Our Town

 I’m sitting behind the wheel of a car tentatively parked at an “Official Parking Only” spot (whatever that means) on one of the faux side “streets” of a large, outdoor, meandering mall, a marketplace designed to look nothing like the town square it was meant to evoke. It could be anywhere in America though this one happens to be in Westchester, and as in all such places everyone seems to be running. The day is cloudy and overcast, which somehow adds a welcome and almost noir touch to the scene. Other drivers of sound mind and fully functioning hearts and limbs have parked even more boldly- a notch up the risk category- in those hallowed handicapped spots, almost flauntingly in fact.

There is not an available, illegal, outside space to be found! I lucked out because I was cowering in the fire zone before the miscreant in front me sashayed back to his car like an insouciant mafia don and languidly pulled out, allowing me to creep up into the area’s last non-spot spot a notch down from the emergency vehicle lane. We rebel outliers have decamped here on the faux streets of the faux town because either we are sociopaths with total disregard for sign warnings, or more likely we wish to avoid the monstrous cave of a garage that swallows drivers into its gaping maw then frustrates the hell out of you as you try to get it to spit the car back out- in large part because the scanners never work. Some of the more devil-may-care insurgents simply walk away from their illegally parked vehicles on the street and nonchalantly stroll to their destinations. Most people run. I am out here waiting because the person I am with “ran in” to make a purchase. Run, run, run. . . .

Even those who come stumbling out of the multi-leveled, dark cavern of a giant parking structure with an assured “legal” spot seem to be hurrying in a kind of semi-somnambulant state. The air is filled with a sort of droning background noise passing itself off as a "song" that’s a simulacrum of the original Muzak simulacrum (remember the tunes of the Beatles homogenized to a cool whipped, barely recognizable melody in a freezing supermarket as you checked out the eggs? That would be like Beethoven compared with this stuff). The track or channel or outer space station from whence this horrible sound blasts a wavy, repetitive series of dissonant grunts, unintelligible moans and repetitive lyrics- some fast, some agonizingly slow- cuts through the sporadic rain slowly beginning to gently splatter the windshield and wafts overhead.

Visitors wander back and forth under the spell of the sleep inducing, indecipherable beat, trance-like and weary, weaving or running toward one or another of the stores on the snaking trail of wares stacked horizontally and lining the way; it’s a series of neat corporate igloos with brand names. I think people think they’re having fun. Well, maybe not. But they’re definitely acquiring stuff.

Like everyone else, I too like to acquire stuff and throw it out. But why can’t this happen like in those earlier, twentieth century Hollywood comedies and romances that take place on a fashionable New York avenue? Cinematic shopping outings with well dressed, perfectly coifed, silly women in little hats, elegant suits and impossibly high heels who breathlessly balance a stack of gorgeously wrapped and festively ribboned parcels in their arms as a doorman suddenly appears out of nowhere to graciously open a taxi door. So relaxing, so much fun! A kind of languorous shopping, no running! Can you imagine such an extravagant bout of retail therapy, at full price no less, with doting shopkeepers clucking over you and the most pretentious, smarmy, Fifth Avenue department store adding a touch of shock and awe; or much less envision squeezing your bunions into those painful, toe pinching “pumps” of yesteryear. . .  and yet it still seems a much more desirable fantasy!

Or perhaps a classic “Shop Around the Corner” jaunt in slightly faded black and white would be more to your taste, where the staff is like a family, the owner the mustachioed, beneficent patriarch, the setting a quaint little pre-WWII European town, the longtime salespeople comically competing; a place where Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan fall in love with each other in and out of the stock room by means of  some wacky pen pal plot device, where there are no parking garages because people walk everywhere, and personal attention is paid to each and every shopper, no matter how obnoxious the customer or small the purchase . . . .

I am whisked back to reality as I continue to wait and the rain drops start to hit the glass methodically like seconds ticking away in a Hitchcock film. Some of the people in the simulacrum shopping town I observe through my windshield- a goodly number of them mildly or wildly overweight and not very well dressed- are carrying little and bigger bags with recognizable brand lettering stamped across the stiff paper. These wrappings with the company names proudly ensconced on them make the purchases seem more important than they are; but the bags are all recycled and not nearly as glossy and shiny as in the good old days of planet destruction. Somehow this makes me sad.

But really, what are my choices? Spending hour after hour blearily sitting in front of a screen at all times of day or night, obsessively browsing and doing the work of store employees by typing in scads of  style or “sku” numbers, addresses and credit information? Then weeks later desperately hunting around the house for tape while grappling with the repacking of a hopelessly and messily torn open box, after you’ve even forgotten you ordered the damn thing in the first place because it took so long to arrive.  And all this so that you can run to the post office and return the defective merchandise as you curse out the seller and swear never to order online again???

Oh wait- gotta go!- a fifteen minute loading zone just opened up and I need to run in for something. . . .

Obligations

Like many of you, I no longer innocently answer the phone with the customary, expectant "hello," mainly because I no longer answer the phone. 

The robo callers have won and altered the cozy civility of phone conversations and personal communication perhaps forever. That awful phenomenon along with texting have kinda' made the whole enterprise of spontaneous, un-screened voice to voice contact obsolete; the absence of other social interactions in which we so casually and easily once participated have followed.

The other day however, either in a moment of weakness or letting down the guard, or maybe because I was expecting a call, when the phone rang I thoughtlessly picked up the receiver and naively said "hello." Crazy, huh? In truth, it may even have been a foolhardy, impetuous descent into morbid curiosity, a sort of devil-may-care rashness that caused me to act so spontaneously and incautiously. 

After a brief silence and quite a bit of static on the other end- a condition which made me think the call emanated from far, far away- before I was able to hang up a voice managed to identify itself as "John from Loan Obligations." John, the archetypal ordinary American guy, calling from Loan Obligations, a phrase intended to strike fear and loathing into the heart of anyone who is not currently in the one percent. I mean, who has ever not had a loan? And even if you were lucky enough to be debt free, you never could be quite relaxed with the lingering, ubiquitous specter of identity theft that hovers over us all and fuels ads on late night TV. The horrible thought of even more obligations that you may or may not even know about, designed to evoke images of millennium debtor prisons; Dickensian work houses twenty-first century style as you try to straighten things out.

So I've sworn off answering the phone, although the scammer's hook to get you engaged did seem kind of funny. Loan Obligations. Clever. Not as clever though as "Existential Angst." Think about it. This is John calling from Existential Angst. I dare you to talk to me in 2019. 

Rescuing April

April by far is not the cruelest month- anyone who has been through a New York winter knows this. And nothing illustrates the truth of this better (while also attempting to shore up the blighted month's reputation) than a good poem.  Bards through the ages have tried to do justice to the start of the vernal season, but no one came near the lyrical craft of Geoffrey Chaucer, who codified Middle English in the year 1400, and poetically sanctified this first full month of spring for all time in just a few unforgettable, introductory words.  

Okay, admittedly 1300's England was nothing to write home about, that is, if you were even literate enough to scrawl out your name. Famine, plague, the Hundred Years' War and of course the crusades. . . . And yet there also was Chaucer and that famous first line.  

As far as April goes however, every era has its baddies and its bards. Let's travel back in time, to some of the past centuries nearer to us and see how they approached the start of spring. 

T.S Elliot of the much blighted 20th century, in his overarching, smarmy, hyper intellectual versifying way, particularly in The Wasteland, famously and rather spitefully called the period following windblown March the cruelest month, quickly imbuing sweet April, innocent, fragrant harbinger of balmier days, with all sorts of strange mythological allusions; sadness, loss, ancient fertility rites and other arcane symbols were the underpinnings of his much touted, modernist poem. But April was maligned.

Later in the century, ee cummings tried to restore the reputation of the season by calling it "mud-luscious. . . ."

Back in the mid-nineteenth century, Victorian gentleman of letters Alfred, aka Lord Tennyson, took an airier stance, though with a more patrician and less liberating view of the early season's effects, reminding us that, In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to love. . . . 

And decades before in the eighteenth century, the highland lad whom my dear old English prof liked to refer to familiarly as "Bobby" Burns- the irresistibly brogue- laden troubadour of the early romantic era- offered his own, lilting Scottish praise to the start of spring's signature bloom; it all sounds out in the lyrical, flirty dialect poem where Burns mischievously pretends to seduce the very flower of April by likening it to his love, O Were My Love Yon Lilac Fair.     

But it was Chaucer who captured the mood of the purple-petaled, showery month (rocked it, blew it over the top, knocked it out of the park!) in his prologue to "The Canterbury Tales," a cataloging in verse of life in the Middle Ages, comprised of 17,000 or so lines of perfect rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter and beginning in April. And in case you should start to ponder how to pronounce these first 18 lines of the famed prologue (see below), please refer to the video link to hear a really neat rendering of those incredible, late 14th century spoken words of a bygone mother tongue. You will be treated to some of the most engaging phrases in the language, among them one of my very favorite images describing the essential cuteness of little birdies chirping their tiny hearts out in April: 
And smale fowles maken melodye (said as: ond smahlleh foul-less mahken mel-oh-deeya, or something like that). Oh how lovely to even think, much less say it!

Honestly, could any feeling person ever resist such an utterance, not relate to it, not be moved?? Merely recalling the image of those adorable, wee "fowl" of the 14th century, singing happily away and "slepen" with their cute little open birdie's "eye" (pronounced eeya) in those musical, iambic cadences is a connection with the past, and also beats watching the news.

So here's a link to Chaucer's paean to April, recited in Middle English, the first 18 lines of The Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales," and be sure to listen for "smale fowles." It's so April.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahuT-JwxIa8

The General Prologue

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote 

     1

The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, 

     2

And bathed every veyne in swich licour 

     3

Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 

     4

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth 

     5

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 

     6

Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 

     7

Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne, 

     8

And smale foweles maken melodye, 

     9

That slepen al the nyght with open ye 

     10

(so priketh hem nature in hir corages); 

     11

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, 

     12

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, 

     13

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; 

     14

And specially from every shires ende 

     15

Of engelond to caunterbury they wende, 

     16

The hooly blisful martir for to seke, 

     17

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. 

P.S. If you find yourself moved to go on a pilgrimage as the season gets 
underway, get your airline tickets early. 

     1

Facebook Phony

I’m an unabashed facebook voyeur.

It follows that most likely I'm not a very good "friend." It's really hard to maintain a serious relationship with dozens and dozens of good friends with whom you keep in touch on an almost daily basis.

Like many out there (and I believe there are quite a few of us), I stand outside the “platform” and gaze on passively, but don’t participate or respond. It’s kind of like going to a place of worship but not saying the prayers, preferring instead to observe the passion of others, the more authentic devotees. 

It really is the ultimate form of social media voyeurism and imbues  the faint illusion of superiority, this very detachment one feels from not joining in or embracing the energetic, throwing and scattering of prosaic words and images that goes on hourly if not by the minute. You believe you are safely under the radar by staying out of it. But in truth, is the act of scanning the page any better than reading the "stories" on yahoo?? And whether or not you remain silent, just by being present you're making yourself vulnerable to the many sneaky advertising ploys. 

The hypocrisy of this passive activity of course is egregious, since I detest everything facebook stands for; and yet I am drawn into its overreaching web, like shopping on Amazon. 

I understand the need for self expression. How often are we made to hold the phone and our tongues for umpteen minutes while a robotic menu frustrates our every attempt to speak, attacks the very core of our individuality and eventually wears us down. . . . The soulless commands exhorting us to keep on pointlessly pressing  numbers on the dial pad so that we hang on indefinitely, or better yet hang up; and all the while the knowing that the question/comment/complaint/issue that prompted the call in the first place may never be resolved. I totally get it. We need to talk, and we need to be heard.

But nonetheless, what are these facebook posting maniacs getting so worked up about all the time? What is driving them to cool/moral/indignant/serene/caring/funny/angry/involved/ concerned/original public stances? Is it politics that form the raison d’etre of this ongoing soap box, a rock band of nostalgia from the past, a gathering, a world event, the mere illusion of those hundreds of meaningful connections one has accrued without having to interact inter-personally with such an invisible gaggle of bosom buddies? Just being heard?

Is it the hope that people will cling to your every inane posting? I read the entries and smirk at the “clever” ones with my own self perceived cleverness, bristle at the annoying ones, but am mostly bored. And then there are all the re-postings of other posts. I mean, do these folks have a life outside their screens? Do I?

On the other hand, you could say we silent observers are simply even more alienated than the hardcore users, looking as we are to hitch a free ride on the thoughts, impulses and emotions of these more connected participants in virtual reality.

Isn't this very blog in fact a kind of totally solipsistic and (barring the wrath of Father Google) mostly individually controlled facebook??? Even the terminology is misleading. It's media, yes, though not always so social.

We live in a world where the bottom seems to be falling out  and the facebook phenomenon (think twitter, youtube, instagram et al) seems to provide temporary housing, at least when not contributing to the dissolution. 

Seems to.

Oh, let's just face it; time to read a bookbook?

The Week That Was

Years ago when teaching a class of high school seniors, I came across a poem in the New Yorker that I believed I just had to share with them, these late adolescents on the cusp of serious adulthood. In my mind it may have had something essential to do with the stuff we were reading, like Hamlet, or maybe an Ionesco play, or maybe not. I was obsessed with existential lit.

The verse seemed a harbinger of something up the road that forced me to think about something I did not want to think about; and although the kids listened intently, they most probably did not get it. But it resonated with me, and they were polite. It was one of those lessons where the students looked at you quizzically but decided to indulge your eccentricities anyway because the class was going well.

The poem talked about things falling apart and whirling out of control in a quiet way, imparting the image of a silent though treacherous domino effect. It wasn't as brutal or intense as Yeats' "The Second Coming" and had no particular imagery of beasts, much less the kind you find slouching towards Bethlehem, but rather was more understated, almost insouciant in its nihilism. It spoke of forgetting to put a coin in the meter one day while sitting in the dentist's chair and other mischances of memory in a suddenly failed orderly existence, and things spiraling downward from there. 

And that's just the kind of week it was, even though the meters no longer simply accept coins but spit out out those slippery, tiny papers that fly off your dashboard when you slam the car door.

So for today it's just sayin' hi,  See you next week or thereabouts with a more orderly set of words.

The Fairies, a Sort of Castle, Some Very Unusual Gowns , A Small Calamity

Did you know that the fairies live in a (very) small castle and must sleep in their fancy gowns?

The castle, though magical, is somewhat makeshift, constructed  of colored, magnetic tiles, the entire edifice 
occasionally given to collapsing. These shiny, clicky "building blocks"- in attractive, primary hues for kids- can all fall in on each other if you're not careful about how you touch and maintain the structure. In truth, it all seems for show. The whole house can dissolve in the night even if you are careful. The tiles are pretty but will not hold, especially if you use them to create anything more ambitious or permanent than say a small tower. This can be quite disconcerting to a just about four year old who is counting on these shiny blocks to house her fairy collection.

The fairies who inhabit this little palace have their issues too. Only five or six inches high- if that- their diaphanous, resplendent costumes actually are painted right onto their little plastic forms (in bright though matte shades)! This necessitates sleeping in the outfits of course, since anyone can see that such apparel simply cannot be removed, ever; in fact, it quite defines them. 

As always there is lots of pink among the colors, even in their hair! I never realized (prior to meeting the fairies) that it was possible to sleep in a formal gown each night, no less one permanently attached. But now I know- this can happen.

The thoughts, observations and questions of a just about four year old who collects and nurtures tiny fairy dolls- regarding the many complexities of life- are truly amazing. As a member of that indomitable band of small, inquisitive persons not yet half a decade old, she seeks to find answers to a host of metaphysical and scientific perplexities; and in this  process of discovery there's a kind of valuable metaphor.

A fairy tale for the ages? Do not build a house to last by using colorful, smooth, and fragile magnetic tiles of undetermined composition; they may be pleasing to look at, clicky sounding and fun, but they're really not all that practical. Never glue your wardrobe to your own self for any reason whatsoever if you intend to change clothes, and finally,  demand a solid dwelling with a strong foundation! Who wants to live in a shiny albeit fragile home liable to descend into structural chaos at any moment? If you find yourself in this situation, just rebuild.

The Nootch pondered this complicated situation aloud one recent day- the collapsed castle, the fairies sleeping in their party dresses. Was she trying to reason it out, inside that adorably furrowed, just about four year old (and always thinking) brow, as she related the calamity of the magnetic fairy castle and the little figurines catching some zzzzzs, in their gowns? Didja ever?!? She just had to tell the story. It's the telling that makes it into a kind of sense.

This being the 21st century however, the Nootch utilizes the shiny, magnetic tiles not only to build sheltering homes for the fairies, but also to construct rockets, based on a recent fascination she has with "Lottie" the astronaut doll. 

So much to learn, so little time. . . . It seems like just yesterday she learned that some stories in books are only make believe.

What will the days, weeks and months ahead bring as she heads boldly and inquisitively towards her fifth year? 

It's mind boggling. Impossible even to try to imagine. 

But however things change or reshape themselves, there will be many more thoughts, puzzles to solve, much curiosity, probable and improbable solutions, fascinating mysteries. . .  all occurring everyday, no doubt!

Of this you can be certain.

What We Read Part Three: Choices

What we read is chosen for us.
In ancient Rome, money talked, self advertising helped, the term captive audience took on new meaning, from the story's "listeners" to its scribes. 

It was the custom of the time for writers to read their books to a select audience of friends before they were published, and it was fashionable to be seen attending such occasions, said H.V. Morton in "A Traveler in Rome;" these listening events also could become quite tedious,  equated once with the "terrors of Rome" like "the collapse of badly built houses" and "fires."

Following the long winded reading came the hard copy. After having read his new work in public, the writer would take it to a publisher, who employed a number of copyists. While a reader dictated a book, scribes wrote it down in black ink on sheets of papyrus, which afterwards were pasted together into a roll. Twenty scribes working several hours a day could no doubt produce a thousand copies which was considered a fair edition.

In the much nearer "old days"  of a century or two ago, getting published no longer involved papyrus (really a hassle to stick in your bag or unroll on a bus!), but it did entail having some talent and/or knowing someone and/or or using your luck and ingenuity. Stories abound about writers whose manuscripts were "discovered" and immortalized on the merits of the narrative.

In these times however, often it looks as if you just have to know someone. 

At least that's what it seems from the volume of crappy selections on store bookshelves, online libraries and even small, individually owned, slightly snotty, ol' time book shops, who after all just want to remain in business like everyone else. Readers get so frustrated with all these (un)literary and often boring "choices" they revert to the classics; soon they're devouring texts that once came with homework questions in high school, finding new meaning in them!

How many current titles on display will make it through the next fifty years? 

So many books, to choose from, but publishing is still a business with grand marketing schemes that not only reflect the reader's taste but create it. Like any fashion, some stories sell, others fall through the cracks- like those funny shirts with the big, silly holes in the shoulders they kept trying to peddle as elegant. The plethora of "choices"  (clever, fun "must reads" notwithstanding) still proves classics modern and old emerge only once in a blue moon.

Keeping all this in mind discerning readers, we've already bandied around the idea of a personal "Top Ten" (or three, or seven) of incredible, artful, life changing books that really did inspire; you heeded the call by contributing a bunch of important, beloved titles! Now let's get down & dirty & find some memorable lines to share- initially I had the notion of  readers choosing from three works to show why these reads wowed you.

I soon realized this was a bout of temporary insanity- who would want to deal with three excerpts, even short ones, for what feels like an "assignment?" But on the other hand, might not many readers involved with this blog very likely agree to doing one? These amazing first, last or in-between lines you submit will lead us to stories we should be tackling immediately (or again!), to say nothing of the bookish, cathartic value of thinking back.

Perhaps you choose to go "ancient Roman" on us & make a short video of yourself reading anything; I would post that too. Realistically though, you may just want to select an especially resonant line or two  from one of your favorite reads and email it in for blog readers to consider and enjoy.

It's food for thoughfulness, will help us through the winter, and the solitary pleasure of reading will not be diminished one jot by these simple though significant offerings.

To kick off this life affirming exercise not requiring any challenging yoga poses, here are two for starters (a compromise between one and three): the first about being young, carefree, and rich in New York's original gilded Age, the second telling of more modest circumstances and fewer opportunities during that same period-

The day was delectable. The bare vaulting of trees along the mall was ceiled with lapus lazuli, and arched above the snow that shone like splintered crystals. It was the weather to call out May's radiance and she burned like a young maple in the frost. Archer was proud of the glances turned on her. . . . (Edith Wharton, Age of Innocence)
                                               vs.
When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skinned satched, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address. . . and four dollars . . . . It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. (Theordore Dreiser, Sister Carrie).

Oh, those marvelous "splintered crystals" under a blue sky that shone on May Welland; ah, that scrappy "yellow leather snap purse" and the absence of prospects it intimated for Carrie Meeber! 

Remember, old or new,  "classic" or not, so many really good reads and fantastic lines, so little time. . . .  What wowed you? 

Some readers have had trouble posting comments. You can always email them to me (nystoryweaver@yahoo.com) and I will post them for you.