Breaking the Ice (Castle)

As the holiday season enfolds I think about the the Disneyfication of New York nearing  its total completion. It has captured even the hearts and minds of the residents, lulled us into an unconscious acceptance, propelled into a kind of Disneyfied world view.

The other day when I left the house and got to my car, I found it neatly and completely encased in a complicated pattern of intricate ice crystals; a kind of giant icy blanket, a fantastic and translucent sheet covering every square inch of my defenseless, little Civic. It was a bit unnerving but picturesque.

After spending a good long time trying to warm the under powered, sputtering engine I alternately attempted to crack the ice so to speak by randomly attacking spots along the windows with one of those plastic ice cracking tools that has a small brush on the other end. It was then that I also noticed the branches of the many trees surrounding my parking spot- the ice had turned them into a fantasia of dripping, frozen, pinkish icicles. This hint of rosy color evocative of a children's animated movie, perhaps something Disney-ish, had to do no doubt with the blue-gray light of December that made noon seem like evening as we approached the shortest day of the year. It was quite pretty, totally cinematic, and daunting at the same time. A definite change in the weather.

Suddenly I began to imagine myself as one of the characters in Disney's latest, wildly popular kiddy story, the ubiquitous "Frozen," perhaps  Anna as she enlists the aid of Kristoff to reach Elsa the Snow Queen and thus release the barren, frozen land from a perpetual winter. Oooooh nooooh, not winter again! If the plot sounds  a tad familiar, just hearken back to the pagan tales of yore, an ailing king, the unforgiving, infertile land of the cold months that is anathema to agriculture or husbandry and the getting of food, and all the ancient rites used to revive the earth as practiced by ancient peoples; they just didn't get it yet that spring would come round again, even without the sacrifices to the gods. 

This kind of magical, respun, old story that the Disney Universe now markets so shamelessly to children of all ages as it seeps through the culture can only emanate from the sun scorched, seasonless valleys of a Disneylandish landscape- an arid imagination, a place where the shade never shines; where changes in the temperature of a sunny everyday and all-is(forever)-well-with-the-world mind set are received with alarm. In addition, "Frozen" has become an obscenely lucrative industry for the Disney trademark, giving rise to the hawking- both to kids and adults- of the myriad souvenirs, amulets and charms evocative of this re-purposed ancient story- everything  from jewelry, pads, pencils, calendars and coloring books with the characters' images imprinted on them to pajamas, mugs, pillow cases and chocolate pretzels, to name just a few. 

"Frozen" in its insane ever-presence and almost scary commercial reach (yes, you can get all this stuff on Amazon) is a far cry from the now seeming, harmless and fanciful tale of Cinderella for example, bare-foot-in-the-kitchen stereotyping that this earlier movie exhibited notwithstanding, what with its foot-fetishing prince, kindly, chubby fairy godmother and hurtful though trendy, must-have party shoes. Nor did the gal who was named white as the driven snow- though she shacked in the woods with  seven, strangely adorable, exuberantly musical male companions- exert a fraction of the cultural influence of "Frozen.". But all that happened before the internet, before Disney Universe took over even our very towns, our stories, and then went after our weather.

Like many here in our little city, I'm quietly and not so quietly horrified by the ever growing disneyfication of the once charming, alive, diverse and vibrant New York streetscape; a place where all sorts of people resided, not toured, lived, not crashed in pied-a-terres, a spot with definable, enjoyable seasons! The takeover has happened in the form of junky merchandise, diluted entertainment, a lack of choices, the disappearance of book stores, all sorts of little shops going out of business to make room for chains that sell Anna-Kristoff-Elsa paraphernalia and the like, corporate fast food signs everywhere and the general dumbing/diluting down of everything: the setting, street improvisation, stimulation of the senses and thought, the arts, alertness, realness as we once knew it. Now they're even aiming at the seasons!

Perhaps equally dispiriting, why must winter be portrayed as so terribly scary, something to be avoided and feared at all costs? What ever happened to the joys of ice skating, sledding or even thinking about ice skating and sledding, the strange satisfaction that comes from bitterly complaining while cleaning off the new snow from one's car in the freezing, fresh air, the comfort of furry snow boots and warm sweaters, a mug of richly brewed hot chocolate, a brisk, energizing walk on a chilly day in the bright, frosty winter sun, and kicking back to watch a video or read a great book, the wanting winter to be over, the anticipation of spring. . . .

It all goes together, it really does. The obsessive online ordering of defective, often disappointing products because of a reluctance to leave your cozy screen, then often having to go through the hassle of sending it all back; the reticence of visiting a store or a movie or museum and especially in cold weather-  and not just places that exist in florescent malls and their "food courts," but the kind of destinations that take you down a real street with sidewalks, hot dog vendors, cafes and restaurants, traffic lights, dogs, baby strollers, life. The film making antipathy toward cold, snow, rain, ice, walking outside, the burgeoning fingerprint of Disney Universe everywhere, cautioning us about the dire consequences of not having a sufficient number of hot, sweaty, mind numbing, ultra violet, and perpetually sunny days. In truth, they even have taken over the barometer,  the notion of changing seasons, our very perceptions and thoughts! 

Now when it snows, or we have an occasional ice storm or "wintry mix"  that requires dislodging the stuff from your car and perhaps getting your gloves wet, for one brief moment I find myself re-imagining myself as a character in a cartoon about the evils of an eternal winter. And I haven't even seen the darn movie, but somehow the whole schtick has permeated my consciousness, as it always was meant to do.

Between Disney and Amazon we surely are done for.

Yearnings

Yearnings

Dec. 13, 2019

 

 

We all experience longing, especially around the “holidays.”

 

Who has not lived, and successfully managed to escape ever wanting a particular thing? Perhaps the sudden sounds of soppy, silly music and appearance of decorations exhorting us to be happy and buy everything in sight propel us into the murky, sentimental and elusive past. In any case, there is introspection.

 

And contrary to the once popular, super modernist film master Bunel (please do not forget the tilda on the “n!”) “The Obscure Object of Desire” is in truth usually not that obscure but quite identifiable, often in the simplest of ways: the universal quest at bottom always is a longing for immortality. Because upon achieving whatever it is that beckons, you invariably want the next thing.

 

As I pointed out to a class in an effort to get them to read and appreciate the Epic of Gilgamesh, the reason for the four thousand year old hero’s obsessive fear of death and ensuing quest for eternal life is simple: why do your homework if you know that one day you’re gonna die? Wouldn’t it be better not, thus making all your toil and efforts more meaningful as you meet each day? Gilgamesh, one of the earliest, recorded neurotics of stature in the western canon, concrete and literal of thought though he was, still can impress. It's the quest, of course!

 

So now that we’ve established the purpose of yearning- that of always seeking immortality- be it through shopping, food, drugs, screen time, human connections, exercise, gambling, constant travel or moving about, sugary confections or a potato chip addiction, I’ll share one of my own particular quests.

 

In the past I’ve wished to be a writer of towering import, as mesmerizing, precise, accurate and compelling as Dreiser and James, emotionally suspenseful and page-turning as Charlotte Bronte, brilliantly witty as Austen, enduring a chronicler of my times as Wharton, slick as Pynchon, poetic as Woolf, clever as Calvino and so much more. When people still eagerly are devouring my books a hundred years hence, they will be transported back into the cultural miasma of the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in bold colors! A labyrinth of pictographs my words have created propelling the readers' imaginations speeding through time and lusting for more of my work.

 

Was this really too much to ask for?

 

Well, now I’m not so sure. . . . In any case, there is the blog.

 

And your yearnings?

Things to Do on a Long Flight

Here are some of the things you can do to pass the time on a six hour flight.

For the first half hour or so you are busy "settling in" as you wait excitedly to taxi to the runway. This includes hoisting a heavy, overpacked roll-y, stuffed with clothes you may never wear, into the overhead without injuring your back, sitting and trying to get comfortble. There's also fiddling with the seat belt, squishing your nice coat and previously spiffy carry-on into the dark, dirty space on a carpet beneath your feet and checking out neighbors.The captain cheerily announces a "brief delay" and it no longer feels exciting.

Since it's usually a seven or eight a.m. "departure"- which means (if you count backwards) you've been up since three something- you are determined to sleep for the first few hours, which almost never happens. You writhe your weary, sleep deprived body into a consciousness blocking, soothing place that totally does not block light, noise or consciousness.

After an hour or so of pretending to "sleep," you "wake" and inquire about the time, at which point you find out you have not completed yet a fifth of the journey. You continue to down as much water as possible to avoid dehydration.

Heading for the bathroom and while waiting for the occupied, claustrophobic little closet to become available, you have a brief but intense conversation with a curious fight attendant who seems mesmerized by the tiny, across-the-body Baggalini you wear. She asks if she can see how the little compartments work. The door opens and you slither sideways into the tiny space.

Returning to your seat you go through your carry-on somewhat wildly looking for something you may have forgotten. Everything is in small, Ziploc bags yet still basically unidentifiable. It's discouraging.

Free floating and un-Ziplocked items in the bag reveal a crumpled scarf, a now creased folder, a couple of pens, a pad, a book, two hair clips, tissue packets, loose hard candies; the process of pawing through the stuff is excruciating. You do not find what you are looking for and have forgotten what it was, but make a mental note to check for it again later. 

Staring intermittently at the book you brought occupies a few unhappy minutes before you decide to search for a movie. The airline film "library" is mainly Disney-ugh along with other made-for-video really bad movies, but you refuse to go it alone and pay for wi-fi, and in any case your "device" is way too small. You go through the menu twice and decide it's time for the bathroom again. It's so important to stay hydrated, you remind yourself, even though this means constantly having to pee in a contorted pose, in a teeny closet that presages being really, really careful; by now your eyes are burning crazily from the dry, recycled air.

You begin this little diary, madly scribbling a few notes, then start the whole idiotic process again: rummaging through the carry-on; going to the bathroom; staring into space; refusing to read your book; more staring; looking at the movie menu in utter disgust; going to the bathroom . . . .

Three hours finally have passed although you have no idea by now what the real time is and may be beyond caring. In any event, you will have the chance to repeat the entire process of rummaging, staring, cursing at the movie menu, staring, wondering if the other passengers are going through the same thing or just have taken drugs, staring, and peeing in a most uncomfortable position at least three more times, and possibly more.

By the time you arrive you are more exhausted than ever dreamed, and the soul crushing, beaten down, nihilistic feeling that began shortly after boarding has permeated almost every cell; but as you prepare for landing  (what will that be like this time? Such episodes from air to ground vary from relatively "smooth" to unbelievably white knuckle) you vow to buck up, drag yourself and all your stuff down that crowded, narrow aisle, and onward!

California Leaves Me Speechless

Reader Responses to Harold Bloom

Reader responses to the post about literary/cultural critic Harold Bloom, with comments and links to other articles.

FROM PAULA T., COMMENT

 I have enjoyed reading Bloom’s criticism over the years particularly because it was thoroughly readable and understandable - a negative to some academics. As far as his prediction of the path academia would take it seems he was spot on. Even when my kids went to college they weren't required to take survey courses. Instead of broadening the canon his critics seem to have narrowed it down into specialties much like medicine. The generalist is a thing of the past. . . read criticism sporadically, never evaluating it, just kind of happy to find something stimulating about some book i was interested in. Every time I visit Renee in Monterrey i read a bit of her copy of Genius just to see what he says about Henry James. He approves. Bloom included Colette in one of his many great writers lists. I approve .He wrote so many damned books I can’t keep track.

I thought he looked more than a bit like Eeyore, but then I adore Eeyore. He was absolutely brilliant and much maligned. He just wasn't PC. In the 80s, when my children informed me that survey literature courses were no longer required, I was appalled. They seemed to go straight through to what I would call electives! I believe a background in great literature should be required.  Isn't it possible to expand literature without throwing the proverbial baby out. Couldn’t world literature be the requirement rather than allowing students to take isolated courses in whatever.  I am so saddened by the the disappearance of the liberal arts. It seems to be something for the elite and even they have to make sure to study what will result in a high income. Bloom certainly was right.

Excellent op ed in today’s Times [Did Harold Bloom or Toni Morrison Win the Literary Canon Wars] arguing that they both won and both lost due to the decline in liberal studies, brought about, I think, by the escalating costs of higher education. Nice way to keep the economy tipped toward the top.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/opinion/sunday/harold-bloom-canon.html

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FROM DANA, A LINK TO A STORY ABOUT BLOOM'S EARLY ROOTS AND JOURNEY

  

 https://www.jta.org/2019/10/17/culture/harold-bloom-dreamed-in-yiddish-until-his-death

                                         . . . . . . . . . . .

FROM NOAH G., COMMENT & LINK TO A GUARDIAN ARTICLE CHARACTERIZING BLOOM AS "A CRITIC WHO POLARISED OPINION"

Interesting article: Harold Bloom was right to extol great literature, but was often blind to who was neglected.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/20/harold-bloom-defence-of-western-greats-blinded-him-to-other-cultures?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

                                     . . . . . . . . . . . .
                                      

FROM KARLAN, COMMENT
Thanks.  I had skimmed the obit and am glad I read it now more thoroughly.  His prediction seems unlikely to me.  It would be good to discuss with current English majors.  

                                            . . . . . . . . . . .

From Storyweaver: How many college students choose English or liberal arts as majors? More generally, do people know what they're missing if they don't read the classics, in or out of the "canon?" Is it really easier and more convenient just to go with the media flow of comforting/distracting sounds, settings, one line "ideas. . . ?"

Harold Whom? Harold Bloom!!

Just to note: a friend pointed out quite accurately that everyone is now writing an essay about Harold Bloom; please be assured this is not an essay but a blog rant.

 Anyone who likes Northrop Frye cannot be all bad.

  

Harold Bloom, scholar, teacher, critic, writer, thinker, was a literary giant of the ol' style literature and else-wise Patriarchy, a man who in a Paris Review article was said to repeatedly call a grad student "my dear" while deriding her analysis of a major Shakespearean villain. He was a defender of the Western canon, most likely a huge male chauvinist, a purveyor of controversy. He also was a brilliant, far thinking, unique, innovative and analytic mind and critic; and for all this, he can be forgiven almost anything.

In addition, Harold Bloom apparently really liked one of my own more arcane literary heroes, Northrop Frye (go look him up, if you are not familiar- dare to find out who's behind the daunting moniker "Northrup" followed by the very Brrrritish "Frye," a name in itself to inspire serious, old school English lit awe, with intimations of perhaps the Beowulf era and the mindless, happy gulping of mead for breakfast).  Bloom also took on the once hallowed (now antediluvian) "new critics" literary mafia and defended the Romantic movement. For these things he shall be forgiven his transgresses, even in our multicultural, post post feminist, post post post post everything social and cultural milieu.

Bloom was the archetypal son of immigrants who caught his star by seizing the educational green light at the end of Daisy's dock, with the distant flicker of success beckoning more modestly, as Master Teacher rather than Master of the Universe; he achieved it through hard work and an amazing talent. He had his critics, and needless to say, like many of us, he was not a perfect human. However he was a gift to anyone who likes well constructed words and ideas and was  influential, entertaining, and a first class literary and cultural trouble maker. How can we not cleave to that?

Not sure how many blog readers know Bloom, or even care to look more closely, but honestly, it's worth a try, whaddya got to lose?? Two well known works among his unbelievably prodigious output on literature, culture, history are "The Book of J" and "The Western Canon." I cite these two only because they quickly come to mind and thus preclude having to dive online and do research to jog the memory- my own laziness here sadly providing yet more evidence for Bloom's lament about the decline of modern thought processes! In truth he wrote tons of great, often illuminating essays on lit and culture, and his ideas on Shakespeare are among the best; his take Hamlet is worth checking out for anyone mildly acquainted with the late Dane.

Did Bloom's preferred canon have significant omissions, and was he too much "then" and not totally in step with the times? For sure! The world always moves on and he left out names and works that should not have been excluded, and included  others with which you may not agree. But he created a major point of reference, a framework from where to start, a codified collection of suggestions, and a history. 

More significantly the canon, unlike the four thousand year old Gilgamesh- the ancient epic's eponymous main character often regarded as the first tragic hero- is not written in stone on rock tablets in cuneiform; it is fluid. And whether fluid or concrete, it's never the last word but a starting point, an idea. 

Perhaps Bloom just reminds me of my own youthful dalliances with serious lit, and therefore my youth, but this in no way negates the importance of what he offered. He also made his knowledge accessible to all kinds of readers, not just scholars and intellectual snobs, and then was criticized for popularizing such rarefied subjects.  

Would I have liked him personally? Who knows. . . .Why should we care about him? Well, why not? He counts. Times  change, but as Proust reminds, some things perennially remain. . . . The guy definitely knew his stuff, and lots of it. If you are one who likes to read, and read things that make you think carefully about what you just read, then read him too if the spirit moves you, and decide for yourself.

This excerpt from the Times obit states Bloom's credo in his own words:“What are now called ‘Departments of English’ will be renamed departments of ‘Cultural Studies,’” he wrote in “The Western Canon,” “where Batman comics, Mormon theme parks, television, movies and rock will replace Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens. “Major, once-elitist universities and colleges,” he continued, “will still offer a few courses in Shakespeare, Milton and their peers, but these will be taught by departments of three or four scholars, equivalent to teachers of ancient Greek and Latin.” 

  

Oy, a veritable Literary Armageddon! But wherever you stand on what should be included (or not) in the canon going forward or editing backward, clearly you don't have to love everything in Bloom's version of what's essential to get the sense of what he is saying about his choice of great works; and I won't apologize for not particularly adoring Wallace Stevens or numbering Wordsworth among my favorite Romantics, but does this really matter?

  

The reactions to Bloom's quotation that came back via email before writing this blog surprisingly and not surprisingly showed me that readers from various and divergent points on the cultural/political spectrum seem to agree on certain basic issues and ideas inherent in his work, rationale, and contribution.

Next time on the blog I will post comments from readers along with email responses to Bloom's vision.  Are we truly headed toward one, gigantic, prose, poetry, art (and everything else that counts) theme park of culture? Maybe we're already (more than?) halfway there? Or not. Let us know what you think, and tune in to next post to see what others say about the direction of the canon, writing, critical reading and all art forms in general, the notion of "culture," and our own culture: the way we live, think, believe, observe and experience.

Small Pleasures, "Happiness. . . ."

I've written of my obsession with books, often in highly opinionated discussions of particular stories that have made it to my very own "favorites" list of beloved reads; going so far as to brazenly suggest that everyone else in the world should and must read and love these works too. 

Such extreme pickiness and solipsism have led me on occasion to throw up my hands at the failure to find a really good read, then over romanticize the past, and finally to fall back on, or into, the nineteenth century (lack of antibiotics but lots of horse manure in the evocative, sepia tinged, city streets notwithstanding!)-  usually in moments of reading despair; it's the kind of hopelessness that clouds one's thoughts after perusing more than a few of those speedily churned out, unfulfilling narratives (of sorts) by folks barely out of their teens; non-entrancing novels arranged on "featured" (or "new in paperback") tables near the front entrance of book stores.

Finally, after desultorily (how's that for a 19th c. word?!?) trying to finish reading what seemed like dozens of boring or just plain ol' silly books this year- although in truth it probably totaled no more than ten or maybe fifteen- some of which were reviewed by smarmy literary periodicals but as it turned out, so what?- I hit pay dirt! For one sweet moment the "find" seemed to make the hours spent trudging through all those other inconsequential pages almost worth it. 

The book's only fault was that it was too brief, almost a novella though not quite. Honestly, I loved it so much I started rereading the whole thing again from scratch days after I finished it. Just wasn't ready to let it go, using the justification for this clingy behavior that perhaps I had missed some incredible gem of phrase or idea the first time around. I mean, who doesn't miss a few subtle sparks of wonderment when you first delve into a book you know almost  immediately you will love and cherish? Happily though, a novel can be read twice, or twenty times. If it were a charlotte russe on the other hand, you would have to buy two. . . or three. . . . Another good reason to gobble books over the years as opposed to, say, charlotte russes.

Ironically because the story imbued so much reading happiness even though it's not especially a happy go lucky kinda' tale, the very title of this wise little book doubly amazed: Happiness as Such by mid-20th century Italian writer, Natalia Ginzburg. Through an especially skillful translation, Ginzburg's powerful, spare use of language in succinctly getting to the heart of everything only adds to the pleasure of meeting her characters, hearing their story. The book also happens to be an "epistolary" novel comprised mainly of letters- another technique of uneven success sometimes assigned to nineteenth century women authors, and not always flatteringly. But here it worked. The author created a super sharp image with just a few well placed clicks of the shutter.

In fact, it's hard to imagine this fantastic work being written in any other way. It's so perfect it almost dares you to ever try to write another word, even a shopping list. 

Now I'm rereading the author's entire (you should pardon the expression) oeuvre (which I definitely am not suggesting anyone must or should do); I'll settle instead for insisting you read this newly translated and published exquisite, little novel.

In return, should you be moved to recommend anything you recently fell head over heels with in reading enchantment, let's post it!

Going Paperless

NO. NO. A THOUSAND TIMES NOOOOOOO!

Going paperless.

Anyone who suggests this has reached an advanced state of hopeless madness.

And yet when someone announces (often quite proudly, if not downright smugly) that they're actually doing this, it prompts a morbid curiosity.

Putting all your stuff in the invisible world, you know, everything, the sum total of every phone number you ever may need, the record of every dollar you've ever sweated for, the file of each and every single transaction that affects your life-  usually in significant ways!- is just plain crazy.

In addition, when carried to the full extent of its words, basically this also means not only paying all your bills in the great, wild west of virtual reality- as convenient as first this may seem- but never, ever touching another sheet of real paper again, be it the page of a book or magazine, a cherished card or letter, a lined yellow note pad, a sticky note, a smooth, glossy photograph. . . you get the idea.

Honestly, it's beyond crazy. It's completely and irretrievably, ineluctably insane.

My fondest wish is to be so relaxed and other worldly that I actually can do this one day; then I regain my senses.

Going paperless. You know, like exploring the fourth dimension, or doing time travel. Or maybe communicating with ghosts at a seance.

I just have not reached that level of total insanity yet, tempting though at various times it does seem. . . .

A kind of Grand Illusion.  A phantasmagorical chimera.

Going paperless.

A dream from which eventually I always awake.

Maybe next year.

Summer Archives: BOBCAT IN THE BELFRY, Part One

This summer we go back to the archives, update & re-post favorite stories . "Bobcat. . . " muses on the joys and terrors of country life.

Bobcat in the Belfry, Part One

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 ambiance 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.

Even now, as I gaze back over the innocent chain of events leading to that goddawful morning, I still have difficulty understanding how it all happened, and why I was destined to play a lead role in a schlock horror film.  Our misplaced longing for cleaner air and a "simpler" existence was doomed from the start, but like complete morons in the foggy thrall of house fantasia, we were clueless.  

Perhaps the entire idiotic mess just had to do with the differences in our cultural backgrounds, Sherwin's and mine.  I was raised in the kind of family where Saturdays were spent at museums and summer days nestled inside air-conditioned Manhattan movie theaters-- we never even owned a goldfish, much less a dog.  Sherwin grew up in a small New England town, had two large, auburn Labradors as childhood companions, and a love of greenery embedded into his earliest consciousness.  He was, in a word, homesick.  So after endless discussion about the evils of urban living and lots of nagging little misgivings on my part, I finally acceded.  Sherwin was to get his dream of recreating the lost Eden of his childhood, at least on weekends, and I would get the chance to chill out, far far away from Gotham.

The plan initially called for the proverbial modest-crash-pad-with-just-a-few-civilized amenities; a base from where he could indulge his addiction to trees, leaves and untrammeled paths, and I could unwind from the daily madness of the city.  Once the fatal decision was reached, we wasted no time.  We mapped out a radius of one hundred and twenty-five miles and began a process of meticulous research, successfully holding at bay predatory realtors and congratulating each other frequently on being nobody's fool.  Ultimately, we even came to perceive ourselves as Informed Buyers.  Yet somehow, after viewing hundreds of shit-holes palmed off as "cozy" and "loaded with charm," we still managed to settle on that Great-Little-House, soon to reveal itself as a surreal knockoff from the The Adams Family, minus the laughs of course.

That May, when Midge Moore from Up Creek Realty called excitedly to alert us that she was faxing a new listing, we had all but given up hope of finding anything in time to get in by summer.  Enmeshed as we still were in daydreams of a recurring reverie of lush gardens filled with Russian sage and copious fields of black-eyed Susans, we ran right up there to have a quick look. The initial drive-by of the property unfortunately only fueled our insane fantasies, and soon we were experiencing our first impulses of misplaced elation. The place, an imposing clapboard chimera, was shrouded among pines and birches, ferns and bluebells; visions of wildflowers, Walden, Louisa May Alcott and all things transcendental popped up like magic mushrooms. 

We drove up for a second look the following weekend and became convinced we were doing a really, really, really smart thing. We ordered an inspection. Contracts were speedily drawn, bank accounts emptied, paint colors selected and lawyers put on retainer. Sadly our misplaced euphoria was not to last.  After the closing, in the first, miserably sweltering and soppingly humid week of July, something that up until that moment had appeared to be a property of "unique design" and "private" in a raffish, country-cape "fixer-upper" sort of way somehow began to present itself as an error of bizarre proportions. The generous backdrop of shrubbery turned out to be nothing more than gross, untended overgrowth and the tolerable little clusters of spring gnats we first encountered there had been mysteriously replaced by swarms of kamakazi-level black flies. What we once perceived as a bower of fragrant blooms was in fact a bevy of killer weeds. We had to step around a seriously rotted, fallen tree that was milling with carpenter ants, perilously hanging over the shed, to get into the house. 

Buyer’s remorse enveloped us almost at once. No sooner had we sealed the deal on our "unbelievable find" than we realized that even the "exceptional location," much like the house itself, was in reality neither fish-nor-fowl, bird-nor-beast.  The front of the land ineffectually attempted to face down a handful of imposing, slightly outdated raised ranches belonging to the town burghers, affable, gun-collecting residents; they seemed to favor an assortment of hokey flags of weird birds and happy suns flapping erratically in the mountain breezes outside their modest homesteads and boasted a bevy of rambunctious, unleashed dogs, some of them quite large.  The rear of the property backed up to what had been described as a large "nature preserve."  More about that  later. . . .

(Part Two next week!)

Spindrift, Part Three

Ah the Green, the infamous Sprindrift Village Green: ground zero for street theater of the absurd and a steady stream of out of tune, self-medicated banjo players. In addition, a number of shmatah encased cafes offering braised broccoli, whole wheat pancakes, fair trade falafel, pesticide-free peas, sand sifted soy milk, chamomile mint fizzes, fennel frittatas and of course community-conscious couscous. 

The Green also was peopled at almost any hour with a vibrant host of hucksters; there were early stage terminal singing guitarists and the Especially Hairy Ones with eerie pairs of glittering eyes peeping through tangled manes- these extremely long tresses often had seen too many visions of nirvana or snorted one more spec of something ecstatic than could ever be accounted for rationally, their unsettling demeanor further emphasized by a tendency toward incredibly scary looking toenails. These truly strange ones however actually comprised a smaller percentage of the census than one might think, fewer in number but highly, highly visible, especially on weekends when they entertained the tourists and themselves with great brio and a kind of drug fueled innocence.

Frankly I just could not see Hermie Treadwell, former NYC high school teacher slightly eccentric but basically mild mannered, in any of these scenarios- it simply did not make sense. He was legendary for chiding his long-haired male students and was known to offer extra points for haircuts. He never showed any affinity for learning a string instrument and definitely was not one to hang out in public places in ripped jeans; the mere sight of pierced body parts on his students, even an innocuous, small conglomeration of two or three ear pieces, tended to kick off spirited invectives on self-mutilation. He also was the last person likely to uproot an entire family and relocate to some upstate backwater redolent of fatal nostalgia and an overdrive of fantasy but pitiably short on pastrami. 

To the best of my knowledge, Hermie had never been a pot smoker and in fact prided himself on being one of the teetotalers at the rather raucous end term parties; he called himself the designated dribbler while the rest of us abandoned ourselves to the Dionysian sensations of cheap sherry at Christmas. Still, when I think of Hermie, none of this makes sense. He was basically a very, very stable individual, not at all flashy, clean shaven, an un-apologetic caffeine addict who preferred diet cokes to green tea and never expressed any interest whatsoever in either the evils of fracking or the benefits of eliminating corn beef from the diet.

Fantasy, the retreat of last resort, or vice versa? I could picture Hermie saying something like this on the last day of school. The truth is that probably everyone at some point in their prosaic quotidian existence dreams of transforming their lives into something more adventurous and riskier. But how many of us actually get to do this? It’s just not practical. And Hermie Treadwell would have been the least likely candidate for that kind of radical metamorphosis. I understand the lure of course as I myself became seriously enamored that summer with the idea of cutting loose from the gulag and doing something rash and exciting. The real estate market already had tanked around the time of Hermie’s defection and there were zillions of opportunities for vicariously checking out new and unusual living arrangements.

Eventually I wound up seeing so many properties that year in my own escape fantasy it became more expedient to concoct nicknames for them, a convenient filing system for all the lives I had the pleasure of observing in the village of Spindrift. In order of appearance though not necessarily eccentricity, several of the more memorable encounters involved: Chotchka Lady, Corporate Nympho, Drinks-Like-A-Fish, Zen Boy, Dark Shadows, Hippie High Ho, The Shining, Incensed on Incense and Little Red Schoolhouse, to name just a few. Did Hermie also comb through sundry small town existences during vacations when he was not in school or at home marking papers or planning lessons on the rebellious colonists and the lure of westward expansion, or devising quizzes on the post-reconstruction period?  

I’ll probably never find out what drove him out or where he wound up because it seems that no one knows his exact address in or out of Spindrift, and he always kept his number unlisted, although I’m convinced he still maintains a landline. Ironically I never managed to bump into him either on the Green, though one would think he would have had to have passed through on some prosaic errand, like buying postage stamps or devouring a soft serve yogurt, and voila, we serendipitously cross paths in a marvelous stroke of synchronicity!  I suppose my ESP was not particularly in high gear at the time. In any event I finally decided against the whole moving thing for reasons of practicality, along with a good, long look at the landscape as the foliage began to wane. The dream quickly dissipated faster than a cloud of chalk dust as the trees grew bare and ominously lonesome, and I began refiguring how many more years in the gulag it would actually take to reach that final “magic number.”

But I still find myself thinking about Hermie and have begun allowing myself a few rewards on occasion, like the unselfconscious consumption, of greasy, ketchup drenched French fries, consumed unabashedly via my naked fingers-  like the song says, freedom’s just another word for no more weight to lose. . .  and do I really, really care what the decorum detectives think? As you can see, I’ve also taken to composing my own little aphorisms. I’ve been going over the various circles of hell with my seniors this year and have come up with a zinger for those who come to class unwashed: Abandon soap, all ye who enter here? Occasionally I continue to check the ads up in Spindrift as well. Recently I took an online subscription to The Sprindrift Times just to read some of the insanely absurd letters-to-the-editor. I’ve also begun taking a little more time off and using up my days because as it turns out absences definitely do make the heart grow fonder. . . .  

Sometimes when I’m meditating in between classes in the teachers’ lounge- a deserted, dank cave in the basement desperately in need of a wrecking ball- I find comfort in visualizing my inner space as a cloudless, blue mountain top with endless vistas. . . . If the universe is indeed infinite, is not anything and everything possible? Would chucking it all be such a bad thing. . . ? Why, why, must I remain at this crappy job?!? Life is short. . . .

 Nah, must stay. Nah-must-stay. Nahmustay, Naamastay. . . . Nah. Must Stay.



(12 June 2012)

Sprindrift, Part Two

 When I finally reached the town center, after almost two insufferable hours on the interstate and then trailing behind a slow moving truck for ten miles, I stopped at a local real estate emporium to use the bathroom, first having to spend fifteen excruciating minutes pretending I was an interested buyer. It was one of those homey offices housed in a ramshackle cape that was in need of major repair- large pots of leggy geraniums outside, flyers stacked in a box tacked up on the front door and a tattoo parlor upstairs. There were a few energetic carpenter ants making hay on the porch beneath two dilapidated white plastic chairs; a gaggle of rather large muffin crumbs, some still with blueberries attached, were scattered across the warped floor boards like an insect smorgasbord.

I schmoozed with a couple of the charmingly quirky local sharks casually posed at their desks trying to appear both city savvy (Oh sure we know what it’s like down there- Hey, I’m from Brooklyn) yet country free-spirited (I hiked up the mountain trail this morning- it was amazing!). Two or three other shadowy office types pretended to busy themselves around file cabinets and computers. I enthusiastically accepted a few brochures with photos of quintessential country ranches and eyebrow colonials draped in weeping willows and told them how much I looked forward to exploring the town. It was all spin of course. I knew the houses were ancient, termite ridden shacks with swamps for basements. They knew that I knew, and that I was just there to use the bathroom. I could sense their cynical, fatigued desperation when I mentioned I had another appointment.  A multi-colored assortment of wind chimes hanging from one of the rotted porch beams clanged exuberantly as the screen door bounced shut behind me.

It was lunchtime and the streets of the town were teeming with vibes of every strange hue and pitch. The scene opened before me like a colorful origami fold, albeit one fashioned by a young, somewhat uncoordinated child who did not exactly know how to neatly line up the corners- the whole flimsy construction appearing slightly off plumb. Milling about the streets and alleyways was a kaleidoscopic assemblage of crackpots whose life’s work appeared to have been  being perceived as cool although in most cases the end result fell way short of that ubiquitous term. It was the kind of place where people came to see and be seen, gawk and pose, still retro after all these years, but lively with a kind of genuine grunge.

Why had he chosen this time warp? Maybe Hermie had always felt a bit anonymous and undifferentiated in his previous existence, a cog in the proverbial bureaucratic machinery, a grain of sand among the endless beaches of the vast civil service world, a pixel on one of the kids’ monitors. My thoughts waxed philosophical. Could anyone find inner peace while trekking each day to a gray cinderblock outer borough high school, an edifice with iron gates on the windows and fluorescent lights flickering annoyingly on the ceilings, where jarring buzzers denoted the end of a class period mid-sentence, to confront much less motivate a slightly hostile group of bored teenagers? The early bird catches more than worm, he passes the class. . . Hermie liked to warn the recidivist latecomers with this nugget, as they engaged in prolonged goodbyes with their friends at the doorway after the bell rang. Was it really any wonder he threw in his Delaney cards and fled to the north country??

The scene in Sprindrift does not appear boring at first glance. In fact it seems so crazily frenetic that it prompts newly arrived day trippers to lump together everyone on the street whom they perceive as belonging to the place, branding them as one entity; upon a closer look however the motley mob breaks down into several distinctly separate groups. The first category entailed a more scrubbed and affluent loose community whose members are identifiable through a too visible lack of the ability to truly connect, an aloofness bordering on vapidity and a preference for dressing in unique, diaphanous fabric to exude what can only be described as a vaguely non-Western elan. These folks clearly did not have their thoughts periodically hampered by the predictable piercing of shrill buzzers over aging, crackling PA systems but rather were free to enjoy an abundance of unscripted hours where they could follow each meandering impulse and idea at will. They were fortunate, moneyed individuals, now and again in their Tom Sawyer straw sun hats and handmade scarves from Nepal, who once in their youth may have traversed mountain peaks in the Himalayas, their corporeal selves cocooned in swaths of orange and vermillion silk as they enriched their universal souls; they subsisted entirely on spelt, tofu, and oms. Their aura of spiritual insouciance was mind boggling. Did Hemie aspire to this persona?

Maybe in his own youth Hermie nurtured secret and unfulfilled yearnings for cosmic wisdom, clandestinely perusing the sage reflections of Swami Satchidananda or his ilk, as he rode the subway each day to the gulag, at a time when such multi-syllabic gurus were so very popular with the proletariat. He never mentioned any of this when we met for lunch sixth period sarcastically reflecting as we stood sullenly on the line whether it was wiser to partake of the “gray” or “brown” entrée. He scoffed at the thin, dark “swill” passing as coffee but as a self-proclaimed “java junky” tended to overlook this small failing of culinary art on the part of the dietician. Perhaps he developed a taste for whole grains and quinoa somewhere along the way- even mastering the correct pronunciation of that latter delicacy early in the game- “keenwah” as opposed to “kin-o-uh- before that product left the health food stores and hit the supermarket shelves- would we have known?

Can we ever really know another person, much less ourselves? No, these former wannabe monks and high priestesses wafting along pathways of light in bright colors and scarily brighter stares definitely were the antithesis of anything vaguely resembling a Herman Treadwell, even though eventually they too did cast off their robes and end up at noisy parent teacher associations, contentious meetings of selectmen and a variety of other jobs, some with vaguely artistic whiffs: part-time volunteer at the local crafts fundraiser, obsessive writer of letters to the editor of The Spindrift Times, and other sundry occupations of moral and spiritual rectitude. Not infrequently they also landed in smallish offices around the Village Green, busying themselves with bursting rolodexes and reams of paper - forests of felled trees notwithstanding- in the pursuit of the very material perks of property investment during the boom times. Hermie would never have volunteered for anything non-paying as he considered his profession to be sufficiently sacrificial, nor was he interested in local politics unless it affected the pension system, and he had never done much travelling out of the country. Had he taken real estate courses in his spare time, and why hadn’t he mentioned any of this at the table? As for affecting poses, he hated phonies and their lackeys whom he referred to as the propriety police.

So I began scrutinizing another “demographic” to see where Hermie might fit in. This group consisted mainly of refugees from the ethnic ghettos of the boroughs, southern Westchester-notably Yonkers-, upstate New York and parts of Long Island who had come for The Concert back in the day and basically never left. Practically starving and sleeping in the muddy fields of a farm located many miles from what became the actual, “iconic” town, they suddenly found themselves in what was looking like the middle of nowhere but feeling like Everywhere.  Or perhaps they just saw the movie and were smitten.

Forsaking cramped family apartments and tract houses, dead end jobs and crazy relatives back home, a goodly number of these downstate refugees never finished college. These folks now comprised the Sprindrift townies, quite different from the gownies of the flowing vermillion muumuus. Being of relatively modest backgrounds, townies did not have the promise of wealth much less enlightenment, but still were intent on being perceived as cool. And so they took or gave evening classes in yoga, hemp quilting, tai die chi, the sacred art of mandala-making, nose threading and cheerful chanting to show that they were regular, esoteric guys and gals- usually after a full day’s work of retail sales in a touristy Main Street boutique or behind the wheel of a school bus or delivery van.

But in a strange irony, it was the gownies with their mantra of reverence for all things natural, those very same devotees of rushing streams and soothing birdsong, who wound up living much closer in and more convenient to the actual town- more often than not as second homeowners nowhere to be seen in the dead of January. The townies on the other hand, most of whom became full timers out of necessity, were relegated to uninspiring bungalows, some with peeling exteriors and questionable septic tanks, flimsy dwellings much further afield and not as easily accessible to the center of the universe, the bustling  and heady Village Green. Hermie would never have put up with faulty plumbing or weak water pressure, field mice and mosquitoes- and imagining him twisting his pudgy limbs into various pretzel-shape formations was ludicrous- he probably had never seen the inside of a gym since attending high school himself as a student and was completely and defiantly out of shape. This was a guy who could enjoy a cheeseburger and fried onion rings or a steak and buttered mashed potatoes without the slightest trace of guilt, then partake of a Twinkie-like confection for dessert- not the kind of fare readily available on the Green. He coined the phrases wellness widgets and veggie voodoo when they tried to include bulghar wheat on the school lunch menu. He was particularly incensed by the food fascists. “What’s next?” he said, “Will we have to give up popcorn? Try, I dare you, settling in for a good movie with a bucket of soggy edemame beans. . . ." 

   So I continued to peruse the crowds at the Green, in hopes of figuring it out. . . .

Sprindrift, Part One

This summer look for tales from the archives, posted in weekly installments. "Spindrift," takes us out of the city's wilds and into the storied north country. 

Sprindrift 

Habit. The mother of inertia!
One of the myriad, self-styled aphorisms Herman Treadwell liked to spring on his students when they repeatedly did not do their homework.

He who retires first laughs best!
A perennial favorite as we sat around the cafeteria at lunchtime in those broken little chairs with the torn vinyl seats, in what a Victorian writer would probably have termed a “desultory fashion,” trying to figure out the break-even point in our pensions. Hermie was such a pro at these calculations of imaginary accrued civil service “wealth” that he had a small cottage industry going helping people figure out their final number, his only remuneration our undying attention. It was a regular retirement posse with Hermie leading the charge and advising people on which death “option” to rope in, what figure to shoot for; it got us through the sluggish and crawling days of the spring term. He was a major proponent of what he called the hop ‘till you drop theory of beating the system.

So it’s not hard to imagine our shock when after two weeks of not seeing Hermie at his usual spot at the table and wondering if he had taken some sick days, word had it that he simply decided to pack it in early and move a hundred and twenty-five miles north! Up the thruway to the once legendary now longtime passé village of Spindrift New York, in essence, fleeing prior to reaching his target date for the maximum payout. Could this be possible? We were stunned. 

Sardonic and popular high school social studies teacher, beloved father of three grown kids and husband to Molly, lessee of a three-bedroom, rent stabilized apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side who possessed the foresight to grab the place when the neighborhood was a total dilapidated, crime-ridden dump- why on earth would he, or anyone else for that matter, want to bury themselves beneath an outdated social trend in the wilds of the Catskills before collecting the meager though sufficient “final number?” He never failed to remind that such perseverance on our part would avoid the necessity of cat food. . .okay, okay, we won’t be living like Gatsby, but neither will we be partaking of the gas pipe like Willy Loman! So we had to wonder, what was he thinking? And which death option did he finally choose? We said we were dying to know. . .  .

Even the name of the place sounded a bit pretentious if not totally idiotic. Spindrift is nowhere near water. The desolate, bumpy access route you catch as you come off the highway- ten hideous miles of depressing scenery before exiting onto the side road that winds its way into the quaint town center- is lined with a couple of broken down delis, an abandoned farm stand, the remnants of a defunct Exxon station and a used car dealership with those red and blue little plastic flags waving haphazardly along the roof line; there’s also a motorcycle store on the route that can attract a fairly raunchy and tremendously overweight crowd on weekends. Every now and then on the way to the to the town you see a makeshift billboard advertising the miraculous musical reappearance for one day only! of some burned out, barely alive human relic from the early days of rock. It’s not the kind of place where you spin your dreams but it does have a fair number of drifters. 

If truth be told though, what did we really know about Hermie? Can we ever really know what goes on in another person’s thoughts?  Even in his absence however he had gotten us to think- his familiar “modus operandi.” One lunchtime, while obsessing over whether I should assign “The House of Seven Gables” or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” to a particularly apathetic group of juniors, without so much as glancing up from his neat and parallel rows of tiny numerals, dug ferociously into a paper napkin with a ball pen, he chimed in, ‘This is an easy one, Huck Finn of course! Are we not a nation of rugged individualists? Hawthorne was a pure fatalist.” Several teachers smirked as the bell rang and they hoisted up their messy Delaney books full of unmarked homework assignments to shuffle off to another forty-five minutes of pure stress in what we affectionately termed “the gulag.” Styrofoam cups flew lethargically into the garbage can one by one as we dragged ourselves into the crowded, noisy hallway.

Consumed with curiosity over Hermie’s spontaneous act of recklessness, I swore off inertia. He was especially fond of calling “screen time” scream time, so I stopped surfing the net and watching the news. It was incredible. After the initial withdrawal period I found myself almost magically imbued with a dose of the same pioneer spirit that he routinely outlined on the board for his American History One freshmen; I was determined to drive up to Spindrift and check it out for myself.  It finally happened on one of those idyllic, wisteria scented weekend mornings early in June, when the teaching day countdown is a heartbeat away from the bitter end and anything seems possible, images of life in the gulag giving way to visions of big sky and open road. Trees were in full leaf, wildflowers ran amok, delicate snowballs of hydrangea cozied up to uneven, sloping doorsteps.

It was lunchtime when I arrived and the streets were teeming with vibes of every strange hue and pitch. The town opened before me like a colorful origami fold, albeit one fashioned by a young, somewhat uncoordinated child who did not exactly know how to neatly line up the corners- the whole flimsy construction appeared slightly off plumb. Milling about the streets and alleyways was a kaleidoscopic assemblage of crackpots whose life’s work appeared to have been being perceived as cool although in most cases the end result fell way short of that ubiquitous term. It was the kind of place where people came to see and be seen, gawk and pose, still retro after all these years, but lively with a kind of genuine grunge; there did not appear to be a laptop, an ipad or a smart phone in sight.


Maybe Hermie had always felt a bit anonymous and undifferentiated in his previous existence, a cog in the proverbial bureaucratic machinery, a grain of sand among the endless beaches of the vast civil service world, a pixel on one of the kids’ monitors. My thoughts waxed philosophical. Could anyone find inner peace trekking each day to a gray cinderblock outerborough high school, an edifice with iron gates on the windows and fluorescent lights flickering annoyingly on the ceilings, where jarring buzzers denoted the end of a class period mid-sentence, then each day to confront much less motivate a slightly hostile group of bored teenagers? The early bird catches more than a worm, he passes this class. . . Hermie liked to warn the recidivist latecomers with this homey observation as the kids engaged in prolonged goodbyes with their friends at the doorway after the bell rang. Was it really any wonder he threw in his Delaney cards and fled to the north country?? I was determined to find out more. . . .