"Kilim" Part One

It started out simply, as most redecorating projects do.

First it became apparent that the dining room chandelier needed replacing. Before I knew it my life had spun out of control. I began to realize I desperately needed to change things around, make a new start. Soon huge tubs of joint compound appeared menacingly in the foyer where the painter had dropped them, waiting to be slathered onto peeling walls. Little flecks of white gop started to dot the wood floors each day, and as it turned out the sanding of the slathered goo really was not as “dust free” and “quiet” as promised. My eyes burned and spirits sank. The air was thick with paint thinner and the place was turned upside down. I began to feel listless. I had not left the house for a week as I tried feverishly to clean up the awful sticky dots before collapsing into bed each night. Finally there came the morning when no workman showed up too early- before I had properly awoken, before I had gotten dressed or had my coffee- leading to another realization- it was over, done! I was free! I had my house back!- but I was much too exhausted to care.

All this because of a New Year’s resolution to buy a new rug, instantaneously followed by the horrible truth that the walls needed refreshing too, and thus the frenzied “brightening up” stage prior to actually making the new purchase. In the early fall I had begun staring a bit obsessively at that quasi-Aztec, fading red and gold geometrically patterned rectangle in center of the living room, my gaze fixed on it for months as I bravely tried to convince myself that this rare item could never be replicated. In my heart though, I knew that its time on my once shiny, now slightly worn parquet floor was irretrievably up. Caput. Finished. Finito. Before its expulsion from my life forever I even had begun reminiscing about how when I first purchased the beloved piece of woolly decor two decades earlier this now old “friend”- once quite young and frisky- had shed for months like a puppy that wasn’t quite house broken. The shedding in fact was so profuse that gossamer puffs of gold and red began to float down the entire length of the hallway outside my apartment, worse when I vacuumed; it was as if an almost trained, baby Alaskan Malamute or some such hairy new pet had tried to make it to the street but failed, finally succumbing to the urge of releasing of a few unfortunate “drips” along the way. After several weeks the rug finally stopped losing tufts from its abundant “coat” but during that unfortunate time I scrupulously avoided eye contact with the neighbors and pretended not to notice anything out of the ordinary softly blowing out from under my door. . . .

Hairdresser, Part One

From "Hairdresser"

Let me tell you about my hairdresser. She’s phenomenal, amazing, knows just how much to trim and exactly where to take it from without butchering you or creating a weird facsimile of Tom Brown’s School Days. She also collects frogs. Ceramic frogs, rubber frogs, frog stickers, teapots with frogs hanging over the spout, grinning up at you with one lid closed. This makes it extremely easy to find a Christmas present for her, although in some years it is not always possible to locate just the right amphibian; frog trends tend to come and go. This fluid, rather unstable frog situation can present a sort of challenge, come the holidays. Her name by the way is Flossie, and she is extremely obese, which is a bit off putting at first I have to admit, until one realizes what a genius hair stylist she truly is. And besides, you don’t have to move around that much to snip someone’s crowning glory, but before I continue, let me tell you about the hair.

My hair probably deserves a paragraph although it could even be described as a circuitous story with lots of twists and turns. When I was relatively little I used to scream and whimper pitifully as my mother attempted to plow through that frizzy jungle of DNA like a tenacious and driven explorer hacking through the bush with a machete. Frizzy. How I hated the sound of that word in an era when blonde and bland and blah was beautiful. Straight, limpid locks, that was what I craved. But instead I was “blessed” with a thick and lumpy patch of mattress stuffing, a curly ball of twine. Later of course, when styles changed and people began resorting to expensive and time-consuming perms, I was thrilled to have “naturally curly hair;” it became my badge, a big head on a little girl. That was how I preferred to envision myself. . . .

For Judy

Flaunting the Rules- In Memoriam: Judy

1965

It is nighttime and we are crawling on our bellies through the grass in the warm darkness to the outhouse, convulsed with repressed laughter. Judy is also in her eighth month of pregnancy and we are not insensible to the absurdity of our strange, nocturnal trek, but we don’t want to get shot. There is a potentially dangerous situation brewing on this border kibbutz, and Joey has been summoned up for guard duty along with some of the other men. We’ve all been told to stay in our rooms, and Judy has come over so we can keep each other company, but suddenly she is seized with the urge to pee. There is no way out, and so we begin our trek. . . . The ground shakes with the silent heaves of our insane guffaws.

1961

My drama prof has handed out tickets to an off Broadway, highly acclaimed production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Diff’rent” and the class is assigned to attend. We are allowed to bring a friend and I bring Judy. As usual, we get there at the penultimate moment before the curtain rises and are relegated to seats in the first row; I nod to the teacher who is sitting placidly toward the back of the small theater. The tragedy gets underway in all its New England gloominess, moving toward a catastrophic moment in which all the characters are screaming wildly at each other. And it is just at that very climax of the playwright’s horrific vision of humankind that we notice a bug tenaciously attach itself to the lead actor’s pants- an item of clothing with which we are eye level- and start hiking slowly but steadily up the pants leg. You can hear a pin drop in the audience given all the clamor happening on stage when Judy and I once again become stricken with bouts of hilarity that we somehow have to conceal lest we be tarred and feathered by the gods of classical tragedy. We’re hysterical. Tears are rolling down our cheeks and we’re ready to bust. Finally, the curtain comes down, the applause is deafening, and our wild shrieks of unbridled laughter are swallowed up in the racket.

1960

Judy and I decide that our last term of high school will be a total waste, and so we enroll in a program called “co-op” that allows us to work and go to school on alternate weeks. We both wind up at Metropolitan Life Insurance on 23^rd in New York City, an uber corporate, life crushing sweat shop designed to turn its employees into zombie-like robotons. At precisely 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. a bell rings throughout the building, at which point everyone must stop what they are doing and take an enforced “break” for five minutes-  just enough time as it turns out for Judy to come racing into my office from next door so we can dive under my desk and roast marshmallows on paper clips, while the reform school matron of a supervisor sends arrows of pure hatred at us from across the room.

1958

My family has moved to a new neighborhood in the tenth grade. I am a bereft teenager, lonely and friendless in this unfamiliar setting, awash among a mass of other teenagers at a strange high school. In that era we still sit in those immovable, old fashioned, wooden, two-seaters from a Dickensean nineteenth century. Needless to say, I sit alone. Judy- though heretofore unknown to me but aware somehow that I live in her building- signals me from the back of the room, and then plops herself down in the empty seat next to me. And thus begins an entire semester in Bio of note passing, unprovoked giggling, and a mutual hatred for anything scientific, especially if it involves chlorination or frogs. Later that year we stay on the phone for hours, lamenting the fact that if we fail geometry, our lives will be ruined, ruined. As we are doing our several mile, all-weather, daily slog to school each day, not infrequent is the morning that we decide to play hooky and check out my old neighborhood; she wants to get to know my friends better and they have been immediately won over by her. When Judy decides to skip school on her own one day, she calls me at my job in the dean’s office so I can tear up her attendance card. An eavesdropping, vengeful switchboard operator along the lines of Lily’s Tomlin’s sniffling “Ernestine” turns us in, and parents are called to school. Miraculously, we survive.

2013

Judy calls from Indiana to gab. We get onto the subject of book clubs and discover that although we both love to read, neither of us has a penchant for reading required selections, or for attending structured meetings, even though we are forever promising everyone that we will, we will. In effect, we are still playing hooky and what of it- ya’ gonna do something about it??? Huh? Huh?

What's in a Name?

From “No More Thelma”

The summer we rented Al Burak’s house we realized there were two things wrong from the start. First, the structure itself- a modular contemporary cape with lots and lots of glass, great writer’s study and thick, rustling pines gently swaying beyond soaring “window walls”- had unluckily been placed at the low point of an incline. This sizable depression in the earth, which we sometimes joked about as being “the ditch the house was nestled in,” somehow had managed to play havoc with the plumbing, and so the sewage had to be pumped uphill in order for the system to work, and everything in the house stayed terminally damp.  Next, Burak- whom we had taken to calling solely by his last name as sometimes becomes the case with certain people for inexplicable reasons- a visiting professor in political science at a local college and regarded as quite brilliant in his field, was almost completely fluent in English, but somewhat shaky in the use of the idiom. The upshot of this small linguistic failing was that he had named his little castle “Happy Farm,” apparently in complete unawareness of the hilarious implications of these two words when used in tandem.

Burak did posses a first name of course- Ahmet- but people sometimes referred to him as "Al" although for some reason we just could not bring ourselves to address him as such. When we were first shown the house, Burak was on hand to meet us, if not exactly bright eyed and bushy tailed, then obviously trying hard to look his most cryptically esoteric and professorial, rumpled sweater, unkempt look and all. I was a bit surprised however at how young he appeared- was he even thirty?- particularly in view of the realtor’s description of his impressive academic credential- a certain supposedly scholarly mystique- and the fact that she insisted on referring to him as “Dr. Burak.”

I remember on that first visit we could not help noticing that the house virtually reeked of cigarette smoke and something else sweet, incense perhaps I thought. I am the kind of person to whom others sometimes refer with feigned surprise as “olfactory” as if this predilection for inhaling through one’s nose is unusual (“you’re olfactory, aren’t you?”). In truth, such observations are somewhat idiotic if not redundant as most people do possess a sense of smell, unless suffering from a miserable cold or allergy, and it’s just that I am always talking about what I sniff, you know, making a big deal over it, especially if the whiff is particularly pungent. In any event, after some discussion with my husband Gaw- short for Gawain and thus the nickname as the green knight would not have gone over well in the schoolyard, Arthurian legend notwithstanding- and as we continued mulling over the distinct fumes that wafted through the house, we soon realized Burak was an inveterate pot head, plain and simple. We visited one more time to make sure and found the air to be thicker and the prof’s eyes glassier than the first time. We began to wonder at that point- exchanging glances as he discussed with some passion his area of specialty in academia- how he managed to teach his classes coherently at the little private school where he spent half the year imparting his immense knowledge.

So after confirming our suspicions and solving the mystery of the strange “incense” scent, as well as zoning in on the recreational habits of Burak, we probably would have speedily moved on had we not met Mrs. Burak during that second visit. Evidently Burak’s wife, or Fatima- pronounced Fhat-mah as she carefully explained, differentiating between the traditional spelling and the pronunciation-  did not share the residence with her husband, but spent most of the year back home, caring for their two small children. Burak’s appointment at the school evidently entailed teaching each spring semester for three years with the possibility of an extension, and so he spent half the year in Massachusetts and the other half back in the homeland on the other side of the world. The realtor told us afterward that Burak and his wife had decided not to expose the children to complete culture shock by relocating them so drastically twice a year and thus had opted instead for occasional visits during the second semester by Fatima. We admired the couple’s sensitivity and caring in balancing home and career, putting the children first and all that, and decided to give it one more try as a possible rental. And so you can imagine our complete surprise on a third visit- this time to check out the sewage pump- to find Thelma emerging from the basement as we chatted with Burak, like a long legged, sleepy Persephone from some invisible underworld. . . .

Amid all the starry eyed possibilities that crop up while perusing a summer rental, along with the sheer energy required to tune into the feng shui, up to that point we had not even thought to inquire about a downstairs level. I suppose we just assumed there was a basement and as we were not in the market to buy there was no need for Gaw to go charging down any rickety flight of steps to see what lurked near the water heater. So the sudden appearance of a long legged blond in her late teens with short tousled locks- ascending as it were clad in sweat shirt and flannel pajama bottoms from what seemed a closet door- was a kind of double surprise- it made us aware that there was indeed both habitability and existent life beneath the floor boards. After a hasty introduction Burak quickly explained that what seemed to resemble a modernized apparition of Venus-on-the-half-shell was simply “a student in need of housing,” at which point Thelma threw us one last shy, sleepy-eyed smile and disappeared into the kitchen. And whatever doubts we had as to the veracity of the professor’s fatherly altruism disappeared down the hall with her, swept away by our need to get things settled. The house was large enough to accommodate our three children, ages five, seven and nine, during a fast approaching summer, it was cheerful and well-equipped enough to make us all comfortable and close enough for Gaw to commute to and from the city. The one thing that really stuck out though was the incongruity of the girl’s name- it seemed, well, just so staid and old fashioned. . . retro, really.

We wound up renting for the entire season and had use of the place from Memorial Day weekend right on through Labor Day; Burak apparently had arranged some sort of temporary housing for himself at the college, and we chose not to dwell on the lurid details. The glistening mornings and sun baked afternoons of those bucolic New England summers began to slip along in exactly the same relaxed and uneventful manner we had so hoped for- warm, honeysuckle days and mushroomy cool evenings, nary a disturbance more intense than a squirrel trying frantically to get into the bird feeder. Gaw managed as many extended weekends as he could muster, though it did get a tad lonely by Thursdays, and downright insufferable if he had to miss a day. However I usually was too busy chasing after the kids, planning activities, or researching a long overdue kitchen renovation to obsess about his absence. The hours flew by so quickly in fact that I barely had time to do my daily workout, the hair definitely wandered out of control at some point and was crying out for a good restyling, and as a result of an incredible farmer’s market just down the road, I also had put on a few pounds- the country fresh jams, cobblers and peach tarts were simply too fantastic to resist.  It was just about the end of July early on a Saturday when we received a call from Al Burak asking if he could stop by with Fatima; she was in for one of her visits and excited about a redecorating project planned for the downstairs- they would be so grateful if they could just take a few quick measurements. Naturally we agreed, and in fact I was curious to get a better handle on Mrs. Burak, as our first meeting had been rather brief and I had been more interested in rooms and beds at the time than people. Was this a surprise visit? Did she suspect something and want to check the place over for clues, in the guise of getting specs? Once again I found myself enmeshed in their tawdry melodrama.

Burak and his wife arrived within the hour, and upon closer inspection it seemed that Fatima was a couple of years older than her husband, or possibly the same age but decidedly more weathered. She obviously was not nor had ever been a gym aficionado. Her style was casual to the point of frumpy, and she was not a great conversationalist. In fact, she tended to defer to Burak, even in small talk. And I know now that the observation I made at that very moment, during our second meeting, could be construed as somewhat silly and off the mark- Fatima did seem as far from Thelma as a body could get- but really, had she been taller, younger, blonder, more Lolita-ish and swathed in PJs and a creased hoodie, she would have been interchangeable with the Teen Queen from Hades- in some weird way they were soul sisters, right down to their seriously glamour-free names from times gone by. After a few minutes of strained chit chat, she smiled demurely and headed for the basement, tape measure in hand. . . .

As Fatima headed to the basement, no doubt various scenarios popped up in your mind as to the possible outcome of such a story. Before I continue the narrative however, I have a confession to make. You see, I started writing this several years ago for one of those idiotic contests which center around a theme. This particular competition offered three "titles" from which to choose, all equally uninspiring, as a kind of test no doubt to the participant's creative powers, or perhaps simply the inane brainchild of some bored contest deviser; "No More Thelma" seemed the least ridiculous of the three choices. After weaving a tale around the selected theme however, I simply could not come up with a neatly packaged plot and finally abandoned the project altogether. I came across the notes the other week while going through the files and decided to post what I'd written and leave the rest up to the reader. If more authors chose to do this in fact, book clubs around the world would have far more interesting things to talk about than whether or not they "like" a novel and in this way the entire process of reading would become a truly democratic endeavor, if not a literary one. Why should the author have the last say?

So in essence there are several ways to end the saga of Happy Farm. The obvious conclusion, as hinted at in the title, entails Fatima just doing away with Thelma (pleading with her, threatening her, killing her, calling her parents, all and any of the above), then presenting the deed to Burak in her halting English to indicate that his girlfriend simply is "no more," but I'm sure you would agree this solution seems way too obvious and predictable. In a less melodramatic more nuanced version, we could start with the fact that both of Burak's women have rather serious names to match their similar nurturing, submissive roles, although their outward persona seem totally opposite in terms of physical appearance, age, and style. In truth, they badly need to break out of their assigned gender roles. Thus it is plausible that a name and lifestyle change is in the offing for each of these characters: Thelma could easily become Tootsy, thus giving her a less traditional, more confident edge, while Fatima, after discovering the betrayal, might very well prefer to be called Fanny perhaps, as a first step toward liberation in conjunction with her new knowledge. As an added twist, even though Burak continues seeing Thelma and deigns to hide her in various places in the large house at times, the two women secretly have become friends and are planning their shared man's psychological demise before changing their actual names and roles- this scenario could be comical or suspenseful. And then of course there is the nameless narrator herself, who amid all this relationship voyeurism has dropped hints about her own marital situation.

Really, it's an open door to fiction.

Stories need endings, no doubt, though often readers are displeased with how things turn out. So you can well imagine what writers go through! Honestly, the long and the short of it is I still deeply regret entering that contest. . 

Summer poetry fest, an ongoing fiesta . . .

Cityscape Sunset

Cityscape sunset
all eeeee's
paper planes silent at the zenith
gliding

Soft gray kiddie kites
floating out to sail;
dark smoky jet streams
weaving for a tail

Pink clouds cuddling lazylike
cotton candy small
huge golden floods light
a blue sky and all

Is this the day
whose shimmering tease
made the Welshman rage at our coming
dying?

Hey, it's too darn hot to write prose in July. . . .

Lancaster PA

In Lancaster PA, a hundred fifty years ago

There stood a house I’ll never live

In which I never hope to know

Upon this well-worn porch of pine and timber forest hitching posts

(a makeshift stage of knotted planks)

The dwelling huddled mid its hosts

Two icons guarding either side its weather beaten east/west walls

The silversmith and town saloon

With brandied wine and flowered halls. . . .

July Poetry Lapse Continued

Sign Language

Poetry is the language of signs:

abbreviated

  

      meaningful

           unintelligible

                  sometimes askew

                          Poets are like midgets in a mirror:

                   small

              sagacious

          absurd                 

as sensitive as me or you  

Sedona Poetry Lapse

Native American

Kiln-baked rocks of the red desert mesmerizing
soul's permanent recall, native flutes unraveling
inside imaginary winds as meditation assures me
there could be no pain of dying at such a shrine.

But a rude moment annihilates sense memory
as cafe musak switches from new age yearnings
to tired old tourist beats and Credence Clearwater Revival,
wrapped in the smell of wet, undercooked fries and BLT down,
hold the myths.

Foot Fetish

From "I Did It For Mustapha"

Who in their right mind would put up with Sammy’s? Wouldn’t it just be preferable to traverse the ubiquitous dog pooh, predictable dark clumps of discarded chewing gum, random shards of glass and other hygienic terrors of the city pavement while stone-cold barefoot?

This may sound crazy, but in a store like Sammy’s where at least half the metro hordes go for regular shoes, altercations are as common as calluses; nasty little run-ins that could easily benefit from the intervention of law enforcement, or perhaps  the Dalai Lama, especially on weekends. By “regular” incidentally I mean the kind of footwear you can actually walk in, not the type that comes in alarming hues of shiny hot pink and sunburst yellow with three inch extended Italian toes into which no human digit was ever made to squeeze; such inquisition chambers for the metatarsals had to be created for teenagers of all ages hell bent on experimenting with foot ruination; they never were meant to adorn mainstream lower extremities with fallen arches, broken toe nails, the errant corn and a host of other all too human imperfections, some of them quite gross. Real shoes for real people, that’s their motto. . . .

Xanadu

What Was I Thinking. . . .

A weird thing happened on the way to cyberspace the other day. My ISP appeared to go DOA for a few days, but instead of sending a frantic SOS via cell phone to a 911 tech wizard in Asia, or fielding my way with infinite patience and a suppressed scream through an endless cable company menu, I decided to go cold turkey. While I was at it, I also desisted from the acrid omens of the 24 hour news cycle,  chucked the iphone, the ipod  and the ipad as well and I was free as a bird with nary a tweet.

Having cleared the air of all media distractions and feeling totally disconnected, I began with early romantic poetry, dabbled in metaphysics and wound up in the intricate pentameter of a Shakespearean sonnet. Amazingly, I soon found that I was thinking for myself!  More specifically, this amazing journey began with Blake’s allusion to holding infinity in the palm of one’s hand from “Auguries of Innocence,” gained sizable momentum as a result of Hopkins’ admonition that the world could indeed “flame out, like shining from shook foil” in his ineffable “God’s Grandeur,” and ended with philosophical musings from “Julius Caesar” about the decline of empires.

Needless to say this thought provoking euphoria was not to last; the land line rang, jarring me out of an Elizabethan reverie, and much like Coleridge who purportedly never completed “Kubla Khan” because of a loud knocking on the door that rudely awakened him from an especially creative albeit opium induced fog, I picked up the phone by sheer habit and was treated to the first few horrible utterances of a robo call. 

Is it possible this interlude from the cacaphony of the 21st century may only have been a dream. . . .

  

19 Jamming with Richie

From "The Richie Havens Mystery"

I once met Richie Havens in 1966 at a house party in Brooklyn. The gathering was at the home of a cousin of one of his friends, a guy who like Richie seemed to have roots in the Caribbean. My boyfriend and soon-to-be-first husband was friendly with both the friend and Richie as well as the cousin. It was all about friends and he said it would be a “blast” and possibly a “gas.” We took the train out to Brooklyn from the Village where we were living at the time in a hot water flat. I swear this is true, about the water temperature. It was so weird though- cold would have been much better because you’d have a choice, you could heat it up if need be, or take a quick icy shower, although you couldn’t cool it down fast if you needed to- but back to the story. A sort of mystery ensued as a result of that meeting, an unanswered question about a missing person, a woman. Richie’s obit reminded me of the whole thing.

The party was in the basement of one of those smallish, respectable, working class homes with tiny backyards that stood in a family neighborhood full of houses just like that, a kind of black Archie Bunker street, at least from the outside. The downstairs was small and packed with friends, all of whom were “rapping” to each other. Everyone was smoking pot. The air was so thick in truth with marijuana that you did not have to smoke to get high. I never really enjoyed smoking and recall practically hurling myself through the back door at one point to get some air. It was summer, and the backyard reeked of reefer too. There was simply no escape. . . .

Just about the time Richie was getting ready to play I was itching to leave, although I was sure the boyfriend would tell me just to “hang loose.” I never had heard of Richie ‘till my boyfriend and his friends talked about him and was wondering what the big deal was. Actually I had never heard of a lot of people on “the scene” in those days as I had been living overseas for a couple of years and had pretty well fallen out of touch. A few weeks before the party in fact I had been introduced to Andy Warhol at a local Village watering hole by our very gay friend Jason who said Maaaarilyn, there’s someone I want you to meeet, and had no idea who he was either. However I immediately thought the guy was an albino because of the platinum hair and eyebrows- a fact which though interesting in itself did not explain why Jason was fawning over him as if his life depended on it. Then too I wanted to get away fast. I have nothing against albinos but this one seemed strange. Jason himself as it turned out was a sort of celebrity in his own right and soon-to-be star of a classic one man biopic by the famous underground film maker Shirley Clark. Needless to say, she too remains a total non person to me, if not to many others. My boyfriend had all sorts of friends, some of them quite well known in the arts, many of them just acquaintances, and even people I had studied in my drama courses, though each time we met them I had no idea who they were. Nor did I especially care. I was young and trying to survive while learning a strange new language that had overtaken everyone’s friends during my absence. Grasping phrases like “groovy” and “far out” or the more serious “heavy” with its cryptic connotation of incredible emotional intensity was challenge enough, as was finding a place to live far far away from home forever. I was going to be a famous writer.

But I stray from the story. Richie played and sang and the gig was okay and it was clear that he was “boss” although I was not “blown away” as it  was a bit loud and after the playing was over his wife was standing at his side and she had a young kid and a baby with her. She was tall and thin and white and had long straight hair and maybe she was wearing glasses too and she was the epitome of a tall, thin, white, straight-haired sixties person married to a black guy, which in those days was still a bit shocking. I admired her courage. I thought about all the shit she’d have to go through having chosen Richie as her “old man” even though he was destined for stardom. She gave out the air of being quietly strong. In a word, she was cool.  

When I was still married to my original old man, whenever we would see Richie on “Sesame Street” the old man would laugh and comment affectionately: When the hell is Richie gonna get some teeth? This response sort of kept up the connection of intimacy between Richie and the old man, who was now a father himself but not as famous. We never even considered going to Woodstock because we had a toddler, and much later on friends who had been seriously considering the idea told us they had to abandon it because word had it the road was blocked and the thruway had become a parking lot.  We did watch the moon landing on TV though, with much incredulity, talk about far out, and get scared to death by the Manson murders. Then time passed, things changed.

So when Richie died recently and I read the obit I was amazed to find no mention whatsoever of the tall, thin, straight-haired white chick who had stood quietly and confidently at his side during the house party. She had been erased. Gone. Finito. As if she never existed. I checked other obits. Same thing. Missing in action. There was brief mention of a second relationship, references to children and grandchildren, nice things like museums that Richie did for all children, and after much, much searching I even found one allusion somewhere to the fact that Richie once had been married “a long time ago.” Hmmmm. A couple of the obits also noted that he liked to keep his personal affairs “private.” Hmmmm again for a guy who was quoted as saying that he was in the “communications” business. What happened to her? Did she escape? Had she too made another life? Why was she invisible? Maybe she was dead. But even so, why not mention her? She took a chance and lost.

She definitely was worthy of mention.

April, 2013

Bobcat in the Belfry, Part One

From "Bobcat in the Belfry"

It's definitely true. Growing up and living your entire existence in the urban jungle can really put you out of touch with nature.  Being stalked by a primeval life form on the other hand quickly can foment an all-too-personal ecological encounter of intense weirdness.

 At the time of my own, particular adventure in a newly purchased gorgeous 3BR-2B-EIK-2.5 wooded acres, I was crouched in an extremely uncomfortable orange plastic "chaise lounge" on the deteriorating and splintery deck of a white elephant of a house desolately plunked down at the far edge of town.  It was the kind of place where raw, unstoppable nature gently tickled a neat, slightly hesitant backyard, though unfortunately the twain never did succeed in quite meeting.  The house's faded olive green siding would have made a wonderful backdrop for a bad seventies movie about downward mobility, the ravaged front yard deeply suggestive of an abandoned trailer park.  The whole ambience as a matter of fact constituted a cross between the more blood-curdling aspects of suburbia and a scene from Deliverance.   How had we landed in this galaxy???  After a soul-crushing, two-year search to find the perfect Escape-from- New York, my husband Sherwin and I had at last been admitted to the Twilight Zone of  second home ownership.   In our craving for semi-rural nirvana (not-too far-from-town), we had totally fucked up. . . .

Being Carlo Levi

From "This is How Carlo Levi Would Say It"

The lily pond:

black as a lagoon,

smooth as an ice rink,

still as blade of glass.

The lily pads:

fat with complacency,

lazy with promise,

inert as a green guru.

One tiny, floating flower:

brilliant like claret,

resilient and lonely,

purple with steadfast.

Excerpt from "Raven Red, " Part One

From "Raven Red"

Passover arrives during the first week of April, and for a few days Lila Mae is temporarily granted a reprieve from twentieth century America.  She's on her way to visit the “downtown” grandparents, Frank’s folks, for an evening of sweet dark wine and family intrigue. Lila and Blood Brother are dressed up “like dolls” by their mother who believes she can show up the more traditional and successful Polish in-laws by using a well honed Hungarian knack for theatrical presentation. It’s a holiday Lila Mae looks forward to for months. Here she stands, all decked out in a new spring coat the color of a pale purple easter egg and quizzically labeled a "topper," a pair of similarly misnomered black patent leather "Mary Janes," and white lacey communion-type anklets with a small ruffle at the top. Selma also has picked out a sky blue Easter bonnet for the costume, redolent of the most shiksa of little American girl outfits, with a wide, navy taffeta bow that ties under the chin; she herself is dressed to kill in a tight suit trimmed with Persian lamb fur, red lipstick, and high heels of the shiniest, smoothest leather and thinnest ankle straps. It is late afternoon before the eve of the first Seder, still a couple of hours before sunset when they leave the house and walk the three long blocks to the train. Lila Mae Kimmelkowsky, at her post near the edge of the Seventh Avenue IRT platform, is leaning over the tracks, peering into the tunnel to catch first light of the chariot that will speed her back to nineteenth century Poland. Her ten tiny fingernails are similarly agleam with Revlon's "Ravin' Red"- which Lila hears as"Raven"- the  matching, vampirish nail polish that Selma keeps in the bathroom cabinet, and to whose miniature bottle Lila is allowed access on special occasions; she has applied the blood red lacquer herself, and being an amateur manicurist, much of the varnish has seeped into the crevices of her cuticles in uneven splotches. But no matter, her hands feel very important, and she is hoping they will be noticed. Excitedly she boards the train and sits at the edge of the seat so that the back of her bare legs won't feel the scratchy, sharp edges of the torn wicker padding. . . . 

Hell's Kitchen

It was all about names. The newly Americanized family, numbering well over forty by the annual head count at seders, settled in and around the west forties and fifties, a few blocks and a galaxy away from the diamond center and theater district in a slightly more “residential” area of Hell’s Kitchen, speedily dropping the "sky" from their last names and going to synagogue with the actors. It was here that father, previously called Zev and then Alter, afterward Albert and finally Al, and five of the six brothers with all their new names and old accents, began to churn up a contracting business named after my grandfather; and then the youngest boy, Shlomo/Sol/Solly, an alum of Stuyvesant and CCNY barely off the boat, some years later finally taking it upon himself to mishandle the accounting and subsequently spend a memorable Passover stint in prison where the  brothers, including possibly Herschel/Gerschel/George and Avram/Abe plus the bro called simply "Eli" dutifully paid visits. The brothers brought Sol/Solly gefilte fish and unleavened bread so he could partake of the festival of freedom- then after his release word had it he landed a cushy job with the city. . . . 

A much beloved, second-from-youngest brother, darling Dave/David/Duvid/Dov/Duvehla, the very opposite in nature to sassy Shloimeleh/Sol/Solly, had passed on before the unfortunate incarceration incident- an incident by the way which easily could have been avoided and erased with a mere fine by Sol/Solly/Shlomo had he not dissed the judge by stating rather pugnaciously that he only took orders from his rabbi. Dave-Duvehla, though one up from Solly-Shlomo was really the In Residence "baby" of the family as everyone more or less adored him, and why not? He was handsome, and sweet, and fun, and nice, and a talented photographer and also a character from West Side Story with his Puerto Rican amour that he hid from the family until after his death; and he also was vulnerable because along with his godlike qualities he possessed the affliction of the great ones as well- epilepsy. And it is that from which he died, leaving this earth in his mother's bathtub when barely turned forty.

Everyone on both sides of the family had several names, be it the crazy Hungarians or the ersatz Poles, and figuring out who was who was akin to fielding a Russian novel during the first hundred pages or so. The paternal grandparents from Poland, Leah and Jacob, alternately Laya and Yacov or Lena and Jake, were in essence Baba and Zada. Their rambling front-to-back apartment of a million little rooms was the setting for periodic ceremonial shouting fests among  half a dozen brothers hurling derisive Yiddish nicknames into the air such as "Shluhmeel" and "Putz" and also "Haim Yankel"- this last term indicating some sort of Village Idiot- along with the masterfully sarcastic "hochem" meaning "wise one." The apartment had twelve foot ceilings and plaster walls providing the acoustics. During these shouting events the sibs nervously, loudly and somewhat obsessively cracked walnuts, pecans and filberts scooped up from generous bowls placed strategically along a huge, mahogany table, then threw the shells every which way and downed tiny shots of straight vodka or small glasses of Slivovitz, the deadly eastern European hootch posing as plum brandy, while their lone baby sister, Faygah/Faygala/Florence, looked on somewhat dolefully. They argued about politics and foreign policy, the economy and Israel- a land where another branch of this Polish Jewish “ex-pat” clan already had settled in a much earlier part of the century. And there's a story here too of course.

My paternal great grandmother as it happened had immigrated to Palestine not long after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 along with her several children, now our long lost tribe of cousins in the land of milk and honey. She lit out for Zion early in the Jazz Age, not that the Charleston would have had any measurable effect on a tiny, miserable Polish village beset by pogroms and located on a river called “Bug” perilously near to the Russian border. Great Grandma Miriam supposedly was the genuine article, a centenarian firecracker to the last. She now lies in what I imagine a restless eternity, in her underground bunker on the Mount of Olives. Picturing her in stillness however is impossible, as the real and fabricated stories of her madcap maneuvers still flow through family gatherings like a bottle of Manischewitz during the reading of the Hagaddah. Even her death was attributed to an impulsive caper: flouting the explicit warnings of her children regarding the fragile state of her health and years, and in her late dotage boldly sneaking out on a damp, cool, moonless night to watch a ship stealthily unloading its cargo of illegal immigrants onto the beaches of Tel Aviv under the cover of darkness- in kick ass defiance of British rule before Israel was officially declared a state- at which time the firecracker purportedly caught a cold and met with her maker, going out with a bang as usual. She forever stands as a catalytic figure in a variegated family mythology in the same way that Israel remains both conflicted and storied. . . . (To read more of this story, email me)

A Story About Storytelling, Part Two

From "A Storyteller's Story"

Unlike Mr. Cantor, the substitute teacher, who obsessively popped "Tums" into a large, loose-lipped, spittle filled mouth, and loudly blew shiny missiles from his mucous filled nose into thin, brown paper towels of the type found in public bathrooms- consequently laying them flat out to dry on the small, hissing radiator while we continued to shiver in the heatless room albiet now with the image of snot-encased "tissues" imprinted forever on our childish third eyes- Mrs. Herskovitz, the regular teacher, inspired rather than grossed us out. But even the revolting machinations of the Tum sucker proved instructional in our own youthful quest for survival. For as soon as creepy Cantor turned his back, however briefly, if only to plant an overly large aleph, bet or gimmel on the rickety, standup blackboard that swayed on its skinny legs with each tap of the chalk, mayhem and bravado spontaneously ensued behind the teacher’s back. And it was exactly during one of these miniscule though significant respites from formal instruction that I learned from Mikey Kaplan the following precious truth: you could run your fingers- nay, the whole tiny hand!- stealthily through eight lit Hanuka candles in one fell swoop and not die or at least be partially immolated, providing you did this insane act of risk taking sure and fast. You would be fine. You would have cheated the grim reaper and eluded painful disfigurement as well. The worst you could expect would be the residue of a little soot on your small knuckles. This too could become a story, one you could tell your children and grandchildren. . . .

A Story About Storytelling

From "A Storyteller's Story"

People don’t just die. Sometimes they simply disappear, from sight, sound, memory, occasionally to resurface in the form of a question. Did Jean Arthur actually make it to the millennium? When exactly did Mary Pickford expire? How is it possible that so-and-so's obituary is in today’s paper- didn’t he die years ago? And why would anyone want to google away the day in hopes of contacting a childhood classmate from the previous century if not to hold onto a simpler, more youthful past? In truth, can anyone fully grasp the idea of annihilation and still remain sane?

These thoughts never fail to remind of the tragedy of Gilgamesh, a story I once attempted to teach to a few brighter than average though equally lackadaisical and similarly doomed high school seniors. . . .Generally considered the first literary “hero” of record, this ancient king from Mesopotamia -a reputed demigod- is the center of a story related in cuneiform, a myth rediscovered in the late nineteenth century on zillions of fragments of stone chards, a heroic recounting reappearing several millennia after it was first ambitiously embedded into chapters hard as rock by unknown authors. The narrative  was translated and re-assembled into quasi tablets by various modern scholars working over a period of decades, during which time some of the translators themselves were “no more”- or alternately, passed on, left the world, ceased to exist, in plain language, were lost to life. In the end, only the story and its fanciful characters achieved immortality, through the telling.

As the plot starts to reveal itself it appears that the hero Gilgamesh’s amazingly naïve tragedy lies in his obdurate refusal to accept the sudden realization that we all die. He is availed of this gruesome fact of mortality somewhat late in life, not as a child, but as an adult who loses his closest friend, an all-too-human alter ego known as Enkidu, after a rather nasty skirmish with a dragon-like monster, who in a brilliant flash of early onomatapoeia is named Humbaba.The hero's ensuing quest consequently becomes eternal life- a spurious journey, needless to say, and this king of Ur comes across some four thousand years later as a rather primitive soul. Come on now, every six year old whose gold fish has met with a bad end realizes the inexorable Fact of Life. But in truth guys, Gilga’s existential angst raises an essential question: Why bother doing your homework if all comes to naught? That unpleasant bevy of boring term papers, book reports, math equations, tedious science experiments, artfully devised crib sheets. . . In short, the students thus were motivated to read on until the very end. The answer to the story’s existential question incidentally, the moment  of truth at the end of the quest, turns out to be equally simplistic: eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow. . .  leading to the inevitable thought that looking back at all our yesterdays, you really have to wonder how far we've come.  

Be all that “truth” as it may, this epic tale of survival still touches a nerve several millenia from its inception, and denial of the ultimate horror still is nurtured from the early years onward through storytelling and various, small acts of defiance. As a curious little girl of seven for example, shivering away at a small desk in a freezing South Bronx storefront. . . I and my fellow bi-lingual first generation students were mesmerized by Mrs. Herskovitz’s stories. . . .

Valentine Fantasy

From "An Internal Affair"

Can one find true love later in life?

It is said that as we grow older our social circles diminish and our calendars begin to look increasingly empty. What complete balderdash! My dance card, I can assure you, is full on both sides. I have appointments several times a week with various doctors and practitioners of the medical arts. These assignations also require that I dress for the occasion, lest they think I am a naive, ill turned out ignoramus or worse, an uninformed partner in health that they can cavalierly throw on the dung heap of rhesus monkey experimentation, or ply me with maintenance drugs from their pals at Big Pharma while I dumbly acquiesce just to keep the relationship going. Hey, I was not born yesterday, far from it alas . . . . I prepare for these meetings with the utmost care to my clothes, hair and make-up. I aim to exude the sophistication of a mature woman who knows exactly what she wants and is willing to co-pay for it- perhaps not a long term commitment, but definitely companionship. Despite all this, I am still alone.

The problem is that I cannot seem to find the perfect soul mate so to speak, an internist that I can live with, someone who can make my heart skip a beat without calling it arrhythmia. Some may say I may be too picky, but so be it- you only live and age and get sick and die once. I might have to consider going online eventually, an act of pure desperation as I am a traditionalist who believes face-to-face meetings are always best in terms of the “blink” factor. . . .

Winter

From "Raven Red"

When not thinking up intricate ways in which to elude the Nazis or trying to escape the icy, winter winds of the South Bronx Prairie, Lila and some last-ditch cronies from the next door apartment house play hide-and-seek on stair landings. They maneuver bikes and scooters in small, square hallways pretending they’re motorcycles, then solemnly revere Howdy Doody's fitful little image in the late afternoons; oh raffish early muppet, harbinger of the decline of the attention span with the power of near hypnosis! Howdy, whose entire name oddly means “Hello Feces,” Buffalo Bob and Clarabel comprise an uncanny cross between Punch 'n Judy, Fellini and secondary characters from a bad B Western, but the kids are not put off.  They cheer insanely as the odd, happy crew manufactures instant mayhem in the Peanut Gallery. 

. . . the commotion from the apartment above mysteriously subsides; there is complete silence from the other side of the ceiling. A frosty, pre-ozone depleted January sets in during that time when winters often plunged below freezing, and there are many more old movies being shown on TV; images of Joel McCrea, John Garfield and Dorothy Lamour are added to the little screen. Slowly over several weeks, the last clumps of blackened, peed-on snow will melt along the curbs, and a fragrant, misleading thaw will ensue. Once again, sounds are detected overhead in 4-C. . . .