Snake Shack

It seems no matter what the state of the world, one can never avoid the New York City dog-days of August.  It's a kind of spell that descends on everything-- a unique bio-chemical atmospheric effect, the set-up of which requires 4 consecutive days of maximum heat and humidity with no noticeable cool-down.  The scent of everything wafts together like an old bad song-- damp animal fur, sweaty humans, car exhaust, fragrant foliage and most of all garbage-- food, organic dog-waste and that indescribable stench that reaches for you from the back of every urban sanitation truck in the universe. Couple that with the image that every inhabitant of the city exhaled all at once.  

Pandemic-empty trains are a thing of the past.  We are crammed in once again on platforms, in cars, absorbing way too much intimate physiological information about our fellow riders. Monkeypox-- other nightmarish summer threats, like shingles and vicious itchy rashes... normal insect bites are relatively benign if you're lucky enough to score an outdoor gig where you watch the little buggers feed on your playing arm. 

Some people leapfrog from air-conditioned room to room-- home to office, bars, restaurants, supermarkets, theaters.  I am still without this luxury... and while older age brings with it lower body temperatures, these days can be brain-cooking and challenging.  My laptop radiates heat like a small furnace, and I hesitate to open windows which let in no breeze but plenty of exhaust from my neighbors' window-units.  

Snake-weather, our young and beautiful live-in housekeeper from South Carolina called it.  Retha slept in a room down the hall from us where the only summer appliance in those 1950's days was a huge attic fan that blew air from the roof down a flight of stairs to nominally cool things off at night.  The sound of the crickets outside was like a symphony... the windows had to be thrown open to maximize circulation.  Before we went to sleep, Retha would recount tales of life in the South... mostly snake-lore.  It terrified me.  They come up the sides of the house, she explained-- wrap themselves around the pipes and slide along the eaves.... they even break the windows with their head-- the ones that have a blunt nose like a hammer.  But we had screens... I protested.  They turn themselves into spaghettis, she said... slips right through and comes together on the other side. Same with the shower-- they comes right through the holes-- they love the water.  Baths only for me.

I could smell the snakes at night... I could hear them slithering around in the flower-beds, coiling themselves around the garden-hose.  When the lights went out, I could see shadows in my sister's dust ruffles, moving.  After a particularly vivid tale one night I vomited.  There were serpents in my mythology books--- I stuck pages together so I wouldn't see... some of them had snake-hair or human heads. It was too much.  

I guess I was 3 or 4-- I'd broken my leg in some spectacular playground feat that failed... so I was less mobile.  My mother had the brilliant idea of taking me to the Bronx Zoo snake house... the hair of the dog?  Anyway, in my cast, I was wheeled around helplessly from cage to cage, from glass cube to cube with these monstrous slimy slidey creatures hissing and coiling and uncoiling like one of those slinky toys.  I remember the smell... it was August, like now. No air conditioning in those days... according to Retha, that's how the snakes liked it... hot and humid-- tropical.  There was one gigantic snake with this spectacular elaborate diamond pattern-- like argyll socks in pinks and blues... pressed up against its window... I puked up my cotton candy and whatever else.  Retha had to clean me up later. My mother was highly disappointed in me and the fact that her housewife psychology had backfired.  But the bedtime stories continued-- with that fascination kids have with horror tales... and the nightmares kept on.  I was chased, I was stalked... I was surrounded, fell in a pit of writhing legless bodies... they dropped from the skies like a Biblical plague.  I woke my sister, had to save her from the under-bed reptiles.  

Still, I never ratted on Retha.  I adored her... her cosmetic rituals and hair-braiding... her incomparable black skin.  We'd go to the store and men glared at her.  She was sexy, although I knew little of that then.  Eventually she was fired.  My mother told my sister she was pregnant... I had no idea what it meant, but with her plaid suitcase in hand, she put my hand on her bump and told me she'd swallowed a damn snake.  It seemed plausible.  

What other animal has those incredible patterns on their skin?  I mean-- there are zebras and leopards and tigers-- but the exotic pictures on reptiles?  For years I never really liked tattoos.  There's a famous anecdote about some old bluesman asking Mark Wenner of the Nighthawks why he done went and made a freak of himself.  Another remarked to me backstage how he can't figure why white people like to turn themselves into snakes.  I dated a guy with a snake tattooed on his arm and I couldn't bring myself to touch it.  In the end it was sort of a dealbreaker.  And a reminder, although my mother assured me there are no snakes in New York City, there are plenty, lol. 

Today I passed a huge glass cage that had been discarded on the sidewalk, close to the river.  It was big as a room, with decorative rocks...and kind of flat.  Obviously it had housed a snake... I wondered whether it had died of natural causes or slipped out in the dog days of summer to find some hot shade in which to coil or molt. Rats don't bother me-- mice, cockroaches... I'm a city girl.  But the image of a slithery stray moonbathing on the sewer grate gave me a hot shiver.

Retha promised to write even though I could barely read.  I guess she forgot, or as I later learned, our mother censored mail.  I wonder what her baby was like, and whether without her tales of swamp horror, whether I'd have tolerated reptiles the way I still don't.  I have an ex-boyfriend who turned out to be secretly married-- for decades. Not just a lying cheater but a cheating liar.  When I called him a snake, he had no idea of the depth of revulsion it conveyed.  I guess in these air-conditionless August nights, when we play back summer scenes from a life, when dog-day feverish sleep induces nightmares, the modern urban versions have at last replaced the ones from childhood.  Not sure which are worse.  Snake-days.  

Collections-- Part 1

Saturday afternoons for years I work at a gallery.  Generally it is quiet there- people come in one or two at a time, spend time thoughtfully in what are generally minimal displays, occasionally engage in a brief dialogue, and leave.  But for the past month, visitors have come in droves more or less, brought in by review after review of a place that is usually off the press radar.  What brings the attention is a small show of selected collections of seven artists.  Each grouping has been carefully curated from objects or small precious things from their respective homes.  In one case, the articles are gathered posthumously from the apartment of a deceased photographer who was apparently kind of a hoarder.  These are grouped on a wall in the front of the gallery-- close together and informally, as they might be in one's home-- simultaneously thoughtfully and not thoughtfully, so they seem a bit spontaneous and natural, in direct contrast to the clean minimalism of the gallery.

The number of people attracted to this random grouping has been astonishing.  I mean, it looks a bit like any vaguely middle-class bohemian parlor-wall-- things painted a bit amateurishly, things of vague value from thrift shops and flea markets...  of a certain period.  Week after week, people gaze in through the glass and sigh at this wall-- with a kind of nostalgia-- young people, well-dressed people; some even ask prices, which are irrelevant to this non-selling exhibition.  What they are seeing is a kind of diorama of this now-deceased person's home, of his aesthetic.   And they respond.

Each of the artists in the show is a collector... of things-- of art, toys, objects... souvenirs.  In a way it is a voyeuristic non-verbal biography of their personal culture-- a portrait of what they love, what comforts them or reminds them-- what inspires and excites them.  True artists are pioneers.  They discover things-- places-- in a different way.  They see a landscape and go home and paint horizontal geometry; they hear a siren and a crash and they compose a violent symphony.  They find a rock or some random object, and they transform it-- they absorb and transcend.

Over the last twenty years or so, people's homes in this city have become more and more minimal.  Technology allows them to live without paper; many have renovated apartments and removed books, records--- things.  Their lives are hard-edged and their lines are clean.  They have windows onto the city, gadgets which fit into drawers and low-tables with only a single book or object.  Clutter has become something to be shunned or hidden.  Closets are organized; there are experts who assist  with this process-- they oversee the discarding and paring-down of the unnecessary.   iPods and phones hold thousands of albums; we no longer need the packages.  Thrift shops are crammed with donations; some have recently declined to accept books; they are glutted with material.

But I have noticed-- inspiration has changed.  The things that 'drive' contemporary art have changed.  Art is about walls, or computers, or animation-- or concepts.  Art is packaged, marketed, less 'hands-on' and more mechanized, impersonalized.  It is digital-- animated, computer-generated.  It has ideas-- large ideas-- but less soul, less heart.  Some of it is created on a huge scale--  cute things-- toys, animals-- that tower over us, as though these 'soft' things are only culturally relevant when they are bloated or monumentalized.  We are jaded and spoiled and cannot 'see' the obvious.  We are adult children and are emotionally unsophisticated from the constant bombardment of phone-stimuli.  The New York Times recently revealed staggering numbers of adults who admit to sleeping with a stuffed toy.  The culture of pets and domestic animals is larger than ever; we sublimate and transfer and rely on our animals for affection.

So maybe this is a clue to the reception of the show-- that these same people who have eliminated the clutter in their lives, but maybe not the longing of their hearts-- are looking at this wall with a kind of recognition.  It represents domestic nostalgia-- a version of visual comfort and aesthetic calm-- like seeing a wall of small landscapes, or a display of rocks... a row of vases, or a garden of things that have grown, things that are interesting to see and aesthetically pleasing.  Inspiring and spiritually nourishing.  Beautiful and not inaccessible, the way museum art can be-- but small and personal and meaningful, the way life and 'collecting' used to be.   They find a connection, here-- they look and look, they ask prices, and standing in front of the wall seems to change their 'speed'.

When my son's friends came into the gallery to see this well-received show, they  remarked that the 'wall' looked just like my apartment.  Millenials come into my home these days and marvel at the number of paintings on the wall, and the rows of books-- the shelves of vinyl and the instruments.  They look around and sometimes they take down a book and absorb themselves.  Sometimes I remind myself I am not going to live forever and I must begin to sift through my possessions.  This is difficult for me; it is a life lived here--- my things, my friends, my nonhuman children-- my muses and my comfort.  Yes, there is a degree of relative clutter, but there is also a kind of soul.  The room is not about the space but what defines it-- the content.   This is my life... my collection, my object-family.

The exhibition ended on Saturday.  It gave me a little hope that gallery-visitors and cultural trendsetters are maybe beginning to thaw just slightly from the techno-cold aesthetic that has defined interior design and contemporary office decor.   These people who paint their skin and own animals and live in 'clean' spaces are beginning to let humanity in... a bit of history, nostalgia-- vinyl, materials... the thrill of a forgotten thrift-shop painting.  Take out your earphones once in a while and talk to an older person-- listen to the sound of things, and find your passion, your own unique collection.  You will be rich in ways you have yet to uncover.

 (To be continued)

Connections

About 20 years ago, after several failed pregnancies, one of my friends was able to adopt a baby.  I took my son-- who was maybe in kindergarten-- to visit.  The baby cried the entire afternoon, as babies often do; my friend kept looking at me quizzically; she was still learning the skills of parenting, and held her tiny new daughter with a bit of anxious awkwardness.  But my son blurted out, after a couple of hours-- 'She's crying for her real mother'.  Out of the mouths of babes….

Of course, science and psychology tell us there is no valid basis for designating a biological parent  preferable to a loving, doting caretaker; but most new mothers will tell you they can pick their baby out of an incubator line-up-- even when they are meeting for the first time over a hospital bassinet.  There is some indescribable empathic biology that connects us-- helps us distinguish one cry from another, identify their little discomforts; or maybe it is our physiology or scent they recognize from their time inside us-- they sense we have maybe just that much more capacity to comfort them.

I've been taking care of a friend who has a truly heinous strain of cancer that seems to resist all treatment and is subjecting her to inhuman episodes of pain, discomfort and physical challenge.  She has no living family; in fact, she was adopted, and I can't help visualizing somewhere a mother walking into her treatment room and, like an angel, bringing relief and comfort.  But she has no inclination to search, and even less inclination to just let out the kind of emotional wail I imagine building up like a crescendo of despair.  Me, I have that gene; she does not.

What makes us who we are?  What makes that woman in my Latin dance class bare her midriff like a 16-year-old even though she is 50-something and no one wants to see this kind of thing?  Or that lovely girl in the front row who has tattooed herself so extensively she looks positively reptilian?   Or the man on the uptown 3 last night, with the wifebeater and the white shorts and flip-flops in the fall chill with his gut hanging out and his legs spread like he was home alone on his sofa on a hot night having a beer before bed?  Last Monday, waiting for the crosstown bus, a man with a deformed hand beside me was scrolling through violent pornographic images on his phone.  Who did this to him and why does this disturb me?

That 6-year-old who was beaten to death by his Mom's boyfriend-- there was a gruesome description of him being hung by his shirt over the door-- like laundry, like a garbage bag.  This child who was so neglected by a broken system that favors abused dogs over children; and like the poor angels they are, when they are removed from terrible homes, these children weep for their mothers; it's natural.  I was homesick for my Mom and my home when sent away, even though my father was only nice to me when we had company, and ignored the highly inappropriate behavior of some of his friends.  Like most children, I wouldn't dare tell on these people; no one would have believed me had it even occurred to us to do so.  I could hear the Catholic boys down the block being beaten by their father at night.  They'd come out and sneak a cigarette while I held icepacks on their swollen face; sometimes they snitched a little whiskey.  They sniffed back tears and acted tough while we sat on rocks and smoked and it made me feel better.  Most of them grew up and became fireman and cops; they had nice wives and loved their kids.

In the city there are people who are hard to read-- men who live alone and are strange and maybe hurt and toughened-- children who grew up missing parts-- disappointed adults with bitter hearts and secret habits.  People who fantasize about things.  And people who are rough and not kind who seem to have regular lives and market themselves as something else.  Pretenders.

I missed most of the debate Monday night; I was working.  It was difficult to imagine a contest between two people who seem like candidates for entirely different jobs.  Despite her flaws, Hillary is a fairly typical high-achieving woman; her daughter grew up in the public eye with her awkwardness and her teenage issues.  She even called Bernie Sanders 'President Sanders' in a recent national faux pas which gave her a certain charming disingenuousness.  Donald Trump's daughter is a professional.  She's a manufactured princess.  I'm sure all her lumps and bumps and flaws were long ago repaired and she is his best PR.  She seems self-assured and skilled; one can only imagine what her Dad might have done to a black-sheep child-- a child with issues.  But who is he?  There should be some kind of tool or device so that we can decipher people the way tax returns or birth certificates give us a paper trail of evidence.  But there isn't.  We can't always tell Hitler from Nixon.  Still, there are signs here-- clues.  What is wrong with people?  Are they going to hand their babies over to someone who has no clue about handling children-- about values and comfort and love?

My friend's adopted daughter has every advantage-- she sings and dances and has beautiful clothes.  Who knows if one day while she is rocking her own baby she will feel some hole inside of her and begin to disintegrate with sadness.  Or manifest some genetic inclination to addiction or madness or early dementia.

A gypsy once told me I inherited the curse of my Grandmother.  She died young and tragically and I used to look at her beautiful wedding dress with the tiny satin waist in a box in my attic which I imagined came alive and rustled through the dark hallways of my old creaking childhood house while we slept.  I read somewhere she had a poet's soul and wept for some young lover during the war and died of grief.  At night I took her old rag doll to bed and imagined her watching over me with love and wisdom.  Her legacy is unspeakably mine.  We have many things in common-- including single motherhood and her dark hair.  Her goodness and understanding informs my life and heart in a way that has sustained me like a kind of personal goddess.

We grow up and parent ourselves, they say.  The genuine of us try to 'feel' who we are, to know our own heart and follow our own dream.  Navigating the staggering choices of life today is difficult.  Our culture pressures us to subscribe to things that have no essential importance to our core and yet have eclipsed most of our humanity.  The truth is so dressed up and cosmetically altered and perverted… there is no bible or manual to help us, no religion or even a parent or lover to answer our needs.  But we can try, like Kachina dolls of complexity, to remove the shells and see ourselves as we are, and see others as they are, and reach out and maybe save someone from a terrible catastrophe or even just a lonely night, or a bad decision.  A shared moment-- a compassionate 'ear'-- a mirror.  And the map of this world is so huge and complicated-- but right through our wall, next door-- there may be something we can change, and we must try to take the tiny but crucial initiative toward some version of human goodness.  Amen.

Sisterhood of the Praying Hands Tattoo

My local homeless man asked me this morning if I'd been to 72nd Street and Broadway recently.  I have, I said… and yes, I'd noticed that a sort of shantytown is beginning to take shape on certain nights… and yes, there is a definite proliferation of the homeless.  They come in all varieties-- the ones who seem absolutely hopeless victims of circumstances-- then the poor planners, the drug addicts and alcoholics who would trade any kind of security for a fix… the beggars, the wounded and afflicted, the vegan dog-lovers who squat on corners and feed their pets boutique food, who ask for practical things like flashlights, batteries, toothbrushes and water packets.  They are safe there--- it's almost a little festive in the balmy summer nights… a kind of reality show of their own-- some of them swearing to me that they wouldn't trade their freedom for the oppressive landlord-tenant system, for a 9-5 existence working in fast food or retail just to put cornflakes in the breakfast bowls of a tableful of kids whining for $200 Nikes and an iPhone 7.

Sister, one calls me as I get off the 2 train at 3 AM… because I am susceptible to that nomenclature, since my own sibling is mean and heartless, wealthy and estranged.  He can almost feel my knees buckle imperceptibly as I reach into near-empty pockets and dole out whatever is left… 42 cents last night… yes, I travel light, when I am carrying my instrument.  Yes, he needs all 42… and I am painfully sympathetic to the less fortunate, despite the fact that a small thing like shoe repair is beyond my budget these days.  No, I cannot imagine not having a dry place to write on rainy nights, clean sheets and a warm bath for my babies, in past days… a door behind which I can lock my guitar and know that it will be there, unstolen, when I return, God willing.

I have thought long and hard lately about this will of God, as I check up on a neighbor who is in final stages of a wasting and wicked cancer-- a woman who just 3 years ago was living the careless and happy life of a bartender/actor with marginal financial success but with a devil-may-care attitude and a spirit of independence witnessed by her wild red hair.  She is now terrified, this new friend of mine-- of the unknown, of the pain, of the power of the disease to outwit any treatment or diet or prediction.  Fear is contagious.  I approach her with steeled nerves-- with love, because I know how callow people shun the sick at times…and with great admiration because she is living with a kind of grace and dignity that I don't think I could muster.  She thanks me for my kindness-- when I have not earned that attribute.  I can scarcely afford to buy her a Gatorade while her electrolytes are haywire and she is unable to manage much of anything by mouth at this point.  She apologizes for the occasional outburst or protest at the medical staff who calmly stick and stab her, wound her and send her home, because she is still, most of the time, categorized as 'ambulatory'.  So she goes upstairs and thanks God for her remote so she can distract herself with television, go online on her ancient computer where she can share side effects and symptoms with other patients, most of whom are desperately seeking affirmation or answers which do not exist.

God?  I ask myself, knowing full well He has never been the sort of miracle worker on a throne with a magic staff.  I imagine He, too, is as baffled by cancer as He is by the internet and robotics and Uber vs. Didi; by an artificially tanned presidential candidate, and by the bitterness of the lower half of the one percent.   No, there have not been many wealthy saints-- no matter how philanthropic this fractional minority with the economic majority may be, they still have way too much.  I, on the other hand, am in the lower half of the 99%… somewhere above the homeless, I suppose, but struggling to pay for intermittent phone service and lousy TV, afflicted with leaky pipes, insufficient heat, mice and various mechanical Catch-22s which make reasonable repairs impossible.

Still, I am alive… I am detached from some of my most cherished lovers, my children are independent but good humans…. my possessions have become things that are deeply poignant and meaningful… as though people have receded and the souvenirs have taken their place.  Try as I do, I cannot impart to my son the importance of this or that book, this pile of old handkerchiefs, these letters-- these hand-painted envelopes and this shirt from 1968… this beat-up guitar case.   To him, they are all things for the future post-mortem bonfire, the enormous thrift-shop pickup which will punctuate my departure.  For me, this seems unbearable now.

I am going out of town for a gig-- I asked my ill friend if I could do anything.  'A postcard,' she said.  'I would like a postcard mailed to me with an exotic stamp.'  And how that touched me--- how I hope I'll find something which will not let her down because that has become my mission.  I wonder if she will notice if I send her something from one of my collections-- because I fear I won't be able to find something worthy in a souvenir shop-- or even in a museum-- in this disappointing digital culture of ours, so I think I am going to cheat and take along something I cherish.

On the uptown C train today, there was a young girl with a 10-month-old baby in a stroller.  He was her 5th, she told me, with her tired eyes and her wifebeater and shorts.  I wonder how many were with her when she got that incredible tattoo of the praying hands on her chest… or the cursive-written ink names on her breasts.  She was shaking her head to music from her iPod as her youngest boy nodded off and his little hand let itself down to his side the way children do in their sleep-- with a slow grace that eludes even the most accomplished ballerinas.
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There is God in this gesture, I thought, although his mother was in the world of Hip hop.  This is how He would bless us, if He did… how He will lower us, we pray, from living to some kind of rest… with a sense of compassion and control… from tears and the hot sweaty crowded subway car of life to some eternal dream of peace... where there are no more bandages or treatments or malignancies or Medicaid, no more bills and hateful sisters… no more homelessness and fearful sleeping in damp ominous doorways under mercury streetlights but the safe breeze of a starry summer night.  Amen.

Smoke and Mirrors

We approach the end of the year all too quickly, it seems… the downhill of December has its momentum, and try as we may, the new year is waiting like a hungry mouth to swallow things we are maybe not ready to let go.  I no longer shop for Christmas-- it's enough to manage basics, my son will maybe bring me a tree;  this is my holiday-- sitting by the colored lights in the semi-dark, collecting inventory moments.  It's been so unseasonably warm-- but there will be a price to pay.  On the news they spoke of a stagnant air mass-- that is an ugly description.  Photos of people in Beijing wearing cheap masks as though this will protect them from breathing in the terrible smog.  For someone who is sad in China, this blur of oppressive air and being confined inside must be unbearable.  I have such a tiny carbon footprint here-- my friends tease me.  No car, no taxis-- I scarcely use a dishwasher.  Still no cell phone-- I am often in semi-darkness, by the glow of my computer, writing-- sometimes the lights of the city outside are enough.  Gigs are bright and loud-- I love them, but I retreat.

Lately I have a sense of my neighbors' proximity-- as though the walls are getting thinner… like I am being invaded, slightly.  I do not know the new people, I do not really want to know the new people-- my old neighbors were interesting-- they were writers and critics and artists, but many have been forced out by an unkind economic pendulum.  Or they have died.  I am hanging in, imagining some young girl in my future helping me pack boxes for who knows what, the way I have done in my past for one or two of them.  But I hear the unfamiliar habits of new people through the walls-- faintly but clearly-- and I feel just a tiny bit less 'safe'.

One of my friends engaged me last night in a discussion about dating and expectations, and partnerships, and love.  For some reason I remembered an episode I'd not thought about for so long.  It was my first art gallery job in New York.  I was maybe 22-- there was a recession, I was on a break from Graduate school, writing another paper, and I got a lucky job in one of the best modern galleries in New York… I'd gone in and volunteered.  I want to work here, I said.  You don't have to pay me and I will work very hard.  So they sat me at the front desk where people like Andy Warhol stopped in every week, and because I was a little pretty and so eager, they spoke to me.  I loved my job.  Someone relieved me for lunch, and I hated to leave my post.  I sorted photographs and copied prices into auction catalogues (they used to come on an addendum which was difficult for the bidder), wrote invitations and worked their old phone system which at the time seemed massively futuristic.  I took home $92 a week.  I also worked at Bloomingdale's on Saturdays and Thursday nights, and after paying rent had barely enough to manage a pack of chicken legs, enough rice and eggs to get through a week-- and my morning roll and butter and coffee from a cheap deli.  The bus.  Often I walked to save the 35 cents.  It was one of those rare gaps in my life where I'd just left a boyfriend to bravely discover the city on my own, and the struggle to 'make it' was difficult but ecstatic.  New York in the 1970's was shedding a skin and changing-- but the aura of the old films was there, and the punks and musicians were simmering in some creative soup of poverty.  We girls depended also on dates to provide a relief meal or two so we could actually afford to go out and hear a band.

Anyway, all the great collectors came in and out of my gallery uptown-- I learned to recognize them; they very unpretentiously in those days gave me their name-- quietly and respectfully, and I would call one of the directors upstairs-- my bosses.  One night I was called upstairs, and asked if I would go to dinner with one of these clients-- a Greek man-- he was handsome and dark and always well-dressed with beautiful shoes--hats and gloves.  Do this, my boss said.  I had only a few cheap cotton dresses, but I wore one of them with my old pearls.  He took me to one of the great French restaurants in New York, and I was a little baffled by the menu… so he ordered for me, and watched while I ate course after course.  The food was incredible-- I was nearly starving from my spartan diet… I felt almost high during dessert.  My dinner companion ate nothing.  He sat and drank some wine, he vaguely watched me, spoke little.

The following week they asked me again to have dinner with him.  Same scenario, another restaurant.  This time he asked me if I wanted to see his place.  For some reason I was not afraid-- I knew my boss expected something and I was curious.  He owned a huge house in the 50's… his flat was on a couple of floors.  Inside it felt like a hotel-- very few things, some over-sized furniture, etc….  he poured himself a drink… he was extremely polite… and asked me if I'd stay the night, sleep with him--  he didn't want sex, just company.  So I agreed.  His bed was enormous, he had these beautiful books on the night tables-- everything was immaculate and there was this faint smell of old leather.  Most of the night he sat up and smoked.  The only vaguely incongruous curiosity was this mirror over the bed on the ceiling, 12 or 14 feet up.  It suggested a past erotic life that didn't make sense. I got used to it; maybe it was there when he bought the place, and it provided some lighting device.  I never commented; he never touched me, and in the morning I went home to change.

Week after week this went on--- he began to tell me he'd lost his wife, somehow-- she was some opera singer…I saw her photo, and she was beautiful.  There had been a little boy-- small fragments of his story revealed themselves.  These were the days before anti-depressants and he was chronically, oppressively sad.  He slept and ate little, he travelled, I knew--- ran some huge family business… and he bought art.  In his sparsely furnished apartments there were great pieces of sculpture and amazing paintings.  He took risks.  He supported new gallery stars.  It was amazing to sleep with these things-- to sense them in the dark, the way I now feel my own unlit paintings at night.  He treated me with formality and respect, even though I was cheaply dressed and so green in so many ways;  he spoke to me with depth and intelligence.  I began to touch him… just a little, at first.  I felt so empathically helpless… I was so eager to somehow please my gallery which was my lifeline-- I had no idea what they expected, but the Director, on these Thursdays, would give me a little wink when he left-- it was our secret.

Anyway, he left the country for an extended time, gave me a beautiful gift from Tiffany which I returned.  I used the money to buy myself a raincoat and a fantastic sewing machine.  In a way it was the most beautiful bargain of my life-- a kind of short story I never told.  It was chastely sexual, it was some kind of love, it was sort of a black pearl inside the shell of my young student existence.  The Director is now deceased, and I feel permission to share this-- one of the privileged fairy-tales-with-no-closure of my past, one of my anti-Sex-in-the-City episodes that shaped and changed me.  Of course I went out and did my wilding and lived with my musicians, and was summarily adopted by this city, my birthplace.  But I realize it put sort of a dark stamp on the concept of marriage as the storybook institution we perceive at 21 or 22… it was another surprising B-side and it left me with a kind of warning, an insight into full-blown adult disappointment and deep heartbreak like a kind of scar.  I can still see his dark hair, the cloud of smoke by the faint light of dawn, hear the early morning midtown traffic, my own dark hair and young face in the mirror above… like a sort of Julio Larraz painting.

These days I feel things in my past-- the warp and weft of my existence around which this tapestry of my life has woven itself.  What I realize is we can sense this 'fabric', but we can't actually see it-- not until it's too late.  I do feel a bit of the unravelling lately-- maybe the deaths, the fear of enemies in the world in a new way-- what can we believe?  The high-pressure air mass gives us sunshine and hope but it is married to the invisible stagnant air which is maybe toxic and dangerous?  My son's friend has a new tattoo to commemorate his Mom's death.  It is a lovely thing… but what about all the tattoos we don't see?

This bird that has come to Prospect Park-- it is a truly extraordinary thing.  Of course I would like to see it, but I also know I'd be part of the crowd there which is running back and forth, trying to follow its little twittery path while it explores its new environment.  I see this as a sign-- a good sign-- that unexpected tiny things of great beauty can happen in our lives, that this supersedes art as it is today, that
a random moment can take our breath away.  Besides, this bird is a loner-- and a male… it seemed to have a little scar on its beak in one of the photos, and if you look closely, its eye-- it is not a young bird.  It knows something.  Maybe it is running away from some sorrow or tragedy--- just flew on a whim, or the distraction of grief distorted its trajectory.  I am certain it has come out of its way to a strange and dangerous city to tell us something, and some of us are hopefully still listening.

Midsummer Pentimento

Teenage hell has me back at the Psych office which requires an early morning start, no sleep. Another UWS apartment-- museum posters on the wall, leather chairs, the kind-faced woman who listens while I weep like it’s Pavlovian….the therapist encouraging me to come, come…she is willing to accept my pittance for the magical challenge of unraveling why a talented person like myself is touring on a luxury unlimited monthly metro-card and traveling across town to celebrate dysfunctional high-school graduation alone in the rain with a $1.25 pretzel which are getting harder to find but worth the trip. This kind of thinking is keeping me in a sort of cage, she explains.

In the elevator down, a kind older woman comments on the Linden trees, obviously noticing my red eyes. They are in bloom— but her words-- from some old poem…resonate, provide comfort in a way the therapy will not. We walk a few blocks. She faces forward so I don’t feel self-conscious…remarks all over the city she sees weeping women every day. My favorite Picasso personification ever—in the Guernica, and out… the Weeping Woman…the one he may have glorified in his painting—as a symbol—but the one men hate in reality.

I acknowledge this woman, agree there are women crying everywhere, with the perfect faces. Reluctantly I leave her-- do not embrace her as I am inclined—do not ask her if she will take my $20 weekly and walk with me-- pretend to be my therapist, my angel, my mother. I need her.

On 79th and Broadway there is a guy with a cart—maybe Hispanic—clean, clean. $1.25 for hotdogs and pretzels. Beneath his khakis on this humid summer afternoon, the guy is lean and hard. His skin looks buffed, his smooth tattoos are approaching middle-aged blur. Facing his cart always with the line, because people in uniforms—the laboring kind—are willing to wait to save a few quarters…will tip the guy the way they never tip the 2-buck vendors. Plus he takes his time. He focuses. He has this routine— 8 shakes exactly of the dogs as he pulls them from the liquid—the perfect slice open, mustard back to front, ketchup same…five shakes of the sauerkraut. Then he asks if you’d like it wrapped…calls you honey—the fresh-mouthed black highschool girls, the John Does, the nurses and Filene’s employees. Doesn’t look you in the eye. His cart is immaculate. I get a pretzel, bagged with the same technique, the same care. I trust this guy. The food feels ritualized-- blessed.

On the bus home savoring my pretzel not just because it’s cheap, but it’s good… I remember last night on the 4 AM crosstown…3 women, like a Chekhovian mini-play—one showing me a yellow jacket she bought for $3, admiring my shoes, $10. The third woman removes one of hers, we name our favorite thriftshops, we laugh and tear up a little—we embrace. Brief sisters, the way my real ones never are these days. Open hearts, no malice. I’d have given my shoes to either of them. So this is my daily therapy— the weeping women of New York— the ones who don’t botox out their life, their sorrow, their joy. Random women on a bus who help me forget, for a moment, the ripping ache of teenage single-motherhood, the missing ex-husbands and estranged lovers, the unpublished manuscripts and unsung songs. Or maybe they help me remember.

Poised we are, midway through the midpoint of the year. Pivotal days that pass, tip the balance of the past into the future. If I got a tattoo it would be the weeping woman, crying tears that spell the name of my cruel son...a tattoo of the hot-dog guy, with the tattooed arms. But I won’t. I’ll spend the required $20 on another useless prescribed therapy session and hope to see the Linden tree lady in the elevator next week.