in hand not for pity but for reverence and awe. With grace I intend to recover from this small setback and shine as I can in this flawed and aging skin I've been so generously granted, God willing. 

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.

Infinite Jest

The last few days I've spent in a sort of limbo haze.  While the weather has been deceptively summer-nostalgic, the news is terrifying and coldly discouraging.  Halloween is a mere hours away-- the costumed celebrators on the street seem oddly misplaced, and subdued.  As usual, it's everyone's opportunity to either hide inside a disguise or become the incarnation one has always craved.  Or feared.  

Down the block two of my neighbors were dressed today as a priest and a nun.  For some reason it was not amusing.  I'm too much of a Sunday sucker to cancel the urge to slightly kneel or cross myself in the presence of a holy robe.  I need this more than ever. The Jews may have had a September Day of Atonement, but Christians still have their weekly opportunity to clear their hearts.  The hourly bells remind me of my responsibility.  In the city, the sound of traffic and the sirens muffle their quiet melody.

In Manhattan most of us blend together.  Few wear their beliefs as a daily costume, and it's difficult without signs or flags to distinguish Palestinian sympathizers from Zionist demonstrators.  And all of us mourn the missing-- the dead and wounded-- the innocent.  In the preface to Election Day a palpable pall hangs over us all-- a kind of looming judgement.  We are both obliged and we are helpless.  While we freely protest and profess our allegiances, the fabric of our country is threadbare and shopworn. 

As a kind of preparation for the Oppenheimer film I'm still reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb.  It's a little terrifying to consider the options and political climate of a sort of 'winning' America at the end of World War II.  Not for me to judge the harsh decisions of 1945, but to better understand the roots of the Cold War that defined my childhood, and mushrooms into the difficult narratives that face our world today.  With all our technology and science, I have less faith in the capacity of this world to find some kind of balance.  Boundaries, threats, political greed and bullying blur the lessons of globalism and humanity.  We are once again at some brink-- several brinks. It interrupts our sleep.

Personally, I've had a week of long conversations-- phone calls from close friends, ex husbands... family.  They feel confessional and intimate... some necessary issues to face-- illness, deaths, decisions... but some simply a kind of need to unburden ourselves and share a personal moment.  At my age I'm so aware of the significance of time-- it both slows and quickens, and I suffer over hours lost, or a day without any output. There's so much to read, and to learn... and then there is football-- the World Series.  I have nothing against Taylor Swift but I prefer her on the entertainment pages, as an option-- not a newsworthy topic.

I can't help resenting the time-wasting 'panning' for information nuggets the media has required of us-- the massive sea of self-serving posts that blind and distract us like Halloween costumes on a subway. It's hard to know not just what is real, and harder to see what is right.  This takes a toll.  Even the pandemic which has shrunk to a lower priority level, still insists on some kind of daily media real estate. 

In the midst of yet another utterly senseless mass killing, the pressing migrant issues which the city is visibly wearing, a young teenage boy drowned in the East River; a man tried to jump from a bridge.  On the West Coast tonight, the actor Matthew Perry ended his life in a tub of water.   

While I never watched Friends, I am aware of the actor's long and public struggle with substances-- with emotional and mental challenges- -with happiness and disappointment and things that most of us don't get to think about, because we are busy surviving-- providing for children, riding a bus to freedom and opportunity, or fighting for our lives.  And still, this news shakes our human core-- the very celebrity largesse of it-- the way we all sigh and gasp and feel sad. 

The utter horror of the first nuclear bombings is beyond human comprehension of terror-- beyond the bloody, gratuitously cruel and violent Halloween movies, a genre of which I could never really fathom a purpose.  The aftermath and the historic future which followed seems to be rife with parallel issues, a world which is so uber-informed and so widely ignorant.

I read an article this morning written by one of David Foster Wallace's ex-girlfriends.  He was wracked with emotional issues, depressions, suicidal behaviors.  Some of them manifested in his work.  Many of us relate to these cultural heroes to whom we refer in solitary moments, like a dark room.

The church of Sunday, for those like me who are fortunate enough to be out of harms way, is a blessing in itself.  I file away the confessions of others, alongside those of my own, realizing I have become, as was suggested of David Foster Wallace, a lesser curator of loneliness.  I wander the rooms of other thinkers who were more clever and deeper than I, with a kind of universal prayer that somehow their lessons and failures will rise to the surface of our daily fare of global disappointments, that they will penetrate and become a window onto the blacker rooms of this moment.

Tarkovsky Unbound

As the snow began falling last night, I watched Andrei Rublev in its uninterrupted magnificent entirety, grace to TCM which like a kind of benevolent media-goddess allows me to view spectacular things in random offerings at 3 AM.  Reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in winter months has been a kind of life-habit for me; the concept of war in frigid landscapes-- the freezing soldiers and the blood-stained snow-- is uber-horrifying.  Given the tensions on the Ukrainian border, the vicious attacks of the Tatars and Russians seemed poignant and relevant.  How greed of all kinds has scarred the dignity of mankind... 

Coming up from the 6 train at Union Square this morning, it occurred to me that it was a day like this when the beloved Charles Otis slipped on the subway stairs at 125th Street and broke his neck.  No battle, no attack... just a random tragic accident that ended his drumming and shortened his story.  No responsibility from the city; apparently, when a snow event is ongoing, there is no accountability for a fall.  Be cautious, drummers and musicians, I whispered under my breath; we cannot afford to lose another.  

It was another day like this that my young father, closed in behind the French doors of the den, covered in newspapers and heavy with the burden of a young family, drank himself into some kind of hospital-worthy state.  I remember piling up some record albums as a step-stool, peering in through the glass door windows at my handsome Dad sprawled on the sofa, high-ball glass in hand, football on the TV console.  Don't bother him, my Mom warned; I was concerned.  My father's parents came from Russia-- one from Ukraine... they settled in upstate farmland and weathered the tough winters with stoicism and bitterness.  Maybe their genetics affected his dark winter heart... they were long gone by the time I was born. 

The blessing of snow, like a consecration-- like temporary forgiveness-- of course reminds us of the joy of cancelled classes, of pond-skating and hill-sledding on a weekday afternoon... hot cocoa and mother-love... bundling up my own son to stand among Christmas trees on Park Avenue and survey a silent city-- the drifts and piles untouched and inviting.   In those days, children prayed for snow.

My older neighbors are more shut in than ever.  They fear falls on the ice, do not navigate well in the crosswalks.  My younger friends fear for my safety.  I am thinking about Ukraine where a friend tells me most of the people are just continuing life obliviously, while I am somehow on high alert.  Part of my sleep-deprived head is still in the medieval monastery with the noble Andrei who refused to speak and paint as penance for the murder he committed, albeit to save an innocent.  

The concept of religion-- the passion and the commitment-- is at heart this allegiance to cause.  The issue of sin seems archaic and irrelevant but our whole culture functions on a level of human blasphemy that is appalling.  The disregard for consequences-- the institutional disregard for the less consequential... when everywhere we are reading about massive financial accumulation, bloated celebrity trivia... it goes on and on.  What did I do after the film?  I watched tennis.  Guilty.  But Andrei, as a symbol of the impassioned and oriented artist, broke my heart.  I had to bring myself a few centuries forward.  

Like so many things, our urban snow episode will have a mere proverbial fifteen minutes of fame before it is blackened and annoying.  Not so on the Ukrainian borders where it will persist and fail to deter the military threat.  I wish Putin could watch Andrei just once this week... I am not sure if these world leaders have permeable hearts and care about art beyond the massive monetary value and national prowess of the Hermitage treasures.  I am not sure whether the churches and frescoes move their emotions the way the old painters intended.  The Botticelli Man of Sorrows achieved 45 million dollars at auction this week; some funds at least will have to be moved.  Was it competitive greed for a prized trophy or true passion?  Tarkovsky gives us long minutes at the end of the film... where he lets us  see the images, in heavenly color... to leave us with some kind of message, some kind of epiphany-- a warning, about killing... about God and man and art and vision.  It seems so simple-- faith and beauty and the choices we make.  The living.  The snow. Amen.

Fourth Prize

Independence Day.  241 years after the fact, the meaning changes.  I am wearing a safety pin on my black T-shirt, supposedly symbolic of my sympathy toward all genders, religions, ethnicities… you are safe with me.  Excepting, of course, those that profess bigotry, hatred, prejudice, exclusion… It is still alarming to me to find traitors among my circle of musicians, as though musical talent guarantees some sort of humanistic tolerance and empathy… and doesn't it?  Are you listening, God?

Actually, I often wear a safety pin because my clothes are tattered and torn; my sewing machine was repaired by a Chinese man in a tiny garage filled floor to ceiling with junk who swore technical mastery of my 1970's Swedish brand but failed to honor his promise despite the nine months of service and my additional monthly payments.  I believed in him.  The fact that he scarcely spoke English only made my faith stronger; somehow I make assumptions that immigrants have way more passion and dedication to the American dream than our birth-citizens who seem more likely these days to pledge daily allegiance to the Apple logo and little else.

Walking through Central Park in near-perfect weather, there was an unusual sense of tranquility… the birds were louder than the cars; Mexican and Puerto Rican families barbecuing and sharing… children playing in the grass… tourists headed to Brooklyn for the fireworks later… up here people are enjoying a holiday, trying not to think of politics and patriotic complicity.

I no longer understand America… the meaning, the immigrants giving speeches about liberty and opportunity that no longer 'ring'.   The bells of freedom, like the bells of St. Martin's church, are in need of repair.  We are like a mis-diagnosed country, the victim of our own philosophical health-care emergency.  Not to mention an early-Alzheimer's epidemic, because no one seems to even remember the melodies that are being recycled, scarcely a decade later.  Where are the lessons learned?  They are archived somewhere digital eons before the 'cloud' of recent invention which is bloated beyond galactic proportion with trivial bits of cultural and personal narcissism.

What will future archaeologists find?  Where are our fossils?  The detritus of our own waste-- unrecyclable plastics and packaging-- corpses and buried secrets from the hideous wars and crimes of warped humanity?  Where is our goodness buried?

Recycling is a good thing in the wake of our wasteful ravaging of this planet… but cultural recycling?  Where is our history, our memory?  Man in his heyday invented writing, to record for posterity things that happened, things that were invented-- instructions, testimonies-- memorials.  Most of us know how to read, but we ignore the important documents of history in favor of entertainment and froth.  How many of us have piles of books by our bed and dedicate time to deciphering ideas and digesting text?  We have televisions-- we have phones; we have instagram and Facebook.  Few lessons are learned here.

In our day, we have invented all kinds of things-- we have created chemicals and microbes; we have changed DNA and bred flowers and dogs.  We have diagnosed strange diseases, chronicled epidemics--- and yet we do not have cures.  We build skyscrapers and house thousands of people in a small space; and still, when calamity strikes, we cannot save these people.  We invent weapons of mass destruction… we fight wars of ideas, but we kill and injure; we cannot spare the innocent victims of these weapons.  We do not really know how to solve our global problems.  Are we independent, any of us?  Do we think independently and make our own decisions?  We rely on our technology and do not think for ourselves.  Somehow we have en masse elected as our national leader a man whose ignorance  is impressive and who could barely survive a day without a network of staff making decisions and executing procedure.  It is a flaccid state of affairs…

Rereading the Declaration of Independence which I am motivated to do after pondering the state of our nation this July, I am baffled that many of the original principles seem to be underknown and disrespected by the priorities of the current presidency.  Are we so codependent and selfish that we cannot look around us and prioritize humanity over material and economic gain?  Are we so shallow that we no longer read or remember any historic lessons?  How many Americans can name Beyonce's new twins and cannot identify 90% of the countries on an unlabeled map of Africa?

Of course, we have our phones; we have Google maps and Alexa and Siri.  We do still use our thumbs, but for many of us, we don't retain numbers and names; we don't wrestle with ideas or walk from place to place but take the physical and mental uber.   As far as history is concerned, we seem to welcome remakes of Hollywood movies and epics that succeeded once; someone seems to believe that massive budgets and contemporary celebrity actors will improve on the original, even though these actors' names will disappear from the horizon in a few telescoped years.  The lessons of history are absorbed in the collective Alzheimer's of our society which is so busy streaming and amassing data that it has forgotten its own origins, and sacrificed the independence of its brain, once the shining crown of Man.

We believe in God, so many of us…  but is religion another excuse for laziness? How many of us fall back on tenets and cliches and fail to have faith in our own ability to think with clarity?  We change our bodies and faces, we are obsessed with style, and yet we rarely spend effort to change our minds.  The tragedy of dementia affects us so deeply, yet here we are, daily, failing to protect or invest our most valuable asset.  Think about it… in the fast-fading afterglow of twilight's last gleaming...

Hunters and Collectors

Like most writers, or maybe preachers… there's a running sort of monologue in my head… I walk, I ride subways… and this undervoice, this commentary… usurps my ear, and occasionally escapes in a snide remark that I swear I am not responsible for… my 'writerless' companion, my simultaneously better and evil twin.  I am a collector-- of voices, of snapshots I will never take-- and she is the critic, the mouth--even when I look down at the sidewalk, she reminds me, she spooks and taunts me…

I still pick up change… tiny treasures on the street intrigue me-- someone else's accident that intersects with my random existence-- the cosmic coincidence thing.  Something I've noticed: people in Harlem don't pick up coins.  Like that woman on the train that brushed herself off when she realized some silver had leaked out… and yet, these Fifth Ave. eccentrics in my hood-- with doormen and drivers--- they will stoop for a dime….maybe not a penny, but a dime.  That's their boundary.  Me?  I'll investigate a worthless earring, an old book, a penny.

For some reason on my walk today I thought about the story of some artist in Chicago-- a Henry Darger type--- or maybe it actually was Henry himself who was a hoarder of great renown, and the quintessential undiscovered artist.  Anyway, he saved up bits of string, and wound them into a ball which eventually, like some Magritte fantasy, dwarfed everything else in the room, made it impossible to enter or leave-- essentially 'ate' his world.

Henry died of stomach cancer; among the thousands of items in his apartment-- including the incredible, magical artwork and writings--  were hundreds of empty Pepto Bismol bottles.  He was a collector.  Most artists, I have noticed, are collectors.  We find treasures where others do not; we create art out of people's leftovers and leavings.  We see heaven in an empty bottle, Jesus in a synchronicitous song lyric, relief and comfort in an old poem.  For some of us, there are levels of discretion-- a bit of filtering that maybe true geniuses like Henry lacked.

On the other side of the field there are those who give things up-- those for whom loss is simply a non-notable occurrence--- like a meal.  In fact, these people probably couldn't tell you what they had for lunch.  I admire their lack of sentimentality-- their efficiency.  They are like a cup with a hole--- everything passes through, they acquire and delete in equal measure, they do not mourn or notice the things that keep me awake nights.  They try not to feel; some of them are extremely successful and clever.  Maybe they have figured out how loss is the end product of this life, in a way, and have learned how to manage this.  Waste management.  They are like dogs, in a way.  They wag their tale when they are being acknowledged, but they don't worry about their death-- or yours.

So I am a collector-- an intellectual hoarder, in a way.  I am obsessed with people like Henry Darger who died in abject hoarder-poverty while art collectors today fight over his fragile artwork, because he had the passion and imagination to create a bizarre and unique world in which he apparently 'fit'.  I pick up coins because I am intrigued by the cycle of life and possessions and the fact that maybe my dead ex-boyfriend might have once held this 1959 penny and used it to buy cigarettes he smoked in bed with me while we laughed and lived in our series of strange tableaus which have become now like an old photo-album that never existed but I am able to browse without technology at any moment.  These thoughts inform my life and my beliefs.

Last week I was offered a job.  Not a gig or a session, or even a writing assignment-- but a curatorial job, from the old life for which I was highly trained.  This corporate collector-- with maybe a billion dollar stockade of contemporary art--- had decided in a crisis that nothing he acquired over the last twenty years had any value for him.  He had decided to turn back the clock and sense his art the way he used to, when paintings were important, and not valued as investment-- when he used my guidance to buy younger under-acknowledged artists (like Henry Darger, at the beginning).  Of course I refused--- me, the starving musician/poet, the poster child for under-consumption, the author of the virtual and incredible guide to NYC on $4 a day.

So the guy calls me back, asks me to meet him for dinner, which I turn down, because I am so inappropriately clothed for the kind of places he frequents.  A coffee, maybe, I agree to-- -and he wants to come to my apartment next-- to see my 'stuff'… and he is now offering me what any normal person could not refuse-- I could fix my teeth, and buy a new apartment with this kind of money.  The job description: to sort through and find the true gems, to disperse the hundreds of useless overvalued works of art, to start clean with a Disneyland budget and buy whatever I valued.  And for all the women I ever advise-- if you want a guy to fall in love with you, just ignore him-- he'll go nuts if he's a narcissistic egomaniac-- the guy is now laying out offers of seven figures…. and I swear, it not only doesn't tempt me--- it makes me kind of sick.  I am terrible at Waste Management, I explain…. and the very reason I am a commodity for him is also the explanation for why I can never do this.

Okay.  I admit it was a little flattering.  It was a little tiny bit affirmative and really who can I confide in except my writerless companion who was making all kinds of obscene dissing remarks about the guy none of which made it past my throat, but maybe made the vision of that cash a little more suffocating.  Having to walk into galleries and watching the calculating Directors of Art Madness suck up to me in my used jeans.  Having a kind of power.  Having desperate artists with eviction notices beg me… but most of all, the fear of losing my voice, of losing my Dargeresque ambition.  Having been baptized into the religion of poverty-- and it is a kind of religion-- it requires faith and strength and compassion and charity and resistance… I just couldn't sell out.  Not for sushi, not for my teeth, not for whatever  costume or bejeweled truffle soup the art world has become.  I can look, I can think and feel and listen and collect what wanders irresistibly into my world where I am King and slave and secretary and CEO and have just enough discipline to know when my emotional ball of string is beginning to block the view.  Amen.

Paulbearers

Another funeral yesterday.  They seem to come in waves.  For the wife--- the kids, the mother--- this is a life-shaping devastation.   For the rest of us, the mourners--- it is more temporary. We go out into the spring sunlight, return to our lives, speak a little less that day.  I try to dress badly for funerals.  Okay, I admit-- these days I don't really have to try--- this seems to be my mode of default.  It just feels so inappropriate to put on make-up and a nice dress.  I'm sure someone processes this as disrespect, but for me-- observing the blow-dried fashionistas--- it just seems wrong.  People forgive you-- -the rock and roller, etc.  It is okay to be 'odd'.  These people have been your audience.

I've been re-reading Faulkner-- Absalom, Absalom.  I was processing the tough version of mourning in the Civil War-ravaged South where the women were violently widowed, and the tragic figure of Judith,
in a primitive dress sewn from whatever re-cycled cloth was available--  betrothed in innocence to her half-brother, becomes a widow and a pallbearer within hours.  I would want to walk forever, feeling the unbearable weight of that rough wooden box on my shoulder until I dropped.  No drama in those times-- life was hard and death in the ravaged south seems so cruel it is almost bloodless.

I'd been to funerals at this Church before…the minister is a woman with a sort of monotonal voice that always sounds priestly--- comforting, in a way.  On this occasion she forgot the Lord's Prayer… right in the middle… I was reciting, without thinking-- feeling the coffin on my shoulder, the discomfort of unbleached ropey shirting-- and she was silent.  Deliver us from evil, she did not say.  Maybe the Episcopal version no longer acknowledges evil--- they are afraid it will frighten away their congregation, in this time where hellish greed fuels the ambitions of our new heroes.  Where a 19-year-old basketball player's salary could feed an entire continent.  But it doesn't.  The developers continue to develop, the digital ching of each accumulated million continues to be the preferred soundtrack of businessmen, the random incredulous accident of beauty is now available for anyone with a fat wallet,  physical imperfections are cause for self-hatred and social disgust, and fashion is not a choice but a pre-requisite.

There has been evil since man was born-- evil and death--- pain and suffering, sorrow and joy.  These days people seem to think joy is a birthright.  Rich people eradicate pain, ugliness.  They live way up high in this city-- -where there is a magnificent view but they see nothing-- no hustlers on the street, no-one shoving or pushing, no-one robbing or stabbing or killing.  They demand things… even people in the projects--- they demand foodstamps and better housing and expensive sneakers.  They demand that there are 2000 versions of E-news now, so we can listen to as many versions of why Beyonce's sister punched Jay-Z (who undoubtedly deserves it and who else could get close enough to do it but an 'inside' woman?  I would have paid her to do this, except I don't have any money).  And the rest of the world news is a tiny postage stamp on the oversized envelope of their daily information intake, if that.

Two nights ago I'd walked up to my usual grocery store in Harlem--- 112th and Lenox.  And I heard that familiar pop-pop-pop like toy caps--- like a transistor-radio version of gunshot…. but it was real.. someone was robbing the store, had sprayed bullets… no groceries for me… the luck of the Irish that my amnesiac Mom had kept me on the phone too long, asking endless questions, worrying about things she can no longer identify, or I could have been the occupant of that box on the altar yesterday.

It is Harlem… no one gave it much attention.  The blue tape came out, the sirens… the guys on the corner put out their joints.  The cops rerouted me to St. Nicholas, another supermarket further uptown where my cashier gave me just a tiny side-smirk when I told him their sister store was shut down for the night.

They are calm, these people.  They accept things.  For the most part, they have given up on ambition-- they are provided for--- they have virtually free accommodation in Manhattan-- their new white neighbors are paying 4 and 5 figures for rent, but they have foodstamps, family--- a 'hood…friends… they greet one another with warmth and cool handshakes.  If they get sick and need a wheelchair-- an amputation-- they accept it.  They don't seem to worry.  Many of them go to church; some of them don't.  The women wait long minutes for buses to go just a few blocks.  It seems there is always a funeral going on, always an ambulance--- police cars, people outside, the smell of marijuana, incense, and music… boom boxes, open car doors.  It is a kind of life in my city where neighborhoods have been renovated ad mortem, ad anonymity.  We who remember--- maybe we are the pallbearers of our former city.  We remember, we find the carved facades of the Louis Sullivan buildings even though their storefronts have been transformed into fashionista modernity.

Waiting for the crosstown last night, one of the Broadway homeless regulars was being placed onto a stretcher.  There were all kinds of secretions and body fluids on the sidewalk.  Two women cops were smirking and keeping their distance.  A water bug was running toward some of the puddles of waste, and they jumped back.  Probably some bad garbage he'd eaten.  Some kind of thick yellow snot was hanging out of his nose.  He looked bewildered or spooked--- but he always looked like that, with his wild matted dreads every which way and his leathery old face with the child's eyes.  On the sidewalk was his friend… he cried, this man-- audible weeping…. like a solo tragic Greek chorus-- he reminds me.  He had his pants rolled up to show off the oozing sores on his legs.  He was barefoot-- as always--even in winter.  He actually generates little income, because people are reluctant to approach him.  It is that disturbing… unless, of course, you have your earbuds in.  I gestured to the cops, who were way more comfortable here than at the burglary scene where they were surrounded by resentful neighbors… Yeah, he's next, one of them smirked at me… like we were sharing some kind of joke.

Maybe they are next.  Maybe I am next.  On the train downtown from the funeral, a beautifully-dressed black man made room for me.  He was coming from a funeral… just like me, he said.  He showed me his Bible, inside a briefcase.  I told him how the minister forgot the Lord's Prayer and he shook his head.  But I'm sure she was thinking-- she was pallbearing in her way…  let's hope so, anyway… let's hope she wasn't planning her lunch menu, or trying to recall her botox appointment-- or realizing suddenly that maybe she and her husband hadn't had sex since Ash Wednesday-- or a worrisome foreshadowing of future dementia.  Or maybe… hopefully….  she was genuinely stricken by the tearful passionate eulogy of this lovely man's son.   At least she apologized, acknowledged the 'unpriestliness' of her lapse.  23rd Street came all too soon.  I realize I can recite many of the Psalms.  They were my earliest poems, along with Rudyard Kipling.  Whatever-- I could have ridden forever with this man who had religion on his tongue and smelled so good.  I could have crawled into his lap and closed my eyes.  His name is Paul, he told me, as he warmly gripped my hand in parting--- like the apostle.  Like the great love of my young life.  I'm exhausted.  I'm tired from caring too much, from worrying about the guy with the rotting feet on the corner who cries.  I'm exhausted from lying in bed listening to my ghosts, from carrying the metaphorical coffin of my dead lovers and those who have no mourners.

And this morning I am especially weary for the NY Times blogger who was singing the pathetic praises of that barometer of low mediocrity, Patricia Lockwood… whose name is far better poetry than anything she has produced...I ask myself:  'What tale shall serve me here among/ Mine angry and defrauded young?'

Hoop Dreams

Yesterday an elderly man with a cane and a disability tripped and fell down in the middle of a street. The light was flashing that countdown thing they do now, and his frail wife was screaming and trying desperately to get him up. A young Superman rushed from the sidewalk while I and several pedestrians waved wildly to stop traffic, managed to get the man upright onto his medical-type shoe apparatus, and he made it awkwardly to the sidewalk. He was miraculously okay--- but shaken; his wife on the other hand was crouching and breathing heavily, wiping her brow histrionically and scolding him. 'Take a minute', I urged ... 'just breathe and thank God for the blessing of the near-miss.' He looked up at me with the kind eyes my father reserves for strangers, and I recognized it. He had his equilibrium. His wife, on the other hand, had 'seen' death; she would be the one left to suffer the unbearable loneliness of old age and was not so easily consoled.

Having conversed with angels and carried Jesus in my pocket, I still find myself at the edge of prayer for the losing team at the free-throw line, asking God for favors while waiting for the downtown 6, wearing my faith on a necklace, looking for saints on city sidewalks. I am well aware on the other hand that guitar gods who move the ground beneath me can be schmucks and losers. That the frail beauty of my pale willowy neighbor translates into a screaming harpy nag when her boyfriend fails to bring home the right bottle of olive oil. That the guy who played Christ in the movies with such credibility was a wife-beater. That the penetrating sax solo with reverb at the tail of a shivery ballad may be seasoned with cocaine and alcohol. So what if the guy is a cheating belligerent asshole-- I can still worship the melody. It is a kind of faith that survives my middle-aged cynicism. Fuck the singer (while, of course, how many of us have done so?); it's the song that we take with us, in the end.

I watch the NCAA tournament with great affection, every year, fill out my brackets with attention and faithfully watch the early rounds where I generally see my CInderella dream teams trampled. I bite my nails and cross myself while boys who played alongside my son put their hearts on the court and shoot their dreams for maybe the last time in front of a massive audience. This is 'it'. For me, it is the last year I will even know any of these players; my son is outgrowing the generation. Maybe next year it won't feel so important; maybe it will just be a fantasy game and not a prayer. I will be a spectator, not a mother. An observer, not a believer. I can't help waiting for a magical moment, for the shot to go in, or go out, or rebound off some unlikely corner, for a player to suspend just long enough to float a ball in, to get the hometown hero welcome, whatever tragedy or joy the rest of his life may hold.

I had 4 college players sleeping in my house last week. Their feet hung off our sofas, and we had to build up pillow-extensions for their mattresses. They were hungry and they were grateful for the home stay. They were soft-spoken and polite and communicated with few words and a kind of rhythmic telepathic physical ease. I didn't get to know them. My son tells me the stories-- the personal struggles, the underdogs and late-bloomers, the brothers and sisters and mothers with cancer, the fathers who are wounded vets, the orphans and foster kids, the immigrants who 3 short years prior couldn't speak a word of English or knew what a shot-clock was. I love this--- the unpaid kids with the expensive sneakers and the sometimes badly-chosen school colors who have not much future but a present so filled with excitement it will weight their past forever. This is 'it'. The 2 weeks of games, the 40 minutes of tension and thrill and heartbreak which make March mad crazy for some of us. Women, kids, poor, rich-- you don't even need cable. Our president is in on it. Wall Street. Las Vegas. The New York Times and Yahoo. Office pools. Sports for so many is the American religion. Why else are so many teams named 'Saints', Angels, Devils, Lions, fantastic heroic things. Symbols. The innocence of boys running and playing ball, no apparatus, no padding-- just man to man. God loves basketball. I feel this. At least he loves the multicolored NCAA boys, before they get contracts and begin the rat-race of money and trades and politics and power.

I have had to defend myself many times this week--- especially among my musician peers who dis and belittle my March madness. Who try to poison my enthusiasm with tales of bribes and money and capitalist corruption and payoffs and cheating and lies. But I believe in basketball. I believe in boys-to-men. The players, the sweat and tears and disappointment and elation and the aggression and the grace. Bless these boys-- the winners and losers and the wounded and injured. They are the sons of America and the idols of our kids. And next year, except the names, we will forget all about them. One or two will be sitting on an NBA bench, some of them will be soldiers, some will be coaching their successors or teaching or in bars telling their game-losing or game-winning shot story to an apathetic drunk ear. Sure you were, the guy may be thinking.

Last night I came uptown at 4 AM. In my car a long man was sleeping; he spanned 6 seats. He wore a Michigan State hoodie and his size-14 Nikes were neatly paired and trustingly unlaced on the floor in front of him. A comb was stuck in his hair, 70's style; his beard was going grey. As the train stalled in the tunnel, waiting for the late-night track congestion to clear, he let out a whooping kind of sigh--- a long exhalation of awe like he had just made a basket from 28 feet at the buzzer. In his sleep he was smiling-- maybe the only smile on the car. Maybe he was just tall, never made a hoop in his life, never stayed at anyone's house in the early nights of the tournament. Anyway, I acknowledged the points, feeling already the letdown of April post-game calm, upcoming Commencement for my son, the end of the 3-point innocence.