Waiting (2020 version)

One of my ex-boyfriends had a song I heard him perform only once; the chorus went Wai-hay-hay-hay...way-hay-hay-hay-hay-hay- tinngggg...  It went on.. not easy to sing on key unless you're sort of a yodeler...  but somehow some version of it has been repeating in my head.   Here we are, nearly in unison, across the world-- taking one of those 'breaths' a brilliant conductor can orchestrate and control by simply holding up his baton... while the brass, the strings, the woodwinds-- they all freeze in mid-breath or mid-stroke... waiting.

We spend a good part of our lives waiting; less so in the 5g internet age where responses are immediate-- goods are located and purchased, conversations anywhere in real-time, deals made, interruptions even possible.  When I was small I waited evenings for my father to turn the corner in his business suit-- he shared a cab and walked the last block or so.  Daddy! we'd yell, joyfully... greeting him just before he'd retire to the den with the scotch-on-the-rocks he'd waited for all day.

And now, the good witch in the story says, 'we must wait'... while the batter magically becomes cake, the oats and water turn into porridge, the pasta softens and curls, coffee brews.  Trees grow and fruit ripens, nested eggs hatch with life, babies are pulled from laboring mothers and childhood begins.  We keep ourselves occupied with schooling and tasks-- with jobs and careers and games and entertainment... while nature cycles on and provides us with most of what we expect.

So what now, as the whole world is paused-- not quite in unison-- for what have we waited?  For a new order?  For a universal decree of mourning?  A mass funeral for those families who have waited many weeks without comfort?  A diminished life for those who have been sickened and not quite recovered? Those who have been wounded and disabled?  A vaccine or cure for something that scarcely existed just six months ago?  A medal of honor for those who perished, who gave their lives unknowingly for some kind of cruel science?  Rewards for the medics and attendants who cared tirelessly and often hopelessly for people who were strangers and became intimates? For society to resume its habits and ways, or to resume with slightly altered protocol?  Will people be kind to one another? Has the waiting tested their patience to the limit?

For me, aside from its homophonic twin, waiting had a certain romance to it.  The 'hardest part', Tom Petty insisted, but I disagree.  The diagnosis is worse-- the verdict, the failure to acquit, the end.  We are all here waiting for death, some have said.... life itself is the waiting.

Ironically, people have learned to stand on line with more patience.  Of course, most have phones and social 'pacifiers' with which to entertain themselves.  I bring a book; I read, look around-- enjoy the air.  Things take much time these days; I waited tonight on a long supermarket line to find the price of chicken had doubled once again.  On my way out, I remarked about it to a woman with greying dreadlocks...  But I'll buy you chicken, baby, she said... in this voice that brought on a flood of tears.  No, no, I reassured her-- I'm fine-- just cranky.  We all need a hug, baby, she said... but we gotta wait for that shit! .... and we laughed.

Like those Biblical patriarchs and Greek heroes-- we wait for love, we wait for death, we wait for God to listen and look and reply.  Most of the time, we are clueless and helpless.  Especially now-- we wait for our mayors and governors to advise us, to coordinate a plan-- to be safe.

The tent hospital in Central Park has been dismantled-- just like that, it vanished almost overnight.  Families of those who did not survive here will have no place to pass and remember their loved one.  It is a grass field, once again.  Will children play here and forget the small successes and tragedies that marked this lawn in the month of April?  

I have learned from experience that grief subsides with the passing of four seasons.  My friend whose husband passed away does not believe this.  You need to get by one birthday, one Christmas, one anniversary, one snowfall, one fireworks display, one turkey dinner... etc.  It is unimaginable but it comes-- the day when you forget for an hour or two, you sleep without a dream, you laugh deeply and uncontrollably.

Walking around the Harlem Meer at dusk tonight, I witness people with masks zig-zagging paths to avoid others.  A few men are maskless by a bench, laughing and smoking, sharing food, touching.  Will we ever trust one another enough to stand shoulder-by-shoulder in crowds?  I passed one of my son's former mentors last night and we spontaneously and courageously clasped hands.  It was so human and healing and strange.  A woman shook her head as though we'd violated some civic law.

I am willing to wait for the next version of future... but not with phone in hand, biding my time.  I am hoping to fill this with some kind of energy-- some kind of work, some kind of prayer... so when the baton lowers,  I will pledge myself forward into the next measure, knowing it is likely to be the 'hardest part'.

Memes

A friend sent me a meme the other day of a beat-up old telecaster; crayon-scrawled on the body roughly and without finesse as though in an alcohol-fueled or museless funk the message: SONGS INSIDE FIND THEM.  It could have been a self portrait.  The songstress scarecrow that is me these days-- the hollow-man with the heart hanging from a string, the tear-tracks I literally feel like tattoos-- me the living girl-with-guitar sad emoji-- a smeary red smile graffiti'd onto a blue surgical mask which (has anyone else noticed?) conceals sorrow.

My symptoms have subsided... the tsunami of late March drama has ebbed a bit and the sun is out in spades, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom-- the dogwoods, the pink gibbous moon spread the evening curtain Tuesday to reveal herself between buildings like a taunting spotlit showgirl.  The evil wave took so many with it;  I was spared, clinging to an old leafless tree like a baffled and wounded survivor.  We all knew April was the cruelest month, but many of us did not believe.

Walking through Central Park, past the eerie tent city where so many hearts lie beating tenuously while loved ones wring their hands at home... the meadow grass is uncut and long... those without the virus can smell the green spring.  Crocuses and narcissi have poked through and a few robins are hopping over the gates.  The playgrounds are empty-- vacant swings like camera-shots in a kidnapping horror-film.  This is an R-rated place.

After 10 PM I can walk up the east side of Fifth Avenue without a mask; the streets are quite deserted except the ambulance activity, hospital personnel crossing from building to building.  The huge mobile-aid semis have put down metal roots along the west side of the street.  We see only the 'closed' side with the huge ominous signs that advertise not carnivals or circuses but Billy Graham.. Samaritans... these billion-dollar charities whose presence is linked to disasters and death.  The oversized cabs of these trucks are parked along the street.  They are shiny and buffed--- beautiful in a way, like gigantic luxurious and expensive accessories separated from their purpose.  Inside the tents we know is some chaos-- exhaustion, anxiety, medical expertise mixed with despair and frustration-- a kind of battleground complete with the structures which have grown weedlike across the meadow and remind us of wartime.  Gates and blue tape surround the area, keeping the public at a distance, warning that there is an infestation within.  Death breathes from the compromised chests of patients.  I heard it when I last spoke to Alan, hours before he passed away.

I feel guilty for my restored health-- for the clear air I breathed today on the way uptown-- for the minutes I have gained since he left the world, for the fact that despite my grief-- I am not even blood. Family members of the thousands of victims of this pandemic have reserved this right and privilege of grieving.  I am just a poor mourner at the window, looking in.

The city, as we all know is unrecognizable-- a skeleton of its former robust self.  It's like one of those ant farm toys where the ants have all died.  Empty corridors and unused pathways.  Halls and monuments without witnesses and participants.  I am some strange animal whose habitat has been profoundly disturbed-- a frog with no water, stranded on a rock somewhere in the midst of plague-- an urban dinosaur fossil dying of cultural and social deprivation  If a painting hangs in an unlit room, how does it exist?

'Widow' always struck me as a beautiful word; it is the title of the opening poem of my latest poetry collection...  a sequence of letters sadly missing the 'n' in the third place.  I have lost before.... a mother, a daughter, my greatest love... but here I am again-- much older, less solid.  I am made of glass-- sympathetic and transparent, reflective, breakable, scored and cracked-- trying to believe in a future, trying to believe in the darkness.

Earlier today I stood on a grocery line on Lenox Avenue, trying to sense some pedestrian normalcy amidst the relentless sirens.  The sun, the car radios, the boomboxes are still there... the people like me waiting to spend a bit more of their food stamps on overpriced stock.  I buy one thing at a time-- as though life is so fragile I cannot see my way into next week.   Much hip-hop noise from the street.. someone practicing saxophone... still the panhandlers out with no protection; they are long accustomed to the precariousness of life.  From 116th Street I heard Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing'.  Not so much of that going on... and at this point in my life, it does not seem plausible.

When my turn came to enter the store, I headed for produce to see what I could afford.  Irony of ironies... Joan Jett came on the system, singing--what else?--  I Love Rock and Roll.  A message?  It taunted me.  I had to leave.  What's up, Mami, the security asked me... you no like? I tried to smile.  Walking home blinded again by teary eyes... the mask condemning us all to this faceless urban anonymity... I love rock and roll, I thought.  It is a no-brainer.  I sacrificed everything in my life for this passion.

Rest in Peace Alan Merrill, my friend of friends, who sang his heart out for this damned city, as though his life depended on it-- and it did.  Audience or no audience, he was the quintessential working man with the voice of a dark angel, another hero in the halls of remembered fame, another urn on the mantel of memory... taking another little piece of my heart and life with you.  I am nothing more than a cliché here, a human meme.  Do we not all love rock and roll? Of course we do.  It is just so rare that it loves us back.