Corona, Corona

There's a Taj Mahal moon out tonight... I mean the musician, not the palace, although you can take her anywhere and she'll never fail you.  A photographer friend tipped me off to the moonrise... he described it as orange and liquid... but here in the city I went block to block without a view until she had risen to the height of an average 10-story building and had become more like a bowl of raw milk.

The first time I ever heard Taj was a hot full-moon August night... I had no idea what to expect-- just the strange name-- and there he was, this simple hypnotic 2-beat weaving a Calypso-ish spell in the steamy club.  'Without my Corinna... sure don't mean a natural thing, ' he sang and it went straight through me like summer wind.

Years later my young husband showed up one day with none other than Mr. Henry St. Clair Fredericks, Taj's born-name... apparently they'd worked together and were friends.  I had many surprises in the early years of my marriage;  he spoke little but his past followed him like empty cans tied to a rear car-fender.  All colors-- all flavors... ('I learned to love you...' the song goes... accent on the 'you'...).  His rockstar friends, as well as the motley entourage that surrounded him, provided two kinds of education-- one biographical, and the other-- well, those were different times.  How many years has it been since I've seen anyone put out a bowl of milk for their pet cat?

When Wall Street has a bad day-- a really bad day, that is, there's a kind of pall over the city.  This virus scare has spread a film of slime and mistrust that no one needed at this moment.  In Harlem, little has changed.  Not so many investors up there... and life goes on-- illness or no illness.  People in their wheelchairs and leaning on walkers, asking for food and money-- no gloves, no masks.  But downtown-- midtown-- trains are less crowded, people seem subdued,  the way they were post-9/11.  Asians cover their mouths.  It's certainly taken us down a notch or two.

My man Salih who sells fruit from a stand across from Metropolitan Hospital says business is way off.  In February he refused to sell ginger, assuring me the Chinese were spreading illness; last night he was practically begging me to take any of his wares before they went bad.  Here, have a bag-- he packed it with a honeydew melon, some red peppers-- give me $2 he said, knowing I won't resist a bargain.  What will become of him who works 14 hours, 6 days... commutes 2 hours to a 2-room share in Staten Island, but is happy to be so close to the Mosque where he gratefully prays sometimes three times a day?

Last winter he was mugged and beaten badly for the $72 he had in his purse.  They dumped his fruit and stomped the bananas.  He is friendly with hospital staff, and they treated him on the sidewalk, but Allah-willing, he is terrified to visit the ER where he might be deemed undesirable and only partly legal.  Salih means virtuous...his son is named Aytagin which he tells me means 'Moon Prince'.

Tonight they have drawn a map-line around several neighborhoods.  When I was small there was a brief quarantine during the final polio outbreak; I thought the word meant something bad-smelling that came in a can-- like turpentine.   It made my mother scowl and keep us close to the small yard.   I keep thinking of that Wallflowers song 'the same black line that was drawn on you was drawn on me..'  We don't need this kind of thing now.  What is the meaning of it?  Threat?  Warning?  Punishment?  Things seemed so much happier at Christmas.  St. Marks Square in Venice is deserted now; the Gondoliers are sitting idly by the water, making smalltalk, telling jokes... but they fool no one.  Here we are trying to smile in our striped shirts, but we are anxious and defeated.

I saw a photo of Jakob Dylan recently; he looks tired and drawn, the way his father often did.  I am old enough to be his mother.  Henry St. Clair Fredericks is fat now.  He can still play, but he is not the same.  Just this week... festivals are being cancelled; music is receding into phones and online venues.  We are like closely-planted islands in this city-- isolated and selfish; few of us know our neighbors or notice when they fail to come home.  Even fewer are sitting quietly on a stoop tonight smoking-- listening to the music in their heart, watching the sky change.

My moon ages little; she hides, she circles, she shifts-- and then there she is, clean and untouched by what ails us here... same as she was the night I heard 'got a rainbow round my shoulder... looks like silver, shines like Klondike gold...'   Shine on, little Aytagin... may you grow strong and healthy as Salih, whose blessing today, in his broken Turkish-English, sounded like 'may you sell a million grapes in one hour.'

Lady and the Tramp

I maintain my own private version of 'New Yorker of the Week' awards.  The designees get no public accolade or acknowledgment... just a silent heads-up from me...  some spare change occasionally, because most of my heroes are either under- or unpaid for their courage and humanity... but since I am a member of the economic underprivileged, I hesitate to insult them with my pathetic donations and instead offer a kind of prayer on their behalf... or literary-underground immortality in one of the poems I scatter like autumn leaves find their way to obscurity-- or maybe to some school-child's fall art-project where they will be briefly loved.  I can't help myself.

Last week's winner was a homeless man, sleeping temporarily on the steps of a church on Varick Street.  I would not have noticed him; it was late, it was beginning to rain…and the staggering numbers of men spending nights on the streets in the last few years has inured us all to the sidewalk population.  They seem to have food; their daily panhandling income, they tell me, averages somewhere between $50 and $150-- more than most real musicians I know earn for a gig.  They stay out of the shelters where their egos are filed and shaved down to a brand of humility that is more lethal than an overdose.  These places are dirty and dangerous.  Despite the rules and regulations,  possessions are not protected and sleepers are subject to violent attacks from other occupants who refuse to take their meds and experience psychotic and hostile episodes.

My man had risen around midnight-- relative calm on the streets-- to relieve himself… because as we all know, there are no public restrooms in the city after dark.  The homeless visit and even bathe in Grand Central, Port Authority, the various library branches, MacDonald's, those Starbucks stores which are kind enough to share their restroom combinations.  But at night-- well, even the parks are curfewed.  We have well-enforced dog-waste laws, but my son tells me in Soho and Tribeca there is so much human shit on the streets these days that business owners have had community meetings about this.  One store recently built an outdoor boxlike structure for advertisements and artistic displays.  Every day they had to shovel out the excrement and hose the receptacle down with disinfectant until they just gave up on the whole campaign.  Coming home at 2 and 3 AM, I have many times seen men defecating at either end of the subway platforms.

So my man squatted quietly at the edge of the steps,  and with his head bowed, stood carefully to clean himself with the pages of an old paperback novel.  I resisted the urge to see the title… but some passing young couples who witnessed his naked butt in the lamplight shadow-- well, they gasped and sniggered and pointed.  The thing was-- he was tall-- like a basketball player… and his sinewy legs and butt were so perfect and beautiful, and the grace of his rising, and even the way he pulled up his layered pants and fixed his clothing-- well, it took my breath away.  The sheer aesthetic reality of this man, trying to avoid falling into the cracks of the shelter treadmill, the humiliation and the consideration with which he waited until dark, until the traffic was moving, how he tried to avoid spectators… how his little pile of possessions was so neatly wrapped.  He was not that far from being a boy; I could imagine his mother, who loved him, or maybe failed to love him and care for him… the women he could have had, in another version of the story… an athlete-- a star… it broke my heart.

I got on the train, feeling helpless and almost guilty because I have a place to go back to-- a place to sleep and take a hot shower, where my books and my instruments, God-willing, are relatively safe and sheltered enough so I can leave them and go about my work.  Another disgraceful story on the discarded tabloids on the subway floor, with our orange-skinned Lego-President spouting more of his anti-humanitarian rhetoric.  He in his gilded rooms on Fifth Avenue, security alone costing more than the annual food budget of a small country… with his umpteen bathrooms and his tanning beds and hair-magicians… he couldn't survive a week in the wilderness.

Why is it we all pick up after our dogs-- we pamper and love them.. and have little compassion to adopt stray people… are disgusted and uncomfortable about their natural needs? Hunger is a force here… disparity is baffling, and for these fallen souls-- getting back onto the track is near-impossible in a city where so many of us are barely holding onto our homes, finding ourselves with a lower standard of living than we could ever have imagined.  I think of all those legends and fairy tales where the kings traded places with the paupers-- how it changed their worldview… what happened to this?  We are all counting our money here… me, and some of these homeless--- counting the change in our pockets to see if we can buy a slice or a coffee… and the Wall Streeters assessing the daily fluctuations in their portfolios-- pushing a button and making more money in a single trade than most of us will see in a lifetime… and they are happy to lend you credit, your friendly banker who pays you no interest-- for a mere 25-30%.  They bet on your failure to repay and they win big.

It makes no sense.  My version of this week's fairy tale has the winning Mega Millions ticket belonging to my man of Varick Street… although things don't work this way.  I do know the affliction of extreme poverty and homelessness is epidemic and chronic.  It leaves scars and residual symptoms for even those lucky few who manage some kind of recovery.  But most don't.  No sociologist or journalist or researcher into the phenomenon quite understands what it is like to be homeless and needy in a city like this, where you are chased from doorways and sidewalks of buildings filled with tenants paying $10,000  month for a few rooms… Lady, a local man begged me-- Can you let me in the gate?  He wanted to sleep in our trash alley where he will be locked safely against attack and theft.  I was reprimanded by my Coop Board for this nominal act of compassion in a neighborhood where a bakery now charges $10 for a doughnut and coffee.  Personally, I haven't bought myself a cup for years now.  Things are tight.  There but for fortune…. but that's another tale.

Today I remembered how my Mom once dressed me up as a 'tramp' on Halloween… at the time I had no clue what that meant, but I wore an old beat-up suit jacket and a bent hat and she smeared my face with coal like dirt.  I had a scarf-sack on a stick over my shoulder.  Everyone laughed and filled my sack with candy.  A man on the block told me about 'hobo' life; it seemed romantic.  I dreamed of runaway trains, of wandering, of campfires and hitchhiking…

Today I dream of a lottery for the poor-- where the billion dollar ticket gets divided among the homeless deprived angels of the street-- What was that old TV show… the Millionaire? The 21st century New York City update… that would be a reality show worth watching…  (to be continued…)

America the Reality Show

At some point during the summer, one of my friends asked me to blog for her while she went on vacation.  Apparently she is a paid 'tweeter' or commentator in various livestreams and publications for television, and apparently it is lucrative enough to allow her to have a holiday.  The catch? I had to binge-watch several shows so I could quip with credibility.

So the first assignment, and my 'audition', was The Bachelorette... regular network, fairly appalling, required reviewing a previous season of The Bachelor to get the backstory on the heroine who had been pretty well re-styled and made-over during the year, was admittedly all-American nice and gorgeous in a high-maintenance way, but likable.  I couldn't help inserting opinions on the pretty good-sized pool of racial diversity even though most of America knew she'd never cross-breed.  But what we were not prepared for was her choice of sub-par intellect, not to mention his bigoted, homophobic and misogynistic tendencies.  Is this the New America, the one that makes Kanye do the Presidential dance? My comments were disallowed.  Politics nixed.  Lovelier thoughts, my friend encouraged-- Keep it light... The only positive I could come up with was about her not-quite-as-attractive real-life (presumably) sister who was truly wife-worthy, loving and supportive, but this was not valid currency.

Next task: I binge-watched two entire seasons of Real Housewives of New York.  At least I could GPS locations... and one of my girlfriends had actually worked on some charity with Carole Radziwill... so I focused in on her.  At first she seemed relatively intelligent and independent-- dating a young chef, leading a life... but I watched her morph from a respectable, carefree woman into a botoxed, desperate fashion-hag-- a true mean-girl whose trajectory took her from top to bottom of the lady-heap.  Her clothing became ridiculous, her snide comments bitter and nasty, her constant style changes rivaled the Kardashians.  What could she have been thinking?  The reality show kiss-of-death for some who seem to compete with the kind of fierceness that eclipses character.  I sided with Bethenny-the-bitch whose real life tragedies won her the sympathy vote, and Carole fell both from grace and cast.  Good riddance... still no payment for all my television efforts, and an inability to separate Carole from my own real-life-nasty sister.

Oh, the fame-whores and phonies, the no-talent celebrities, the ass-kissing extras and free publicity opportunities.  Who are these women?  No one I would want to hang out with, except maybe Luanne-the-convict-version whose cabaret performance was entertaining in a horrific kind of way.  Some of my best friends have been in prison, rehab, various institutions...  almost relatable... but for the most part,  an entire mockery of my New York.  About as real as cartoon-Disneyworld, but not quite Thanksgiving float-worthy... Needless to say, my comments were undervalued.

But I'd been summer-bitten by the TV reality-bug.. and poor as I am, there were few evening options to distract me from the heat besides gigs.  I moved onto My 600-pound Life which is truly reality-worthy and eye-opening.  We in New York City rarely see this sector of population who are compensating for deep emotional wounds with food and essentially no more bloated than our local urban billionaires, just more honest.  Personally, I cannot fathom how they pay for all these meals; I can hardly afford restaurant or prepared food.  What I do know is the sin of gluttony seems far less heinous than the wanton greed of the 21st century corporate culture.  These people wear their weakness;  the Wall Streeters have personal trainers and plastic surgeons to keep them lean and mean while their investments balloon in 1200-ton portfolios.

Maybe the real reality show now is America... the Celebrity-Apprentice Presidential Candidate himself, with Kanye this week migrating from the Kardashian set to the Oval Office stage... flubbed his lines and embarrassed his audience but no apologies from the Trumpsters.  Protocol, ethics, intelligence, logic, respect-- all bets are off, all clarity is blurred and justice itself is on mock-trial.  Journalists and quipsters are hyper-provoked... pundits are ubiquitous and political cartoonists  hemorraghing material.  Endless dialogue and competitive commentary-- verbal bullying and misstatements are considerably more common than truth; little is unscripted except the pathetic presidential tweets...  and let's face it-- the viewer population is way more familiar with Bravo 'anti-stars' than political candidates.

In the end, I failed miserably as a TV tweeter... earned not even subway fare for all my viewing efforts, and feel a bit slimed, as though I skinny-dipped in contaminated surf.  If rap is the new poetry, 60 is the new 40, American politics is surely the new comedy... and I'm not sure where I belong.  It's like I'm looking at a chessboard with Monopoly game pieces.   Things are rigged and backward and ruined and even the weather for all our technology is less predictable than ever.   Everyone is a follower and no one is a clear leader.  I am betting that more people trick or treat than vote; however we celebrate Halloween, there seems nothing more horrifying than the Apprentice-president in the White House and his ghoulish team of clown-hearts with their golf-bags of tricks.
There are real tragedies, real victims of real disasters, real catastrophes and suffering.  Not reality shows but world events... not television entertainment but life.  May the better man, for God's sake, win.

Pocketful of Wry

Yesterday on the sidewalk two small birds were having it out-- a bonafide squall... a few others flew in for the entertainment; two extras got involved in the fray.  It was like a game of 3-card monty... squawkers and gapers and rooters and much flapping around.  Finally I got a glimpse of the prize-- it was a chicken wing-tip-- like a discarded piece of Kentucky fried bucket-stuff on the sidewalk.  Hey, hey, I shouted to the sparrows-- not even pigeons who have no shame in this town-- that's your cousin there you're tearing apart-- what are you, cannibals?  Or maybe the processed stuff which passes as meat at KFC has no authentic bird DNA.  They dispersed, only to return when I got a few feet ahead... to peck it out until death....

I thought about Aesopian philosophy-- mocking bird humor-- an Ogden Nash or Edward Lear would surely come up with a limerick.  A Wall Street parallel?  A dog-eat-dog kind of thing?  What occurred to me is the fact that people have lost sight of the 'prize'... they will duke it out, compete, race and grab out of some instinct... kind of a Donald Trump thing-- going all out for a political campaign when you have no idea of what you might do if you actually win.  And, as we suffering Americans have learned well, not only does the best man not win, but the worst man wins, the best men stay home, the race ends in a brick wall collision-- no trophy, no pride, no victory-- just a kind of sick realization that you ruffled your feathers for some kind of cannibalistic irony...  a bad joke... fuel for all the cartoonists and comedians and late-night talk-show hosts.  I'm not laughing this week.

Last Saturday school kids led the country in a meaningful protest against gun-violence; they spoke with emotion and pride-- the mourners, the victims-- the girl vomiter who displayed her facial wounds to millions on international broadcasts, while the president-- the Commander-In-Chief whose worst pain is from a hair transplant procedure-- played golf or watched shark-week TV.   The demonstration totally eclipsed this year's NCAA tournament and imparted another ironic meaning to  Sweet Sixteen.   Brackets lost their edge anyway; the hype this year seems larger than the competition. Wth the exception of the first round, the winners seem less appealing-- no dreams, no legends, no compelling stories.

On the train this week I sat beside a homeless girl-- Maria from Panama who came to New York for her boyfriend-- shining and bright-- having won hands down her high school talent contest, she hoped to become a star, but had to sell her violin and saxophone for food.  Where is her joy of winning? What harsh lesson has she learned here?  I wanted to take her home with me, but I can no longer do these things.  I can no longer saddle myself with more causes and sorrows and sicknesses; I am worn from not even three months of the new year; my shadow is dense and dark-- daylight savings time seems ill-omened and premature.

One of the workers in my building complained to me about the way some new tenants have treated him-- with disdain and disrespect; these people who have bankrupted old Wall Street firms with their greed and shenanigans, their margin-trading and derivatives manipulation.  Here they are, the criminals and crime-masters of finance, buying weighty shares in my coop, throwing their power around like the entitled brats they are, tearing down walls and wrecking old fixtures as they move onward, losers become winners...  You are a good woman, this man told me, with his thick accent; you will be rewarded by Jesus; I believe this, he said, pointing to his heart.

My friends question the existence of a God who countenances childhood cancer, these senseless innocent killings... I do not hold Him personally responsible;  I know this is not the way the world works.  There are no Superheroes who catch falling infants from burning buildings, but firemen and people who reach out and sacrifice themselves for others.  We honor them, we decorate their graves and donate money to their families... but who are the winners here?  I don't know anymore.  All day the nursery rhyme has been going over and over in my head-- the Trump-as-King is in his counting house, counting out his money, the Queen is in the parlor (Trump Tower) eating bread and honey; the maid is in the garden hanging out the clothes...along came a wing-eating blackbird and snipped off her nose.  It seems the poor and the good are being punished here; they are shot and homeless and suffering from asthma and cancer and poor medicine while the losers have become the winners.  Crooked men are we, the new Americans, with our phones and selfies and downloaded lives-- broken brackets, crumbling White House, obscene coffers and man-made poverty; we are no longer dreamers but streamers.   Maria in the church basement cradling her empty violin case like a baby, waiting for her sad supper on a paper plate, singing a song of sixpence...

Hark the Herald Angels

Like my father before me, I often watch Bloomberg television in the overnight.  I'm fascinated by economics, the way they graph and predict and analyze what seems the bizarre and illogical behavior of current financial markets.  It's also a little comforting, in the thin hours where late-night dissolves into dawn, to know that across the world people are awake and bustling, when you are just home from a gig  that isn't quite what you wanted it to be, and sometimes considering life-alternatives.

Apparently, according to the financial pundits, it was a healthy Christmas.  Retail in-store sales were up, despite the anticipated online shopping dominance.   Personally I didn't really buy into the holiday spirit until I met my son in Herald Square at 5:45 PM, Christmas Eve.  Everyone should have this experience once in their life; it puts capitalism in some kind of warped perspective.  To be honest, there was less panic than I'd have predicted… and we managed to score the last pair of black Timberland nu-bucks in his size.  They were more than I could afford, more than I spend in two years on my own clothing-- but he wanted them.  He wanted the same ones in 2004, but I didn't bring that up.  It's imperative to buy something I can't afford; especially something that rappers seem to endorse universally.  Of course, he'd really like a Rolex, but he'll have to wait until he can buy it himself which is imminent, I sense. As for me, I've given up the ritual of exchanging gifts with everyone else… I can scarcely manage building employee tips and they all know they earn more than I do, but it keeps us on some kind of level ground of courtesy.  God knows the value of courtesy in this city.

My son always buys me a tree-- my only wish-list; this year he gave me a phone-- for emergencies, Mom, he explains to my idiosyncratic luddite head-shaking-- an extra line came with a huge discount in his bill, and a free phone… so I had to concede, even though I will not carry it.  He  knows me well; I have a history of wondering at the yearning of most people for what they do not have, and not often wanting what I get.   My childhood Christmases, after initial dismay that Santa did not leave me a horse, were not materially memorable.  I spent long days shopping, wrapping, and crafting things for everyone with my babysitting income.  I loved the giving.  Presents for me were generally the little-sister version of whatever my mother had selected from my sister's hefty list, which included prices and sums.  My Nana knew me best; she gave me boxes of scraps and spools of thread for making doll clothes-- rocks and old stamps for projects.  These were my treasures.

One year my Mom gave me Judy Collins' 'Wildflowers'.  It was the first record album that was designated mine and not communal like the scratched and dog-eared Beatles and Stones in the hifi bin, and it was like a coming-of-age joy-- one of those moments that let me know my Mom really 'got' me.  I loved it to death.  Sisters of Mercy.

Another year I remember tonight: I must have been 18, planning a summer trip to Europe with my boyfriend, and I begged for cash.  Christmas morning there were the usual piles of gay-looking boxes and bags, and not a thing for me.  In the toe of my stocking, something rustled: it was a $1.  Fuming, I took off-- skipped the traditional pancake breakfast and ran downtown.  The city was deserted and I was sulking and in desperation hopped a bus back to college.  It was a day like today-- frigid and unforgiving, and when I reached my empty dorm, I found there was neither electricity nor heat.  I wept in Christmas solitude and called my boyfriend in Boston from the house-phone who consoled me and directed me back to New York.   Anyway, trying to sleep that night under piles of blankets, I heard a strange noise-- found a flashlight and discovered one of my eccentric roommates in several hats and coats in her bed reading the novels of Jane Austin.  She'd stayed behind, intellectual that she was, and not buying for a second into either the holiday or home-sweet-home.  I'd never have really known her,  had I not had this little learning excursion which also taught me that I was an adult, and had to rely on myself if I wanted something-- that home was where I was, not some kind of story-book picture.  I thus weaned myself from my sweet Mom for the second time.

I've been thinking about her all this week-- my first motherless Christmas, the first time I wrapped no gift for her.  I remember how she understood me, even though she disagreed-- how she had to align herself with my Dad and refuse to sanction or even witness my artistic and romantic ambitions, but how she'd send me something like some candy bars I loved taped together, with no card-- or an old ribbon.  How she called to cry about John Lennon when he was shot that cold December day… how she tried.  I suppose death is the final weaning.

There's a Code-Blue out tonight in New York City.  It's so cold they've directed the police to round up homeless people who are at risk outdoors.  I was in Harlem at dusk; on the steps of a familiar church where a population beds down, two cops were trying to coax a sleeper to a shelter.  I don't mind the cold, he kept saying, but I mind the shelter.  After they left, I asked if he needed something.  Plastic bags for my feet, he said, and asked about my dog.  My dog has been dead for years… but he seemed to recognize me.  You gave me a sweater one night, he told me--- you were on a balcony and it was raining, and I was digging through restaurant trash… and you brought me a blue sweater.  I remember this… I did… and I remembered seeing that sweater in the trash bin the next morning, like a dis.

It's hard for me to believe this was that homeless man whose face, I confess, I don't recall… I keep thinking he is some sort of angel or apparition; his voice was soft and resonant and musical,his leathery smile so kind.  He also gave me a bag of socks to wash; I threw them into the machine at 2 AM when no one would be there to judge.  I will take them back to him tomorrow evening even though I wonder if he will be there; it is my foot--washing opportunity-- a real Christmas gift and I resisted the temptation to buy him a new pack, but executed his wish, as he presented it.   Clean socks.  I will sort and fold them in the Christmas spirit I failed to embrace this year until now.  If he is not there, I will leave the bag along with a candle for his night, and a prayer.

This is the sort of thing my Mom frowned on; after all, she was a lady, and didn't understand this is my version of rolling bandages for soldiers as she had done in her day.  In the scriptures, the woman who washes Jesus' feet with her hair, no less, was a sinner.  I've sinned plenty, as my Mom did not, and maybe you must be a sinner to want to serve the homeless.  I'd like to think it is compassion, not guilt that compels me.  But maybe some of those smug Bloomberg guys need a bag of dirty socks left under their tree with the Rolex boxes and the new-car keys.  How about putting that on your billionaire-list, Santa? For the naughty or nice, financial sinners all-- the ones who drank the Trump tax hand-out just as happily as a Christmas egg-nog.  From your warm golf-courses and holiday Caribbean hideaways, may you dream of some human foot-washing in the arctic cold as you kneel before a man who has maybe never seen the inside of a an airplane, or a decent restaurant, or a lovely warm home, but who is closer to some version of grace than all of your graphs and statistics will ever be.

Amen and Happy New Year to all.

Homeward Bound

On the way home last night, I hitched an uptown First Ave bus; it was after midnight-- my card was near-empty but the driver was kind and waved me on.  The ride uptown took nearly ninety minutes.  It seemed every stop was crowded with the down-and-out crowd.  By 34th Street the bus was jammed with passengers-- many of them homeless men and women with oversized carts filled with stuff.  The stench was strong, but the driver patiently rolled out the handicapped ramp and let them all board, mostly without paying.  it occurred to me that they wait for this man-- maybe the beginning of his shift, and they know they can rely on transport, these forgotten untouchables.  Maybe some of them ride all night to stay warm.  A few disputes erupted among cranky territorial passengers, but for the most part people were complacent; many came from the VA hospital, Bellevue… a drunk man kept yelling he needed a hospital… but then he passed out and slept like a baby.  It was a kind of pre-Thanksgiving reality check.

When I was young, I used to visit my friend's grandparents in the same building where I now live.  It was a little far uptown to be fashionable, in those days-- a great old turn-of-the-century prewar with a grand lobby but no doormen or luxury services.  Their space was massive-- lofty-- with skylights and high ceilings, and resembled my imagined version of a successful European artist's studio c. 1900. It stretched from one end of the building to another, with huge windows onto upper Madison Avenue.  Sparsely furnished, there were plenty of loungey sofas and reading chairs with quaint lamps-- tables and ashtrays-- window-seats and desks.  As they were part of an important publishing firm, they entertained writers and intellectuals; there were books everywhere… yards and yards of shelves, and piles and piles of treasured volumes, magazines, journals.  The radiators clanked in winter; in summer, in those pre-air-conditioned years, the top floor was sweltering.  The park was half a block away, and there was often a breeze on the roof, if you climbed up at evening.  It was a source of gossip and rumors-- secrets were exchanged here, a few inappropriate relationships, many drunken dinner debates-- a million cigarettes, deals inked and stories begun.

The sprawling apartment-- undecorated and decorous as it was, felt like the heart of adult New York.  This was what I would be when I grew up and got old--  a host-- a home-conversationalist in a book-lined room alive with  dialogue and energy-- ideas and excitement-- like a sort of club whose membership required no dress-code or mindset, but a passion for literature and art.  But more than anything-- it was a home.  You knew where you were when you were there; you could wander and browse, sit and lose yourself in a poem or look out the window… but you felt 'embraced'.

Thirty-five years later, I bought into their building-- a funky back-door apartment in need of renovation but with the pedigree and bone structure that had become part of my Manhattan dream.   It was cheap and a little dilapidated, but I was a young single Mom and felt so empowered to have bought what would really be my own true home.  My first Thanksgiving was blessed, for so many reasons… but I felt the tradition of that building, even though the publishing family had died long before, and that grand space had been divided into smaller units.  There were neighbors who had grown old in this place that seemed magical to me;  there were senior couples with piles of books and great art and they welcomed me into their homes with the often shabby old chintz curtains and the beautiful but worn Persian rugs; they spoke the cultured and human language of old New York; they had ideas-- they loved music-- they wrote, still read Latin and Greek, many of them… they treated their neighbors with kindness and generosity.

In those years the old building had a single employee: a superintendent who'd been born here… he was in his 60's, had raised his family in the ground floor rear unit.  He painted, polished brass, cleaned the old marble.  The rest of us chipped in and tended the garden, had lobby parties-- we were a true cooperative in the old sense-- a group of tenants who all cherished our home, who seemed to agree that our space and privacy were sacred.  Our individual priorities included maintaining a low public profile, modest monthly fees, a non-pretentious simplicity of style.  The architecture spoke for itself-- a quiet, old elegance, without luxury.  They welcomed me-- financially limited as I was, because they knew I was happy to be part of this lifestyle.

It took years to fill what seemed like a massive space to me-- to furnish it with my books, the art I've collected over the years, the finds and objects, the old furniture I've gathered at random auctions… It is quite full now-- my instruments, the things I love… I have quite everything I ever longed for as a young woman… and yet I am no longer content and secure the way I was twenty years ago.  In the early 90's, I helped a senior woman in my building-- Jane, was her name-- to pack up her spartan belongings.  Regretfully, she told me she had intended to die in this apartment, but her very modest pension from years of brilliant editorial work no longer covered rising maintenance costs.  I recognized so many of the wonderful books we carefully piled into these boxes like relics from a life well-lived and no longer valued.  The economy had changed,  New York had undergone a massive progressive facelift; the Wall Street culture had created a greed-bubble that has not just priced most of us out of the market, but has altered the rank-and-file New York City human profile.

While Jane was forced to move in with her son somewhere out of state, I find myself living on $3 a day most weeks--- having given up all luxuries including the subway, some days, in favor of walking, rice-based meals… my entire annual clothing allowance is less than some people spend on lunch.  Haircuts… movies… vacations… a day at the beach… have been so long left behind… but these days I dare not buy myself even a coffee.  Until last night's ride, I have been plagued with my annual Thanksgiving dinner anxiety-- putting on a brave face while calculating how I will pull together the meal on a skeletal budget, how it will set me back.  But turning the key into my place-- like a souvenir-shop of my life, a three-dimensional photo-album of memories-- I realized I was 'home' and the idea of these people on the bus having nowhere to 'let down' just seemed tragic and inhuman.

In recent years young bankers and hedge-fund managers have recognized my old building as the potential cash cow they envisioned. These families renovate, destroy, combine, disregard… and then sell. They have way more space than anyone requires; they are rarely home and they have no observable sentimental possessions or books. They have architects and designers, and mostly photoshoot-ready but soulless apartments.  The ghosts of former tenants and the spirits in old walls and floors sigh and creak at night.  The old radiators still bang, although they will manage to eradicate these eventually.  They have forced doormen and lobby improvements-- fancy elevators. They have usurped the great old roof with their equipment and air systems. Even as the smallest shareholder,  monthly costs nearly exceed my very humble income as a musician/poet.  My slender spending habits have become emaciated.  And tonight, as I listen to the soft roar that is New York City seep through my leaky windows, I wonder if these people feel 'home'.  As in home-less.

There is some George Segal movie on from the 70's and this is New York, the way I remember it… before clothing advertised things.. when even rich people's apartments were comfortable and slightly messy and filled with things... when hair was not perfect and women had wrinkles and the buildings looked habitable and a little dirty.  I realize I am of a dying or defeated generation here-- hanging in, holding on to what I know and love-- my building, my old guitars… sentiment...

Things change-- I know this, and not all change is bad. But this Wall Street generation changed the rules for many of us who thought we had secured some kind of tranquility for our older age.  Our trusted annuities and medical plans have been up-ended, our modest pensions have been diminished and decent healthcare is precarious and prohibitive.  I naively bought shares in a wonderful institution, only to find myself a tiny minimized partner in a corporation with an agenda of money and attitudes and little regard for human values and the great cultural mesh upon which this city was founded.

I will be home for Thanksgiving, and I will try to forge onward and resist what feels like a tidal insult to everything I am.  My neighbors will never share a bus ride like the First Ave. M15 at 2 AM; they don't want to see or smell this kind of thing, and they seem to enjoy the demolition of old walls as much as they enjoy their indulgent vacations.  They will grow old, too-- not as gracefully as this building has, and maybe one day they will discover nostalgia or homesickness-- that nothing is ever as precious as that which has been lost.   By then I'll be sharing a cigarette with the old ghosts on the stairs while, God willing, someone might be enjoying a home-cooked turkey in what will always be the old rooms with the book-lined walls.

The Man Who Sold the World

Now that I've seen so many, I  begin the new year with trepidation-- with reluctance.  It's not that I hate to leave the old behind, but the acceleration of loss in my life is tipping the balance sheet to the dark side.  Even Wall Street is following the pattern.  But the deaths-- the illnesses, the shocks-- the accidents… January is already a bit of a black hole and the downhill track seems to have taken root in only 12 days.

A couple of my friends have already ended relationships... Damage control? Some kind of prescient avoidance of rockier paths ahead?  Who knows?  Maybe the unseasonably warm December cooled their winter passion prematurely.  There was something disconcerting and ominous about a balmy New York Christmas Eve-- a sense that we would be punished for the weather oasis.   I did my New Year's Eve gig--- put on my proverbial red shoes and danced the blues-- had a couple of friends over for second-shift pre-dawn champagne toasts, and was so concerned with other people's drama that I forgot to make a resolution.  I mean, my own expectations are fairly realistic at this point; besides promising I'll do a solo gig or release an album,  I don't overcommit.  2015 was a rough year for goodbyes and memorials; I have a little more respect for fate at this age, and a sense of fragility I didn't have years ago.

The post-New Year's sidewalks of Manhattan are lined with deceased Christmas trees, some in some state of greenery, some quite dead.  The irony of having seen these same trees vertical, healthy-- freshly cut and ready to shine for a family just a few weeks ago makes this seem a bit sadder--- they are now horizontal-- end-to-end, like a funeral procession of firs, sadly waiting to be turned to mulch and maybe returned to the ground from whence they came.  The sheer number is a little staggering-- an imported urban forest graveyard.

Dismantling my tree is a solitary and ceremonious task for me.  I always put on some mood music to make the tedium of putting away ornaments and lights just a little easier.  It brings back so many deja-vu Christmas denouements-- my son's first Christmas when I could scarcely afford a small scrawny tree and sat up for 3 nights with my feverish infant while he suffered through his first life crisis.  I was terrified and alone; my gift was his recovery.  Sometimes it's Beethoven or Bach; sometimes it's the Stones or Game Theory.  The Christmas just after Jeff Buckley had died,  I played his Grace and really 'heard' the Hallelujah for the first time.  It seems there's often a late-December death among my friends-- as though someone just can't quite cross over into the next year and succumbs.  I've always thought it's not quite as bad to die in the cold--- in the snow.  The white blessing seems to soften the blackness of death.  We all dread the New Year if we're smart.  From what I've seen, the future has yet to hold a candle to the past.

Saturday night I was already sad.  I put on the remastered Led Zeppelin which has so many associations it is relatively non-sentimental.  I got up on my ladder and managed to get the job done 

before the second cd had finished.  I took a walk up to Harlem at around 11 to shake my blues and buy a few groceries and on 110th Street, I ran into a prophetic figure.  She was tall, with heavy dreadlocks and a sort of black cape-- softly weeping until I passed her, when she began to wail.  What, I asked her… but it seemed the love of her life had just passed away; she'd left the hospital, was blindly walking toward some non-future, and she grabbed onto me.  She was desperate and I was madly searching my brain-bank for anything I could offer someone in urgent grief.  He was loved, I told her--- he was surrounded by the sense of love as he crossed over… how many of us have this joy?  Most of us shuffle from day to day alone and under-appreciated… but in a moment like this everything is a drop of water to a parched country--- it is nothing.  She wept and howled, blew her nose in my pocket-napkins, and tugged at my now-wet coat (the rain had begun-- even the sky was crying) as she sank to her knees and screamed for help.  I won't leave you, I promised.  And I kneeled with her, while the reality of what had happened replaced shock with some kind of violent emotional retching.  Finally we began to walk.  I was beginning to feel exhausted and trapped, in a way, in a well of sadness which had no bottom.  I tried to distract myself with thoughts… of course I'd had the very same loss-- the one human I knew as my great love-- who had suffered and died-- the one who told me he'd never leave-- he'd left me to grapple with lesser versions of love, failed attempts at marriage and family-- a story I could never relive and a dark shadow which followed me in and out of every single year.  

At least you won't witness the first night your husband turns his back to you--  the first infidelity or indiscretion-- the wounds and injuries that punctuate a lifetime of love, I wanted to tell her… but I didn't.  Finally I walked her to a friend's home and handed her off.  We exchanged first names only; we'd shared a moment of unbearable intimacy; I was covered in her tears and secretions, and I would most likely never see her again.  But I knew this was a sign.  I was about to get some terrible phone call; the next loss of the year had been foreshadowed.  I returned home and listened again to the new Bowie release which I'd heard the night before.  It was even darker now that I began to absorb its meaning.  Sorrow, I kept thinking-- ironically went to my computer to watch the great video version of Bowie and Amanda Lear… it distracted and took me into a world I'd once lived in.  The devil's daughter, I thought, as I processed my bizarre encounter on 110th Street…. I'd lived, though.  Twenty-four hours later I received the news that shook our musical foundations-- the loss of losses, for some of us.  Our Genie, our Hero, our Enchantor… 

The phenomenon of public grief is a little easier than private.  The fact that the music of someone like Bowie has rooted in our hearts at various moments of our life-- has taken us from teenage into near-golden years…. is something that may not happen in this new world.  I can't imagine my son and his friends grieving over a fallen rapper the way this death feels so universally catastrophic and sad.  What I do know, especially after the last week--- is that loss and grief are here to stay, in my life… whether I befriend or fear them, the only escape now is my own death, which is inevitable and closer with each tree that I lay quietly on the curb with its memories and sense of past finery.  Whether we are good or bad, kind and loving or cruel and cold, we can create-- we can produce, we can try to make something of this life, but nothing, as our sadly departed Muse understood long ago-- no, nothing will keep us together.  

Not-so-sour Grapes

I woke up today from one of those post-apocalyptic nightmares where you are stuck in some barren landscape in a precariously fragile building which is the only protection you have from seeping white slime or fallout or whatever form the horror takes in this particular version of the dream.  I suppose this is some left-over haunting from the Cold War era where we were constantly being instructed in safety protocol 'in the event of…'  Generally my personal dream features a dog I've forgotten, or a child; this morning, my baby boy was missing---I was panicked, and somehow found him asleep in his little trundle bed, all clean and fresh in little bunny pajamas… untouched by the hoarfrost of melted clouds.

Then you transition into the actual circumstances of your life-- -the stacks of books,  guitars needing attention, the quilts and laundry, the unrecorded songs, the piles of lyrics, unwashed dishes… and somehow these loose ends are welcoming.  The tranquility of my familiar personal chaos comforts me.
On my voicemail a message from an old schoolmate who has decided after 2 unhappy marriages and 30 years of Wall Street and country clubs, that we should make a 'go' of things.  He is tired of the debutantes who at our age are looking grandmotherly anyway, and sick of the socialite bankers and the Hamptons.  Manhattan Bohemia beckons, and he has dialed my number.

Somehow I turned on one of those highbrow talk shows tonight and there is not just the billionaire husband but the it-boy son of my most beloved college roommate.  Apparently her choice of spouse was much more successful than either of mine, although I remind myself that she had sort of a nervous breakdown and I visited her in an upscale mental hospital in Connecticut where she began to wean herself from our slightly warped friendship.  I also remember her calling me at one point more recently to tell me her daily pile of antidepressants was becoming larger than an average dog's dinner-- bragging that she had a closet filled with mink coats and couldn't get off her bed.  Going further back,  her remarks that her fiancee looked exactly like me, that we could be twins--- which was not far from the truth--- so I looked carefully at the screen to see how my male counterpart weathered the years.   He was snide and smarmy, actually--- and here he is, delivering this rehearsed little aphorism which is about as profound as mis-translated Plato… and Charlie is giving him that extra gracious smile he gives these hedge fund assholes because he saw The Music Man when he was a kid and knows all about con men and 'the think method' which is maybe a little charming when applied to a kid's marching band, but not when these toxic pillars of mediocrity are stripping their country of a future so they can line their fat uninspired pockets.  I'm beginning to think the guy is truly pathetic and not even smart and has some kind of desperate power fantasy or maybe even on an early road to dementia.  Did I miss something Sr. Massimo Unimpressivissimo?  I have to admit the son had her lovely eyelashes and was cute while smug for his age, obviously not bothered by the fact that his Dad had propelled him financially from wannabe to 'is'.

No wonder my son--- the same one who slept so peacefully through my dream holocaust-- resents me.  He has to compete with these excessively privileged people.  And I have to admit, there is the faintest  twinge of some unkind emotion that flits across my face, like a passing car headlight… and then I assess the sex appeal factor of this guy which is a very low number, even factoring in the massive wallet size and the triple-floor penthouse in a very exclusive CPW building with a spectacular view.

I have no view--- well, some brick walls, a few pigeons, a century-old courtyard below… a modicum of reflected light during a brief period every afternoon.  Then again, no one is pointing a gun at me or hacking into my mobile for the latest inside trading trickery or media stunts because I don't even have a cell phone.

I once dated a celebrity and found myself literally suffocating at the dinners and looking at my watch.  I hated the dresses he bought me, returned the jewelry and although the free screenings were okay, everyone seemed just a little bit smaller in person, and except for some really lewd remarks whispered to me by one of my favorite writers who had a serious drinking problem, very few laughs.  Celebrity sex gets boring too… and you can't just go get yourselves a big mac at 3 AM without someone taking his photo.  It was essentially too high-maintenance and I fantasized about going home with cute Irish bartenders from sleazy Hell's Kitchen pubs and sleeping in their unwashed sheets on a lumpy mattress on the floor of a tenement.  Until I did.  The celebrity was furious, but the bartender and I were very happy for a time.  It was the perfect ending to a fractured New York fairy tale.

So while very few would envy my life, I somehow pitied my roommate tonight.  I doubt she worries about her social security, but those of us without a consistent mate have really conducted a lifelong experiment in love and its various manifestations.  I've had plenty of men in many forms, and drawn many conclusions.  Her financial footprint is certainly larger, and her possessions could perhaps fill a large mansion but I will leave a huge pile of un-pirated intellectual property I've created and written during all those evening hours when she's sitting in the front row at fashion week and attending functions and dinners, and getting styled and regaled and made-up.  I've seen fewer plays and films but read more books and borrow from the library.  She doesn't play guitar and can't even carry a tune, as I recall.

Tomorrow I will return the phone message of my Wall Street friend and tell him I can't make the dinner, or the weekend, because somehow in my version of Cinderella, I refuse the glass slipper and still kiss the prince.  I will ride my C train back home to the dust and the bare floors and toast my old guitars and the rising sun and drink my first coffee as it sets.  Amen.

Nun of That

So there’s a sign outside the rectory of a neighborhood church.  It’s on a side street--- one of those heavy old glass-covered black felt boards with the white plastic letters that give you a feeling of old-timey smalltown announcement-comfort.   It poses a question in all-caps…"HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT BECOMING A CATHOLIC?”

These days I find myself nodding and grimacing in the street, smirking and gasping, and downright talking to myself.  Maybe it’s age, isolation, a surfeit of irony that begs public release…whatever.  But the truth is, I have thought about becoming a Catholic.  I’ve also thought about joining the army, about prostitution, about marrying my best girlfriend in Sweden for the healthcare and companionship… and many other things.  But ‘enlightened’ and cynical as I am, I have always had an affinity with cathedrals, icons, Mexican votive paintings on tin—Giotto, Fra Angelico.  Personal devotion to a concept of God—of divine love and forgiveness--- as opposed to most of the men I’ve wasted nights over—is appealing. 

Maybe it’s the Goth thing, or the fact that my first true Hollywood crush was Jeffrey Hunter in King of Kings… but I grew up on a street with Italian and Irish families and my playmates’ objections to their religion fascinated me.  As did the rituals, the communion dresses--- the mysticism, the music.  We had an Irish nurse who often took us to mass (we got a Good Humor as reward) and I’d pretend the church was my castle and I was a Princess.  I loved the velvet plush seats and the smell of old wood and incense.  The choir, the organ… and the stained glass….it was magical.

My lapsed Catholic friends seem so ‘grounded’ in their anti-beliefs.  And the bad boys were oh, so bad—Jim Carroll, and my first boyfriend who’d been an altar boy and made me have sex with him in a back pew—at night, of course--- the church was empty.  I kept waiting for a thunderclap, or for one of the hanging lamps to drip hot wax on us… but nothing happened.  

For most of my life, if I feel really badly about something, I visit one of the grand Manhattan churches –at off hours, generally. Whenever I need to ask God for some favor, for some healing or a little support… I go Catholic.  I feel slightly closer to the celestial ‘ear’.  And unlike Starbucks, or the ‘free’ internet in a café, you don’t really need to buy anything.  No one gives you a dirty look if you don’t pay for a candle.  You can cross yourself, listen to the choir rehearse, kiss the foot of the Virgin statue, kneel, or have a cry--- you can even drink a coffee and no one bothers you.   I feel ‘safe’.  I feel calm.  I confess and apologize, and leave by the side door. 

I used to wonder if there was a website like digitalpriest.com where people could confess and be forgiven…if it would not be wildly successful.  An app--- an ichurch, with your choice of music and architectural style… I used to wonder if they installed little confessional boxes on Wall Street, where traders and hedge fund managers could ‘mail’ little anonymous slips of paper, get things off their expansive David-Barton-buff guilty chests…maybe inside bathroom stalls.  Guaranteed privacy, guaranteed direct-access to some religious figurehead, like a kind of Oz priest—who would dispense immediate  forgiveness for insider trading and general infidelity and lack of compassion.  Or maybe they would get an email:  Say 3 Hail Marys and send a check to your nearest democratic headquarters.  Or to some very edgy and dysfunctional kickstarter campaign.   Maybe they would slow down a bit--- maybe they would consider at least the concept of guilt---or right and wrong, the way they do not.  

People in church these days look at their phones.  They text, and sext and read email.  The bandwidth of religion in our lives is not prominent.  So yes, it seems simple and clear and pure to give up all of my priorities and convert.  To surrender to some version of a path to goodness.  But I don’t.  I keep my habits and my possessions and my ex-boyfriends and my passions.  I cannot give them up.  The thrift shops and sidewalk trash piles and the success of ebay all attest to the fact that this is a culture of consumer-hoarders---excessive money, constant clothing changes—make-up, accessories, food of a trillion varieties--- there is not a single person among us who doesn’t own one too many of something.  

But most of all, I am sick of the ever-increasing eruption of public confession.  I am sick of these ‘me-novels’ and songs and endless memoir-writing and the trillions of instagram photos and facebook posts like a virtual endless dump.   I am sick of Miley Cyrus comments and Beyonce’s stupid blond hair and these pathetic TV real estate agents.  I am sick of seeing rich housewives cry on camera and the WEN guy and the QVC network ladies.  I am sick of narcissistic politicians  and the hundreds of botoxed talking heads who create TV shows out of dumb tweets and bad cell-phone footage of celebrities in their bikinis with their gut hanging out, or punching someone in the face.  

Maybe if these people went to church and saw a priest they would filter their bleeding hearts and tweets and kiss-and-tell or didn’t-kiss-but-told-anyway.  I don’t want to see your 5^th engagement ring on my facebook page or your dog’s dinner or your solicitous kickstarter projects.  I want to hear the sound of one hand clapping and a legless person kneeling.  I want forgiveness and generosity and music that prays.  I want every Wall Street fatcat to remove their rolex and place it on the wrist of a homeless person.

And whats-your-name Biden…grow up and pay your rent.  We have seen more of you in that ridiculous white sheet than the entire Syrian civil war crisis this week and you need either some true religion (not the clothing kind) or an old-fashioned weekend in the can.

The Giving Tree

It is Christmas night.  Something urgent came to me and I woke up my 23-year old son who is here, after a day of quiet holiday inertia and basketball.  He was cross, unreceptive.   I have failed to pass on the gift I’ve had all my life—the one that wakes you with mad urgency, the one that made butterflies talk when you were little--- the one that let you see the names of things, like a sign--- before you knew words.  The ‘privilege’ that strange man at the gallery recognized some months ago.  

I heard the other night in some film that ‘spirits’ appear as reflections of light or tiny orbs in old photographs.  Maybe it is my missing Grandma— undoubtedly a ‘waker’ and taken away in the prime of her legendary beauty--  that shines from the teary eye of  my 3-year-old portrait.  She is the one who would have understood me, who died for love, who suffered for art, who comforted me when I cried for no reason, for something I didn’t understand, who led me through the piles in the attic to the right books, reading over my shoulder in her curtainous wedding gown.  I could smell her hair, like a kind of sweet fog of musk.

So we were sitting in the wet hallway last night, tediously sawing branches from our orphaned last-minute tree with a dull bread knife—a million strokes--  and images from past trees were appearing like Christmas lights... always especially missing my one truest love who smelled faintly of pine… the one we buried, who occasionally sings through me like my lost Grandma, so young and beautiful... the one who loved to be awakened, the one whose song I will never get right. 

My girlfriends are annoyed with me today.  They were partying and drinking and meeting.  I veto their priorities and dislike their escorts.  Conversation was clumsy and stupid, last night; I was feeling the Christmas bad elf on my shoulder, I was snide and bitchy and rude… and then suddenly I am back like a holiday pumpkin-- it is just me with the bored tired kids carrying back the abandoned (free) tree-- the dark, the rain, the wet pine needles and the sap… me craving solitude and the dark—the tree lights, Sigur ros or Mogwai or Low, maybe some depressed Scott Miller--- and the Dickensian Christmas thing passing through… better days… sexier days… days when we were both waiting.

By dawn I hear my neighbor through the wall—the one with the midlife crisis and the newly shaved head and the motorcycle jacket who has now taken up slide guitar.  It’s bearable this morning.  Downstairs they have a new piano and a fake-book version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’.  Less bearable.  Outside is that layered kind of winter sky you get in the mountains.  Someone has blessed the city today…the late-afternoon feels blended with sunset. Couples in buildings are fighting, couples are disappointed with their gifts…couples are proposing to one another, nursing hangovers, watching the Knicks lose.  Kids are getting high in courtyards, sneaking alcohol in bedrooms, vomiting up their fruitcake and eggnog.  Dogs are overfed and sleeping, bankers with full stomachs are on Park Ave. sharing cigars, thinking about their mistresses—loving or cursing their kids, counting their bonuses, the fictional fiscal cliff, refusing to regret.  Someone is nursing a loved one through a final Christmas—always extra people die at Christmas—in a sense it’s a great day to do it…and others are missing their wives and husbands who no longer love them, children who despise them, children who were cruelly murdered-- grieving, refusing to grieve. 

Our presents were few and inexpensive but smart… still, I must cook and laugh and realize that although my son may love the tree in that Shel Silverstein way, his genetic buck stops there, and having his sleep disturbed now, he is annoyed and accusatory in a way that I'm sure my rigid imaginary Grandfather was.  No one here will sit with me and listen and feel things pass through us.  

Still, somewhere in this city-- -and in other cities-- I know there are the sitters like me who will not take what comes up on the wheel but will wait it out… past the disappointment, past the redundancy of middle age.....even if it never comes, because there is an exhausted Santa who cannot possibly be everywhere…will wait for the gold angel, the perfect story, the man who will not say ‘but no one ever will love you the way I do’, even though he didn’t, but will light up with mischief when you crack the door at 4 AM because something has just occurred to you, and he ‘gets’ it… he has had it all—the hallucinatory sex and the endless drives home over terrifying bridges and hellish rivers—he gets the skewed jokes and the references and why this song is the best, and the tearful laughing, and Barcelona, and sleighbells in the subway, and why the Christmas rain feels like cool acid on your face, and the smell of your Grandmother’s hair in the pre-dawn of the last night of the last endless week of some urgently cold year.