Pity the Poor Immigrant

I walk the streets with a running monologue in my head; sometimes it's a poetic kind of voice, other times it's a soliloquy-- a kind of rant or commentary.  The barraging urban incidentals feed this, redirect and influence... sometimes it is chastising and harsh, otherwise gushing and passionate. Most of it evaporates... one cannot document or note everything, and inspirations are corrupted like a warping digital file.  It's a wrap, I think, occasionally, as I invent a short story... and then it is lost in the ever-washing tide of temporary memory. Aging brains have less capacity to compartmentalize these things.  One fails to make notes, and then there is nothing... like a dream which disintegrates as one wakes.

It occurs that as one ages, one is shaped by what one forgets, as much as what one selectively recalls. I texted a friend yesterday that my life is defined more by what I have not done than what I have-- the way I consistently avoided opportunities of success or even a kind of minor celebrity... how I felt compromised by this kind of thing, and adhered to this stringent discipline of seeking my true voice rather than an audience. It probably has not served me, I note, as frothy influencers collect more than my annual income for a shallow momentary display of 'meme-dom'.

We musicians circulate periodic youtube fragments of odd under-known geniuses-- gypsy guitarists, random Eastern European instrumentalists whose personal style has developed unaffected by trends and online platforms.  Some take one's breath away... one discovery from last week, on further research, had died several years ago; fortunately he survived into the mobile phone culture enough to have had dazzled witnesses capture a few performance moments for us. It's humbling.

Fast forward to my regular life-- the email, the constant stream of notifications and requests... it's mind boggling, the number of attachments that accumulate-- the statistical impressiveness these marketing tools provide... the spread of mediocrity like bad mayonnaise on packaged white bread which affects not just taste buds but critical faculties.  We are intellectually worn like smooth stones by the incessant traffic.  I feel like variety has suffered... for every celebrity there are easily 5-10 others who look alike.  With cosmetic procedures, each of these changes facially with every appearance.  Maybe I'm just old and losing visual acuity-- but everything seems to be leveling off. The dumbing down of America which produced the current state of affairs... the rounding of corners...the filing of edges, the general whitewashing disguised as red-white-and-bluewashing.

Since I rarely consult a cellphone, I am inclined to talk to human beings like a crazy person.  It's interesting. Many of those willing and anxious to speak are from other countries.  Their trajectory, even in a five-minute conversation-- is often adventurous, and their take on America reminds me of what I used to believe in.  The drum circle on the North end of the park is comforting somehow-- the camaraderie and the colors... the warmth.  My young Senegalese friend who took me to the hospital after my accident last year--  still struggles but his huge smile and sheer ability to find joy are contagious.  

The Philippine farm workers who come weekly to my neighborhood and sell great vegetables for less than half of the pricey city Greenmarkets... I look forward to their Sunday stand, although they speak little English.  And then in East Harlem-- a new grocer-- with piles of exotic rice sacks and slightly damaged produce that is affordable.  On my block they sell Honeydew melons for $13.99.  Not even spelled right.  But here... they were $3.  I asked a very thin Middle eastern worker to help me pick a ripe one; he offered to cut it... if it is not good, he said, you don't have to buy.  So he disappeared and returned with a knife-master's slice... it was heavenly.  Then he wrapped the two halves in plastic.  Where are you from, I asked? I am Palestinian, he replied. Images of emaciated children and clamoring crowds of hungry desperate parents.. I was overcome with tears... we pray, he assured me.  I am the lucky ones... but fear for my family here.

Outside the 96th Street Mosque a man sells fruit from cartons on the sidewalk.  A blind man with a beautiful face and pale eyes sits in a portable chair for long hours.  If one has no money, one can take something.  These small human dioramas comfort me.  The diversity often disguises a kind of goodness... the hidden geniuses in quiet rooms and the generous gifts of the poor who give not for the deduction or reward but because it is inherent.  

Now that the whole city is being sued... one wonders... where is the sanctuary? I am quick to apologize to these people that the American Dream they sought has let us all down lately.  How many amazing souls are being deported with the bathwater?  Encroaching tides from both sides-- it overwhelms.  Like the general pool, a few from desperation turn to crime as a quick fix, but we in our cracking and chipped glass houses, may we see via our hearts' vision.

11 A

Since the weekend I've been carrying dread like an unborn child. Literally... the quasi-physical heaviness of a pregnancy, without the joy, without the future. The relentless bad news, the threats to human freedoms and everyday security. It's overwhelming.

I watched a kind of forum on human empathy-- and identified as one of those people who prioritizes others-- known popularly as a 'people pleaser' which is not really a positive thing.  We do no good either for ourselves or others, yet it's built-in-- layered-- a little like a second heart which doesn't serve or beat, but simply aches.  There is no surgery for this; I suppose a high dosage of meds would temper it, but my friends know overstrict emotional self-parenting makes me reluctant to even use aspirin.  

My Irish nanny told me at the age of four not to tell my parents but I was a natural-born Catholic.  I asked her all kinds of questions about things, and I was perpetually preoccupied with the reviving of dead insects, plants, birds... tearing up in Church at the hymns and prayers, obsessed with but unable to fully fathom the Jesus story.  I watched magicians pull rabbits and living things from boxes... the personal metaphor of my personal hat somehow implies this secret belief that something mystical is hidden there-- that life is not all objective-- music, most of all, maybe. 

So while we cannot all be heroes, we can perhaps be conjurors... we can be fixers or healers.  Watching a concert at the Central Park bandshell Tuesday evening I realized how completely altered I was with each piece-- as though I physically melted into the cosmic architecture... I could almost sense the composer and his vision.  To be a musician is such a blessed thing... how I miss the gigs of old. Even those sweaty crowded dive bars-- to be part of the crowd-shaping thing... it was a blessing. 

And the actual heroes... well, they are passing with acceleration. Rick Derringer... we all disagreed with his politics in the end, but I had ties to him through various people I worked with.  One night he came into one of those east village bars in the days when cabaret laws enforced a three-people-only-rule onstage.  We were  a well-working trio... Rick, to participate, sat on a barstool across from the bandstand, plugged in and played like a phantom genius inhabiting our amplifiers.  I tried to remember that, and to honor his passing.

There are times when politics must take a back seat.  The irony of that plane crash yesterday-- in a second we recognize tragedy... the enormity and horror of a scene like this... the human grief... the families... and yet daily we hear news of missiles and war, and equally devastating destruction-- death and hideous injuries... and we digest this. What is wrong with us?  How have we grown immune to the architecture of suffering on a large scale?  Because it doesn't affect our neighborhood?  

I read and I read.  I watch way too much television.  I have friends who tell me they don't watch news... it's too terrible.  I cannot help feeling this responsibility-- just to know, and yet I cannot help. I also spend an inordinate amount of time reading books... they are both comforting and alarming... the past has taught this generation little; we seem to be repeating the same mistakes in different clothing. There is no DNA to identify a situation, but the parallels are disturbing.  The suppression of freedom-- the support of freedom to be racist and uncompassionate... what is our human responsibility? If a nation decides to attack another, it's a hideous barbaric choice. But still there are good people on both sides; and one cannot condone anti-semitism because the actions of Israel are aggressive and inhumane.  No religions teach this kind of thing. 

People like me, my psychiatrist friend tells me, get cancer.  They suffer and cannot exorcize what compels them to live inside this chronic empathic cloud. If it's not one thing, it's another.  I worry.  My son is my absolute source of light.  He, fortunately, has not inherited my emotional impairment.  He is smart and forward-thinking and extremely functional. Hats off to him, truly.

Yesterday I tried a local pharmacy-- sick of the lines and the monopoly of these huge drugstore chains and the whole profitable medical industry. It is right by a local mosque; the owner is Muslim and so kind.  When he walked from behind the counter, I saw he was a huge man, with a terrible disability... unidentifiable. I immediately invented this narrative that he'd been somehow beaten and tortured in a torn country and survived with a twisted architecture.  Painful to see him walk... and yet he was happy and smiling and grateful for my tiny business.  When I got home I realized my prescription was nearly at expiration.  I will not complain. I know this is wrong-- I'll simply wait and get a refill eventually. This is medicine; this is a business... and yet for me it is not.  I have adopted the pharmacist into my massive family of those for whom I worry.  

11A.  I hate flying... the slightest turbulence gives me terrible anxiety.  In 1988 I took Pan Am flight 103 the night before that horrific crash; I felt like a survivor in a way.  But I cannot imagine processing the miracle of walking away from a wreck like yesterday's. One man.  Defying a lethal diagnosis... dodging an executioner's bullets.  It's unfathomable... the burden of being that person, if you're someone like me-- how to process, how to return a massive 'favor'... the one home that survived the fires in a neighborhood destroyed... the one standing tree after a tornado. Nothing compares.  Inexplicable. 

Many of my friends have no religious beliefs.  They take a scientific perspective on death as a full biological stop. How does one explain the rapture of music?  I don't know. The thousands of movies that interpret and explore an afterlife-- angels and heaven and ghostly hauntings.  Like a hunting dog, I have often picked up the scent of previous lives, the déjà-vu.  I wonder if the passenger in 11A sensed these things.. how his life will change.  Already real estate brokers are asking a premium for 11A apartments.  People are booking the seat first... they could charge a premium.  

I'm hoping somehow to unburden myself of this weight.  Not hopeful because the news is cumulative;  problems outweigh solutions. Sicknesses far outnumber cures... and will continue. Death will relentlessly equate births... one cannot exist without the other, really... sort of a paradox.  We can only hope that each of us provides a little relief to someone-- sharing a sandwich, proverbially. It's contagious, kindness... really the only thing we can control-- our personal space, the way we manage it. A different kind of pandemic... maybe it's my ingrained vague version of Catholic belief... and the importance of mercy-- to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, etc.  And maybe the victims of the plane crash were taken to heaven... but 11A was given a mission.  We are all, those here reading-- given a daily second chance.  Trying to decipher mine, today. 

Let the Games End

I don't know why the opening ceremony of the Olympics sort of gives me the shivers.  Maybe it's the color wash of pomp and nationalistic display that just seems so out of touch with the dull and miserable reality of the less fortunate population.  Puerto Rico is neglected; starvation and disease are rampant in so many places worldwide; the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots has never seemed so hideous.  The Korean culture itself--- the military parades and exhibitions of the North like a braggart's bluff-- the singing girls and the happy marchers... the reality of repression and forced obedience... the apparent moratorium on human rights that welcomes athletes from a hostile and hideous regime for what-- the spirit of competition?  I just don't get it.  It feels opportunistic and juvenile... some kind of #metoo madness.

Not to mention the pall cast over the gymnastic community which has colored yet another sport almost permanently.  Who protects those of our children who have been deemed special or uber-talented and marketable-- whose natural skills and talents have been parlayed into industries and fortunes not to mention a kind of national heroism?  As a young aspiring dancer, I could sense the thorns and perils even before I understood abuse and boundaries.  We each have instincts, but our ambitions so often triumph better judgment... as well as that of all those people on our path who close one eye when there is a huge pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.  Until the whistles blew.... and how many sports are now tainted by cover-ups, pay-offs, cheating, doping?  Does the best man/woman win?  Look at our elections.  Not only did we get the dark horse but we got a non-qualifier.  If politics was a sport our president would be limping at the starting-line with an ill-fitting uniform and no sponsors but his own sad brand.  Eisenhower might have been a good golfer but he was also a 5-star general.

What version of America shows up at these international competitions? The athletes are still young players in a kind of dream-- individuals with the drive and stamina to be the best they can be-- who put their skill on the line internationally for their nation-- but who are we?  A disorganized country with little focus except money-- an untrained leader whose familiarity with the 50 states came from watching the  Miss America pageant.  And now he wants a military parade-- this man who never fought a war or trained for one-- who throws around threats and battle-language like some kind of cartoon character.  The Monopoly president whose claim to office is an affirmation of the sad state of pop culture and the negation of human values.  We won't see his image on a bill or coin, but on a game-piece-- a gambling chip.  The man himself to me is an ever-expanding hot-air balloon-- the latest float at a Macy's parade...  to bring him down will take some strategy because he is not just a player but a cheater.  In the end, in my personal American dream--- to ultimately deflate the high-flying symbol of bloated greed and cartoon quackery will take a simple pin.

I can't help blaming the current flu epidemic on a certain emotional malaise among my American peers.  My friends and I have been mostly depressed since Election Day 2016.  Anything could take us down.  Few of us trust the medical system  to protect us against disease or to give a whit about healthcare beyond what profits the insurance and drug companies.  We do not get vaccinated; we get sick.  We are watching these games and athletics through feverish eyes, wondering at the lingering inequality of women in some sports, and worrying about the fate of the Korean cheerleaders and delegates.  Will they be punished?  Will there be defectors?  Why is South Korea so apparently recently solicitous of its evil Northern sister?

To me the two Koreas seem like a dysfunctional family; the South-- a beautiful place, ranked No.1 in the world in technological innovation-- so there is obvious talent and brilliance concentrated there-- a thing which might create envy in any family.  In the North-- repression is standard; starvation is rampant.  Students reputedly must buy their own desks and chairs to attend class, etc.  It is not a place that fosters creativity or joy... one pities the athletes who cannot possibly reap the rewards available to other nations-- win or lose.  It parallels my own sad family, in a way.... love has become impossible.. and although I neither respect nor admire my sister, she has used threats and fear to further alienate and weaken any family attachment I might have had.  She has forbidden her children to befriend me, although they have attempted defection... and now through force and might has conscripted the core and remaining fortune of my nuclear family so that even my own legacy will be withheld.  It is a game without rules; a rigged contest where the judges are the contestants, and there is one pre-arranged winner.

In this upside-down Trumped world where the jokers preside and justice sits on a bench with yesterday's stale sandwich, well... these villains will continue to steal the pie.  But for my true sisters of musical voice-- of pen and pencils and paint-- the filmmakers and innovators-- my teammates in life-- we will dance on their graves one day.  We will speak and write and sing and continue to raise our children with unconditional love.  We are out there-- on the streets-- in cornfields and in small homes... some of us coughing and barely able to board a public bus...  we wave to one another-- with some hope--  in our old clothing, with no medals or trophies but underneath it all,  a still-ticking American heart.