Where the Truth Lies

Last night in the rain a man literally walked into me on the street, and then shoved me and shouted out how I'd better look where I was walking, etc.  It shot me into this sort of rage that I witness so often in the city-- I mean, this 'fight' reflex.  I'm going to find a policeman and have you arrested for assault, I threatened, knowing well I'd do nothing. 

And it wasn't the physical shove that made me want to punch him as much as the phony accusation. My personal history is a little littered with these twisty versions of reality, these false manipulations which place one on the wrong side of a barbed fence.  It's the Trumpian version of reality-- the slippery miscarriage of facts that makes him an absurd debating opponent and an elusive and dangerous candidate.  Our daily newsfeeds bleed with his petty face-slaps and pokes and lies.  One wishes that AI could highlight untruths in red. It just piles up-- day by day. But it was as though the man on the street was trying on DT's personality costume, with an extra dose of bully. 

On 14th Street I've noticed a new approach to panhandling.  It's sort of migrant-related, because young mothers sit on cardboard blankets with their children-- sometimes two or three-- with a sign saying they've just arrived and need help.  It's heartrending and also manipulative, when most of these families are being given aid and shelter-- granted, not ideal-- but using children this way always bothers me.  Last week I was confronted by a man-- maybe around 30-- who asked me for money for his baby.  He showed me photos on his phone and I looked into his eyes and tried to see his soul, as I agreed to use my food stamps to buy him formula.  In the supermarket, the large-sized can was $36; as I paid, the checkout girls were all silent and judgy as though I'd assisted in a crime.

So apparently, I learned from a more streetwise neighbor, powdered formula is used to cut street heroin or other drugs... looking back, it was sort of a generic baby photo I'd seen-- it looked staged and professional.   I tried to forget... it wasn't the $36 but the complicity that plagued me.  

My longtime friend and onetime fiancé has been like family throughout my adult life.  For thirty years he accompanied me to funerals, graduations, events... collected me from wearying hospital visits-- photographed my son at sports events.  As we aged, we often talked about taking a retirement trip across the country-- living in an RV-- doing things I'd never done... maybe even sharing a mountain-house somewhere with a front porch and chairs to rock in while we admired the view and drank coffee like old friends.  But I was utterly shocked to discover that he'd been secretly married... yes, I had to pry it out of him... and was living an absolute double life.  It wasn't the romantic thing-- that had long since fizzled out and we'd always shared stories of affairs, etc... but the utter betrayal of what one assumes is a kind of honesty among intimate friends-- or even thieves, lol. The fact that day after day he'd stop by and we'd drink a coffee in his car-- he'd call or text many times. He described every move, every meal... or so I thought...  he came for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc... always solo, not that it was a requirement; he knew all of my circle.  Could my judgment have been so poor? I felt ill-- tainted... invaded.

Even my close friends could not believe his duplicity-- like an alternate reality.  While he begged and wept for forgiveness, alleging he was stuck in some terrible entanglement... well, I gave him a little slack and sympathy.  Years later, I find he has never divorced, and while he claims to have left the state, he has been here... he appears... presumably still pays her rent, like a sort of guilty phantom. And me-- not just another betrayal-- but a huge one, because my trust was so broken, not to mention the fact the 'wife', known to no one,  had no knowledge of his attachment, romantic or not.  I am not the 'other woman' and I have a right to object to being backed into that complicitous corner. Swallowing other people's lies is like bad food-- it just doesn't go down.  And he, above all, is a liar. Full stop.

I was thinking today about Pete Rose-- how he fell from grace... was it money, some kind of temptation or just bad decisions that imploded his career some years back?  His legacy will be vaguely lightened by his death, but not whitewashed. I can't imagine how his family must have felt... 

With all the cameras around-- the constant recording of reality-- how is it that we seem less attached to truth than ever? Plastic surgery, weightloss drugs, pitch-correction, photoshopping and filters...  we can present as almost anything. As for Mayor Adams, I am withholding judgement.  In this milieu of deception, lying, cheating, his indiscretions seem less heinous than the things that roll off of Donald Trump's tongue hour by hour.

So at my age, it's no wonder I'm wound tightly enough to want to punch back at the man in the street who shoved me... to feel venomous toward my friend who wants to be forgiven. The baby formula-- well, I've been duped many times and choose to believe the 1% possibility his baby son is being nourished on my 'dime'. Watching resignation after resignation from city agencies, it's hard to believe in the innocence of our mayor.  Assuredly running municipal business requires skills I'd rather not think about. But on the larger stage we have a criminally indicted ex-President who has somehow maneuvered his way back to candidacy.  What is wrong with us? 

And then there were two (too)

Anyone who has lived in New York City for fifty years or more must recall at least one of several sets of twins who appeared in tandem on the streets, always dressed identically the way their mothers must have done when they were infants. They all seemed a bit theatrical and bizarre, like a living Arbus tableau, and they were known and well photographed. Before the phone era, street 'theatre' and even just dressing up, had a different meaning-- it was a kind of art, a kind of living performance that has grown a little cheap in this Tik-Tok/instagram age. I've heard there are these extreme sisters on a TLC television channel-- girls who insist on having their teeth pulled simultaneously, even though only one has an abscess.  

When my son was in a pre-school playgroup, there was a set of identical triplets-- girls-- who seemed to signal one another mysteriously and then perform the exact same movement or mischief like crashing someone's block tower.  Their mother seemed to age years every week. It was kind of a supernatural thing and actually fascinating.

I've been reading Miss MacIntosh, My Darling,  again... I often pick it up after a hiatus and am always intrigued by the two Mr. Spitzers-- one dead, one living as the attentive but always-denied suitor-- identical twins who may or may not be aspects of the same person. It occurred to me that my last read, Solenoid, was narrated by a man who claimed to be the sole surviving twin whose brother had died shortly after birth. The concept of original twins-- like Yin and Yang, is archetypal. One wonders if the human state of longing is the result of losing something at birth-- of separation or the sense of missing, as though we all once had a twin in utero.. a little companion-cell-- and yet we are born alone.

My first husband was a twin; very prematurely delivered, he'd been left for dead in a shoebox with his tiny brother and moved just enough to be discovered living before burial.  He became a musician, among the chain of men I've been close to who were often searching for something elusive which they either mistakenly or not (temporarily) discovered in me.

More than ever, despite divorce rates, despite the diminished significance of mandatory marriage rituals, this culture is obsessed with coupling.  The overwhelming numbers of dating sites, matchmakers... the barrage of television shows seeking mates in various ways, all bolster this obsession.  Tonight, I noticed, there's a Bachelorette version for seniors.  In the arts, I've been to several recent gallery exhibits which present 'pairings'-- some of which are feasible and others of which are far-fetched and almost silly.  I've been to restaurant dinners which feature meal pairings, course by course, of wine and food; these generally make more sense.

There are almost no Wikipedia entries that don't list, with vital statistics and data, one's spouse or partner.  This interests us, as though it explains something about the person-- that they are loved, or that their wife was beautiful, or their intelligent scientist husband thought enough of them to procreate or simply cohabitate. If there is no spouse or companion listed in an obituary, we pity that person... or we wonder. There is simply this inherent 'quest' one has for an 'other'-- someone to whom we can roll our eyes and know that they will understand precisely what irks us.

The trouble is-- the act of coupling is not neutralized by uncoupling which is complex and not simple.  I used to watch Thomas the Tank Engine with my little boy; the uncouplings were routine and mechanical... but in our lives, these are rarely amicable.  Still, we pursue this like a career 'calling'.  Many of my son's generation have chosen to freeze their eggs and wait to have children... yet the biology of conception doesn't seem to affect their desire to have a partner. So many of us have tried on marriages which do not fit, or which we outgrow like old fashion or clothing. Some of us find our significant other has coupled with more than one simultaneously. While a pregnant woman cannot get pregnant until she delivers again,  there is no biological law that discourages or prevents her having sex with several partners. 

It's not really a comforting thing-- the way a twin is 'for life'-- unless one dies, that is, and this must feel like a kind of death for the other. To be born together, and yet to die alone seems somehow odd, although it is fairy-tale stuff to have simultaneous deaths.  

I read recently a literary piece on the language of Shakespeare which pointed out his extraordinary and deliberate use of the word 'and' to join disparate ideas or things... we expect the two sides of the conjunction to be equal and yet they are not.  Of course Shakespeare's exquisite command of the language is beyond reproach but many of the contemporary 'pairings' I've recently encountered require a huge step to digest any valid relationship.  There was a Calder and Klee show which was spectacular but in a way unsettling and opportunistic.  Certainly the Hammershoi paintings coupled with Anni Albers or Robert Mangold at another gallery seemed at best uncomfortable. And odd couples are a thing-- opposites attract, etc. Oxymorons and paradoxes abound in our daily speech.

My very good friend who was sort of an acquired twin to me for decades... turned out to be coupled with some 'else'.  He'd hidden this-- not just from me, but from everyone... it was only happenstance that brought me to the knowledge of it.  He is miserable-- badly paired and unable somehow to remove the attachment.  In fact they barely see one another-- ever... but they have a legal bind.  While I have uncoupled, somehow there are jagged edges, or tiny pieces that adhered and are hard to delete.  It's like a human virus, I suppose.  So while the theoretical plan is to find 'the one' and go through life arm in arm, hand in hand, this is a rarity. And the fact is, despite all the dating and mating sites, the even-numbered rituals and pas-de-deux, perhaps these are only our attempts to subvert the harsh reality that we all do die alone.  

On Point

It's closing in on a year since Matthew Perry's death... and the trail of blame unravels: the unscrupulous doctors and enablers, the greedy parasites who attach themselves to celebrities who are emotionally disabled.  I've seen this-- rockstars who struggle, actors between successes hanging out in bars, drinking themselves into a kind of crippled charisma.  It has an appeal, this state of manic hilarity, of self-effacing confessional deprecations and desperate nightly dramas of carousing.  While some pick up their career and dust themselves off, all too often this ends in tragedy.  It's very hard to measure quantities of alcohol or meds when one is just intent on blurring out the demons.  The failure we fear is too often simply the fear of failure. It's complicated.

Still, in the very sensitive aftermath of a tragic death, there is unprecedented sympathy.  Where were these mourners and criers during crisis?  Matthew was not in an appealing state, and I've argued in vain (pun intended) with addicts and junkies at the midnight hour when nothing but a needle makes any sense.  But after the fact, as a sort of clearance for the victim, there is this blame game... sometimes valid, sometimes a consolation narrative.  Where life insurance is concerned, there is a financial reason to morph a suicide into an accident or a manslaughter scenario.

And then there is the chain reaction-- those who are on a kind of edge and are so derailed by the sad ending of someone who struggled, as they do-- especially when that person was a 'someone' whom they admired.  If this man couldn't manage, one thinks, how can a loser like me ever get clean or sober or 'happy'-- that evasive human nirvana?

Granted, there was a hideous sequence of heinous people who profited from the pseudo-medical art of prescription peddling, especially common among well-known people who want to keep their vices within a more private circle.  But it helps to exonerate the deceased and attribute his errors to an evil little machine of individuals which took away his choices.  The consistent popularity of Law and Order and varieties of Dateline exemplifies our human obsession with blame-attribution.  We want justice for the innocent, and we often want the guilty ones we love to seem less guilty. The dead cannot defend themselves; we must unravel and discover.  

While I find mass shootings (and all random shootings) horrifying, I'm not sure the gun makers are culpable.  For someone strangled with a silk tie, well-- nearly anything in the wrong hands can be transformed into a means of killing.  Of course guns are made for this... and what is wrong with our culture and all past cultures which decided that wounding human bodies was a way of solving massive conflicts? All guns aside, it was God Himself who weaponized rain in Genesis. 'The fire next time,' He warned, in the traditional spiritual which inspired the James Baldwin title.  This always frightened me, like a premonition of firearms, nuclear war.  Summer wildfires are terrifying enough.

We named my very first band The Blame.  Blame it on rock and roll; something like that.  Blame and guilt go hand in hand in adolescence, in bad relationships, in family dynamics.  We grow up pointing fingers... even the dog gets involved as the fallguy-- eating homework, breaking expensive china, etc.  And then there was the pandemic-- the ultimate culprit in stalemating lives, creativity, social connections.  It caused depression, isolation... it had no end, no boundary... for many of my peers this became a new way of living. Come to think of it, was not the great flood of Genesis the ultimate cancel-culture event?  

August always brings with it a kind of nostalgic regret-- the end of summer is sad for children; they must go back to the grind of school, and leave the freedom of unscheduled days and jacket-less afternoons.  We adults carry this with us... the cusp of September seems always harsh for me... as though I no longer deserve a day of respite, of freedom.  We are grown ups-- we must take responsibility for our failures and lapses. Jews have a day of atonement; I wonder how many in Israel will be thinking about the Palestinians whose children will be vaccinated against polio, but destroyed as a people. It's downright ironic, this priority to cease warfare just to insure that these babies in the line of fire are inoculated. 

Not to deny the back-and-forth between our political candidates. Leaders are generally held responsible for the ills of their regime, but the blame game goes far beyond culpability in an election year. Finger pointing and accusations far eclipse the vulnerable reality of policies which are only as solid as theory or hindsight witnesses. We are all to blame for sins of omission, for selfishness, for failing to reach out and empathize.  Too often the burden gets transferred and passed down to the one who has least power to defend.  Like the tastelessly loud guitarists who blame their sound crew-- the venue-- acoustics-- or band members for volume issues. All we have are tools of prevention, and our own hearts and minds which will hopefully embrace some kind of universal truth and move this world forward into not just a foreseeable but an accountable future.

Grey Flannel

As part of my adaptive reading program, I just finished Mosquitoes-- a much criticized early Faulkner novel which, while flawed, still rewards with unpolished and sometimes erratic youthful exuberance of description. Another claustrophobic August narrative for me-- dank, humid and overripe with the disappointment of human relations. But well worth the effort.

Late last night after a day or two of uncharted sleep-deprivation, I made the mistake of flipping television channels.  Besides my go-to film stations, there is quite a bizarre array of lameness across the board: flimsily-premised game-shows, re-treaded bad 'reality'... it's as though everything has been done... and redone, or the interesting actors have taken a hiatus and left us with the dregs of low-level celebrity who for the likes me are not just unremarkable but unrecognizable.  

Friends of mine are visiting New York, and ask me for suggestions. I'm not in the least tourist-ready, as I once was-- brimming with passion and lists of competing activities and shows... primed for inspiration and  ripe to be dazzled by some fantastic band or gallery exhibition.  It's not just seasonal malaise but a general thing. I mean, my books, most of whose authors are dead, do not fail me.  They also remind of my creative mediocrity and the distance between where I am and where I might have been.

And there are those among my Facebook acquaintances who still post and gush and selfie at myriads of openings and gigs and events-- dress up and do their hair and socialize.  It is a reminder of why the Stones are still touring... for those of us who have found little else to replace what used to be a common and easily-accessed quality music scene. 

Around 2 AM, there was a Nashville songwriting hour program, featuring three young artists.  One had guitar skills, but the songs were utterly cliche'd... another I recognized from the club scene here twenty years back... here he was on television, with his talent yet to sprout... and a third-- the daughter of an old and extremely good songwriter... she-- whom I'd met as a baby-- seemed exhausted by life; her songs, too, were old and not memorable.  I felt a kind of pity for her performance, especially conjuring her father whose genius was undeniable despite extreme stage-fright in his early days which he battled by facing away from the audience.  It was charming because he was brilliant and undeniable. But where am I, I was thinking?

I happened on a brief clip of a Townes Van Zandt memorial songwriter's circle-- with all the best Nashville celebrities from the 1990's... with each performance of a song more heartbreaking than the previous.  I watched and I wept.  Townes was an occasional visitor to New York and the sheer pleasure of having once spent an evening with his humble sense of humor and utter boy-charm was thrilling.  He was a consummate and sad artist.

There are of course a few lights in the August tunnel-- the Os Gemeos murals on West 14th Street, not minding the occasional soaking of a passing rainstorm... the pale moon, translucent over the twilight river sky.... the perfect pitch of a little morning dove who visits my bedroom windowsill nearly every day... just inches away behind the glass.  And what I call the 'grey flannel' days- those occasional weather-anomalies of chilly rain, reminders of the autumn to come, and of those homesick summer camp mornings when we were forced to pull these scratchy uniform components from the bottom of our steamer trunks and wait out the sun dressed like soldiers.  These days make me grateful to be an adult-- to have freedom of time and wardrobe and activity-- privileges we aging seniors take much-too-much for granted.

This morning I woke up with one of those vivid memories one occasionally pulls out of a deep subconcious hat... of a late August trip with an ex to the Jersey Shore.  Difficult to get away without children in those days, but we managed to rent a car and have a couple of unpremeditated days exploring roads I knew from college and he knew from songs.  We were surely at the end of some journey as a couple, although we had some fun... including a night in a cheap depressing motel in Neptune we booked out of desperation-- in the days when one had to drive from place to place to inquire about vacancies: it was after midnight and the desk attendant was annoyed and smelled of cheap whiskey. We swam in a small, sort of fetid pool and then slept poorly in a damp ground-floor room where the air conditioner was ineffective and one felt like a mushroom. 

Anyway, at least the ex got a decent song out of the trip.  I came home with the desolation of another failed relationship, and that deep sorrowful mix of nostalgia and regret and impending loneliness that comes when one distinctly chooses to put something precious behind a line which marks past from present.  There was some love there, or had been... and surely it was I who destroyed it-- I was very good at that.  Although now, so many years hence, I suppose the song still exists, and between us, the thing that replaces everything in the end-- what we had, what we had not, a kind of distance through which we see things both less and more clearly as we log yet another season.

Summer Interlude

July humidity is a uniquely oppressive phenomenon for those who are economically committed to all-urban summers.  Nothing-- animal or material-- escapes its wilting inertia; we slow, perceptibly, like a musical command... and offer an opportunity for things to penetrate. If we took a personal inventory,  I think summer memories would dominate.

After the massive Nersesian novel (thank you, Arthur, who individually thanks an impressive litany of his East Village neighbors at the end), I took up some late Roberto Bolaño who never lets me down, even at his least luminous.  A summer vacation diary-- with deaths and mysteries and World War gaming minutiae... but the heat... the damp, the summer rain.  It stuck to me like my clothing.

And then Soldier's Pay-- to cleanse my literary palate, so to speak-- with early Faulkner.  So many of us read Faulkner in school-- before we were able to absorb his language facility-- well, it's worth going back after all this time.  One wonders where Cormac McCarthy would have been without him.  The imminent summer is palpable... and the way he is truly in love with not just words but the way people speak them... and the descriptions drip vocabulary like wet rain.  He over-saturates but it's young and utterly world-shaking. 

It occurs to me that old writers become more sparse and bitter, as though they are slowed and dulled by their own self-critical ghosts. Maybe, as we age, we spin off enthusiasm and joy like coats of paint-- and we are left, in our later years-- wiser but hampered by our own hesitations.  Rarely does one see a senior kick up his heels on the sidewalk. Later novels tend to be more careful.

Evenings I still circle the park; one of the highlights is the 110th Street drum circle.  Africans of several countries meet here and sing and dance-- some in T-shirts and jeans, some in colorful native dress. Beats and chanting fuse with the denser landscape up there into a ceremonial soundtrack.  There is joy in the circle-- camaraderie and affection... but overall there is this pall of homesickness-- of these transported people into the harsh summer reality of Manhattan... and I feel sad for them.  

Among friends, many are crippled with a kind of depression which seems less justifiable in summer, but nevertheless persists.  I speak to them because they know I'm awake at 3 AM when they are haunted.  I empathize, and I refuse to cross their boundary of despair.  Some of them hide in their apartments-- I, too, am a little guilty of anti-sociability-- but they assume these Facebook Fred personas-- they post and converse on social media... it's an anodyne, I suppose.  Many of them describe and display their surgeries and illnesses-- their recoveries and badges.  It's wonderful-- but what about those of us who toughed it out-- no  addictions, no drugs, no 12-step programs? We changed diapers and bailed kids out of jail.. we did the daily penance with no one but a vague Jesus beside us to listen to our prayers. No award.

Some of us cannot see what we have become.  Some of us work hard at filling in wrinkles and lifting saggy jowls-- at coloring our hair and camouflaging reality.  The depressed and vocal do not see how they have become narcissistic-- a black hole into which they draw their friends and anyone who will listen.  It's like a kind of emotional quicksand.  

As we add more and more to our life scoreboard, the losses ironically mount disproportionately.  Some of the losses are more memorable than the wins, although in this Olympic season, we barely remember even the medalists.  We love doing some things in life... others we dread, but we are glad that we did them.  I thought much about that couple who set out to sail the world and were found dead in a lifeboat.  Even they would not have had regrets; somehow we know this.

At a certain point we begin to give things away-- we realize what we got is not really what we wanted, and conversely, what we wanted is not what we got.  Some things happen to us... and they are not good, but I also often wonder that life has not been even more tragic-- that the good has outweighed the bad, that five mediocre novels do not change the one brilliant one; it is only the writer who suffers.

Tuesday at 5 AM I watched part of Bergman's Island... the original documentary which is Bergman at 80-something speaking about his life, filmed on his beloved Fårö.  He is consciously at his productive end and has always been clear about his films-- their meaning, the brilliant intertwining of his life's personal narrative with his work. But it seemed so simple-- the landscape, the genius himself in his fleece slippers, sitting on his fireplace, looking and explaining.  He was so utterly candid-- so honest.  His fear of death, his failures, his memories. It's extraordinary-- what he accomplished and how he of all people was able to see himself.

Dawn seems to come quickly in summer.  Evenings are slow... I feel certain, on the cusp of August, I will sense the season being sucked from the room.  It's another goodbye.  Whatever the summer has brought, whatever it has meant,  I hate goodbyes.  I will miss my sticky fingers on the keyboard in my unairconditioned apartment.  I will log my summer reading and console myself with the knowledge that these months are a smaller and smaller fraction of my lifespan. But I also think, after all these changes, I do know who I am.  And despite the relentless over-saturated cloud of grief no one measures with daily weather and air quality statistics, I belong here.

Songs from a Room

In the familiar old heat of my beloved 'back room' last night, as is my habit, between 2 and 5 AM, I was watching films. On these dense airless summer days, it's always a little warmer in here, as it is colder in winter. We're fortunate to have this 'extra' space-- old, soft sofas and chairs-- the TV-- my little closet writing nook, random guitars and basses on the furniture... and a wall of books, of course.  The ceiling fan occasionally makes a sort of ticking sound, like the proverbial clock on the wall... my only company.

I have lived in this apartment far longer than anywhere else-- far longer than I anticipated.  I can look around and remember the various configurations of this room-- when it was virtually empty, and children used it for train layouts and games-- when two sofa beds were often made up to accommodate overseas guests and stragglers-- when I struggled with a novel, staring up at an enormous fat monitor with a blue screen and white text, dreading the alarm which signaled the dissolution of my solitude into breakfast-prep and getting my son to school on time.

There is a fire escape outside one window, although I rarely go out there now... an occasional visiting bird reminds me, but city ordinances forced us to remove plants and other 'hazards' (an old rocking chair, etc.)... and now this has become a bit like my personal Proustian cork-lined refuge.  In the back of these old buildings which converse easily via courtyards and alleys, nights are quiet. I hear the hum of air conditioners and motors but little else besides the strange sort of symphonic white-noise of the city which always feels about to crescendo and then doesn't.  It's indescribable, this soundtrack; not many are privileged enough to hear it... but there are these films I see--- mostly the kind with little dialogue-- which use this sort of atmospheric noise like an orchestral score. 

Still in the swampy-thick of this Nersesian mega-novel, I feel a little hallucinatory and anxious about the status of my city.  On the screen now there is a 1960's shot from an airplane approaching Manhattan-- no WTC towers, but the poetic density of older New York.  It feels so vulnerable.  We watch air-strikes in Gaza, in other parts of the world... vintage footage of post-war destruction... and I cannot fathom that I have earned some right to feel so 'safe' here in my back room which from the heat-emitting effects of cable boxes and laptops is warmer than the outside temperature.

Then there is a mediocre c. 2000 movie with Ben Affleck.  He's a wonderful actor-- and his inherent intelligence shines always.  Here he is young and boyish, as I always remember him; his teeth are still his own-- he transcends the banal dialogue and we believe him; he is himself.  The version we have now of a darkened and disgruntled playboy is not right.  Forget about sexual appetites and attractions... he doesn't belong with the Beyonce'd version of Jennifer Lopez he got this year.  He's complicated and critical and, like the best of us, a little self-loathing. 

But it was so long ago-- the making of this film.  He was a boy.  I was a considerably younger woman and actors like Brad Pitt were in their 'young' prime. As we see these people age, it reminds us that we are that much older, that we are uncomfortably close to some kind of final denouement.  I inventory various configurations of my life, often; my son doesn't remember details of his childhood-- maybe it was the intrusion of technology which distracted from absorbing the minutiae of reality. Personally, I can provide an inventory of my mother's old 1950's kitchen-- the black cast-iron trim on the maple cabinets, the green formica and the deco table and vinyl-upholstered Breuer-style chairs.  I can open the pantry and see the various jars of sweet pickles and mustards and relishes-- the ketchup bottles and cans of sardines and tuna.  I can read the labels and smell the vaguely cinnamon/cardamon scent of her little collection of bottled spices.  

And still I wonder when these things will fade--- when I won't be able to mentally circle my second-grade classroom and name every child in the seats. Some of my friends don't remember their teachers' names.  In school I was often told I had a sort of not photographic but phonographic memory.  I could recall conversations in real-time.. I could hear voices as though played back in a certain core of my brain.  Not so much anymore, but a few of those moments resonate.

Last weekend I went up to see my beloved neighbor Patricia. She is still smart as a whip, but at 98 she has to admit some frailties. She can barely see now, and it's a struggle to listen to me read to her. Last week I brought up a large book of photographs which really interested her; her comments were astute and enhanced the text. She knew these people and these places, and the backstories.  But I also realized the challenge of 'reading' a photograph-- the way companions must translate reality for a blind person.  There was one in the museum several weeks ago.  He was being wheeled around and his 'minder' was doing a fair job of listing paintings, but not really the job I could only infer this man required.  

So I tried my hardest-- to describe the sense of space-- the distances, the attitudes, how a model's hair was styled, how it had been raining and the streets were reflecting... what the weather might have been from the clothing.  It was tedious.  I exhausted her, and my descriptions were so suffused with personal suppositions and editorializing.  A picture is worth 1000 words; mine were cheap and inadequate.  But for those of us who can see, we take so much for granted-- we waste so much time; we fret and bemoan ridiculous things, we sacrifice to marginally improve our appearances (some of us)... and in the end... we have merely the past, an unappreciated present and a tenuous future. Picture this and picture that, one of my early songs sang in its chorus.  'Picture this, the morning after... the camera won't lie like you.' I still remember these and most of the thousands of lyrics.  Picture that.

Seven Versions of Ambiguity

For as long as I can remember, PRIDE weekend in the city has been festive and colorful. It's something to celebrate and New York feels like the center of it all.  The subways are extra crowded with excited visitors and parade participants.. the level of street noise is a little higher, and the bars, especially downtown, are packed and raging. 

This year, coming on the heels of a disastrous Presidential debate, I don't feel much like celebrating.  Saturday at Union Square I noticed only the summer homeless population-- the couple who sit outside Wendy's waiting for someone to buy them breakfast-- the beggars and signboards looking for train fare, a room for the night-- anything.  A particularly stenchy person was overturning trashcans and soliloquizing in some indecipherable angry language; anyone was a target for hurled containers and cups.  A few truly afflicted men napped on the sidewalk-- their legs swollen and oozing with untended sores. Another regular wears a hoodie and long pants with gloves, even in the late-June heatwave; his face is covered with disfiguring growths and neuromas so that he can barely see.  Children point at him, and he bows his head.  

I am failing these people, I think... where is their pride, where is their comfort?  Singlehandedly I do nothing. Yes, there are those-- mostly my son's age, who cavalierly hand out a $10 or $20, as though there is a bottomless supply. Me-- I am rarely carrying cash these days; my pathetic sympathy does nothing.

There's little worse, as an audience, than feeling anxious for the performer.  I had this presentiment all week; the very first minutes of Thursday evening's debate confirmed my worst fears.  And then it just lay there-- a kind of pathetic circus of old-man caricature versus the blustering buffoon who looked comparatively solid.  

What some of America  doesn't comprehend is the innocent celebration of freedoms and alternative opinions is threatened.  It's not just a presidential election, it's a move rightward to a platform of dictatorial narcissism.  Where is our choice?  'Either/or' no longer suffices.  And yet, that's where we seem to stand at the moment.

Pride... I thought more about the deadly sin described in Proverbs as the precursor to disgrace and destruction--that which goes before a fall.  The Lord, says Proverbs 16, 'detests all the proud of heart'. Since religion- -specifically Christianity-- seems to be creeping into politics, how does one process this? The Proud Boys-- all the participants in the January 6th incident-- will be rewarded, as democracy dissolves in an old bucket. 

My generation is proud of our children, our parents who fought wars and weathered the depression.  Some of us are proud of ourselves-- our accomplishments and our success that have enabled this version of America with its bloated wealth and alarming poverty.  Some of these people forget their roots in the 1960's and vote to preserve their own bank accounts.  They resent immigrants and social welfare programs. No one of them wants affordable housing on their block, or a shelter, or a migrant hotel. 

I know there were demonstrations during the Pride march--the suggestion of violence.  A gay rabbi boycotted this year because she was confused about the perception of her Palestinian sympathies. We are people, all of us... and yet we are polarized by beliefs. Mostly there is anger... the uptick in crime on the trains and the streets reflect this.  Any excuse-- politics, religion-- to burn off steam and maybe beat someone up.  

Pride, according to several passages in the Bible, is the root of all evil.  Not the kind of pride displayed by the June parade, but the kind displayed by the presumed Republican candidate. It's ironic to me that the Red states are reinstating much of the Church-and-State intimacy which was banned in the name of freedom. We are going backward, unraveling the path of progress that made us feel safe and proud to be American.

And the majority of people just went on with their lives today-- they went to the Hamptons, they played tennis, barbecued in the park, shopped... laughed, maybe even went to church.  At a point the sky virtually opened up and poured enough to halt the baseball mid-game. You'd think one would be reminded of our good fortune here... that we are not drowning and overcome, we turn on a faucet and water comes out-- clean water. For those of us who struggle, we can get food stamps to help with groceries... for now, while we have an inclusive local government.  

I visited my 98-year-old neighbor today whose failing eyes and ears reminded me to value what it is I have.  She worked in fashion and championed models of all colors and affiliations.  While she rarely leaves her apartment now, she could teach us all a thing or two about history. In the city today, few people were listening; they were partying, parading, drinking, eating, being happy.  Not that I am against these things, but my sense of pride in all its complicated definitions and manifestations is deeply troubled. 

When my neighbor was born, Coolidge was President.  He was known for doing very little to curb business interests, little for agriculture and the poor.  He declined to run for a second term, and when he left office, the Depression followed soon after.  In the interest of our national survival-- the democratic cause, our current president needs to swallow his version of pride.  We need to figure this out before it's too late, before all versions of pride are confounded and damaged. 

It's Sunday; I could use a sermon. We could all use some old fashioned peace, love and understanding. And a dose of leadership. Amen.