Mitch Levenberg

Hardware

2012-03-21T12:26:00.006-04:00

On my way to the subway this morning, the owner of the hardware store smiled and waved at me. I was certain he was smiling and waving at someone behind me. That happens a lot and I’ve been trying to guard against it- waiting just long enough before returning a wave until it is teetering on the edge of impolite and then- when I’m absolutely sure the wave was meant for me- wave back.

This time was no different. I waited and waited and just as he was about to turn the corner, then waved back- just the way he waved to me- my arm only slightly elevated so one might recognize it as a wave in the first place- wrist bent back- hand stiff and flattened- fingers spread but not too spread out.

Let me tell you it took a long time to earn that wave but I’d really rather think of it as not so much earning it for my knowledge of hardware but for just being a nice guy from the neighborhood who buys a lot of light bulbs.

I know nothing about hardware. I know nothing about those things that take things apart or put things together and the paste or glue like substances that go with it.
I don’t even understand paint. At one time I thought I could go into a hardware store and just ask for a can of white paint. I had no idea what the guy was talking about when he asked whether I wanted white or off white, gloss, semi-gloss or high gloss, latex or oil-based. I had no idea.

Imagine my utter terror the day I found out there were different kinds of light bulbs— for years I just bought- light bulbs. The light went out my mother would say or later my wife would say, “We need more bulbs” and I’d go to the hardware store and buy them. Suddenly, they started making light bulbs of all different sizes and shapes. If I need one of those, I either bring the burnt out one with me as an example, as if an Aztec came in on an errand for Cortez or else forget to bring it and then try to describe both bulb and “ceiling fixture” it screws into as if I were a first grader describing the monster of his dreams.

And how many times have I seen one of the family of hardware men at this store remain patient- questioning me as if we were embroiled in a particularly challenging game of charades- a line of real men forming behind us, holding jigs and figamajigs-not to mention the right cans of white paint in their arms- grimacing and growling anxious to get home and re-build their houses or bathrooms- and the hardware guy- really having no choice- asking me to step aside. Step aside. Words I never wanted to hear at the hardware store- or anywhere for that matter- words of ostracism- of humiliation- of emasculation!

Sure, you might say, maybe they could tell you what shelf to find the grouting- but-could they tell you what act and scene Hamlet confronts his father’s ghost? But I say whether they can or not I know they know a lot more about hardware than I know about Shakespeare and besides you can’t compare light bulbs and literature and weren’t we talking about emasculation anyway?

Things really came to a head the day I came in needing track lights- knowing at the time neither what they were called nor how many watts I needed. “I need those lights,” I began. “What lights?” he asked patiently that line already starting to form. At least this time I stepped aside on my own. “Those lights,” I said pointing to the ceiling. “The ones that kind of go inside the ceiling. . .”
“Track lights?” he asked.

“Yes!” I exclaimed as if he was the once and always winner of Charades.

“How many watts?” he asked. I was crestfallen. Two of his brothers ran over now to take care of the other customers. I thought about telling him I better go home and ask my wife or bring a burnt out bulb with me- but I knew I couldn’t do that- that I’d never be able to face this man or his brothers or their sons ever again. Perhaps I would even be banned forever.

“How much you have?” I asked.

“I got the 65s,” he said. Just like that- not “what do you mean how much do I have?

Or “How much do you want,” but just “I got 65s- three to a pack.”

“I’ll take it!” I said not knowing whether I was buying the right thing but just appreciating him throwing a wattage number at me as if I were part of the “hardware scene,” though it was more likely I knew at that point I better buy something.

From that point on I still didn’t learn much about hardware nor do I know to this day what kind of white paint to buy without asking my wife or bringing the empty can with me, but I do know my 65 watt track (or recessed) light bulbs and can screw them in within seconds. It’s kind of like someone memorizing a passage from Hamlet even if they don’t understand it or the rest of the play for that matter.

I mean I can memorize the wattage of our track lights, bring in burnt out examples of other assorted bulbs, buy garbage bags and even salt for ice during the winter, but anything else needing description or explanation I leave to our handyman.

So, did I really deserve that smile?

That little stiff wave?

Not having to step aside for someone he was smiling at and waving to behind me?

Maybe, maybe not.

But I do know

That for some crazy reason

At that very moment

It meant as much to me as all the Shakespeare in the world.

Seniors share some powerful prose 3/09/12 : Currents

2012-03-13T15:38:00.001-04:00

Seniors share some powerful prose 3/09/12 : Currents

The Sixth Happiness

2012-03-02T19:15:00.003-05:00

When I was growing up my favorite movie was Inn of the Sixth Happiness with Ingrid Bergman playing Gladys Aylward a British maid who goes to China to become a missionary and ends up leading a hundred orphans through the mountains to save them from the Japanese.

Of course at that age I identified more with the children being saved than with the woman saving them and my favorite part of the movie was when the children sang

"This old man-he play one he play knick-knack on my
drum with a knick-knack patty-whack give a dog a bone this old man comes
rolling home" -

a song both surreal and nonsensical

- the song they sang to keep up their courage, the same song I sang to my daughter in a Chinese hotel room- the song I played over and over on my little record player when I was 6 years old-a song that would come to define the child I was and the adult I would become- a child knick-knacked and patty-whacked his whole life and then an adult getting a chance to knick-knack and sometimes- patty-whack- back.

By the time we went to China to adopt my daughter all I knew was that I was becoming a father and at the same time saving a child from a life of poverty and whatever marginal existence may have awaited her- I didn't know a lot about what her life would have been like if we hadn't saved her. Perhaps someone else would have. I didn't think of myself as a savior- just as I don't believe Gladys Aylward did either- whether she was "saving souls" or the lives of a hundred children she did not think of herself as a savior but as someone just doing what she felt she was born to do. I never felt I was born to be my daughter's father but there did come a time- shortly before going to China- when I began to believe that it was what I was meant to do.

"You've done a great thing," some people told me when I returned with my daughter from China- while others would ask if I felt guilty I had taken her from her country- her culture.

I have to admit I hadn't thought about either one very much. I suppose I was thinking too much of what it would be like to be a
father. If I was truly saving her- great. If I was taking her away from her culture-from her country- not so great and no matter how many Chinese language lessons and dance lessons and Moon festivals and spending New Years in Chinatown with our adoption group- other parents who also took their children away from their culture- it wouldn't really change things very much.

In the film, when Jeannie Lawson- the old missionary with whom Aylward originally goes to live- opens an inn for Chinese traders passing through town in order to convert them to Christianity- she names it The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

Of course, I had to see the movie again to learn what the Sixth Happiness actually was.

Health
Virtue
Wealth
Longevity
A Peaceful Death.

Those were the first five.

Even Gladys knew the first five- but what was the sixth happiness?

"Each person decides in his own heart what the Sixth Happiness is . ..” Jenny tells Gladys.

And that's when I knew I had decided a long time ago what my Sixth Happiness was- the moment my daughter was handed to us in the noisy hallway of a Chinese hotel.

Book Review: Stephanie Hart's Mirror Mirror

2012-02-27T17:12:00.003-05:00

On the cover of Stephanie Hart’s mesmerizing memoir, Mirror Mirror: A Collection of Memoirs and Stories, there is a picture of the author as a young girl in a fur coat- a coat that looks like the coat of her ancestors. The young girl looks sad and more than that fearful and distrustful. Her eyes look askance, off the page, furtively into an uncertain future.

This is a book about survival- surviving the ghosts of a past top heavy with tragedy and tragic figures- the dead and the living who haunt her.

In the opening chapter, “Dinner at Our House,” Hart describes her memories of dinners at home as “a screen of moving images, some indistinct and some familiar.” This memory- as are so many of her childhood memories- dark and shadowy, laden with loneliness and fear- of familiar strain distrust and distance.

“The distance between the table and my room,” she says, “feels like a continent of linoleum.” Her father “chews noisily and wipes his face with the back of his hand.” He tells her “you can’t trust anyone.” Her mother, though “more genteel, embroiders smoke rings in the air with her cigarettes.” She seems at times like that wicked queen in Snow White who constantly looks in the mirror on the wall for the confirmation of a beauty she feels she has wasted and which now seems to be fading. And it is this mirror that haunts Stephanie as well. “I see what my mother sees,” she says. “I want to hide that fat, stupid, ugly little girl away from everyone.”

This all seems the grimmest of fairy tales, a castle by the sea full of frustration and guilt-the parents bring the burden of their past into the new world like heavy luggage. When little Stephanie asks her father to tell her something he did in his childhood, he says, “I remember walking along a river on a cold night. I had a lantern in my hand, so I could see my way in the dark.” How poignant, how sad- this inherited past of darkness through which a little girl must struggle to overcome, whose only escape from this reality will be through her imagination.

And it is from the ashes of reality that the poet, the author, is born.

In the chapter “Mimi Freeman,” the author relates the moment her “muse,” Mimi, shows her paintings of fruit “that looked real enough to bite into.” Again, it is the imagination, it is art that appears real to Stephanie. It is truly the sensual poet that begins to emerge. Sensation, wonder, spiritual immersion becomes all- as it becomes her means of survival.

“Let the colors speak, ” Mimi later tells her, and she will hear them: “Red sounded like a drum. Yellow like kites flying; green like the rush of water.” Mimi helps her lighten her otherwise dark world with light and color, to find “colors and shapes everywhere-later on she will notice how “even in the darkness . . . I hear her voice, which has become my voice, too, ‘What do you see? What do you hear?’”

Later on, while spending an afternoon with her mother’s magician friend and future husband Richard, Stephanie will notice how the “sunshine comes through the windows and paints us all in afternoon colors.” At the same time, always merging reality with fantasy-“a patch of cold comes from Richard’s direction . . .Richard smiles and winks at me, kind of pretend evil like Captain Hook just before he sends the pirates after Peter.

For the author, every dream, every fairy tale has its dark side as well as its bright side. In the very same chapter- once more fusing real life and fairy tale- she speaks of her mother in whose eyes she warily waits for “storm clouds to appear,” the mother-object of both love and fear- who “blows smoke rings like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland.”

Reality, pain intrudes everywhere— not only in the family but in the world around her as well- the girl next door who along with her family dies in a fire, the classmate from boarding school found murdered in her Bronx apartment.

We see in the chapters that follow the steady growth of the child into adult-the imaginer into poet. Beautiful language and poetic imagery lace the narrative—At Boarding School she and her friend Barb “watch the moon like a giant coin in the sky move toward us.”

In “Seasons” paragraphs could easily be poems as when she speaks of her friend Samuel and herself:

Arms wrapped around each other, we traversed the city

Buildings looked brazen in sunlight

Trees newly green seemed to stretch in their skins.

I watched his shadow emerge on the pavement

As my smaller shadow walked beside his.

Ultimately, the author’s language, her very life becomes transcendent as she reconciles past and present. In the chapter “On Friday Nights,”— my personal favorite since for me it is so identifiable with my own family— the author describes her “mother’s mother’s kitchen” which becomes a living prose photograph— her family, her past, integrated into her poetic imagination-no longer the frightened little girl, the victim of a family from which she must escape into fairy tales but more the objective, self-contained adult/artist who seems to have transcended her past and can now look back with sympathy, compassion, understanding, and the poet’s wary eye for those ghosts that will always haunt her as our own ghosts haunt us. She says of her great grandmother:

“She fills the folds of her white cotton dress like a monument to patience.” While praying her voice is “so low could enter another sphere.” How wonderfully she describes her family with such intimate and detailed clarity— this “profligate group” her grandmother is “determined to give legitimacy to”— her Aunt Rose “warned against passion, the underwater dance from which one may never emerge . . .” Her daughter Anna who sits in front of her mirror to “watch herself become Ava Gardner . . .” who will “let her tongue linger over her bottom lip.” There’s Uncle Nathan who “folds into a parody of himself” and whose wife Betty has to beat off all his female admirers “with her fists when they knock at her door.” There’s the profligate patriarch Grandpa Joseph whose “face resembles the painted face of the man on the herring jars he sells in his grocery store” hoping “to escape” to his mistress Lena later that night, whose “silhouette” he sees “in the eye of the candle his wife is lighting.”

Is there any wonder that despite her determination to keep this family together, the grandmother “has only a small ration of love left?”

“Disagreeable words,” Hart states in the chapter “Decisions,” came off their tongues and settled under them; they took pride in being enraged and disgruntled.”

It seems, ultimately, that the more answers she may come up with in relation to her spiritual and emotional attachment to her past— to her family and its effect on her own ability to survive in the world— the more questions she will have—As she says in “The Philosopher’s Path,”

“I wondered if my mother’s creative spirit now belonged to me along with my father’s dreams of achievement. I wondered how I could find my own path to enlightenment, allowing me to embrace life and face death with courage and equanimity. . . I wondered how the intuitive sense of what I thought and felt could become louder than any other voice.”

And as she continues to wonder, to question, Stephanie Hart continues to flourish as a writer and poet. This wonderful memoir, richly lyrical, skillfully detailed, is a testament to that.

Stephanie Hart's Mirror Mirror: A Collection of Memoirs and Stories is available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Untitled

2012-02-20T17:12:00.004-05:00

I really love titles. The Unberable Lightness of Being, The Metamorphosis, Bedtime For Bonzo, Something in the Garden of the Eternal Something.

I think titles are harder to come up with than all the words that follow them. I don’t think I’ve ever come up with a really good title yet unless you count this one. Titles are inscrutable. Chinese puzzles. They remind me of those magic pictures where if you stare or look at them just right- and stay real patient- you’ll see another picture beneath or behind them. It’s hard to say where it is or even what exactly you need to do with your eyes to see them- but if you keep looking-eventually- you will.

Titles should contain the essence or the meaning or better yet the secret that lies beneath or just below it-on the page of course. If you think the stories “The Cruller” or “The Cat” is just about a cruller or a cat look again— let your eyes relax-it will come to you. Titles should be short and to the point. Lengthy titles, esoteric titles (Unbearable Lightness of Being excepted of course) or titles where you have to look up words or obscure quotes might distract from the story itself or else the story will have to live up to certain expectations you or the story may not want to live up to.

You don’t want a title so thick and juicy that the reader feels- after just reading the title- that she has read enough and can- with confidence and without guilt- tell people, “no I didn’t read the story but I read the title and really that was good enough for me.”

It’s like eating soup- filled with meat and vegetables- right before the main course- and getting too full to continue eating. A story shouldn’t have to live up to its title but only justify it- maybe explain it- definitely engorge it- fully and satisfactorily. I love titles but I have the damndest time coming up with them.

Take my memoir for example. Adopting my daughter in China. That’s not the title. Neither is Dancing with My Daughter Under the Chinese Moon— or Reading To My Daughter in a Chinese Hotel Room. My wife doesn’t like titles that begin with those present participles and since I value her opinion I won’t use them and my publisher Liz is right when she says that mentioning China or Chinese might tempt some readers to think it’s a book about China too which it really isn’t.

I know that in this memoir we want to get the idea across that I am a father writing about adopting a child which is not really very common- certainly not as common as mothers writing about adopting a child- but it’s hard to get all that in a title except maybe for the word “Father” which in itself is so overused.

So the challenge is to find a title that is short and points out in as few words as possible about a father writing about adopting a child in China without exactly using the words China or Father or beginning with a word with an ing ending and oh, yes— the word “Journey.”

Journey- that stale, overused, cliché ridden or- as George Orwell would say, “aspirin tablet”- word that might have meant something once- something more than just some physical trip- but really doesn’t anymore- like the words “awesome” or “terrible” or “tragedy” which too have lost their original meanings.

At one time a journey meant not just something physical- moving from one place to another-but also connoted something spiritual or emotional- a journey to oneself or towards enlightenment. This journey was usually restricted to gurus or poets or philosophers and then everyone starting doing it and suddenly the word journey too became a cliché.

Then one day I thought I had it. I had been watching the sitcom, “How I Met Your Mother” with my daughter when it hit me. Did it help I was watching with my daughter? I don’t know but suddenly I thought why don’t I call my memoir “How I Met My Daughter?”

I loved how each word in itself was significant. “How”- after all it’s a book about “how.” I? Need I say more? And there’s your father for you. My? Yes, goes without saying. Daughter— hey this is about my daughter- I mean I’ve got to mention my daughter do I not? Then I added the requisite subtitle— warning: subtitles are often more important- though never as interesting- as the main title because they’re supposed to explain more— just in case the main title doesn’t explain enough--“A Father’s Adoption Tale.”

Well, “Father” got in there but at least “Journey” didn’t.

So I had my title. The only problem was it seemed too many people knew the TV show— I announced it once after a reading and I could swear some people groaned-- so my title became a step child at best- besieged by insecurity, doubt and serious identity issues.

Then one day after I read about another book called “How I Met My Aunt, I realized that naming books or TV shows “How I Met” something- just as “The Color of” something did a few years before- was starting to catch on. Now- though I still have “How I Met My Daughter,” I am still in search- or at least open to- another title.

Then I started to think about where I actually first met my daughter- in the hallway of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nanchang- so the first title I thought of was “Meeting My Daughter in a Chinese Hallway: A Father’s Journey.”

But something still seemed wrong with that. Maybe, I thought, it was the word “Hallway”- which can be such a cold and vapid word- I mean wouldn’t- let’s say- “Passageway to my Dreams” be better?

Or is “Dreams” yet another word to stay away from?

Nikki’s Yahrzeit

2012-02-13T09:54:00.015-05:00

It’s been a year since our dog Nikki died. You might say he was our first born. When we adopted him at 7 months, he was wild
and out of control. He leaped at people went after Rotweillers and pit bulls (he was a small terrier mix) and ate my favorite book one day-not to mention a brand new bed we bought for him. He was a feisty no nonsense dog whose love you had to earn and we loved him dearly.

I remember the day we left for China- to adopt our daughter- how Nikki stood at the front door a little disconcerted- this time suspecting something was happening. With all those suitcases around he knew– as only Nikki could know- that it couldn’t be good. Yes, Nikki I thought, as I left the house, “things will never be the same.”

And they weren’t. They were better.

Now we had a daughter and Nikki had a sister.

When we got home, Nikki leaped with joy and then ran around the house on speed-- like the Bolshoi Ballet in Bye Bye Birdie- jumping on every piece of furniture as if to show us it was all still there-waiting for us-and he had made sure it would be. People warned us about the dangers of one’s dog meeting a new baby and vice versa. Let him sniff her blanket or an article of clothing- let him get used to her smell. But all Nikki really had to do was sniff her and she him and everything was fine. Sure we intercepted her from time to time before she could pull his tail but Nikki had a high tolerance for tail pulling anyway.

I have to admit that the first time I took them out together-the baby in her stroller, Nikki close by on his leash, I was a bit worried. As I said, Nikki had a mind-or should I say nose-of his own out there. But he was fine. He was on his best behavior-he stayed close to the stroller, he turned when I turned- sometimes he turned before I turned anticipating my every move. Yes, they loved each other from the very start. “Ni-Ni” she used to call him.

Sometimes when she would eat those long thin Lo Mein noodles and drop one over her plate like a rope towards Nikki’s mouth. Then she and Nikki would start eating the noodle from opposite ends- baby and dog eating the same noodle- until their mouths met in the middle.

When Nikki grew old and died, my daughter was only 11 and really didn’t understand what it meant to die. But she did know- so we thought- that Nikki wasn’t coming back and went on with her own life as we all did. We also had two other dogs to distract us.

Then a year later- something happened. My daughter was eating Lo Mein again and this time hanging out a noodle for our now oldest dog Layla.

Once again Anna began to eat the noodle from the top while Layla started to eat it from the bottom- however, when they met somewhere in the middle, my daughter suddenly began to weep. At first we thought she was upset at Layla for some reason. Maybe she got to the middle of that noodle faster than Anna did. We kept asking her what was wrong but she wouldn’t tell us until finally she blurted out, "Nikki! I miss Nikki! I want Nikki to come back and I don’t want Layla to ever leave."

That’s when I had to give- for the first time as a father- "why people and dogs die-and dogs die much too early- but our memories of them live on" speech. She was still inconsolable. I told her that Nikki (though in ash form) was still with us in a box in the basement and that we could bury him in the spring and have a nice ceremony for him, all of us telling about our favorite memories— bringing pictures and even his dog collar and tags with us that we could bury with him.

This made her feel a little better but there was still that idea of Nikki being buried and not even Nikki but Nikki’s ashes and of his things being buried with him which really disturbed her so I thought why not light a candle, a Jewish Yahrzeit candle for the dead just like the one I had lit just a couple of months earlier for her grandpa.

She seemed to like this. After all wasn’t it more appealing to light a candle and send a dog’s soul towards heaven than to just bury his ashes beneath the earth- in the backyard where spring will come as will the other dogs who will dig him up?

So the following day we lit a Yahrzeit candle and said- together- the prayer for the dead which begins Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba- May "His great Name grow exalted and sanctified"— for our first dog Nikki.

And when I saw my daughter stop crying and stare at the flame I knew she felt that- at least for the rest of the night and the whole next day- Nikki was still with us. And it was not so much because I believed it myself but because I thought she believed it that I too began to weep.

Digital Age

2012-02-06T07:55:00.005-05:00

"Do not hang back with the apes!"
- Blanche Dubois to her sister Stella in "A Streetcar Named Desire. "

I have reached the digital age. Principles of Uncertainty and Other Constants- my short story collection- is now on Kindle. It is paperless and wireless. It suddenly appears and suddenly vanishes with the flick of a switch.

Where does it go or come from?

When it leaves again I am afraid I may never see it again and when it comes back again it seems like it was never
gone. These are the same letters- an electric illusion of course- that light up Tolstoy and Lipsyte, Doctorow and Doestoyevsky and now me.

It's also stain proof- spill some spaghetti sauce on it and just wipe it away with a sponge.

My father wouldn't have liked it. Where would his legacy of spaghetti sauce be- the very stains I still see in his books- by
which I remember my father and his love of reading and how he got me to love reading by bringing me home books with not only words but also pictures and photographs that always came to life.

One of last things I said to my father- when he was dying- when he could no longer read- was how proud he should be that he had read all those books- what an accomplishment it was I told him- as I swept my arm across the span of those book shelves down in Florida- sweeping my arm like I was sweeping across history itself- like I was Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune (see "The Cat" in paper or Kindle).

There were those thick tomes of History and Biography and Science (even my book was up there). How could I have
ever swept my arm across a single skinny Kindle where all those books he had read were hidden from view- invisible to the naked eye- broken down into digitized molecules- a single skinny e-reader where hundreds of books used to be?

On the other hand my father was fascinated by technology and how much easier it would have been for him to bring a Kindle or an iPad to the coffee shop every morning or the waiting rooms at all those doctors' offices or the mall while waiting for my mother- how much easier than lugging around all those 800 page hard covered books.

Let me be honest. I'll always love books more than book machines- the feel of a book- flipping through the pages with your
fingertips- without what came before disappearing in the wake of what followed- writing between the lines and along the
margins like your mind traveling- following- the flow of a river along its shores.

Yet as I sat the other night reading my book on Kindle I started to feel that my words electrically charged had a new kind of energy- unrelentable indestructible non-exchangeable non-returnable, un-throwoutable- energy an energy of a new generation, a new age- I read my own words now- this brave new world of words- as if they were in timeless limitless space- words without beginning or end- without front or back. So I read and read and read- one page- one percentage point at a time- until the battery ran out.

The Bird Has Flown

2012-01-18T16:14:00.007-05:00

Photo: Mitch Levenberg

I've been unperched. We've all been unperched. You could hear the bird fluttering its wings wildly in the night- taking off for points unknown. It sent the neighborhood reeling. This place was a mainstay. No one expected this bird to fly. But when it did people were actually asking each other in somewhat hushed tones, as if someone we all knew had suddenly died. "Hey did you hear about the Perch?"

I'll miss the Perch. That unexplainable explainable pretentiously unpretentious cafe coffee shop restaurant bar sometime literary salon Park Slope fixture.

I won't miss it's hit or miss and slightly too expensive menu or all the work-at-home lap toppers and the mothers with their wide bodied triple decker strollers all of which only bothered me in a distant aloof head shaking kind of way.

It was the part time literary salon part I'll really miss- those little Tuesday evenings of poetry and fiction hosted by Pam Laskin or the Sunday Open Mics I always meant to attend but never did but still could always hear- passing by with my dog- the joyful shouting in that tiny corner in the back right next to that door into the garden through which mothers struggled in and out with their strollers- always against the grain of struggling poets shouting out their poetry above the din of clattering plates and dropped siverware and distant laughter.

The Perch was where I too got to read- brand new stories I was trying out for the first time or old stories sometimes to as few as 6 people- usually friends and maybe one friend who brought a friend or even as many as 20 sometimes when other friends or students read with me and their very loyal and enthusiastic friends would come.

But at The Perch it was always quality of audience not necessarily quantity- and even though the restaurant itself only got "B" ratings, the audiences always got "A"s.

People appreciated the largeness of literature squeezed through the smallness of The Perch's little corner in the back.

My best memory of those readings was probably the last time I read there when I read "The Pen" and began to cry half way through because I suddenly discovered just by the way the audience listened- I always know when and why and how an audience listens- that what I was reading wasn't so much about a pen as much as it was about my daughter.

And I will always remember that the moment I first began to appreciate my own story took place at the Perch.

I don't think the Perch really knew what it wanted to be except to try to be all things to all people. That wasn't a terrible thing in general but it was probably a terrible thing for a restaurant.

Photo: Mitch Levenberg

Anyway, I will miss it- maybe not for its food- but for what it meant to me personally and for what it meant to the neighborhood.

And though- as the Beatles once said- (not about a coffee shop but a girl who might very well have stood for poetic inspiration)- this bird has flown-

Still, I hope that bird finds its way and perches safely somewhere else because the world needs as many as those little corners in the back of cafe coffee shop restaurant bar literay salons as it can hold.

Franklin Park Reading: One Shock of Recognition

2012-01-16T13:56:00.008-05:00

Last night at the Franklin Park I got to read with the big guys and when it was all over I was up there with everyone else buying their books, getting their autographs. Sam Lipsyte wrote that it was great to hear my work and to steer clear of Envelope Face- a rather terrifying character in my short story, “The Cat.”- the one I read at Franklin Park.

Image Credit: Standard Motion

For a while I didn’t think I would read it. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I’d ever get to the stage. There was our host Penina Roth finishing her introduction of me and there was me for struggling to get by people, over people, through people and finally onto the stage. There were a lot of people- young people mostly– so they must have been used to this with their grandparents.

“I’m coming!” I called out to Penina. “I’m almost there. Any minute now!”

When I finally got to the stage, I began to talk without a microphone and someone called out, Can’t hear you!” So I reached for the microphone- I hate microphones. I’m just not a microphone kind of guy. I can’t explain it- we just don’t get along- for me it’s basically something else to think about while reading on stage. But I did grab for it and before I knew it I was holding it in one hand while trying to keep my book from popping out of my other hand and then looking for what page the story was on. But I just couldn’t find it. I knew it was there someplace. Then again could this have been the one copy of my book they had forgotten to print “The Cat?” Well, there was always “The Cruller” I thought. If not “The Cat,” “The Cruller;” that’s what I always say. Sometimes even both.

What worried me was that I thought I only had ten minutes and I know I had already used up a minute or so getting to the stage, more than a few seconds fiddling with the mic, and now a minute or so looking for the elusive stray Cat— What did any of this have to do with Literature? Nothing- Unless of course it was performance literature.

Anyway, I found it. It was still there. Looking at the dim skinny print of my table of contents I mistook p. 47 for p. 41. A 1 can look awfully like a 7 for an old guy wearing bad drug store glasses. “Ah, here it is,” I finally announced: ”The Cat.’”

Every time I read this story I think I’m grabbing that damn cat all over again and tossing it out the bathroom window. But, alas, it always comes back- and I’m glad. Otherwise, there’d be no ending- or at least the wrong one. How many lives does this story have anyway? It seems as if I’ve read it at least 9 times already—
Anxious to get started, to keep that rather new stiffly- spined book open with one hand, holding the mic in the other, bad glasses, my book part in shadow part in light- I began strong, deliberate steady—“. . . and when I asked who it was they said, ‘Us,’ I said as if not only the “U” was capitalized but the “S” as well.

Then it happened. Do I dare mention it? Did anyone know I actually skipped a whole line- that my eyes landed on the wrong place somehow and poor “tangled hair” lost a whole line of dialogue? So be it. There was no turning back- the runner stumbles he goes on, the skater flops on his ass he gets up and does a triple Lutz (no pun intended Gary). And it did go well after that. I felt that nice feeling- that euphoria really of finally being in control-of my story, my characters, the audience, even, yes even the microphone although that seemed to come much later when

I found just the right distance between mouth and mic not to keep hearing that angry feedback all the time. When it was over- making sure not to mumble or slur that last important line- the one that leaves everything ambiguous and open ended- I received some very nice applause and one or two cat calls- so to speak- and then made the same arduous, treacherous- perhaps even more desperate- trek back to my table.

Funny, how I still thought about skipping that line- how I thought people would look at me on the way back with a look of pity in their eyes- like man, nice job but if you only hadn’t fucked up that line. No matter how good you were after that, we were just stuck on that one line. Like what the hell was that last line anyway?” But that was just me all the way. Perfectionist or Paranoid, no matter- it’s what others thought (I know the damn story already) that really matters and all night these young people- people so much younger than I am- really thanked me and said I was, yes, “awesome.” “Awesome” coming from this generation, when it comes to important things like writing- is, well, awesome. One kid named Adam leaned over my booth and said,

“You know I’m so glad you were here and I’m so glad that I was here to see you.”

I swear, he actually said that. Ask my friend Danny DioGuardi- he was sitting right next to me- I checked with him that I heard it right as I jotted it down in my notepad (actual pad not computer).

But hey, no matter what I might believe, this evening was not only about me- the two young women, Catherine Lacey and Christine Vines, were very good and very funny and of course the big guys- they were so good that the longer I listened the more I began to feel that euphoria begin to dissolve- they’ll all forget me now I thought to myself- any minute now they’ll forget I was ever here or worse than that they’ll suddenly remember– they’ll see me waiting on line at the men’s room and say to themselves, to their girlfriends, their boyfriends, “Hey that’s the old guy who skipped a line when he was reading.”

But when it was all over something strange happened. Oh yes they all loved Sam and Gary- they bought their books and had them signed and after I did the same- I waited on that men’s room line waiting- waiting to hear it but it never came. But when I sat down again, a young woman named Courtney leaned over to me- and I wrote that down too- “leaned over”- And said,

“I really enjoyed your reading.”
“You did?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You have real presence up there.”

Then it was true. They still remembered me! At least Courtney did. I was still a part of that great night, that special night in a bar (and beer garden) in Crown Heights, Brooklyn- part of that circle of great writers.

I thought of Herman Melville who once said- speaking of his friend Hawthorne- “For genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.”

Or what Julia Jackson said in “The Outlet,” how “two talented hot ladies and three talented and hilarious Woody Allenish- voiced men showcased the wonders of short fiction.”

Either one sounds good to me.

But maybe the quote I just came across recently by William Carlos Williams might sum up this evening best for all of us-readers and audience alike:
“To eat, to drink; the wines, the delicious flesh, the poets— all good things of the world— these we must learn again to enjoy.”

Franklin Park-
Penina Roth-
Keep having those evenings-
Keep spreading the word-
The world needs it.
And please-
Don’t forget me.

The Franklin Park Reading: Not Just Another After Dinner Mint

2012-01-06T16:23:00.007-05:00

On Monday night January 9th- this January 9th- I will be reading at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Brooklyn with Sam Lipsyte who recently wrote “The Ask” which I actually read and really enjoyed and I’m kind of nervous meeting him- I mean he’s kind of famous and I don’t do well meeting famous or even well-known or even kind of well-known or you know pretty well known people in their particular field- like writing for example.

I mean the kind of person who can actually be introduced at parties as an author first, professor second- or maybe- most likely- just as an author which could definitely sustain him through the night- unlike me who would could never be introduced as a writer or author alone because after a while someone’s going to ask, “And so what else do you do?”- meaning what do you really do-

All small talk inevitably leads to the most personal questions and I envy the famous or even the quasi-well-known- who don’t have to indulge in small talk unless it’s with someone he or she wants to indulge in it with. I personally would have no idea what to say to Sam Lipsyte in a small conversation. I’d probably say, “I liked your book,” and then what? Unless he’s from Flushing- then maybe we could talk to each other for a few minutes

So that’s Sam Lipsyte. Now, as far as Gary Lutz- the other well-known writer I’ll be reading with- who wrote “The Divorcer,” which I haven’t read- in fact I haven’t read anything by him at all and I’m not going to lie to him and tell him I did or should I? Let’s see what happens. I may never meet him at all. Then again, I wonder whether I’ll read before these guys or at the end of the evening when the audience has dwindled to a precious or perhaps inert few and has already been sated with quirky ironic funny yet occasionally poignant short fiction.

I think of the really rich fat guy in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” who is so stuffed at the end of an endless, gluttonous meal- during which he is periodically provided with barf buckets- during which he throws up on nearly everyone in the restaurant— he is so stuffed, “so absolutely stuffed,” that he refuses a simple after dinner mint. But the waiter insists- implores him to try just one last thing-one small after dinner mint to which he finally succumbs and- alas- blows up.

I don’t want to be that after dinner mint. I hope I don’t have to be that after dinner mint- to become- perhaps my worst fear- gastronomically and viscerally redundant.

I will be reading “The Cat.” I never liked cats but I think in this story I show a lot of respect and even admiration for cats and I know a lot of people who go to these readings especially in Brooklyn- have cats. I really love dogs but believe it or not have never written a story about a dog. This is my urban story, my story about a man looking for love and companionship in all the wrong places. It always goes over well- it’s always a nice mixture of funny and quirky and disturbing- and short enough (I have to do this in 10 minutes or less) to bring appreciation (if not love and companionship) from a relatively “hip” audience.

And if I do read last- let’s just hope they’ll be in the mood for one- just one small– dare I say- dinner mint.

My Own Private “Indian Camp”

2012-01-03T09:20:00.010-05:00

Sometimes it seems so hard to be a parent- especially of a 12 year old on the threshold of being a teenager- maybe just months away from green hair, a nose ring, and going off by herself to “The Village.

Of course living in New York City it’s not so easy to protect your child from the dark side of life- especially during the Christmas season- you know with all those various members of the wretched of the earth- on the subway for example- excusing themselves for ruining your day, your holiday season— by begging for money or even some food you might have on you and are thinking of throwing away. Sometimes, I feel so bad I even think of reaching deep into my pocket and bringing up some coins but usually can’t because I’m so squeezed in between two people I can’t possibly reach into anywhere without having to stand up and draw attention to myself. So I usually drop the idea.

Christmas of course is always people under a lot of pressure- people who fight more, curse more, beat their wives and kids more, probably because they can’t afford to be generous- because they’re reminded- everywhere- of how little they actually have. And think about how much this all happens in public- in stores, on the street, on buses and trains, in person and on cell phones.

Certainly, we thought- my daughter had seen, had heard it all and yet my wife and I still banned her from seeing certain movies. I guess there are those official parent sanctions where we can officially say what we don’t want her seeing or hearing so that we know we have the right idea, send the right message about being responsible parents so we know we’re doing the best we can- being there when we can to explain things- you know- reality- away- and can feel good about it- kind of like keeping our fingers in a hole in the Titanic at the same time not giving too much thought to the fact it’s sinking.

So my wife and I were still talking the other day about whether or not we should
take our daughter to see “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” (I didn’t even want her to know about “dragon tattoos”) I hadn’t seen the American version of the film yet but I had read the book and seen the Swedish version and I thought it might be a bit too brutal, too dark to bring my 12 year old daughter.

For the last several months, no fewer than 4 houses on our otherwise quiet tree-lined street in Park Slope- have been under gut-wrenching- for us and the houses- renovation, demolition, you name it. The workers for the most part- except for the crew leader of one house who has to scream orders at the top of his lungs every morning at 8 A.M.- have been pretty civilized- following orders from crew chiefs, contractors, real estate people, architects, owners. . .

However, just yesterday, a crew of plumbers showed up at one house and one of them began to use the kind of language- well, just think the exact opposite of an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem.

My wife and I were out of earshot (perfect word) at the time but my daughter explained all. Apparently, an altercation broke out between the plumber and the driver of a car who complained about the plumber's van being double parked and in the way. My daughter proceeded to tell me how for almost a half hour she heard the most horrible words coming out of that plumber’s mouth (not sure about the guy in the car) she had ever heard before. “He used the “F” word, the “N” word, you name it,” she said. “It was the worst thing I ever heard in my life!”

And here I thought she had heard it all. Perhaps this time it seemed to her more an act of violence, a violation, something much more personal- after all, she was not on the street or in the subway but in her own room- all of this verbal filth coming in through her own window- invading her own private space. And I was not there to protect her.

Ah, I thought to myself- the spirit of Christmas! But I also thought by not being there- even to hear this with my daughter- to take her away from it- to explain how people can be nasty no matter what time of the year it was- that I had abandoned her- left her vulnerable and unprotected. Or maybe I could have somehow intervened, said to them “hey this is a residential street. Children live and play here, so if you don’t mind . . .” and even though somewhere between “so” and “if” I would have been punched in the head, at least I could have been there- could have tried . . .

But it was too late. This, as a father, was to be my “Indian Camp” moment- when little Nick Adams in Hemingway’s story sees the Indian husband slit his own throat because he could not stand the screams of his wife who is having a pretty tough time giving birth. His father explains to Nick that he does not hear the screams and by implication Nick shouldn’t either. But screams or no screams Nick just happens to be standing in the wrong or maybe just the right place. His view is perfect and Nick’s father can do nothing about it- except try to explain in his own uncertain way why people kill themselves.

But it was too late. Nick had already passed from innocence to experience whether he knew it or not- and his father was unable to stop it- just as I was unable to stop my daughter from hearing that foul mouth across the street- and just like I will never be able to stop my daughter from passing from innocence to experience- it was for me as it was for Nick’s father as it is and was for every father- real or fiction- alive or dead- beyond our control.

So the next time my wife and I talked about seeing The Girl With
The Dragon Tattoo,” it went something like this:

“OK, let’s go see it,” she said.

“What about Anna?” I asked.

“I thought we decided not to take her,” she said.

“Well, what’s worse?” I asked her. “Her seeing the movie or listening to some plumber cursing his brains out for a half hour?”

“Good point,” she said. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s all go.”

Ah, wouldn’t it be better- I think to myself- if instead of cursing each other we would just read Edna St.Vincent Millay to each other?

Which would you prefer?

“More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world”

Or

“Go Fuck Yourself!!"?

I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Plumber

But just remember.

There’s a young girl sitting up there in her own room.

Alone.

With the window open.

The Finalist

2011-12-20T12:30:00.011-05:00

I've never been a finalist before in anything. I was a semi-finalist once but never a finalist. This night at last I was a finalist. There were eight of us. Everyone else was young in their 20s no doubt except the first guy, the guy who read before me who wrote about murder and AIDS and I think someone with AIDS who was murdered but I'm not sure. I don't listen well to the person or persons who read before me. It's not right I know but I can't help it thinking about me getting up there messing up lines missing pages losing my voice but most of all I am distracted by my own excitement my own anticipation.

Tonight I just came from the Christmas party downstairs and- these days all it takes is a couple of glasses of wine to flatten my voice out.

A week ago I received an e-mail from my friend Ian Maloney who runs many of the literary reading events at St Francis College who asked me if I wanted to read Friday night at a Brooklyn Non-Fiction event at the school. I said yes and sent a piece I had written about Greenwood Cemetery- to the moderator Aziz Rahman. Before I knew it I was a finalist on the program with seven others for the big prize.

What big prize? No one knew. Aziz asked Ian if he could provide some money for a prize but Ian said there was no money. When I was asked to read I was happy because I love to read but had no idea that being accepted to read automatically made me a finalist or you might say- a guest finalist.

This was a contest that until that morning I never knew I was entering. But there I was at the end of the evening standing in front of a capacity crowd in the Maroney Center at SFC waiting for Tim Mcloughlin- writer and editor of the series- to present a plaque to the winner of the 2011 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Reading Series.

After that somewhat depressing opening piece on murder and AIDS it was my turn and I began by saying "I have a rather lighthearted piece on Greenwood Cemetery(the audience laughs- I've got them in the palm of my hands- but wait, I think the audience doesn't even vote!)- which I'd like to dedicate- I continue- to my friend and mentor professor Frank Mescall and I ask Frank to stand up and then I begin to read and from the very start my mind was floating in that Whitmanesque solution.

I am back again walking those beautiful winding hills of Greenwood with Frank and those high school kids. I am back at the tomb of Walter Hunt inventor of the fountain pen and safety pin who buried his dog right next to him with an epitath- a poem- any human would be proud of having on his or her tombstone- which of course reminds me of my dog Nikki who died last February so my voice starts to crack just a little- but I never cry- not like the last reader a young Asian woman who breaks down reading about an insensitive Orthodox Jewish boyfriend who makes her take a morning after pill after their "first time" together and I'm thinking oh no she'll get the sympathy vote now- until I remember again the audience is not voting.

I finish my essay talking about how Frank Mescall wants to keep going- that if he really wanted "he could probably go on for all eternity."

The applause-not unenthusiastic- follows me all the way back to my seat.

I notice Garland Jeffreys now- who earlier sang his great song called "Coney Island Winter"-

"Twenty Two stops
Freezin cold no time to weep
Boardwalks dead
On a midnight creep
Its colder than a Polar bear
But I don't care
Coney Island Winter
Coney Island Winter"-

- how he is running towards me from the other side of the auditorium.

He tells me how much he liked my piece. He asks for my phone number and a copy of the essay and I give him both on the spot.

The third finalist has already started reading and I'm sitting there in my seat not really listening because it's hard after reading to really pay much attention to the person right after me and I'm thinking maybe I'll win this thing afterall and I'm already picturing that winner's plaque on the wall of my office.

A little over an hour later all eight of us finalists stand in front of the audience and Tim Mcloughlin is just about to announce the winning essay and as I'm standing there I'm thinking how too bad America couldn't vote I mean after all America would love me wouldn't they? I mean if the audience or America had a chance to vote I'd certainly win wouldn't I?

And the winner is . . .

I mean I am the oldest most experienced writer here I mean after all why else would they. . .

And the winner is. . .

I mean after all Garland Jeffries took my phone number and my essay away with him. . .

And the winner of the 2011 . . .

I start to lean forward just a little bit my right foot getting ready to spring forward my hands already feeling the smooth wood of the plaque as Tim hands it to me.

And the winner of the 2011 Brooklyn Arts Festival Non-Fiction Writing Award is. . .

Naima Coster

Of course I knew it all along. I mean how could I or should I beat out a young woman who writes a very touching piece- "When Brooklyn Was Mine"- about growing up with her immigrant parents in Fort Greene struggling to survive, struggling to create an identity for herself I mean after all is this or is this not what Brooklyn is all about- tough struggling immigrant working class Brooklyn suddenly overun by insensitive yuppies and preppies and old white hippies-- like me?--

I do remember thinking while Naima was reading her essay- that this is the one I would have to worry about- that we'd all have to worry about not only because of what she wrote- but because of how well she wrote it- and how good and touching and funny and human it was- and if I did win that plaque I knew I'd probably hand it over to her anyway- well, not really- but still I'd know she really deserved it.

So she held her plaque high and the audience gave us one last round of applause and I thanked Tim and I thanked Aziz and I rushed home to see my family and say good night to my daughter and walk my dogs.

And even though I don't have that plaque to put on the wall I thought how lucky I really was to get to be a finalist without even entering the contest thanks to my good friend and colleague Ian Maloney who is always looking out for me.

And of course how great to be able to dedicate this story this evening to my mentor and friend Frank Mescall who despite not feeling very well these days still came out to see and hear me-

And of course to get another chance to read my work which I love to do more than almost anything else in the world.

And after all

I'm from Queens.

An imposter. A carpetbagger.

So what do I know about Brooklyn?

The Smell of Cinnamon Buns

2011-11-21T12:32:00.006-05:00

I'm at Remsen Graphics the copy place across the street from St. Francis College making a copy of my father's Army discharge papers.

"This is to certify that FE Levenberg staff sergeant 29th evacuation hospital is hereby Honorably Discharged from the military service of the USA. Seperation Center Fort Dix, NJ 21 December 1945."

He was in the Army for 4 years and 22 days. He was overseas for 8 months and 3 days.

Under the heading "Battles and Campaigns" where someone typed in "None" my father penciled in "Luzon."

I remember my father's photos of the severed heads of Japanese soldiers brought back to his camp in Luzon by Philippine guerillas.

In a journal entry dated June 25 1945 he says:

"Two Japs filtered into our area. The guerilla guards got them and cut off their heads. So there is peace in death. Heads looked young, rather clean cut looking."

When I first saw those photos I couldn't sleep at all, had the lights on all night and kept checking my parents' room to make sure their heads were still attached to their bodies.

When I asked my father how he felt about seeing those severed heads he just said "What can I say? That's war."

When the graphics guy brings back my copy he says, "40 cents,please" and I can't believe it costs only 40 cents to copy a part of WWII.

When I tell him it's my father's discharge papers from WWII, he says "Oh yeah?"- in that kind of faux enthusiasm of a generation mired in indifference- so I can tell right away he's not really that interested but the old man standing next to me says" Oh yeah?! like I just woke something up in him like he's the ancient mariner who no one listens to anymore.

"My brother was in the 34th Evacuation Unit" he says. " Oh yeah?" I say back and then suddenly the "Oh Yeahs" are flying back and forth- like missles over the sea of Japan."

My father was in the 29th Evacuation Unit," I tell him.
"Oh yeah?" He says and then he tells me everything.

His name is Gene. He grew up around the Brooklyn Navy Yard and joined the Army when he was 15 and a half. He said he had no idea what he was getting into until he suddenly found himself in North Africa.

Later he served on the USS Shea which went to Okinawa to assist with minesweeping and anti aircraft operations and then on to Iowa Jima and then he told me how months later a Yokosuka MXY-7 rocket powered Kamikaze plane (he said they called them Bakas- fool or idiot in Japanese) hit the ship so fast and so hard he hardly knew what happened- where it came from- where it went- and how- just like that- 40 men had been killed and over 80 wounded.

Later, while lining up to receive a Purple Heart with all the other survivors, he suddenly smelled cinnamon buns- it had been years since he smelled cinnamon buns- he thought the kitchen was destroyed and now he thought he might be smelling things- post traumatic shock-

But at that time what wasn't post or pre or just shock?

The whole time he was there in the Pacific- like in Okinawa or Iowa Jima- every ten steps someone else got blown up.

Go figure.

Shock meant nothing

These guys were tough-

Nobody got shocked anymore.

No these were cinammon buns he smelled all right-

The kitchen had blown too.

But kitchen or no kitchen- he knew that- with a kind of certainty he hadn't felt in a long time- that he could smell cinammon buns and that he was getting off this line- Purple Heart be damned.

And he was right

And even though he never got his Purple Heart he did get his cinnamon buns and the whole time hes telling me this I know he's still smelling them like he was still standing on that line almost 70 years ago.

When he told me this story I thought of course about my own father- the man who wrote about the food during the war as much as the battles that still raged in the Philippine mountains or the occupation of Japan- about the big chickens and the radishes- so big my father said because they used human feces to grow them.

He was in the 29th Evacuation Unit in the Philippine jungle.

He was a medical laboratory technician who got excited whenever he got the chance to sew up bullet wounds or help treat lepers

There is a photo of my father sitting on a beach chair in front of his tent holding a beer looking like he was sitting in the backyard of my aunt and uncle's house in Whitestone, Queens during a holiday BBQ.

After Gene finished his story he had that same smile my father had sitting in that beach chair like the world is crazy- always has been- always will be- and that if you can grab a chicken or a cinnamon bun even in the midst- of human madness and chaos and world conflagration- go for it

For isn't it true?

That while wars come and go- while people live and die- the smell of a cinnamon bun lasts forever?

Going Urban at the Sidewalk

2011-11-07T10:05:00.010-05:00

I was going to read "The Hotel Clerk"-my German story until I learned my reading at the Sidewalk Cafe would be kind of an opposites night with my friend Diane Simmons whose book-"Little America"- was about the great empty highways out in the far far west and the dreamers and misfits that drive on them-and me the city guy.

Photo Credit: Marilynn Lundy

"The Cat" was already locked in- do or die- that was my urban story, the story I always introduce at my Lit Readings as "my urban story-inspired by actually living in a 4th floor walkup in Hell's Kitchen for about 8 months or so.

The other story I figured might be "The Package" which also takes place in the city but most likely an apartmentt house in Queens although we dont really know for sure. I chose that one mostly because having to cancel my Literature- eccentric/unreliable/mad narrators- class that night I asked my students to come see instead a real live literary eccentric author-me- and they could write a paper about it.

Almost all my narrators-most seem to be the same guy but not all-are certainly eccentric or quirky.
So I wavered between my class and my evening theme- eccentric vs urban and if possible both.

"The Cat"- like I said- was locked in but "The Package" soon gave way to "The Cruller"- Diane's favorite story- the one she helped get published in Fiction Magazine.

"The Cruller's" narrator is certainly eccentric enough- the story urban enough- a typical Manhattan coffee shop with those plastic cases with all those stale crullers in them and watresses tough outside and soft inside- except just like the cruller itself in my mind it was getting stale and I started to sound stale reading it.

What about "The Homeless" a little known seldom read story about one homeless guy following another and both being followed by a Republican with a bad toothache. Nah- that would make both stories about the homeless- so the wife says what about "The Bagel King" an urban bagel and lox story I read only once before the night in a Williamsburgh bar I discovered I needed glasses when under a very dim light I read the story very haltingly and deliberately and then was complimented for the uniquely haunting- though unintentional- way I read it.

Nah I thought too much lusting after young girls- don't forget I was asking my class to come which has several young women in it- and I really didn't want them looking at me too weirdly the rest of the semester and besides the story was about a holdup by two young junkies kind of resembling the home invitation/invasion motif in "The Cat".

Then there was "Dyspnea" my breathing story written during a particularly unpleasant and protracted bout with bronchitis.

"Dyspnea" is also my Thanksgiving story and the reading was in November but still it's not too urban (I think the narrator takes the subway) or that eccentric- although many of the characters- dead or alive- are truly mad.

So I went back to "The Cruller" because afterall it was really a good balance after all- urban enough- eccentric enough- not as dark perhaps as "The Cat"- pretty inoffensive and funny with just a little dash of poignancy sprinkled in- even if it was- in my mind at least- getting a bit stale.

But the day itself leading up to the Reading was not so linear or logical. It went more like this:

Okay "The Cat" and "The Cruller." No "The Package." "The Cat" and "The Package." That's it. Wait, you're right "The Bagel King" that's perfect. Okay then "The Cat" and the "Bagel King." Nope can't do that. Lets go back to "The Package." Unless "The Homeless." "The Cat" and "The Homeless" "The Cat" and "The Cruller." No "The Package"- "Dyspnea" of course it's Thanksgiving but really that's not uh really relevant is it? And after all Diane my co reader loves "The Cruller" so it may be stale but it is still loved- and by all people Diane Simmons whose opinion I value so much and who writes so differently or at least about such different people or at the very least about such different places than I do.

When I arrive at The Sidewalk Cafe- with my friend and colleague Danny Dioguardi- there's Martha and Basil King (the founders of the Prose Pros reading series) and my friend Burt Kimmelman- Diane's husband and a brilliant poet- and my friend Marilynn Lundy- whom I call every week to talk about writing- and I join them and order a wheat beer because I see Basil drinking one and it looks good but it makes me just a little drunk which worries me because I usually don't read well a little drunk and I happen to mention- emphatically- that I'll be doing two urban stories and Martha says that I can read whatever I want that the urban theme was mostly for promotional purposes so I turn to my friend Danny and say "The Hotel Clerk!" Im going to read "The Hotel Clerk!" and Burt says yes please read the German story you've got to read the German story so I smile at Danny the one who heard me all day- my sounding board- going back and forth about what to read and he smiles back at me as if to say please not again and I say no "The Cat" it's already locked in and "The Cruller"- that's it-t hat's all there is to it- and that's what I'm going to read.

And I did though I was a little too drunk when I read "The Cat" which I read first because Diane was not there yet and Burt says she wouldn't want to miss the "Cruller" and by the time I read it she's already there and maybe it was her sitting there but it was truly the best I ever read it- as if the story itself had become a brand new cruller fresh out of the oven and delivered with love into the waiting mouths of my audience.

Tale of the Tape

2011-11-02T10:54:00.005-04:00

Should be an exciting evening tomorrow indoors at the Sidewalk Café on Avenue A. I’m already feeling the dichotomies, Whitman’s old knot of contrarieties.

My co-reader-and good friend— Diane Simmons- is from Oregon. I’m from Queens, a little bit from Brooklyn and Manhattan.

I lived in apartments most of my life- those apartments where the doorbell would ring and you had to look through a peephole to see who it was and just see one big eye staring back at you. That was growing up in Queens. Always one big eye staring back at you.

Diane grew up on a farm where you could see visitors far enough away where you could get a good look at them- and only if necessary- plenty of time to reach for your shotgun.

Diane has lived in New York for many years now but I know she still has that Far West open door open road wanderlust in her blood like I’ve still got the NYC triple lock paranoia in my veins.

If you’re into those things, The “Tale of the Tape”- Diane vs. Mitch- might look this way:

Urban vs. rural
West vs. East (As Jim Morrison said, “The West is the best,” but as Levenberg always says “The East is the Beast.”
The open road vs. the locked apartment
Driving vs. walking up and down stairs
Trust vs. paranoia
The uncertain future vs. the uncertain past

In the long run however I would have to say that- in our moderator Martha King’s words— Diane and I are both “In agreement and in opposition.” No question we both have that skewed take on the world- an impenetrable faith in the strangeness in the mundane— of the consistency of order in chaos and chaos in order- that nothing is what it seems and most of all that the only thing certain is uncertainty.

Anyway, it should be an exciting evening— Prose Pros- Sidewalk Café- Thursday, November 3 at 6:30- 94 Ave. A at 6th Street.

To Live and Die in Flushing

2011-10-27T16:54:00.011-04:00

What is it about Flushing? Why is it that every time I go back to Flushing I think I'm going back for good this time to live out the rest of my life and then die there.

The poet Stephen Stepanchev who is from Chicago but lived in Flushing for a very long time- including the time he was my poetry teacher at Queens College- once called Flushing "The Center of the Universe" and certainly for almost 40 years it was mine.

Brooklyn is my home now but it is not my essence. It never entered my bloodstream- my soul if you will- for good or bad like Flushing did.

I know it is wrong to want to go home.

Ask Thomas Wolfe.

But there is a pull for sure- but perhaps it is an unhealthy pull. I don't know. I do know I start to get excited whenever I plan a trip to Flushing but it's just as true that Flushing isn't quite the Flushing I remember.

Still it's there.

I still recognize it- still feel it- through its new facade- its new human and concrete identity- its Asian restaurants and groceries and beauty salons and mini malls.

It's not what's been replaced or added it's what still remains or- better yet- not so much what is still visible but what is invisible that pulls me back.

I think of Ishmael's words in Moby Dick:

"Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright."

I am no Ishmael.

I was never exiled

I never wandered.

I stayed put- in Flushing.

My wandering consisted perhaps of a journey of half a city block to a quiet corner of the playground where I would try to imagine myself someone or someplace else- but I just couldn't.

I just could not imagine myself anywhere else but Flushing.

When I go back to Flushing- I can't quite escape the invisible- something is unresolved.

There is someone I need to see

There is something I need to do.

Besides eat good Chinese food or go shopping in a Korean supermarket.

It's that young boy I look for in the playground- the playground that is still there despite the fact you need a key to get in now. Why?

Maybe to keep the old ghosts in or the new condos out.

The Flushing I knew is like a painting beneath a painting.

Pentimento Flushing.

Changed, alterated-

But the Flushing in my soul alters not when alteration finds.

The street in front of my old apartment building may lead to a different place but still it is the first street I learned to cross-

The sky, the trees outside that second floor window is the same sky the same trees that inspired my first words-

My first verse of poetry-

My first story-

The window from which my Grandmother's ghost still looks out in fear.

Still stares beyond the visible.

At something the rest of us can neither see nor understand.

Yet still fear.

We have been to lunch at Nan Xiang- a dumpling restaurant on Prince Street just off Main Street in downtown Flushing.

On the way back to his apartment, we pass the playground and I ask my brother to open the gate with his private key.

I always wanted one of those private keys.

I show my daughter where I used to play box ball or bench ball or where the old sandbox and sprinklers used to be.

I almost show her where my ghost sits- inside the small tunnel that leads back to the gate- but I decide to leave him alone.

I wanted to tell him that he turned out okay.

That there was nothing to fear after all.

That he has a daughter now who will never be afraid to imagine something else or some place else.

That she will remember a Flushing without ghosts.

One that was formed not in fright but in love.

But I think that young boy must know that by now.

My Life with Money

2011-10-17T20:26:00.006-04:00

In my life with money three moments in particular stand out.

The first has to do with my Grandfather who every month would come over to our apartment in Flushing for lunch and just before leaving would call me from my room and place a half dollar in my hand.

This was no ordinary lunch. You'd think my grandfather was really paying me off so I would never speak or write about it.

My grandfather and I really had no relationship with each other. He died when I was 10 and I never really spoke to him except in a dream once many years later.

He and my granmother- who lived with us- had seperated many years earlier under not very good terms and he lived mostly in SROs in Manhattan. He always seemed to me a homeless man and I always felt that the half dollar he gave me every month meant far more than 50 cents that really our whole relationship was in that coin- all the things he was unable to say to me but somehow wished he could.

My grandfather began his journey to Flushing by first visiting my mother who worked at the hospital just 4 blocks away and then coming over for a hot lunch.

My grandmother would cook for him- then serve him course after course- walking silently back and forth between the kitchen and dining room- All the time neither one of them would utter a single word to each other.

The whole time I would peak out at him from my room. And watch him. He did not talk or read or watch TV but just ate slowly, methodically- in no particular hurry.

Then just before he left he would call me out of my room put a half dollar coin in my outstretched hand, pat me on the head, and go.

The second most memorable moment of my life with money was right after my grandfather died. My father had just finished shaving when he called me into the bathroom- the only room in our apt where there was any privacy at all.

"Come here," he said in a kind of conspiratorial whisper- careful not to let my mother hear him.

"What?" I asked.

"Look," he said, his eyes all aglow. "A thousand dollar bill. "

The first thing I remember seeing was Grover Cleveland whom I recognized right away- despite the fact I was only ten years old.

I knew the presidents backwards and forwards. I remember reading that Cleveland was elected president twice with Benjamin Harrison sandwiched in between. I also remembered that he married someone half his age while in the White House.

Then I saw the number one with all those zeros on the bill- a clean crisp bill looking like it had just been printed for a special occasion- which in this case was to pay for my grandfather's coffin.

I had never seen a thousand dollar bill before and I don't think- looking at the child-like wonder in my father's face- that he had either.

Perhaps that was the moment I began to associate money with death.

Then came the time of the credit card. The credit card and my father. Not the other way around. Maybe it was the very beginning of credit cards because you have to admit the idea of using a plastic card to pay for something is kind of magical. My father thought so- the way he waved that card to the whole family as if it were a magic wand. I think my father thought that the two most magical things in life were pickled herring in cream sauce and a MasterCard.

The herring transposed him to another dimension of time and space. The card made him feel like a millionaire in our time and space like he no longer had to work too hard for money or even have to pay it back except in those small minimum payments credit card companies use to lull these poor naïve people like my father into a very false unmagical sense of security. He never thought about interest. In fact the day he signed over his card to me- since I wasn't able to get one on my own - he signed it over with plenty of interest still on it which I'm still paying off.

There was the day back in 1968 when we were all going on a trip to California by plane and staying in the best hotels that my father seriously said to all of us-flashing that card before us- that this card he held in his hand was like a miracle because without it we would never have been able to go on this trip and live- for ten days- way beyond our means.

I remember when I had my first card thinking that if I wanted to I could go to Paris tonight stay at the Ritz have a great meal fly back the same night just in time for work the next day and not have to pay a dime- I wouldn't even need a suitcase. Just my card. Me and my card. My card and I- and Paris.

Soon I was getting every card I could. One I decided would be for clothes and records another for trips and so on.

Guilt.

My father told me a story once about the time he went to a steam bath with his father and uncle back in the 1920s and they were in the cafeteria eating pickled herring in cream sauce and at some point my uncle got up and while walking away, slipped and fell.

While everyone rushed to his aid- they thought he might have cracked his skull- my father said he just kept sitting at the table eating his pickled herring in cream sauce.

That was always his example to me to show how much he loved his pickled herring in cream sauce.

I think the wonder of his love for, of his obsession, overshadowed any guilt. It was almost a warning not to go cracking your skull while I'm eating this or you might just be lying there for a while.

Now whenever I use my credit card- especially with my daughter around- I feel guilty. First I make sure to groan or exclaim "oh boy here we go again" and then turn it around from its more shiny side where there's a rainbow that leads- not to a pot of gold but a pot of debt- to its more serious printed side where my own guilty signature appears.

Funny thing is every time I use my credit card or feel guilty about spending money there's still that part of my father in me that heads straight for the pickled herring in cream sauce.

If I'm not exactly transposed to another dimension of space I am definitely transposed to another time sitting there with my father in some steam bath cafeteria in the 1920s licking that plate of herring clean while my great uncle falls and nearly cracks his skull.

After all, if we need to buy a coffin- there's always a credit card.

No question- I'm still my father's son and sometimes that's just a little bit scary.

Perch Revisited

2011-10-07T12:01:00.013-04:00

I came back to the Perch last night with two students from my senior citizen creative writing class. My daughter and her friend Gracie- also adopted from China by friends of ours- ran in ahead of me to order taters- a Perch specialty. They weren't staying and before I knew it once they got their taters they were gone again.

I ran out of the cafe just in time to see my daughter- who turned 12 two days ago- race down the block towards home and turn the corner where I finally lost sight of her.

That's a sinking feeling I've just had to get used to the last few years. The fact that my daughter turns corners on her own now and then disappears from my sight.

A far cry I think from when she was in swaddling clothes at the Bureau of Social Welfare in Nanchang or in a Brooklyn supermarket when we had to keep watching her to make sure she didn't turn down another aisle.

I'm reading "The Pen" tonight- a story that takes place shortly after my daughter is born and abandoned in China. In this case filling out new patient forms in the immunologist office in Brooklyn Heights with a new and expensive pen I borrowed from a colleague of mine. Later I drop the pen and lose the cap when it rolls off on its own and drops down a hole in the floorboards. Unable to retrieve it I imagine it falling through the earth and landing on our hotel bed in China still waiting for us-right on the pillow next to the chocolate mint- when we arrive.

But the night really belonged to my students Ellen Press-Scott and Joe Davis. Ellen is my lead off reader. She has good range. She gets on base. She's a table setter- she gets the class started- gets them in the right mood.

Ellen is known mostly for her funny and thought provoking monologues for which she provides all the various voices and accents from Brooklyn to the Ukraine.

Joe is 84 and started writing stories just a few years ago and now can't seem to stop. I describe him as Lovecraft meets Kafka meets Hawthorne. Like Ellen he loves to read his work, his "twice (sometimes thrice) told tales" and enjoys it so much he laughs sometimes right along with his audience.

The Reading would begin at 7:30 one of those times I would always remember because it was the time back in 1977 I was supposed to meet my friend John LiCastro to see "Animal House" and when I told him I hope I don't forget the time he said, "Just remember that 7:30 looks like a man with a beard."

That's what I thought of too when they told us our daughter along with all the other babies would be arriving right outside our hotel rooms at 7:30. "There's the man with the beard" I told my wife when I first heard the screams after the elevator doors opened- but I don't think she heard me.

So now it was 7:20 and only 6 people waited to hear us. Ellen was worried. Even Pam- who ran the program- wasn't there yet. Everyone grew quiet. The stage where we read looked dark and uninviting.

It reminded me of the moments before those elevator doors opened in our Nanchang hotel- the moments of anxiety and uncertainty.

Of those pivotal moments before our lives would change- one way or another- forever.

And then- suddenly- it all started to change. The evening moved out of our consciousness- of our own fears and expectations and took on a life of its own. Pam arrived- with still 9 minutes to spare.

She did not look like a man or a woman with a beard

She adjusted the lights and the microphone. She seemed to make the stage inviting again.

Then others began to arrive- 91 year old Florence Yukon- another student of mine along with her daughter Heather and Heather's boyfriend. Still more friends of Ellen's arrived- once again giving her a renewed faith in an always fickle but sometimes just universe.

By the time Pam had finished introducing Ellen every friend she had invited had shown up.

How often does that happen?

Then she read her story. The story was wonderful, magical and it was the best reading she had ever done before a class or audience.

It was a story based on an assignment I had given in class: Take a myth or fairy tale and place it in a modern day setting.

Ellen chose Snow White. She did all the voices all the accents She would have made Disney proud. The audience--numbering more than 15 now (if you include the bar tender who definitely was listening)) was thoroughly enjoying it. Whatever path she was taking them on they were following This was no bunt from any lead off reader- this was a clean up reader hitting a homerun.

Then Joe came up. He wrote about a man who turned orange (another of my class prompts) and a garden that talked. Joe has a way after a little bit of a slow start of grabbing his audience's attention-then losing it about midway through- and then getting it all back again at the end. He just has to be careful not to go on too long. Like I said once Joe gets started its hard to stop him. But there are others-well known authors- I might stop before Joe.

Then it was my turn. I had never read this story in public before. I always thought it was about losing the cap of an expensive pen but as I kept reading I reaized how it was really about far more than that about receiving something or someone new and being able to hold on.

It was like the hallway outside the hotel room in China with all the uncertainty and anxiety and fears that went along with it.

It was about what would happen beyond that moment- at 7:35 when we had that baby in our arms and whether or not we could hold her- hold her in a way so no one could take her away- or abandon her- again.

It was the best I had read anything in a long time also because the longer I read the more I felt this story was more about my daughter than a capless pen.

And I wanted the audience to feel that too

And I think they did

It was a beautiful night

For everyone.

Grown Up Novels

2011-10-03T13:54:00.004-04:00

When I told a friend I was reading another Grown Up novel he said "you mean Adult novel don't you?" So I tried to explain the difference.

Adult books- I told him- write about sex that adults fantasize about as opposed to sex adults actually have. One is real fantasy the other fake.

In Grown Up novels 50 year old men go to bed at night with their 50 year old wives and try to remember what their wives were like at 20.

In Adult novels the woman the 50 year old guy goes to bed with really is 20.

Also in Grown Up novels the 50 year old guy always wakes up in the middle of the night with an angst that suddenly appears like acid reflux- while his wife remains asleep- breathing peacefully- probably dreaming about being married to men without angst or acid reflux.

In Grown Up novels these men often wonder how and why they screwed up their lives so much even though their lives don't seem so bad to the innocent onlooker (the reader) since these guys usually live in a fancy townhouse in tony London or on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

These 50ish upper middle class men often wonder about their teenage kids as well and why these kids resent them so much.

In Adult novels men sleep through the night and though they may have teenage kids- sprinkled around the world- they have no idea- nor do they particularly care- where or who they are.

Okay- granted Adult novels aren't written as well as Grown Up novels and tend to be a bit superficial or one dimensional- but at least they don't pretend to be what they're not.

Like Grown Up novels.

Grown up novels tend to see themselves as complex and revelatory- as contemporary chroniclers of the human condition.

I tend to see these novelists as pretentious, humorless, self-important, self-conscious and most of all --as my wife would say- bloodless.

Many Grown Up novelists take themselves and therefore their characters very very seriously and believe we should too.

I'd rather not. I'd rather watch TV. For example a show like Breaking Bad- ironic absurd mad passionate- which is a real tragedy where you never know what to expect except the inevitable.

I don't know about anyone else but most of the time I'm bored with these Grown Up novels.

Most of the time I plow through these books waiting for someone to actually jump off a bridge, put their head in an oven, tear out their eyes, go stark raving mad, get lobotomized or end up dead in their swimming pools.

Like in real tragedies not fake tragedies.

When suddenly there are no choices and your past really does come back to haunt you.

But don't look at me. I never really did grow up anyway.

The Face of My Father Reading

2011-09-26T20:30:00.008-04:00

I was walking my dog in the park when I spotted a young man sitting under a tree. He wore a college sweatshirt- a college I did not recognize- He sat cross-legged reading and smoking a pipe.

He reminded me of a photo I have seen of my father as a young man- also sitting cross-legged under a tree wearing a college sweatshirt- also reading and smoking a pipe.

That face, the face of my father reading, is always the face I see in my mind when I think about my father.

My father read all the time. Under trees, under lampposts, in doctors’ waiting rooms, on mall benches waiting for my mother to finish shopping, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the dining room.

I think my father only felt and looked content- really content- when he was reading.

He had little if any patience for people. Some people he liked. He liked me and my brother and my mother. Mostly he liked to be alone- like sitting under a tree or at the kitchen table-reading.

Whenever my father sat with a group of people, he would pretend to listen to the conversation for a while and then often fell asleep. Then my mother would elbow him in the ribs and he’d wake up with a start like maybe he was reading a book in his dreams and thought it was real. Then he’d look over to whoever was sitting opposite him and just keep shaking his head- slightly-as if he had been in agreement with what they had been saying all along.

Yes, my father loved to read. He told me had a nightmare once where he suddenly found himself on page 500 of a book he could swear he had just started and couldn’t remember anything that came before. My father worried about forgetting everything he read. He was convinced that the more he read, the more he forgot but still I think he remembered quite a bit.

I do remember that whenever my father had a discussion or perhaps more accurately an argument with someone about history or politics he’d bring up a lot of facts and examples from all the books he read. Still he wanted to remember more. He was always fascinated with the brain’s capacity to absorb and retain information and he was proud of his ability to do so. On the other hand, he was frightened of losing that ability. It was only when he lost the desire to read- not too long after he was diagnosed with cancer- that he finally knew he was going to die.

My father read mostly history and biographies but almost no fiction. He found things that really happened much more interesting than things that were made up. When I asked him whether or not he believed that maybe people made up history too he said no, that there was a lot we didn’t know about but that nobody purposely made anything up.

My father loved books. I mean he really loved the books themselves. He always removed the book jackets (he mostly read hardcovers) before reading the book in order to protect them and when he finished a book he would always write “read” on the first page so he’d remember he’d read it. He knew he would only write “read” if he actually had read it so he didn’t have to worry years later remembering whether “read” meant to read or already read. Then he’d put the book jacket- preserved in all its beauty-back on the book like someone’s long lost wedding jacket still looking like the day they wore it- and put the book back on the shelf. Oh, how he loved looking at all the books standing in a row, so large, so rich, and recall the wonderful moments they had together- just man and book- a relationship that no one could ever tear asunder.

There are two photos of my father I have always loved. One is of him wearing his U of Missouri sweatshirt, smoking a pipe, reading a book beneath a giant tree.

The other was taken about 60 years later and he is sitting in a McDonald’s in Florida drinking coffee and reading a book- a tome really- perhaps one he had already read because he had started reading certain books over again especially those he had read but couldn’t remember too much about.

Then there was I— who learned to love books from my father- last Saturday afternoon, walking my dog Layla- who among all my dogs would be the dog most likely to read if dogs could read- when suddenly I spotted this young man sitting cross-legged under a tree just like my father- wearing a college sweatshirt just like my father- smoking a pipe just like my father- and most of all- reading- just like my father.

Or was it?

I was just about to go over to the young man- to tell him how much he reminded me of my father

Or perhaps he was my father- his soul having inhabited the body of a thirty year old just so he could sit in the park and read- alone, undisturbed, no friends, no family, nothing to do for eternity but read— I would talk to him about all the new books out since he died- about Kennedy and FDR- and then show him pictures of his granddaughter and then leave him alone so he could keep reading.

But then I noticed something. The young man in the college sweatshirt- who was smoking a pipe- was indeed reading but not from a book- that is a book with actual pages- but from an e-book- a Kindle or Nook or iPhone or Blackberry- I couldn’t tell.

That’s when I knew that couldn’t be my father- spirit or no spirit- my father wouldn’t be caught dead or alive reading anything but a real book with real pages.
After all, how could he write in the margins in his indecipherable handwriting

Or stain the pages with spaghetti sauce

Or write “read” beneath the acknowledgments

Or- most of all- remove that spanking new book jacket and preserve it in the back of his book shelf?

No- that wasn’t my father sitting cross-legged under the tree- smoking his pipe and reading an e-book.

My father would have no patience for that.

Sour Grapes, Gelato and Reconciliation at the Brooklyn Book Festival

2011-09-19T22:40:00.006-04:00

This can't be about talent. I mean call it sour grapes on my part but why are there dangerously criss-crossing lines coming in and out of a church, three leaving one entering. Fortunately these are people who still read passably good fiction and so are more unlikely to trample each other due to drug induced paranoia or tendencies towards extreme violence like at a Justin Bieber concert or a Yankee game. I mean no one's gonna knock over anyone rushing to see Wallace Shawn or are they?

Don't get me wrong. I love Wallace Shawn but to risk being trampled by book lovers by culture consumers by people who sit in B and N all day and take up the few chairs near the book shelves (I definitely can't sit on the floor anymore--anywhere-) or in the cafe sipping on a Latte for hours and reading still another article about you know- Paul and Siri's garden in Park Slope.

Sour grapes on my part? I mean last year I had a table with all my books on it and sold nothing. People barely looked at it because they thought-- quite rightly perhaps-- like who the hell are you and why should I read your book when there are so many white middle class post-middle aged writers out there who write about waking up in the middle of the night with all this white middle class angst and guilt-- and washing it all away-- for the moment-- with vodka and pills.

I'm more like some unknown Kafka who writes about bugs and people who have trouble breathing.

So this year I roamed or better yet skulked around the various small press tables from the esoteric to the conventional-- like the Paris Review-- all right- Paris Review-we know all ready--you're wonderful-- we know.

My wife and daughter spent the day eating some great stuff like tacos and lobster rolls off the food trucks in Prospect Park while I starved all day at the book fair. When I finally found this snack stand (I don't think it was a truck) all I wanted to do was order some coffee but all they wanted to do was get me to taste their gelato.

No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get my coffee but I did taste three kinds of Gelato-- none of which I liked-- and finally had to walk away.

Isn't anybody out there going to give me what I want?

That's me- sour grapes

But

On the other hand and I truly mean this-- it was also nice- reassuring really- to see so many people still love books (like my friend Josh says, "The idea of a Kindle Festival is frightening") and to wait on long long lines to see everyone from Joyce Carol Oats and Jhumpa Lahiri and Jennifer Egan to Comic writers like Craig Thompson and Anders Nilsen.

Sometimes I give away some the tickets I get at St Francis to strangers at the end of the tickets line just to see that bookish smile pop up on their faces.

So keep reading everybody. Keep making heroes out of our writers-- some of them even deserve it-- I mean I overheard a woman telling Jhumpa Lihiri how her work inspired her and I thought how nice it was that not just ballplayers like Derek Jeter get to hear that once in a while but writers too.

So as long as festivals like this one in my wonderful home town of Brooklyn-- where the F train really is sometimes like a movable reading room at the library-- can keep reading alive the world is not totally lost.

And as for me, I'll just eat my sour grapes by myself-- that is if I could only find a chair.

See You at the Brooklyn Book Festival

2011-09-18T09:02:00.002-04:00

Could it really be a year already since the last great Brooklyn Book Festival where I sat among the enchanted and the disenchanted the hopeful and the delusional among the voices of angry metaphors and soothing rhymes among the wandering ticketless rejected superannuated ghosts of a forgotten generation and the fresh faced superbrats of an over rated one-- all of us and my books and my friend Greg getting wet under a pissy but consistent rain selling nothing just mingling with the crazies and the semi crazies all of us inside and out indoors or out with the same thing in common our love of the written word no matter how well or badly written the words are.

Today I'll be there again-- writer without a table to put his books on but if you see me skulking and slithering among the other booths and tables if you can find me insinuating myself among the some and hiding from others if you find me I will hand my book to you like I was giving a gift to an old friend and I will sign it "Dear so and so how wonderful to see you again."

9/11: I Interrupt this Memoir

2011-09-09T13:47:00.003-04:00

My daughter was not yet two when I began writing my memoir about adopting her in China. Then came 9/11 and I suddenly lost the urge to continue. I mean what was the point?

One morning people, families, just like my own, just like the family we were first starting to create- were tragically broken apart— men and women, fathers and mothers left the houses that day filled with hope, with all sorts of expectations for the future— at least with no reason to believe there wouldn’t be a future at all— no reason to believe they would be incinerated, turned into ashes, or forced to leap early in the morning when one is sipping one’s first cup of coffee before they can even begin the day— from one of the tallest buildings in the world which too would crumble before our eyes as in some improbable scene from some improbable science fiction movie.

My family and I were fine. Not even two hours after the attack we were all together again, watching the unbelievable- the improbable- unfold on the TV screen where it all seemed to belong- where we were used to watching such scenes unfold.

Yet, something had changed inside of me as I was sure it had changed for thousands, maybe millions of others who were not physically affected (at least not yet) by the attacks.

That something had changed inside us- something that would make us all forever uncertain, make us question the meaning of life- not as some textbook abstraction but in very real and disturbing ways.

And finally, make us realize that nothing would ever be the same again.

The following words were written on September 12, 2001— while sitting in a coffee shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

I interrupt my China memoir after terrorists have slammed two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. I have brought this baby to the safe haven of New York City, I think to myself, and now I stand on the roof of St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights and watch the towers burn across the river. I remember looking across the river Gan in Nanchang (where my daughter was born) and thinking how anything could happen out there, how uncertain life was here and how I couldn’t wait to get back home.

And now the towers burn, thousands are dead, and there is no certainty anywhere. I leave the roof and call my wife. The baby is still in day care just around the corner from our home. My wife says to come home. There is debris falling in our backyard. I walk home, followed by a huge ugly black cloud. I get a slight burning sensation in my left lung and I think to myself, “Where might this lead?”

Nothing is certain anymore.

I don’t even feel like writing any of this down.

I am years away from that feeling again. This book seems meaningless now. All I want is to get home and get my daughter. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been a beautiful day, at least weather-wise. But now it seems unnaturally hot and sunny and you can’t help think something has gotten into the air, into the sun, that we will all melt within minutes. I don’t think about that yet.

I don’t think the dogs have caught on yet either. People are still out there walking them, and they sniff and stop, pee and poop just like they always do. It’s only later that night that all the dogs begin to howl, to say things to each other we will never know about. Perhaps it is a warning or a call for some contingency plan in case humans are wiped out for good and there’ll be no one to get their food.

Whatever they mean, this howling is somewhat comforting, like great trumpets announcing the end of one thing and the beginning of another. It’s terrifying for sure, apocalyptic, yet how can one not be awed by it, accept its inevitability. This is big, very big, beyond us, and even the dogs know it.

We could just as well have been incinerated as walking around right now. When we pick up my daughter, she is still running around, laughing with absolute joy and innocence and for a moment I wonder if anything has happened at all. Watching her temporarily obscures the horror in my mind, the unthinkable remains unthinkable and my mind moves with my daughter’s movements.

Before going back home we go to the supermarket. We imagined all the food would already be gone, that people would start hoarding it, but the aisles are full, overflowing in fact. We pile up our wagon. Our daughter wants to hold the corn, the stalks of corn in her lap.

The Milky Way and the Hurricane

2011-08-30T15:49:00.003-04:00

It begins with my daughter going to Massachusetts with her friend and leaving her Milky Way behind. Every day she was gone, I just looked at the Milky Way just sitting on the kitchen counter unopened- taunting me, tantalizing me- what if? I thought to myself— what if I ate it and then replaced it before my daughter came home?

But there were two problems with that.

First, I’d probably forget to replace it and if I did she’d probably know it was a replacement because 11 year olds know these things.

Second, my wife would be pretty angry- because even though she never said anything- I knew she wanted it as badly as I did.

So it sat there- unopened, untouched until . . .

Two days before the hurricane came, my wife went out and bought two cartons full of non-perishable items- no Milky Ways- just a lot of canned stuff like tuna and Vienna sausages.

There was one box of vanilla wafers which is perhaps the direct antithesis to a Milky Way.

In addition to all this, we bought a First Aid kit, several flashlights and batteries, along with tarps and drop cloths and again--

No Milky Ways.

We were getting ready for Big Irene who we were certain was going to flood our basement and ram a giant tree onto the back of our house.

Then it came. My worst nightmare. I heard lapping sounds down in the basement—similar to our dogs drinking from their water bowl but louder, more intense. I ran down to the basement and it was completely flooded.

Only moments later I hear the giant tree fall on to the back of our house. Then our power went out and over the next several hours we ate all our perishables so they wouldn’t go bad.

We knew the non-perishables would be all we’d have left for the next few days— cans of tuna and Viennese sausages and deviled ham and fruit cocktail-and of course-vanilla wafers.

Things we never liked to eat under normal circumstances.

We feared that- ultimately-more sooner than later-our daughter’s Milky Way would be the only thing—or the last desirable thing- left in the house to eat.

As the winds continued to howl that Saturday night, as the rains continued to pound and flood our house- as visions of Armageddon danced in our heads— we knew that any moment one of us would go for the Milky Way.

After all, our daughter would understand. Did she want to find her parents half-starved when she came back home?

Of course not.

“Do we still have that Milky Way?” I innocently asked my wife.

“You mean our daughter’s Milky Way?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Is it still here?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why?”

“No reason,” I said.

“You’re not thinking of eating it, are you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “No more than you are.”

“Well, don’t,” she warned.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

Then we both laughed like we knew there was no way we could trust each other. I mean everyone was going nuts, weren’t they?

One of our neighbors, a newsman, a respected member of our block was right at this moment tossing buckets of water over his fence and onto his neighbor’s (a poor old lady) yard.

While still laughing, our backs now turned from each other and the Milky Way itself, suddenly, without warning, like we had rehearsed it for days, we turned around at the exact same moment and leapt towards the candy bar.

I got there first and grabbed it, but before I could do a thing, my wife grabbed it out of my hand and before she could do a thing she grabbed it back and it went on like this for a while until—the wrapper was in shreds, the chocolate mashed and melting all over our hands and as we desperately licked our own and each other’s fingers, the front door opened. We assumed it was the wind or perhaps looters but it was our daughter who came home early despite the hurricane because she missed us, because she wanted to be in her own home where she thought it was safe and secure.

“Mom and Dad!” she cried. “What have you done to my Milky Way! I’m so ashamed. I’m so ashamed of you!”

Oh my goodness, I thought looking at my wife. What have we done? No, better yet, what hath we wrought??

Then I woke up.

From my worst nightmare.

It’s 8 A.M. Sunday morning. My wife and dogs are still asleep. Our daughter is still in Massachusetts. I look out back and see our tree still standing. The winds have subsided. I go into the kitchen and turn on the light switch. The lights go on. The refrigerator is still humming, still lit and the food- those wonderful old perishables- smile back at me.

I go down to the basement and it is all dry. This is because we heeded the mayor’s warnings and put tarps on the floor, towels and garbage bags rolled up and stuck in the corners, sandbags against the doors.

I go back upstairs.

I hear the light snoring of my wife and dogs.

My neighbor continues to toss water from a bucket onto his neighbor’s (a poor old lady) backyard.

I look at the Milky Way-still unopened, untouched—glistening like a giant golden nugget under the glare of the kitchen lights.

And I think of our daughter-

Who would be so proud of us.

Old in Woodstock

2011-08-24T14:11:00.006-04:00

I don’t feel old in Woodstock. I mean I don’t feel old bad; I feel old good. I don’t really feel young in Woodstock either.

I mean, I know what they’re trying to do with all those retro t-shirts and posters and cut-outs of a youthful Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. I know Dylan is 70 now and those other two would have been.

I guess you could say that when I visit Woodstock (New York that is) which I recently did with my wife and daughter— I feel young and old like I’m in two different places or time periods at the same time. There are some young people there who look like what we looked like in the 60’s who wished they were in the 60’s and a lot of old hippies who in many ways still are.

I mean if there’s any place at all I actually like looking my age it’s in Woodstock. Even if I wasn’t at Woodstock (as opposed to being in it) young people look at me like I might have been and that’s all I need to feel- something like an old statue covered with leaves and pigeon poop but nevertheless still there- rooted, timeless, ageless, looked up to (literally) by an entire generation.

Because I might have been there.

Mr. Yasgur's Farm

When I walked into a shop that sold useless knick-knacks two older ladies with granny glasses and frizzy white hair smiled at me like an old friend they shared a bong with in the middle of Max Yasgur’s farm in the pouring rain covered in mud chanting for the rain to stop waiting for the great Santana to take the stage. At least it seemed like they were looking at me like that.

In another shop, the owner was on the phone explaining to someone about a channeling the dead class and I immediately thought of Hendrix and Joplin and Morrison and even Mama Cass whose amazing, disembodied voice I would hear later in still another useless chatchka emporium.

I’m a little less skeptical about things like channeling and the healing powers of crystals in this town than almost anywhere else. Or at least I want to be.

Now I’m back in the city on the way to my young friend Kat’s new play “Undocumented.”

Only a block from the subway, I look and notice dark storm clouds gathering. The next thing I know I’m tripping (not on LSD) but on a crack in the sidewalk (the bane of old people) and fall like the proverbial ton of bricks. When I finally get up, my knee is in pain, my ankle feels sore and I’ve skinned my elbow like I used to do when I was 10 except my mother (or even wife) isn’t around to administer the Bactine.

Still, I get up, as quickly as I can (which means slowly) before someone tries to help me and manage to get to the play- and actually enjoy it relatively pain free despite the fact this young guy had to squeeze in next to me- significantly restricting my leg movement.

On the subway back, I have to stand but I’m okay with it; I neither feel nor show any signs of pain; I mean I’m just standing there when I feel someone feverishly tapping me on my back. When I turn around I notice it’s a middle aged Chinese man who wants in the worse way to give me his seat.

Now I know the Chinese are a wise people and I’m thinking no matter how straight I’m standing, no matter how far over my eyes I keep my hat, no matter how much I try to channel Jimi and Janis in my head, this guy sees through it all. This is misguided respect for sure- Respect for age sure but what about for my wisdom- my spiritual aura, my iconic, ageless, timeless presence- would you offer a seat to a statue?

To an idea?

To an at as opposed to an in?

Max Yasgur's Farm Today

The next day back at work, a couple of my colleagues, slightly, but not significantly older than I am, asked where I had gone on vacation. “Woodstock,” I told them.

“Woodstock, N.Y. or Vermont?” they asked. When I told them New York, they both suggested I try Woodstock, Vermont, an idyllic, peaceful, well-manicured little town where young is young and old is old and where Jimi and Janis- cut outs not withstanding— are long gone.

Who needs that? I thought to myself, smiling at them like we once shared a bong in the middle of Max Yasgur’s farm . . .

Midnight Sun

2011-08-01T10:59:00.003-04:00

It was scary. I turned on Channel 1 news and there it was on the bottom left hand of the TV screen right above the time— 11:55 A.M.- 104 degrees. It couldn’t be, I thought to myself. This must be some kind of nightmare. I expected that any moment my own child (except she was away at camp so let’s say the child next door who wasn’t) to bang down the door, mouth dripping with blood, and sink her teeth into my neck like it was one of those racks of lamb dangling from the middle eastern food truck—(see “Dawn of the Dead” sans Middle Eastern food truck).

The streets were eerily deserted but for some poor dogs (and their owners)whose tongues dragged along the sizzling sidewalks of Park Slope.

I thought, as usual, of the Twilight Zone, the one called “Midnight Sun” where the Earth—as Rod Serling informs us-
“ . . . has suddenly changed its elliptical orbit and is moving closer to the sun. . . The time is five minutes to twelve midnight. There is no more darkness. The place is New York City and this is the eve of the end, because even at midnight it’s high noon, the hottest day in history and you’re about to spend it in the Twilight Zone.”

And spend it I did.

It’s 1961. Men are not wearing sports jackets and their sleeves are rolled up. Women walk around their apartments sweating and just wearing slips.

Yes, the world is coming to an end.

A man, apparently gone berserk (but not in a crazy 2011 way) breaks into a young woman’s apartment and steals some of her water. Later, he comes to his senses, having slaked his thirst, and apologizes to the young woman, an artist whose paintings all seem to have the same theme—a giant blazing sun about to incinerate the Earth.

Finally, her thermometer bursts, her landlady- that proverbial, wonderful voice of doom and gloom- succumbs to a self-prophesying, yet inevitable death, and in a symbolic tour de force- which was no mean special effects in those days—the young woman’s paintings begin to melt— the paint dripping like gooey death off the canvas.

But it’s all a dream.

The young woman awakes from a fever dream. It’s winter. You can see darkness and snowflakes out the window. Everything will be all right. It was a just a dream, right?

No, not at all. After all this is the Twilight Zone. If it’s a nightmare than it’s usually a nightmare within a nightmare. This time it’s not earth moving closer to the sun, but the earth moving away from the sun and everyone is about to freeze to death or be buried by snow- which I’m sure the Mayor isn’t going to bother to clean up.

We’re screwed either way.

I think of Robert Frost— who very well might have watched this very episode of the Twilight Zone:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I think of this past week or month or maybe year—

Obama and the Republicans- the liberals and the centrists- the conservatives and the moderates- fighting over the debt ceiling all of us sitting back knowing no matter what happens, no matter who wins-

We’re screwed either way.

Then there was the Christian right-wing anti-Muslim terrorist who bombed the government in Oslo and shot innocent children before they could grow up to become labor party members.

And, of course, Amy Winehouse- so bright, so young- so far gone her death surprised no one.

And Rupert Murdoch- evil incarnate-surviving a near death by pie experience.

And it was hot.

Everywhere.

Oh, for the winters of yesteryear!

Caroline Hagood: Beauty of the Blank Page

2011-07-15T11:01:00.008-04:00

Caroline Hagood’s poetry explores the wonderful contrarieties of life and language—it awakens our imagination as if (metaphorically, of course) she has thrown ice water over it after a long sleep. She combines images I have never seen combined before.

For example, as I write what I write now, I am thinking of something else— her images will not settle neatly in my brain— I cannot sit still.

I take a walk.

I come back.

I need to come back. In fact, before I can go on I have to mention that the phrase “stout brew of human howling” still haunts me- in a beautiful way. As many of her images, it goes deeper inside me than I expected. Yes, some imagery is like the “slurrings of the dylanous Bob”(and what better adjective could one create to describe Bob Dylan than his own name!) but it’s the Hagoodian Caroline whose images often meet in darkness and explode into oxymoronic loveliness and light. In “New
York, New York,” she says,
Living to sit on fire escapes,
And watch my Gotham pass by taxi light,
A cement orchid among hot dog stands,
Beautiful and artificial

She embraces the city and all its wonderful opposites, its Whitmanesque “knot of contrarieties” after an apparent loss of love—you might say a kind of human power failure:
Tonight my city is fat with night light as I look upon it.
I forget, but my New York remembers,
Tells my story back to me

At this late hour, I allow myself a wild fancy,
Alone and smitten by pavement,
I imagine my metropolis in love with me.

If her lover won’t love her, her city-- sensual and sensuous, ugly and beautiful, transitory and eternal- always will.

The poem is ironic and sorrowful; it is honest and tender. It is about a moment in the poet’s life but it is also about the life of the poet, the poet who works not only by artificial or even candlelight by the lights of the city itself, “taxi light” “seared light of Brooklyn,” a city “fat with night light” lights that distort reality yet illuminate the mystical quality of the city and the poet. The story the city “tells back” is the city as poem— her “wild fancy,” the city enveloping her imagination.

Indeed, much of Caroline Hagood’s poetry is about poetry, the agony and pain of its creation and its ability to remain kindled in the poet’s mind. Becoming a poet merges with the confusion of knowing who one is, what one must do to live, why one is alive at all, and most importantly, what’s all that “water swirling inevitability” going on inside of her— For Hagood it is the poet yearning to emerge- or better yet- burst out like Athena from the head of Zeus-arriving fully armed with metaphor.
“. . . a measles of infrastructure —
So vast and vat deep that I am beginning
To see earth worms ascending while I sleep,
The true knowers of the blackness.”

I am reddened, raw and tender.
I sit here with all this mangled light inside me,
Coming to the surface, water swirling, inevitable . . .

Cut me open and you will find words,
Smoky, deconstructed sentences, a multiverse of language
That builds huge structures while I’m not looking. . .

Suddenly, written water starts to flow.

Ah, yes. The ultimate teenage angst. The ultimate teenager as poet angst:
“My beautiful mistakes haunt me
Like the radioactive candy apple at the fair
That I never should have eaten.”

Is this the forbidden apple? Is this the forbidden apple that thrusts the teenager/poet towards the godhead, towards a knowledge reserved for the poet? Whatever it may be, for the birth of poetry and the poet always remains a mystery, she is right about herself.

There is also her struggle to reconcile her poetry, ironic, “multiverse,” with her relation to others, to the “real” world.

“I wish I could just speak
This poem language to people . . .”
So often I remind myself
That people don’t talk like that
And if I do, they will find out at last that I’m not a person . . .

Finally, she realizes she can’t always fit into both worlds but certainly that one can enrich the other, that each can enrich and embrace each other:
But it’s all good
I’ve decided to stay strange
And deal with the problems as they arise . . .

In “Quarter-life Crisis” she sees poetry as “so many memory-encoded moments/set to be reversed in sky-logic . . .these lettered entrances to my Netherlands,/my recombined alphabet stew . . .

Poetry for her always remains inexplicable, magical, Alice-like- the writing process itself like
. . . walking through some thought forest,
My limbs beating time with the tentacles of trees.

And fortunate for us that upon one of these trees she has “made a bird’s nest for (her) poems/so they would always have a place to go.”

“The most beautiful thing I ever saw,” Hagood writes, “was a piece of blank paper that I could fill up.” And fill it she does- taking us to those transcendent, breath-taking places only great poets can.

See more of Caroline's work and find her poetry on her blog on Salon.com, Culture Sandwich and Poets & Writers or follow her on twitter.

The Shed

2011-07-07T10:40:00.013-04:00

On June 15, I attended the launch/reception for the Brooklyn Book Festival. At last year’s festival I shared a table with my friend and colleague Gregory Tague. We represented St. Francis College.

We sold one book between the two of us but spoke to enough Brooklyn “characters” to fill several more books including the Russian woman who claimed the US government had evicted her from her apartment and wanted to know if she could leave her suitcase under our canopy- out of the rain.

We probably should have checked to see what was in that suitcase but somehow we trusted her because in some way we might have identified with her that day— wet, isolated, alone, unknown, placed outside the inner circle of the writers who “made it” who were reading and selling their books in the dry comfort of Borough Hall or St. Francis College- the very college we were supposedly representing. Not wanting to remove myself from my table, from the slimmest of chance of selling one of my books, I gave all my complimentary tickets— tickets to see and hear the “big
writers,” the inner circle of writers— away.

We are the side show— we find ourselves on the outskirts of legitimacy— we are the “unestablished,” struggling for recognition, acceptance— “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” the Beatles said.

“Genius all over the world stands hand in hand and with one shock of recognition goes the circle round,” Melville said.

Meanwhile, we sit in the rain— listening to the stories of the wanna-bes, the almost-weres, the doomsayers and naysayers, the beautiful and damned, the marginal and neglected, those ancient and middle aged mariners roaming the earth and assorted book fairs needing to tell their story.

Now, nearly a year later I find myself at the launching of the next great Brooklyn Book Festival. Marty Markowitz, our Emperor, praises Brooklyn as the new literary capital of the world, it's great writers like Jennifer Egan- recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad.

And here I am in the middle of it all— out of the rain, drinking red wine and eating little gourmet sandwiches with little toothpicks in them. I am, for the moment, inside the great circle and I am hoping as I shake the novelist Darcy Steinke’s hand that the shock of recognition will go the circle round!

It doesn’t.

The following Saturday I’m at my nephew’s Little League game with my brother-in-law who introduces me to Jennifer Egan whose son is on the same team. I tell her how much I liked her book and then my brother-in-law tells her I’m doing a reading that night. “Oh yeah? Where?” she asks. “It’s actually at my neighbor’s house. A shed in their backyard. A shed they renovated.”

I feel myself dissociating, drifting miles away. I don’t think Jennifer Egan can hear me anymore. I can barely hear myself. I begin to see Jennifer way in the distance becoming smaller and smaller receding further and further away until she becomes a single ray of light— until she is no longer there.

The Shed. What is the Shed? Is it like those barns in those old Judy Garland Mickey Rooney films where all these talented people are standing around and someone says— I think Mickey Rooney or maybe Donald O’Connor says, “Hey let’s put on a musical!” and Judy Garland says, “That’s a grand idea! And we can use my barn!”

Not exactly.

My neighbors, Roberta and David, created this little cultural cocoon to give local, Brooklyn writers a place to read their work— a place to show films and documentaries, to hold animation workshops for children.

But can there be a place any more outside the inner circle? Unknown, unrecognizable, isolated?

We gather in our hosts’ living room and kitchen. I bond with my audience— eat with them, drink with them, discuss films and literature- before I myself read a single word.

Then it’s time. There really is no set time. The Shed is eternal. It is not limited by space (well, maybe-it can’t seat much more than 25 or so) or time (well, our hosts would like to go to sleep eventually).

As I step down the steep wooden stairs that lead into their backyard I start to panic. What am I doing? Where am I going? Is this expanse of darkness, as small as it is- between house and shed- a journey into the underworld? A journey back into my tangled past? Into an uncertain and anxious future?

My audience leads the way, strolling- with a palpable lack of urgency- a sense of amiableness and good will.

Then, once I enter the Shed, I shed my fears, my doubts, my geometric uncertainties. I do not see- “obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror”- like Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown does in the dark forest as he searches for his own “Faith,” his own world and his own uncertain relationship to that world.

Once I crossed my neighbor’s backyard and enter the Shed I begin to feel at peace- that this is where I want to be, where I belong.

I begin to wonder what I could possibly have meant by this idea-my idea- of this inner and outer circle of writers— of the exclusiveness of art— of creativity— of one circle being superior to the other, of one hand worth holding more than another.

What could be more outside the circle of established writers, of established forums where writers read their work than the Shed nestled in the darkness, in the very back of my neighbor’s backyard and yet for me that night nothing could be more inside the circle.

Yes, there were only 8 people that night but they were 8 who came to hear me and whenever I looked up from my story I could see every face very clearly— listening, laughing, curious, surprised.

I followed my own story in their faces, in their eyes. My audience of 8 in the bright light of The Shed was worth a hundred in the dark.

These are the people I write for.

And this is what I have to remember.

Or else why write at all?

Tears for Lear

2011-06-14T14:10:00.009-04:00

I went to see King Lear at BAM the other night— alone- childless, dogless, wifeless, a naked, base Park Slopian stripped of his familial identity.

But it didn’t storm, nor did the winds howl or crack their cheeks (at curtain time the winds were actually out of the NE at only 8 mph.)

My wife bought me this ticket from a ticket liquidator for only 6 or 7 times face value- a young man in khaki shorts and orange fedora- who met me at a designated street corner near my house.

I told her how much I wanted to see this production with Derek Jacobi- one of my favorite actors of all time ever since I saw him in “I Claudius” on PBS back when I was in college— so she surprised me with a ticket-an early Father’s Day present.

Father’s Day also happened to be the day we first met our daughter in China back in 2000. I remember so clearly the moment she was born to us, how all the girls were born to us at the same moment, the screaming and crying and howling, the most terrifying and primitive, not to mention the most beautiful, sounds we had ever heard. It was as if life had suddenly spilled out of non-life, out of abstraction and speculation, out of repressed emotion or emotion on hold.

I had spent the day of King Lear with my soon to be 12 year old daughter. We did our usual shoe shopping and talked a little about adoption and I happened to mention how lucky some of her friends were who ended up with parents who had a lot of money (which we do not) and that’s when my daughter sang the immortal words of Jessie J:

“It’s not about the money money money
We don’t need your money money money
Just wanna make the world right
Forget about the price tag”

“Yeah, Daddy,” she went on. “Money is nice but I’d rather have you.”

Ah, I thought, already starting to cry hours before the play, this was no Regan or Goneril, professing some false love, drooling for half my kingdom. No, this was my Cordelia who I would always need and want to protect from a cruel and uncertain world a world where “as flies to wanton boys so are we to the Gods.”

Ever since I watched the Zefferelli version of Romeo and Juliet with my college students last spring and cried uncontrollably at the end- unable even to utter the single word “goodnight”— a good cry has become my litmus test for a successful production of a Shakespeare tragedy.

Anyone who does not like the play King Lear- King Lear might be considered by some Shakespeare purists as a “thankless child” you know “sharper even than a serpent’s tooth.” There might be some association with poison there as well— I remember when I was growing up and went against my grandmother’s advice how she would lash out at me, “I hate you like poison” which was perhaps her less elegant way of saying “how sharper than . . .”

I mean Lear has it all: loyalty, betrayal, vengeance, redemption, love, lust, hate-even comic relief. Shakespeare is life-from all sides and angles— it runs the gamut of every human emotion. Even if you are dozing off at some long difficult monologue, something will suddenly jolt you into the shock of recognition- something that has connected us in some ineffable way to every human whoever lived and will live. Shakespeare isn’t just the moment or the three hours until your parking runs out it is for now and forever.

So that Saturday night, I watched the tragedy play out. Lear’s misguided loyalty— the evil betrayal of Goneril, Regan, Edmund— the selfless loyalties of Kent and Cordelia—the bloodless stabbings—the bloody tearing out of Gloucester’s eyes-- that “vile gel” flung against the castle wall— there was Lear’s madness— terrible, pathetic, sad, angry, at times even comical.

Yes, it was Shakespeare- the lines were there— the great speeches— a powerful make believe storm on a bare stage— It all certainly made me think, to shudder, but, alas, not to cry.

And then— suddenly- it came. From off-stage came perhaps the very culmination, the most extreme moment of Lear’s tragedy, of a father’s tragedy, of human tragedy itself. It was the wailing— Derek Jacobi, Lear wailing, howling, while carrying his daughter in his arms, the daughter who loved him more than land or money—
And that’s when I too finally lost it.

“Howl! Howl! Howl! Howl! Howl!”
Oh, you are men of stone”

No Lear! I don’t know about everyone else, but I am not a man of stone! I am with you! I hear you! I feel you!

“Had I your tongues and yes,
I’d use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack.”

Now Lear? Now? It’s too late. It’s too too late. You see you gave it all up.

It was not about the money money money
It was about the love love love.

You gave up the only daughter who really loved you. You are old. You are nothing now. But still you wail, you howl; you have woken up the world; no doubt you have woken up the audience-down to the last daydreamer—down even to that person dragged to the play by his wife wondering only where he’ll be having dinner afterwards—

I cry for him. I cry for everyone.

I cry because . . . because one just doesn’t know. None of us knows what stupid human mistake is going to bring us to our knees and make us sorry we never appreciated what we had and not what we didn’t have. That the only thing ever certain, ever constant, was uncertainty.

So I am crying, but I am also happy, more than happy that Shakespeare and Lear and Derek Jacobi have not made me sorry for coming tonight

And especially for being human.

And all I want is to go home now and thank my wife again who bought me this ticket—no matter how much it cost- out of pure love.

And to my daughter who would rather have me than all of my kingdom or even someone else’s kingdom-

For now at least.

Apology to Dorothy

2011-06-01T09:29:00.005-04:00

I guess I never thought anyone—- outside my inner circle of course-- really read these things. That is until I started noticing a neighbor of mine down the block who started giving me the cold shoulder— these kind of begrudging hellos or nods of the head-- every time I passed her house.

One day I asked her if she ever saw that writer who lived in the apartment next door, the one she wanted me to meet so badly, the one who was supposedly coming out with a novel.

“I don’t see him much anymore,” she told me. “And I also wanted to say that it wasn’t very nice saying I was a nag on the Internet.”

“Did I do that?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You called me a nag because I wanted you to meet that guy and I don’t think that was very nice saying that on the Internet.”

Then it came to me. My blog! Dorothy somehow had read my blog entry from last September when I did imply that Dorothy was rather persistent in her attempts to get us (me and the young writer) to meet each other. In other words, in her words, “nagging me” about it.

Let me just state right here that Dorothy is a nice person. She is a well meaning person. She really doesn’t nag and so what if she does sometimes? Nagging can be an act of love, of caring, of wanting the object of the nagging to do well in the world. My mother, my wife, my daughter, even me; we all nag because we have our best interests in mind. If Dorothy was actually “nagging” me about meeting this guy she too had the best of intentions. She wanted to see two writers, two people with similar interests get together, talk, have coffee, maybe even become friends. This is a positive kind of “nagging” with hopefully positive results.

This is somewhat related to creating a sense of harmony in the world rather than friction. Dorothy wanted two people with similar likes to get together and not only, perhaps, to enrich their own lives but maybe the world or even the universe in some way. Dorothy and others like her, unable to make more significant changes in the world— like Oprah for example— can at least start small because no matter how small the act of kindness, no matter how small the gesture–- no matter for one person or thousands-- which always might need a little “nagging” or persistence to get it done-- will make just as significant impact on the universe.

I’m the crab. I’m the one who flips the universe whenever I get the chance. I’m the one full of envy, humoring Dorothy every time she asked if I wanted to meet this guy—- I’m the one who really didn’t care whether I met him or not--who saw no benefit-- to me certainly-- meeting someone 30 years my junior who most likely could do me (as Rodney Dangerfield used to see) absolutely no damn good.

Besides I never like meeting people—- at first—- okay if I must I must—- and sometimes I’m not sorry and once in a while it even works out. Like my wife—- true no one nagged me to meet her-— but maybe that would have been okay, especially if had started a little earlier.

And as for this young writer Dorothy wanted me to meet so badly. Well, I finally did meet him and even gave him my blog address. And did he ever ring my door bell and talk to me about my blog, in particular the entry which Dorothy interpreted as me calling her a nag?

No, he just showed her the entry and let her make whatever assumptions, good or bad she would make out of it.

Did he want her to make the wrong assumptions?

Did he assume she’d make the right assumptions?

Were his intentions good—- did he just think that Dorothy would enjoy being talked about on the internet, good, bad or indifferent? As Oscar Wilde once said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

I don’t know, but since Dorothy and I already knew each other, I don’t think he was trying to bring us together, to make another positive dent in the universe. No, whatever dent he made is a dent I’m going to have to bring to the shop and smooth over.

So Dorothy, here’s to you-- your kindness, your good intentions—- I appreciate it and I know the universe does as well.

Judgement Day

2011-05-24T15:44:00.007-04:00

On Judgement Day, my daughter and I went shopping for shoes. Within seconds of entering the store, she picked out a pair of flip flops and I a pair of running shoes. The grand total came to less than $30.

A Judgement Day sale?

Perhaps, though there was no indication of it. “Let’s check out some other stores,” I said to my daughter. “Maybe there’ll be some sales there too.” Oh, if only Judgement Day could be every day, I thought to myself. How calm everyone seemed that day, how patient with each other, how resigned to their own fate and the fate of everyone else. I almost expected Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera” to be piped through the streets.

Of course that could have been the weather. It was sunny and mild, not a cloud in the sky, the first time in days there seemed no threat of rain. No, just the threat of total annihilation and extreme suffering and hell fire for those who “did not believe.”

I could live with that.

The next store we went to, a giant discount store had t-shirts for only $1.99. I mean, yes, it was a discount store, but these shirts usually go for $2.99. That’s a whole dollar. Then again, what was I to do with a whole dollar if the end came?

Bribe Beelzebub? Grease Satan’s palm? I doubted that. After all, the currency in hell must be completely different.

They might even use Euros.

So on we went, my daughter and I looking for sale after sale and usually finding them.

“People must be really expecting the end of the world,” I told my daughter.

“Maybe it’s the Economy,” she answered.

“The Economy!” I exclaimed. “That’s it!” From the mouths of Babes. Uh oh, I thought to myself. I’m starting to quote— sort of- the Bible. A sign of something? Who knows?

Back to the Economy.

There’s so much uncertainty in the world— for the world. Maybe for some of these stores, many of these owners and employees and their families, everyday is the threat of doomsday— every day a struggle to survive. So maybe these are doomsday sales— if not for today— then for some doomsday in the future.

My daughter and I talked about these Doomsday believers for a while- she in her brand new flip flops, me in my thinly padded brand X running shoes. We were happy. We ourselves were still “non-believers” so we were happy. We found the shoes we were looking for- within seconds- we were happy.

“Maybe these people aren’t ‘crackpots,’” I told her.

“What’s a crackpot?” she asked me.

“Crazy,” I said. “Maybe they’re not so crazy.”

“You mean the world isn’t going to end today?” she asked hopefully.

“I doubt it,” I said. “But maybe these people who think so just want to make a point-want everyone to be aware of God- to fear God- to be aware of something besides ourselves. Or maybe . . .”

“Maybe?” she asked.

“Or maybe they’re just crackpots,” I said. I think at that point my daughter stopped listening, but still, I kept talking.

“Think how comforting that would be— I explained to her- to really believe- I mean believe it so strongly that you take your whole family, kids, dogs, plants all over the country trying to get other people to believe it too- that within hours, minutes you were really going to meet God, be spending eternity in bliss.

And if they’re wrong? How will they explain that? God changed His (Her) mind? Mathematical miscalculation? On the other hand if the rest of us are right and the world doesn’t end- how do we explain that? How do we keep justifying the world going on the way it does without feeling at least a little bit of responsibility for making it better, at least better enough so that the end doesn’t seem so desirable or even preferable?”

I went on— checking from time to time that she was still with me.
Not necessarily listening, but still with me.

“And maybe the fact that these people even made us think about and talk about and of course joke about the world ending, is a good thing— because even if we deny it forever, thinking and talking and joking still admits possibility- no matter how small a possibility. And I think the world can only survive if we can admit to that-to the possibility at least- of possibility.

I have to admit that this sudden onslaught of floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis in the world definitely has me thinking- if not worried. To admit the possibility of all things- great and small- good and evil— believe in something greater than ourselves— can’t be all wrong. And as for the Doomsayers— crackpots or not— there’s always next time.”

Yes, there’s always a next time, I thought to myself.

If only the rest of us could be that optimistic.

Then, just like that, the skies began to darken.

“Looks like rain,” I told my daughter.

“Yeah,” she said. “Rain.”

“Well, they did predict it,” I assured her.

“Exactly,” she said. “Is it 6 0’clock yet?”

“Not nearly,” I told her.

And so we hurried home- still clutching our brand new, non-refundable, doomsday shoes.

China Memoir

2011-05-12T13:55:00.000-04:00

I remember giving birth to my daughter on the night of April 6, 2000. Just the night before I had written the following letter to her:

Dear Anna Rose-

Your mother and I are waiting to take you home. Right now you’re more a dream than a reality, but still you’re there— we’ve named you- we’ve imagined you— we’ve already put you into our lives and you’re here except— no one knows this more than we do—you’re not here.

The fact that you are Anna Rose and you are already in our hearts if not in your home- and there is no way to remove you from them in either thought or deed- so in a sense then we are no longer waiting.

If we never saw you- if God forbid we were never to see you at all- though I know that’s impossible because you exist— you are there in China, somewhere, no matter if you have been or will be chosen for us because you are already part of us; we are already a family.

You are the child who will be given to us not because they have decided to give you to us or because they have picked one child over another child but because you are the child who is meant to be given to us and has always been meant to be given to us long before we had ever thought of having you. I wish I could tell you right now not to worry because even though we are not there yet to take you home still we are coming and since you are in our hearts nothing can happen to you— you are as good as here.

The next day we received a call from Gongzhon— our Chinese connection from the Gladney Adoption Agency- that “they” had begun “mixing and matching” adoptive parents and babies in Nanchang, China, and that any day now we would be receiving “official confirmation,” so I wrote to her again:

Dear Anna Rose—

Now I know you’re listening! No one has ever responded to one of my letters so quickly, not even by e-mail. So they’re mixing and matching. Like I said you were always here but it’s nice to get some unofficial official confirmation.

Anyway, sleep well and dream of big American toy stores.

Love,
Your Dad

It was not an easy birth, not an easy journey, but I enjoyed every agonizing, ecstatic moment of it. It began with frustration and disappointment and the end of something that left us dead inside, that would shed old beliefs like skin, from which- like a miracle- new life would emerge.

There is no real way to know when this journey began. There is, of course, the failure of biology.

I suppose it begins there. But not really.

“Why don’t you adopt?” friends would ask and we would say it’s not the same thing.

It wouldn’t be ours. It wouldn’t look like us, act like us, eat like us, cough in the winter or sneeze in the summer like us, be bad in math like us.

I’m not exactly sure when the exact moment came or moments or days when we began to see things differently— maybe it was the day I saw a little girl run into her father’s arms on his way home from work or a father showing his young son Shea Stadium for the first time from the window of the #7 Train- shining like a great ancient jewel under the Flushing sun— something let us feel what it would be like to be parents no matter what the child looked like or talked like.

Reaching the decision to adopt was the end of the first journey— others followed from applications and medical reports and fingerprinting and referral letters to the moment we heard those babies’ screams in the hallway of a hotel in China until we brought our daughter home holding a plain brown envelope that under no circumstances was allowed to be opened— or else what?

We’d have to send her back?

Or else?

What if?

These journeys within a journey were fraught with uncertainty, fate, speculation, fear, anticipation, the haunting spectre of the unknown. They were also filled with unimaginable joy, a heightened sensation of heart and mind that was like none other I had ever experienced.

The final journey was the memoir itself. Memory is a funny thing. Certain events, moments, sounds, sights are indelibly etched into my brain. Other events, moments, sounds and shapes were overwhelming, vertiginous; I can only recall them as if I were recalling the moments of a dream, in fragments and images, sometimes surreal, sometimes too real— I think of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tamborine Man (though through the entire trip I was never on anything stronger than a Tsing Tao)

“Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship/
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip/
my toes too numb to step. . .”

and those were just my feelings before I even got on the plane to China.

My memoir on adopting my daughter from China was perhaps the hardest thing I ever wrote mainly because at the same time that I was trying to understand what was going on, what this sudden unexpected journey in the middle of my life actually meant, to capture in words what it actually felt like– I was trying to get others to understand, to feel all of this at the same time.

I hope you’ll join me on my journey. Stay tuned.

Paul

2011-04-30T10:18:00.006-04:00

Meeting Paul Violi for the first time was like meeting one of his poems for the first time— charming, cynical, joyful, bright, unique and full of surprises.

When I heard he died, I felt a part of me die too. He was the kind of person— and there aren’t that many of them— whom you can’t imagine the world without and though I hadn’t spoken to him for a few years I began to miss him immediately.

His death scared me too- like if Paul is gone why am I still here?

How is the world going to sustain another loss like this?

Paul was a friend and a colleague and a fellow writer but also a mentor. Paul taught me— though I’m still learning— how to love what I’m doing and to just keep on doing without worrying about what others think or might think about what I’m doing. He eschewed the conventional; the conventional is dishonest; predictability insidious, pretension, hypocrisy, dishonesty of thought and action were unforgivable.

He could be both biting and passionate about the world. I think he was angry that the world could not recognize its own potential for wonder and beauty and that- most of all- it had no sense of humor about itself.

That was Paul’s job, as poet and as a teacher— to infuse humor and irony into all the serious business in our lives and to forge something no one had ever seen before.

Reading or listening to him read his poetry was like being a spectator or participant in a strange carnival or circus that has suddenly broken out in our minds that reveals truths to us as if they were our dreams. They are profound and funny; earthly and erudite, marvelous and mischievous, the leap between each line, each image, like a wild and netless trapeze act:

A lovely plant
that smells like rotten meat,
Or any other flowering contradiction
Whose colors attract bees
But whose stench draws flies;
Whose pollination depends
On an insult as well as beauty. (from “Little Testament”)

I was so pleased when Paul described the characters in my stories— for a blurb on the back of my book- as “farcical and heroic as their everyday lives turn into an eerie high wire act.”

How wonderful to have been validated by Paul, to be accepted into his own marvelously absurd universe. For me it was nice enough to be able to meet him on those nights before class at NYU when just sitting with him outside of Shimkin Hall drinking coffee, talking, or just sitting there absorbing the aura that was Paul Violi.

I suppose Paul’s last surprise- for any of us- was his death. What was that about?

I mean if anyone could put death in its place, could make it seem foolish, preposterous, it was Paul. Death, so obvious, so mundane, so inevitable; everything Paul wasn’t. And Paul did outsmart death too. Yes, he is gone now, but he left that larger poem, the poem that was him, that is still out there, that is in all of us who knew him and even Death cannot take that away.

L

2011-04-19T14:39:00.008-04:00

Lately I’ve been feeling a bit old, useless, obsolete, weary, stale, flat and definitely unprofitable. Cheer up, my friends and family tell me, you still have plenty to offer the world, you’re only as old as you feel.

And then I see my horoscope in the L magazine-- the coolest magazine in the world, the magazine I am not hip enough for, the magazine that I have to sneak out of its cool orange kiosk with the big letter L on it because I don’t want to be spotted by the hip police—- a magazine either named after a lousy subway line to hip Williamsburg or someone’s girlfriend named Lisa or Laura or Layla—- I see my horoscope which is so cool and so esoteric in a cool, hip way which says, “You’re only as old as you feel, Virgo! Bullshit! You’re actually getting older and closer to death! Hooray! Whatever wisdom you feel you have accumulated is actually just exhaustion! Forget it! The human soul is like a plastic bag that eventually just bursts! Into plastic shreds! Sorry!”

Thank you, “the” L magazine. I wasn’t imagining things after all. I am old and useless. I knew I had been falling asleep a lot on the couch because of all that damn accumulated wisdom I’ve gathered over the years.

What wisdom?

The wisdom I “feel” I’ve accumulated which—- according to L is probably no wisdom at all. It’s satisfying to know that “all ye know on earth and all ye need to know” is the wisdom now contained in a hip—pocket-sized magazine. In fact observe the cover title of this week’s issue: “5 Art Stars You Need To Know.”

You see? Was I making that up? “Need to know.”

But you see I’m not even hip enough to know that I need to know it. To tell you the truth, I feel a little bit like a dirty old man looking at this magazine, like I’m looking through my daughter’s drawers or something and finding things I really don’t need to nor want to know.

There’s always an American Apparel ad on the back cover of the L magazine of a half naked or selectively naked or seemingly naked or suggestively half seemingly naked young woman in some awkward sexual pose which I definitely should not be looking at for a lot of reasons. One is how old it makes me feel. Another is how creepy it makes me feel looking at it. And how even creepier it makes me feel feeling that the girl is somehow looking back at me in a not unwelcoming way-- mistaking me—- of course-- for another twenty year old who “needs to know” as opposed to some older guy who does not—- anymore.

I also made the mistake of entering the L magazine Literary Upstart Reading contest-—1,500 words or less. I tortured two of my stories-- like Procrustes trying to fit his “guests” into his little bed—- cutting them down from 3,000 plus words to a measly 1,500. Just to be an upstart!

I entered twice and was rejected twice.

I don’t think I mentioned mutilation, hopelessly depressing relationships or bodily fluids enough.

Consider the rejection:

“While we were grateful for the opportunity to read the piece, we’re sorry to say we won’t be inviting you to read at our upcoming events—- but we’d love to see you there.”

The only word the guy left out was “grandpa.” It’s like grandpa no longer being invited to family dinners because he might keep embarrassing us in front of the guests. He says things now that people just don’t get, esoteric things, sometimes wise, sometimes funny, but stale, unhip wise, strange—- not ha ha-- funny.

Dear Grandpa-- Thank you for the opportunity of knowing you but we won’t be inviting you to Thanksgiving dinner anymore. We’d love you to come and watch us eat as long as you keep your mouth shut!

Now would I like nothing better than to just pass by these filthy little kiosks with my nose held high but my dog insists on peeing on them.

You see, my dog’s name is Layla so she probably thinks the magazine is named after her.

Reasonable

2011-04-05T17:13:00.004-04:00

In Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” the American, who has gotten his girlfriend pregnant, has been a bit too “reasonable” in trying to get her to agree to an abortion. On the other hand, she has been “rather patient” with him, up until a point of course; she has not told him to shut up but instead she asks him “rather calmly” to “please please please please please please please stop talking.”

When he starts to talk again, she does not scream, but only threatens to scream.

“I’ll scream,” she says.

When the waitress tells the couple that the train from Barcelona- on its way to Madrid- will be stopping in two minutes he gets up to move their two “heavy bags around the station to the other side.” On the way back he stops at the barroom “where people waiting for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train.”

What does it mean- I always wondered- for the 35 years since I first read this story- to wait “reasonably for a train?” First of all are they really waiting reasonably or does he just think they are— his judgement somewhat clouded by the Anis, a drink known for its high alcoholic content and most of all by his desire that everyone, the whole world, but especially his girlfriend, like so many girlfriends before her- be reasonable- reason things out— act accordingly-take the path of least resistance.

The man has a lot of confidence in Reason— he believes the world (with a few beers and Anis del Toro) falls nicely into place (for him) with Reason.

I don’t like him. I like the girl. She has imagination. She thinks the hills look like white elephants. The man says he has never seen one. “No, you wouldn’t have,” she says.

She has an imagination

And a sense of humor

I always liked this girl. I remember the first time I read this story wishing it was me sitting at that little table with her. I would have the Anis. She would have apple juice. After all, she's pregnant.

We’d talk. About hills looking like white elephants- like clouds looking like donkeys making love- I’d lie and say I had seen white elephants before— she’d smile and I’d see what that guy had seen in her once what all men had seen in her once-that untamed laughter of a child- that calculating look of a woman— the reckless need to be loved- the dangerous tendency to trust men. The woman who could disarm reason just long enough to get herself in trouble.

Then I’d read her some of my poetry and then my short stories about waitresses and stale crullers and young women— like Dyspnea- who need to be saved by horribly destructive men.

Then we’d talk about Hemingway— not exactly Dr. Frankenstein— but her creator nevertheless. She’ll ask if she could be in one of my stories instead— Maybe one day I’d tell her because she is in my head all the time. I asked her if she wanted to go away with me. Get up from this table and get away from here. She said she couldn’t-that she had to wait-till he came back. It was part of the story. She had no right to get up, to change the story.

Is your name really Jig? I’d ask her.

No, she’d say. I don’t think so. I don’t really know my name. First I thought I was Spanish and when he called me Jig I thought I was English. I have no idea who I am or where I come from only that I keep ending up somewhere else.

She reminded me of Alaska.

Alaska was a character in one of my stories— the woman who had no idea why she was named Alaska yet was certain it had something to do with Destiny. And that’s when all the women in the neighborhood began to change their names. Barbara to Asia—Ethel to Europa—Angela to Africa— and now Jig to . . . to . . . Iberia! Congratulations Iberia I told her. You are now in my story.

And then we’d go somewhere— Iberia and I- somewhere else— because we were confident now and—as everyone knows- confidence quickens the imagination. We will leave before that guy comes back from the other side of the tracks. Before he sees an empty table—an unfinished glass of apple juice- before he sits down again and waits- reasonably—for all eternity if he has to— for her return.

Way Out

2011-03-30T15:23:00.005-04:00

I knew it wasn’t my imagination— the imagination of an 8 year old fueled by a raging childhood fever— lying in his bed, delirious, forced to eat soggy oatmeal and orange juice with the pulp still in it, threatened by doctors visits, long hypodermic needles pulled from black leathery bags of various and sundry medieval torture devices. I can still hear the water boiling on the kitchen stove. I can still see the smoke rising from the black box in the corner as if from a witch’s cauldron, the black box they called a “humidifier” though I knew better; I knew its real name was “the black box of death.”

What I had was what they used to call “the grippe,” a term that also frightened me and made me think of some creature from whose claws I could never free myself. Every year (it was usually during Christmas time) I got the “grippe” I was certain I would die from it and certainty, if I ever did, it would not have surprised me.

Yes, there were always reminders or instruments of death floating around. My mother knew how I felt about doctors, so she’d secretly call mine and he would secretly ring the doorbell which woke me out of my deepest fever dreams, and he would always stay in the kitchen and boil his needles while my mother yelled at me open my locked door.

As he examined me, I would look at his face. I looked for the expression I would often see on the TV shows like Ben Casey or Dr. Kildare when they were listening to the heartbeat of someone with a brain tumor. Then I’d watch the doctor’s eyes meet my mother’s and wait for that subtle shake of the head as if to say “It’s only a matter of time.” Then he’d just say, because there was nothing else he could say, ”Keep giving him what you’re giving him,” which would mean more soggy oatmeal and Orange Juice with the pulp still in it.

Then, just like that, usually by the weekend, I was better. Where was the sweet smell of death I wondered that would keep me home from school another week? Gone, gone!

But it was Friday night and Friday night meant The Twilight Zone. But this one particular year I can remember a new program (they called them “programs” in those days) coming on right before it called “Way Out.”

I was watching TV on our old portable black and white which was attached to a cable that ran clear across our little hallway into my parents’ bedroom straight into the closet where it was attached to the “main antenna” which sat proudly, defiantly on the roof of our apt. building daring the Russians to blow it away.

The first episode of “Way Out” was about a man’s brain kept alive in a tank of Ringer solution after the rest of him, the rest of his useless body, had died. This was my worst nightmare and perhaps the reason that this episode alone (out of 14 of them) was the one that stuck with me for the last 50 years. Imagine, a young boy with a fever- at the mercy of his mother-fed soggy oatmeal and OJ with pulp still in it— his body useless, unloved, his brain removed and put into a tank of Ringer solution- a curiosity at first like Kafka’s giant insect but soon becoming an inconvenience- taking up room on the bookshelf, having to be dusted, the solution changed by revolving cleaning women angered by my Grandmother’s incessant demands, pushed, shoved, excoriated.

One day the ringer solution is replaced by OJ with the pulp in it- another day a goldfish drops in, another day a turtle- nothing evil like the wife of the man in “Way Out” who blows cigarette smoke into the tank to intentionally annoy him— but just creeping neglect, a novelty that has out welcomed its novelty a brain that no longer served its purpose that sucked in math anyway and whose oscillator batteries would soon not be worth replacing.

And for 50 years it haunted me, this episode of “Way Out.”

I remembered something about a brain in a tank of liquid, a machine that recorded brain waves, a cranky genius, a vengeful wife, the helplessness, the fear— exposed to a cold and heartless world- nowhere to run, nowhere to hide- was it the memory of a childhood dream or was it real?

I asked people around my age if they remembered it but they didn’t. Perhaps I could have looked it up but I preferred the uncertainty— the doubt— memory as shadow and dream— that amusement park house of horrors and other odd occurrences part of my brain I like to roam in once in awhile undisturbed by reality.

But these days the comforts of uncertainty and mystery are much harder to come by.

One day last week a friend of mine posted the following on Facebook: “Roald Dahl’s ‘Way Out’ TV series now on line/Salon Arts and Entertainment” and just like that there it was, the very episode entitled “William and Mary” featuring a man’s brain floating in a jar of Ringer Solution, the famous Oscillator with its sharp and wavy lines to indicate the brain’s disposition and the brain’s wife blowing smoke on him.

So I hadn’t imagined it after all; although to be honest, once I saw it two or three more times I just couldn’t get up that old fear and terror it caused me as a child and kind of wish it had just remained as a shadow of uncertainty— half dream, half reality- in the child portion of my brain, the brain that did not want to be severed from its body before its time to float in a jar of orange juice with the pulp still in it.

Oh how I rue the day- which I believe might finally be here- when all my dreams and half dreams, my distorted perceptions and murky memories, —the potpouri of my imagination— are at last- thanks to the Internet- magically- thrown— like Prufrock’s “nerves in patterns on a screen,” ordered and explained- calculated and columned– projected on the excel sheet of my unconscious.

Nice for some people, but really “That is not it at all, that is not what I meant, at all.”

Ah Humanity

2011-03-23T20:31:00.003-04:00

Ah, humanity. The older the world and I become, the harder it is for me to understand some of the people in it. As Henny Youngman (look him up) might say, Take Gaddafi. Please.

Are we sure bombing the guy is the best idea? A lot of innocent people always seem to die way before you eventually, if ever, get the guy you want. Why not try reason?

How about trying to get him to go or better yet forcing him to go to therapy?

My idea is to somehow get him in a room with some of the best and the brightest therapists New York City has to offer (I would even narrow it down to Park Slope or the Upper West Side of Manhattan) and make him sit there- even if you have to tie him up- and maybe after 20 years or so get to the bottom of his rather consistent, irrational behavior. If this doesn’t work, then by all means kill him. By that time he might actually be crying for it. Anyway, just an idea.

Then there’s Japan. I like Japan. Despite the fact that the Japanese could have killed my father during WWII, I still like them. Even my father, when he went to Japan with the occupational forces in 1945, liked Japan, and liked the people very much. Anyway, some people— I won’t mention names— maybe it’s some of those people who prefer tea to coffee— have pointed out the irony that since the Japanese are getting somewhat “nuked” again, then it must be some divine retribution for Pearl Harbor and WWII.

Hunh?

You mean Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t enough? “Well, maybe it was enough for you,” one of them- let’s call him Bob- might say, “but it still ain’t good enough for me. And besides one might add, isn’t Tsunami a Japanese word? I mean you come up with the name for something like that you deserve to get one right up your ass.”

It certainly couldn’t be that Japan might just be located in still another bad spot on this drowning, crumbling planet of ours could it? Nah, what fun is that? You can’t get a good 65 year hatred up against a planet.

No, it makes people like Bob feel so much better getting that hatred up against other, usually innocent, people.

Ah, humanity. Whenever I hear myself saying with resignation that there will always be crackpots and bullies and bigots in the world, I think of those prophetic, eternal lines in Yeats’ “The Second Coming” :
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

So, maybe, if all those passionate bullies and bigots out there could be a little less passionate and a little more compassionate just maybe . . . I mean, after all, couldn’t it be- more than anything else- the lack of compassion in the world that might be slowly destroying it?

Ok, so now who sounds like a crackpot?

The End of Willie’s Dawgs

2011-03-16T17:22:00.009-04:00

Willie’s Dawgs is gone. You wouldn’t recognize the place. The first thing that goes when a hot dog place closes is the smell. Perhaps when a man closes down his hot dog place, when all the dogs are gone, when the sauerkraut and relish and mustard dissolve into thin air and are reclaimed by an indifferent universe, he will insist on taking the smell with him. I know that Tom- who used to own this place- packed up that smell and took it with him.

Tom’s “mutts” are gone. Heidi, Frankie, Rudy, Daisy, Grady, Murray, Carlos, Willie, Blue, Spike, Cassius, Sadie, Champ, all gone.

To be replaced by a Peruvian Bistro.

Another Peruvian bistro. Doesn’t Park Slope have enough Peruvian bistros?

It’s tough selling hot dogs and helping to save real dogs at the same time, but Tom was good at it. He let Sean Casey’s rescue truck park in front of his place every month or so to adopt out dogs. He hung up photos of beautiful dogs that either had been or still needed to be adopted. He stuck picture post cards of my book into each corner of each frame of every picture.

Dogs, food, sports, books- it was a good world.

As for the hot dogs, I will never forget those little diamond onions scattered across the hot dog sparkling under the sun of early spring where I sat at a picnic table, my back to all the Park Slope couples with their baby strollers, listening to my iPod and furiously working on my blackberry poems.

And the root beer. Will I ever really have root beer again and if so, when? And for free. Every Saturday afternoon when I came into Tom’s for a mutt (I just had the traditional Mutt with “stuff,” mustard, relish, onions on a big fluffy bun like one of those hotel beds that you, like one of Tom’s hot dogs, kind of sink and swim in all night) he or his helper Paul from Pittsburgh, would give me a free root beer. I didn’t even remember I liked Root Beer that much until I had it every week again like when I was a kid and I mean every week in the heat of summer, the cold of winter. I actually believed and still do that it was the root beer that you might say rooted me to that place more even than the hot dogs because the consistency, the freeness, the unlimited generosity associated with that small cup of cold root beer made me feel as welcome as if I were in my own home.

Ah, Saturdays will never be the same again. It was right before my pilgrimage to Willie’s Dawgs that I dropped my daughter off at Brooklyn Mercantile down the block where she was learning how to sew. I liked that too. Tamara, the owner, put two of my books on display, blending their colorful blue and red cover into the various fabrics and knick knacks and sundries and sewing items in the store always finding some new little angle every week in which to present them.

During Christmas, someone actually bought one for a gift which Tamara didn’t tell me about until a couple of weeks later but that was okay because it made me feel like a real writer because, hey, does a bookstore call the author every time it sells one of his/her books? “Hello, Mr. Beckett? Hi, it’s Tamara. I just sold another copy of “Waiting For Godot.” Isn’t that exciting? Hello, Mr. Beckett? Hello? Are you there?”

Alas, my daughter doesn’t “do” the sewing thing anymore so no more visits to Brooklyn Mercantile although I hope my books are still upstairs somewhere on display and not in the basement with all the old, discarded knick knacks and sewing machines.

Finally, after Tom’s, after my final hot dog and final root beer, it was time for the wine store where I’d roam totally ignorant, blindly choosing a Syrah or a Merlot because I know I’ve liked those before. These days my wife comes with me and, unlike me, she chooses carefully, roaming less and reading more- labels and those little descriptions just below the bottles or asking advice or even having heard of certain wines herself. What fun is that? But we do drink wine together now instead of just me having my glass or two and falling asleep on the living room couch.

I know my wife feels bad for me. Even she misses Tom and she hardly ever went in there. She doesn’t like hot dogs, but it was knowing he was around and how good he was for the real dogs and for the neighborhood and for just providing a little balance to all the pretentiousness and preciousness surrounding him.

Yeah, Tom is gone now but I have this feeling he’s not too far because once in a while I can still smell the hot dogs. Yeah, I know he’s out there somewhere and that one day we will meet over a cold root beer and a couple of hot dogs maybe at a food truck or on a different street or neighborhood or maybe even at a Met game.

The only thing is do they even have root beer at Met games?

Nikki

2011-03-04T12:28:00.006-05:00

When the Vet looked into Nikki’s eyes and said “This isn’t Nikki anymore,” my dog’s whole life flashed before my own eyes, from the moment we adopted him until the moment his legs finally gave way under him earlier that morning. He was my wild boy, my dog-faced boy, the dog I wanted to call Nova because he was bright and explosive and it was November and most of all he was always the dog I wanted to be.

No, this was not Nikki anymore, the little terrier spaniel retriever eskimo snow spitzer lab dog who never weighed more than 40 pounds but would bark relentlessly at Rotweillers and Pit Bulls and German Shepherds who dared cross his path.
Nikki was a dog of the “hood,” rescued after being tied up for days without food.
Until the day he died, if I ever fed him by hand I’d have to be careful he didn’t eat my fingers too.

Nikki and I did everything together. We were even trained together by Tyril, the “Dog Whisperer” of Park Slope. Nikki learned– sort of- not to jump on innocent people who happened to be walking past him, or running off with people’s hats or gloves or eating my favorite books or tearing his dog bed to shreds, or shaking his collar loose and running off somewhere even he didn’t know where.

I learned– sort of- how to walk Nikki– our dog trainer Tyrell skulking behind me—watching my every move- and me struggling not to let him see, and Nikki feel, how nervous I was.

After a while, Nikki made me feel confident and cocky. We both developed the same swagger. He had one of those plumed tails that had a life, a swagger, of its own, part of yet separate from the main dog.

And though I never had the tail, I had him.

Nikki taught me a lot. I wanted to be just like him. He was feisty, yet patient, defiant, yet reasonable. He had floppy little ears, a high pitched whine if I accidentally stepped on his toe, a terrifying growl if I tampered with his rawhide bone, and these white messy fuzzy sideburns someone once said looked like Grandpa in The Munsters. As a young dog, long before he lost his religion, he would howl at the church bells every Sunday at noon. It was comical and awe inspiring at the same time.

He knew what he liked and he went for it. One time he picked up a bone in the street and when I reached into his mouth to remove it, he just kept chewing, biting down so hard he nearly punctured my hand. Later, while back in the house tending to my wound, Nikki came up to me, sniffing my hand, looking all contrite, as if to say,”you know it was nothing personal. After all, no matter what you might think I am a dog and at that moment in time there was nothing else in the world but that bone.”

He liked being a dog. He felt comfortable in his own golden white fur, but when he would look at me with those doleful brown eyes I always thought he would have liked to talk also, sit down and talk to me about this strange human world we had thrust upon him.

No, this wasn’t Nikki anymore and how much easier it is to accept one’s death when they are no longer themselves. I remember when my father was dying, when he stopped reading and stopped eating- the two things he loved most in life— my mother would tell me that that person in the other room wasn’t my father anymore and I wondered then where the hell he was.

And it wasn’t until he was gone that he was back again, a ghost in my head, haunting me, sometimes pushing me on, sometimes holding me back, but always reminding me of my own mortality.

I really thought, once he passed 14 or so, that Nikki might live forever. When he was sick or had some unexplained ailment, he always seemed to rally, to continue his leaping, relentless assault on life. He was too much a part of the world and of my world to ever forget. How could I ever look at his favorite leaf of his favorite bush beneath his favorite tree again without thinking of him?

How could I look at my neighbor’s curb your dog sign without remembering how she scolded me when he peed in front of her house which I can no longer pass without thinking of him.

But then Nikki too suddenly stopped eating. If he happened to pick up a bone in the street, he’d let me take it out of his mouth without a struggle. I yearned for those dog molars to bite down on my hand again, but it wasn’t to be. His instinct was still there all right, but when he leaped, he’d often land badly, his back legs no longer able to support him. He still barked at bigger dogs, but not with the same intensity or swagger. Rotweillers and Pit Bulls and German Shepherds were no longer afraid of him.

It was like the whole dog world knew the great patriarch was on his way out; they looked at him compassionately, fatefully; you could sniff the respect in the air.

Then there was the morning, his last morning, when we found him splayed out on the ground, no longer able to move. We sat drinking coffee, waiting for our appointment at the Vet. Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement. It was Nikki, struggling to get up again, and as I watched him struggle, I struggled along with him, because he was part of me and when he struggled, I struggled too.

Then, suddenly he was on his feet again, and I thought maybe, just maybe, he had rallied again, that instead of going to the Vet we could go out walking together again and put this morning behind us. But when I looked at him he looked back at me with his melancholy brown eyes as if he wanted to tell me something, just one last time, about us, about our lives together, about this strange world we had thrust upon him and for some reason he now had to leave. “Nikki,” I said. “It’s going to be all right Nikki, It’s going to be all right,” I told him as he collapsed— again— for the last time.

From the Talented Caroline Hagood

2011-03-02T11:24:00.005-05:00

I'm honored to have had my book reviewed by the talented Caroline Hagood who shared the stage with me at Perch Cafe last month.

Check out Caroline's blog, Culture Sandwich, for her review of my book and so much more.

Caroline Hagood is a poet and writer who teaches literature and writing at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York.

The Last Time I Saw Doctorow

2011-02-14T16:10:00.003-05:00

In 1977, when I was a graduate student at Queens College I went to see E.L. Doctorow read from his latest best seller, Ragtime. Fifteen years later, when I was teaching at NYU. I went to see Doctorow in his office at the School of Arts and Sciences where he was teaching creative writing. At the time I was the faculty advisor for the creative writing club in the General Studies Program and went to see him on the pretense of inviting him to talk to the students in my club which consisted of- on a good day- about 10 students.

I knew he was a very busy and famous man, who probably got at least $5,000 per appearance— I think we paid $100— but the truth was I wanted to meet him anyway. So I wrote him a letter and a few weeks later his secretary called me and said, “Ed would be glad to meet with you this Thursday at 6.”

Ed!

She referred to him not as E.L Doctorow or Mr. Doctorow, but as Ed. We were practically friends, I thought to myself. So that Thursday I met with and we had a pleasant conversation, mostly about my writing club, and I took the opportunity to ask if he’d be willing to read some of my own work and he graciously said yes but warned me that it might take a while to get back to me but that he would get back to me.

About two weeks later, Doctorow was scheduled to do another reading at Queens College so I called my friend Joe Cuomo who was the coordinator of the Reading Series, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind introducing me to “Ed” after the reading. I was curious to see if he would remember me and if so whether it might not remind him that some of my stories were sitting on his book shelf.

Joe said he would be glad to introduce me but had to warn me that most of the time after these writers read and answer questions and start signing copies of their books, this “glaze” comes over their eyes and they don’t really see, let alone recognize, anybody. So that night, after the reading ended and the Q&A ended, and the signings began, Joe introduced me to Doctorow and he said, “It’s nice to meet you,” but when I looked at him all I could see was this glazed look in his eyes.

I didn’t take it personally. In fact, I was sure that once he got back to his office at NYU he would see my stories sitting on his shelf and it would all come back to him. One year passed and I started to get a bit antsy. Five years went by and I started to get somewhat concerned. After ten years, people started to say he would never get back to me and after fifteen years went by I started to believe that myself, so I started to hold a grudge. I would not read any more of his books- I stopped at Waterworks. I demoted him, in my mind, from the first tier of American writers to second and sometimes third.

Then I stopped other people from talking about him by making a face every time they mentioned his name.

Now, 17 years later, he would be appearing at St. Francis College where I taught writing and literature, but still that Clash song-“Should I stay or should I go?”- kept going through my head. I thought that maybe after the reading I could sneak up to him, squeeze right in there between someone walking away from him and another heading towards him and then I could just ask him, once and for all if he was ever planning to get back to me. It was a tough decision, but the moment I stopped thinking about it, I found myself headed downstairs to his reading.

And then suddenly there he was walking down the aisle of the auditorium, still looking pretty straight (his spine that is) and distinguished. When he spoke-somewhat haltingly, after all he is already 80— and part of me wanted him to fail— yet the moment he began to speak he drew me in like he had done so many years before—he spoke of how he had been a writer long before he ever wrote a word, how a writer spins a story out of nothing. How magical I thought, how like a god- to build, to create, to spin a story out of nothing- he spoke of what it meant to be a writer, about the act of writing itself that writers must first write before knowing what they write about.

Listening to Doctorow, I felt like a young writer again, just starting out (and in many ways I always am) listening to his words, and remembered from something deep inside me, something that never left, why I liked him so much and why I read so much of what he wrote. His work always had that feeling of a world I had never seen before (Ragtime) or a world I had known and which I felt very close to (World’s Fair). Though we were not friends nor ever were friends,(aren’t those the people you hold grudges against?) I still felt I was rooted in the same soil as he was, and listening to him that day I realized that in a way- a different way- he was getting back to me, (It was I who really should have come back to him) and that there was so much more he had left me with than he had ever taken away.

Afterwards, I did not go to the reception but instead went back to my office and thought about my own writing students and how long it often took me over the years to get back to them, getting lost in my own life, moving on to my next class, my next project, family obligations, often never looking back at all. I remember certain students in my creative writing classes at NYU (yes, where I first met Doctorow) who had given me stories to read after the semester ended and how one year later they may have gotten antsy and five years later concerned, and by now wondering whether I’ll ever get back to them.

Honestly, I can’t say I ever will. I can only hope that they might remember something I told them or showed them some things about writing that have made them better writers, writers who know how to spin something out nothing.

I hope they realize that- despite how it might seem- I never really abandoned them.

Burnt Parmiagiana

2011-02-07T16:48:00.007-05:00

My mother would no doubt consider Alfred Lord Tennyson- as John Lennon once considered Sir Walter Raleigh- “a stupid get” for saying “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

My mother loved twice, lost twice, and was pissed off both times. The first lasted 61years and the second only 4, but still she got to love twice when many “never loved at all.” I think my mother, even at the age of 84, believed her second love should have lasted at least as long as the first and when it didn’t I think she was sorry she ever loved at all.

My mother married my father in 1942, not long after Pearl Harbor. This was during World War II. World War II was so long ago, my college students think Lincoln may have had something to do with it.

When I mention the names Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, they think it’s a rock group they also mostly never heard of like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

I tell them we entered the war after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and even though at one time college students heard of Pearl Harbor because of the Hollywood movie of the same name, but that too was long enough ago so that students now may not know it anymore. When I tell them how the war ended with us dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (I don’t mention Nagasaki-why confuse them?) they seem to know something about that, though vaguely or maybe it’s just atomic bombs they’ve heard of or bombs in general because bombs are bombs and will never go out of fashion.

But my mother remembers all this. That was all happening during the first time she loved. My father. Such a long time ago.

There is a photo of my mother and father sitting at a table in a night club in Manhattan in 1942. My father looks quite handsome and confident in his Army uniform, à la Dana Andrews, and my mother is very blonde, à la Betty Grable and, at least on the surface, appears hopeful. They are at the beginning of something.

The world may be at war, but they are in love and love springs eternal- certainly neither can imagine an ending, the world be damned- it is anyway. The world is old and cruel and is trying to disrupt their lives and for this night at least they will have none of that.

Then 61 years later it was all over.

However, just 3 years later, there was Herman. At first, my mother refused to meet Herman. Her best friend wanted to introduce her to Herman who had lost his wife about the same time my father passed away. Then, after a bit of persistence on her best friend’s part (her best friend since high school who coincidentally introduced her to my father) my mother agreed to meet Herman. She didn’t like him. He wasn’t good looking. He talked like a former garment worker from the Bronx (he was a former garment worker from the Bronx) and when he asked if she would go out with him again, she refused and barely said goodbye to him when she left his car.

Later that night, my mother started to feel guilty and called Herman to apologize and out of guilt agreed to go out with him again. It took a little while, but in a few months they were seeing each other regularly, and shortly after that neither could imagine a time they did not know each other. Herman became the love of her life, her best friend, and they became inseparable. That was Love #2- in the books.

And then shortly after turning 91, Herman died of Cancer and my mother limped away again, away from the herd, into her solitary lair, depressed and bitter, more so it seemed than when my father passed away, because for 4 years this love seemed brighter, more intense than her first love.

In fact, this seemed to be the guy she should have married in the first place. Age was only a number, a couple of numbers, but now for the first time in 4 years she was starting to feel old. It was like she was allowed to go to the ball but when the clock struck midnight it was all gone. Life had played a cruel joke. How much better it would have been to have never loved than to have loved and then lost- again.

Never do I appreciate the fact that men mostly die before their wives than when I visit my mother in Florida. There are herds of these widows everywhere- on the lookout for the few good men left out there. My mother refuses to join these herds. She stays in her own condominium without a shuttle bus to take her to the mall or supermarket. People keep getting, not older, but younger around her as they take over the condos of those old people who have either died or moved back north to assisted living facilities. She has become the lone wolf, limping off by herself, licking her spiritual wounds and avoiding the carnivorous herd.

Recently, I visited my mother in her private lair. One of the few friends or relatives she has remaining, Lil, her sister-in-law’s sister-in-law, drives us to the local flea market afterwards to the early bird at Bella Roma restaurant on a strip mall down the road from Lil’s own condo which does have shuttle buses to the local shopping center.

Dinner at 4 in the afternoon! How exotic, how decadent I think to myself. I imagine white columns and fountains, ruggedly handsome mustachioed waiters à la Marcello Mastriaoni and voluptuous, raven haired waitresses à la Sophia Loren. Young gigolo artists sit at tables with red and white checkered tablecloths sketching giggling, aged women over giant bowls of pasta and oversized bottles of Chianti. Ah, Bella Roma! Ah four o’clock! The hour of love!

But, of course, it’s not that way at all. There are no columns or fountains or rugged waiters or raven haired buxom waitresses. This place, this quasi-glorified pizza place doesn’t even serve wine! No, à las Bella Roma is Bella Roma in name only, a large counter, a few tables, a few waitresses with Jersey accents, a TV set with the football playoffs on.

This is the kind of place that’s all about ordering. Ordering food is the same everywhere until the food actually comes to the table. The dishes are still in our head, in our imagination, not yet in our mouths. We have the same hunger and hopeful anticipation no matter where we are. Yes, this place was about ordering and I ordered chicken parmagiana because I always have my ideal of the perfect chicken parmagiana no matter how many times it arrives imperfect.

At the table next to us is one of those herds of women (and two men) who definitely remember Pearl Harbor, if not the Maine. They seem to be celebrating something, but they don’t need to be celebrating anything. Perhaps they are celebrating being alive. They talk loudly because they can still talk loudly. They laugh very long and hard because they can and because they still believe there are things they can still laugh long and hard about. My mother’s sister-in-law’s sister-in-law informs me that there are always far more women than men here, everywhere, and that they are always on the prowl.

I think of these women in Dionysian wolf packs, surrounding some poor innocent widower, ripping his clothes off, tearing into his flesh, dragging him limbless and listless into the condo clubhouse, devouring what’s left of him. No wonder the two men at the table (2 of 8) sit so close to the edge, eying the women carefully, ignoring everything they say because they know how dangerous it is to remember anything these women say, that it is just a trap, a deadly trap to remember what a woman has said, for there is no greater prize for one of these women, no greater aphrodisiac, than a man who listens and can remember hours later what she said.

Lil informs me, however, that there is a new requirement a man must have other than being a man in relatively good health, which is the ability not only to drive but to drive at night. For many of these women, driving during the day- despite weaving in and out of lanes, despite going too fast or too slow or stepping too hard on the brakes- is no problem. Driving at night is a different story, for at night, to quote Lil, “they can’t see a damn thing.”

My chicken parmagiana arrives which looks like it’s been cooked in the dark. There are brown bubbles all along the cheese so that it looks more like a layer of hell than of parmagiana. My mother and Lil tell me to return it. They actually seem excited at the prospect. I thought they might be embarrassed or even angry at me for mentioning it; after all, aren’t they regulars here; isn’t this the famous Bella Roma my mother talks about so much, wants me to experience, to enjoy as much as she does? Apparently not. No, this is bringing something out in them I had not anticipated. They couldn’t care less about the restaurant. I think they just like saying the name— Bella Roma- how it slides off the tongue, how it conjures up visions of throwing 3 coins in the fountain with Rossano Brazzi.

I can see in their eyes it wasn’t only the restaurant that screwed up, it was everybody who screwed up, it was the world that screwed up, that was an incompetent mess that was somehow responsible for making them old and obsolete and exploited and condescended to- empty and voided. It was the same world that took away my mother’s husband and then her boyfriend, that took away her license when she had that accident in the shopping center parking lot, that now burnt my chicken parmagiana, and so it would pay.

I was thinking of just eating it and not complaining at all, but the moment the waitress came by to ask if everything was all right my mother looked at me and I knew rather than suffer the childhood humiliation of one’s mother speaking for him, I informed the waitress that my parmagiana was burned.

“Would you like something else?” she asked.

Why would I want something else? Did she think I was so turned off by those brown bubbles that I’d never want to have chicken parmagiana again?

Or was she telling me in no uncertain terms that the cook couldn’t cook chicken parmagiana to save his life (or his job) so I’d be better off ordering something else?

Regardless, tasting the food had already taken away the anticipation of ordering something new so I stayed with the chicken parmagiana and yes it took a very long time and everyone else finished their meals and were already on the dessert by the time I got it which now seemed slightly undercooked the cheese looking white and smooth as if a baby’s bottom was made out of parmagiana cheese, the memory of burnt bubbles gone forever now.

When we left the restaurant, the sun was about to set and I saw that uneasiness in Lil’s eyes about getting back before dark. No one speaks to each other. It seems we are in a race against the sun setting, but a race in slow motion. Lil hands me a coupon, a lifetime coupon it seems, that would make this cheap early bird dinner even cheaper. When I pay the check, along with the coupon, the cashier asks me if everything was all right. My mother and Lil aren’t around so I tell her it was. What difference does it make? Is telling the truth going to make the chicken parmagiana any better? Does anyone really believe that here at Bella Roma- just across the road from the Great Wall of China take out restaurant- those brown bubbles are gone forever?

At the table next to us the women still eat and laugh; the men sit at the other end of the table- speaking to each other, eying the women from time to time yet careful not to listen or even to be perceived as listening— reserved only, they know, for the darkness.

See Mitch Levenberg this Tuesday, Feb. 8, at Perch Cafe in Park Slope.

Still Reading "As If Free"

2011-02-02T19:32:00.005-05:00

Reviewing Burt Kimmelman's As If Free Part 2

In the poem “Cicadas, July” Kimmelman reveals the eternal verities in the sound of cicadas, how

Everywhere their whrr fills the
Summer day with restlessness
And confuses the birds whose
Signals have come to an end.

Again, it’s the “restlessness,” the “confusion,” that upsets predictability-the “arrival” of the cicadas with “the morning patches of sunlight” takes on that same revelatory “Coming” as in “Summer’s End-the cicadas “unfolding from their pupae/glistening for a moment/these strangest of all creatures/tell us what heat is about.” While all the while they

lie hidden in the grass,
Though a bird’s beak might pierce their
Bravura, while we long for
The quiet and cool evening.
What goes on here beneath our feet is worthy of the masterful intrigue of Frost’s “Design,” of the metaphysical inquiries of Prufrock’s “Overwhelming Question,” of a kind of mini-miraculous birth and martyrdom of Auden’s “Musee Des Beaux Art”-- as Kimmelman explores that balance between human mortality and the eternal aspects of nature.
The very first poem of the collection, “Taking Dinner to My Mother,” begins:

My mother sits on the edge of her bed,
A scarf on her head to hide the gray hair
She can no longer manage to dye black,
Her flesh falling away from the frame of
Her face and shoulders, loosened by the loss,
When the body’s pain forbids all desire.

In this fragile balance, this tense co-existence between flesh and soul, it is the body that always “betrays the soul.” This is the human ritual of dying, the loss of flesh, of desire, the last lingering remnants of life. Here the mother “sits on the edge of the bed” as if she sits on the precipice of death. Yet, the poet reminds us as well of the beginnings of life, as he contrasts the “bending” of his mother towards death with the “bending” of his daughter “as she learned how to walk” and how at “a nearby table/a new mother fed her infant daughter,/who sat up in her baby carriage . . ./the smell of her mother’s hand mingled with/this first food, a small bird in her nest.”

Kimmelman, indeed, has a keen eye for the everyday scene, the visible world as well as the invisible world, for the profound within the mundane, for the unspoken moment, the a single human gesture that in some way alerts us to the mysteries that both inform and surround us. They are everywhere, from the “whirring” of cicadas to the single act of a mother feeding her child, to the unspoken gestures of life exemplified in “Three Women Smoking Cigarettes” who

. . . sit at their tables
At the outdoor café,
Their chairs turned to the side
Facing each other, their
Cigarettes propped between
Their long fingers , and they

Talk. One of them laughs as
She nods her head. There
Is something to what her
Friend has said. . .

Here again, the poet syllabically breaks up the world and our mundane perceptions of the mundane. Our simplest gestures, our simplest positioning in space and time, take on a higher, almost religious significance. The poet not only moves us from the mundane to the mysterious but celebrates the mysterious in the mundane by changing the way we see and hear, and perhaps more importantly, what we do not see and hear:

. . . I cannot see
Her eyes from where I sit
On the other side of

The picture window, but
What she says, I know, is
Important . . .

Just as the poet carefully observes the movement, the sounds, of trees and wind and insects, so does he here observe the “nodding,”” laughing”, the lighting of a cigarette, indeed “Everything is at stake” and certainly everything seems as if it were at stake. Yet, there is no urgency. The rising of the cigarette smoke that “dissolves slowly in the warm air” is like a significant sign or message (I think of the smoke signaling the selection of a new Pope) in this small, microcosmic cafe that seems to have a bearing on all our lives, as if it foretells not only each moment of our lives ,but another “Coming.”Not only will the “long fingered” woman be coming back but so will the poet:

. . .I hear
her say she will be back
tomorrow—as will I.

Revelation hangs in the air like the smoke of a woman’s cigarette, suspended like the poet’s words before they drop into the next stanza . After all, “everything is at stake,” so what choice do we all have but to come back again?

Read Part 1 of my review of Burt's book.

Reading Burt Kimmelman’s "As If Free"

2011-01-31T16:39:00.005-05:00

After reading Burt Kimmelman’s new book of poetry, “As if Free,” I wonder what it’s like having lunch with him outdoors. I think he would be too distracted, hearing things that we can’t hear, feeling an invisible pulse of life hidden among the leaves and branches, the busyness of nature, its freeness and its eternal powers of redemption.

In “Monet’s Garden,” the last poem in the collection- which contains, hidden between commas in the last line of the first stanza the very title of the book- he writes,
The lily’s charm is not
its colors but how it
floats, as if free, upon

How reminiscent of Williams’ The Red Wheelbarrow in how each line, each image, each syllabic construction depends upon the one that follows, like the continuous interdependence of objects, of life itself.
the pond’s dark surface. We
make our way over his

wooden bridge and then pass
the shrubs and flowers he
planted, arranged just so

to paint. How carefully
the pigment would be placed,

how gradually the world—
in daily businesses—
would become still and deep.

It’s the “wooden bridge” that allows us not only access to Monet’s creative process but to Burt Kimmelman’s as well, to how he uses space, rhythm, language to unfold, to reveal the unexpected life.

This “bridge” is the bridge between reader and artist, between the visible and invisible world, between the quotidian business of the world and the limitless and “free” powers of the imagination.

When I read this poem I imagine the concentric circles created by the slightest movement upon the water and how we the reader move inwards from our “daily businesses” outwards to the subtle, breathless movement of language by the poet, to the “ careful arrangement” of the “shrubs and flowers” planted by the artist, all leading to the final circle, the” gradual” and mysterious transformation of worldly “businesses” to something “still and deep.” And above it all floats the lily, “as if free upon the pond’s dark surface.” How reminiscent of Yeats’ “long-legged fly upon the stream” that symbolizes, eternalizes civilization, the very “artist,” whose “mind moves in silence.”

And how can one really express this “freeness” by art or poetry? Yet BK, like Monet, come close by his syllabic slowing down, by his ability to approach, through words and language the very rhythm of nature itself.

In “Summer’s End” again there are the small details that make up life, the syllabic rhythm that reflects the natural, unpredictable movement in nature:

A squawk in the
Bushes then a
Red flitting from

Branch to branch, the
Cardinal in
The cool sun, days

Certainly, the pause between the stanzas represents in a very palpable, sensual way, the leap of the cardinal, reduced to color only, blurred by surprise, by suddenness.

Ago the light
Bright and hot, now
No doubt what will

How clever, how revelatory, that pause between “days” and “ago” so that time lies suspended between stanzas. The predictability of phrases, clichés like “days ago” are upset, broken up, so that the reader too must take that imaginative leap to catch up with meaning.

Come— a squirrel
Skitters along
The fence and leaps

Into a tree

Ironically, what appears a simple, mundane act of nature becomes here a moment of almost religious significance, whether it is a second or third coming is irrelevant, for it is a “coming” nevertheless, whose meaning appears simple yet which is rendered ungraspable.

Read Part 2 of my review of Burt's book.

Aftermath

2011-01-04T17:14:00.006-05:00

The streets are beginning to look a lot more like Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” than Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life.” It’s that post-apocalyptic holiday time of the year again.

The snow has turned black, the garbage bags keep piling on top of it. And the Christmas trees once so bright and cheery now lie dead along the curbs for blocks on end like the aftermath of a post-Christmas massacre. One particularly sad sight is of an old rotted pumpkin lying half buried in the snow, not so sad for the pumpkin as for the family who finally got rid of it, who no doubt tried to hold on to it and to the holidays as long as possible.

It seems like we just bought all those pumpkins and trees. Was it yesterday? Last week? Two weeks ago. Whatever, for many of us the turnaround from almost here to here and then to not here anymore, like life itself, was all too soon. And then having to look upon that filthy, black snow, those dead Christmas trees, the piles of black bags, is perhaps more than we can take or should have to take. As for me, looking at all that post holiday detritus is like staring in the face of my own mortality.

Day after day, as the garbage piled up, as the snow grew darker and darker, as more dead trees, once so happy and bright, littered the streets, I could only feel the end of something, the end of the year instead of the beginning of a new one. Please take it away I say to myself. I want to be happy again. How I think to myself can a civilized city, a civilized society, allow this to happen? And if it all has to stay with us for awhile, could someone at least clean it? Could we find a way to clean this snow while it takes its sweet time to melt?

Ah, but why complain? It’s time to move on. The holidays will be back and in the meantime we can go on with our everyday lives, our family, our work, our plans. Yes, some of us are actually making plans for after the holidays. Even for February! Some people I know will be going skiing or on a Caribbean cruise or finishing a novel or renovating their kitchens! Yes, plans. How wonderful to have plans. After all, isn’t making plans what life is all about. Whether we go through with them or not is irrelevant. It’s the ability, the means, the privilege, of making plans in the first place that keeps us going, that always gives us something to look forward to.

Then, of course, there are those who can’t make any plans at all, who struggle from day to day, sometimes from one paycheck to another or else with no paycheck at all, for whom each day the snow seems blacker, the garbage higher, their hopes bleaker. For them there are never any plans other than to continue the struggle as long as the ability, the means, the where withal, to take on that struggle still exists.

Meanwhile, we know that sooner or later the snow will melt, that the garbage will be taken away and most of all that there are only 355 more days to Christmas! God bless us, everyone.

New Year’s Resolutions:
1. I promise this will be my last entry on the holidays, post or otherwise.
2. I will not eat old food anymore I find wrapped in tin foil in the back of the refrigerator
3. I will continue to watch the “Twilight Zone” marathon every year until I die.

The Beautiful and the Sublime: Blizzard of 2010

2010-12-30T11:42:00.005-05:00

Ah, the Blizzard of 2010. The snow plows are late so it looks like this year the city will clean it up the natural way, the green way, the yellow way, the sun.

Whether that’s tomorrow or April, we don’t know, so meanwhile many of our streets, our secondary and tertiary streets (including my own) have become winter playgrounds. Children throw snowballs at each other, others build snowmen. Some make angels or practice their cross country skiing while all the assorted detritus of men, women, and animals remain in the deep bosom of the snow buried.

There’s something about a blizzard, whose winds like Shelly’s “unseen presence” does something to one’s soul in all its beauty and terror that the body and mind could never understand. Even meteorologists, so cursed with scientific understanding, with the need to measure accumulation and wind chill and visibility, even they must in those first sudden moments of that ghostly, swirling beauty, take pause, as understanding flees and the imagination soars.

As Edmund Burke writes in his essay on the Beautiful and the Sublime, “Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force.”

It is always in those first moments of a blizzard that I get that immediate, giddy feeling that things will never be the same- in a good way- not that I’ll never see my car again (I don’t even own a car) but that somehow the old life, the old world is ending, and a new and better one is about to begin.

It’s like nature’s own version of whiteout, whiting out our mistakes, our regrets, shrouding all memory of failure and lost opportunity; “Ding Dong Merrily on High” rings through my brain; my heart beats faster; I run into the spectral mist, into zero visibility. For just this quick moment of time I am one with the world. The world is good and so is everyone in it.

By the next morning, however, it appears that this feeling seems to be gone. A mound of snow blocks our way out of the house. I begin to shovel with a sense of impending, frozen death.

In order to clear a path I shovel snow into my neighbor’s front yard who later in order to clear his own path will shovel it back into my front yard.

Already, all of us are digging our own paths, sparing no one or nothing.

I see my garbage rise again from beneath the snow.

But wait, the streets remain unplowed. Children make snow angels and build snowmen. They scream with absolute joy and throw snowballs at each other. Then, suddenly, the sun shows itself for the first time in days and I start to think, to feel really, that maybe we don’t need those snow plows after all; for isn’t it true that “if Winter comes can Spring be far behind?”

Yes, Fred Figglehorn, there is a Santa Claus

2010-12-20T18:03:00.004-05:00

Sometimes we rate holidays in terms of how the last one was. Like last Christmas Aunt Thelma’s pie was definitely sweeter and then we find out she’s going to Weight Watchers.

Or maybe Uncle Sol wasn’t quite as funny because he’s had bladder problems- which is also why you can no longer finish a conversation with him. Or maybe this year the little Angel on top of the tree, that has been on top of the tree every Christmas for at least 50 years, is gone because the new puppy, all of 5 weeks old, ripped her to shreds.

Also people and or pets shouldn’t die on or near Christmas because that spoils every Christmas ad infinitum. If people and or pets must die, let them die in February. It’s not good to die anytime, but since we have to die let’s all just agree to die in February.

Then there’s the Christmas party at work. Last year there was scotch. This year there was no scotch. End of story.

Also, what’s happening to the illusion of Christmas? Hey, movies like “It’s A Wonderful Life,” “The Santa Clause parts 1-37” and even “Elf” may be sappy but they aren’t wrong. For some reason people, society, the media, seem determined to burst illusions- good illusions, illusions born from the heart, from a child’s imagination- and let the blood and guts of Christmas spill out of our collective unconscious like a bad horror flick.

There’s a teenage video out now called “Christmas is Creepy” by Fred Figglehorn. Here’s some of the lyrics:
“If a snowman came to life
That would be creepy (creepy)
If Santa snuck in my house
That would be creepy.
Reindeer (sharp teeth)
Rudolph (might eat me)

Christmas is
kinda strange
When you think about it that way.”

So why do we have to think about it that way. Especially teenagers and pre-teenagers. Isn’t it bad enough what they think or pretend to think about everything?

Because once you start thinking about it, that’s it for Frosty, Santa and Rudolph ad infinitum.

There’s plenty of weird stuff going on with Charlie Brown also, but I think Fred forgot that. And what about sugar plums dancing in our heads. Isn’t that creepy too? I mean wouldn’t that be the onset of let’s say— Schizophrenia?

Must we now relegate Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Reindeer and Santa Claus to the same list as Freddy Kruger, Chucky the Clown and Hannibal Lecter? Santa sneaking into my house? I mean, yeah, if it’s some killer dressed as Santa that’s more than creepy, but Santa himself?

Yes, Fred Figglehorn, there is a Santa Claus!

And if he does happen to slide down your chimney, real or imaginary, how lucky you and your fans would be.

I think of Francis Church who wrote to little Virginia O’Hanlon in the New York Sun back in 1897: “Virginia, your little friends . . have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. . ..They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. . .Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”

So, yes Fred Figglehorn, there is a Santa Claus and that’s why as long as you keep writing songs about Rudolph and Frosty and Santa creeping us out, Santa will never slide down that chimney and sneak into our house like one good generous thought sneaking into our minds, into the world’s mind, for at least one night.

Is that so creepy?

Call of the Wild

2010-12-08T19:50:00.005-05:00

“The word is out;” the e-mail said. “Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has selected your block to receive lovely wrought iron tree guards!”

Now why wasn’t I excited?

So many people on my block, all the “block leaders”- those who spend the most time standing in front of their houses talking about the block- were patting each other on the back for their indefatigable efforts to secure lovely iron tree guards, running over to us lucky winners of lovely new iron tree guards, reminding us that if not for you signing that petition . . . but I couldn’t get excited.

Maybe there was something about the name itself: iron tree guards. I mean I never liked the word “iron,” too tough, too clanging, too damn painful if you bang your shin on it.

Of course iron can be made to look beautiful, especially wrought iron surrounding a tree. The contradiction, tree and iron, one surrounding the other is the very definition of poetry, the tension of opposites that will make all our trees living poems.

Trees guarded by iron.

Not quite a natural contradiction, like thorns in roses, more a man-made contradiction of nature, the very mother of contrived poetry.

Then there’s “guard.” I never liked that word either. Anyone or anything that needs a guard, especially an iron one, is in trouble from the start, needs protection, iron protection.

Like our trees. From what or whom might our trees need protection from? From our dogs, of course.

And there I was walking my dog one night and just looking up and down my block, imagining the day when all our trees will be surrounded by iron guards, all the trees with pee stains on them, some looking strong and sturdy like the ones (unlike my own) that survived the last tornado, others looking frail and uncertain, newborn and wobbly. In my heart, I know that these particular trees can use some protection; if it’s an iron tree guard so be it.

But when I look down again at my dog, she looks worried.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “There are more trees where these came from and they’re unguarded too. You can’t guard them all,” I tell her.

My dog’s ears pricked up. Whether she understood my words or not didn’t matter. She could tell from my voice, my reassuring tone, that I would not desert her. She seemed psyched. I thought she wanted me to go on, so I said, “And if worse comes to worse, there’s always the curb.”

I should have stopped while I was ahead. She looked at me with that wide-eyed sense of wonder and betrayal, that look a dog gets when you suddenly yank it away from someone’s flower garden or pull a chicken bone out of its mouth. “You see,” I went on, “we could always use the curb and save a few trees. It’s real easy and I’ll be with you the whole time . . .” My dog just looked at me and growled. “Sorry,” I said. “Forget I said anything.”

But it was too late. We went back into the house. When I took off her leash, my dog ran out into the pitch darkness of the backyard. I could no longer see her but I could hear her deep throated bark calling out to all the dogs in the neighborhood. Barking, howling and hooting, yipping and yapping answered her call from all directions.

Then, suddenly, there was silence and I remembered the end of “Call of The Wild” when the narrator says of Buck, “The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.” I looked down at the empty leash in my hand and hoped my dog would come back soon.

Notes on My Senior’s Class: The Warmth of Memory

2010-12-02T20:20:00.003-05:00

When I walked into the classroom last Sunday, I felt like I had happened upon the remaining survivors of a lost expedition to the Arctic. Their usual greeting of smiles and hellos were replaced with chattering teeth and finger pointing at the windows which had all been open on this cold November morning only moments before-most likely had been open for all five days of the Thanksgiving holidays.

“I just closed those windows,” one of my more robust students told me.

“All of them were open,” she said as if there had been a complete and total attempt by the authorities to freeze these people out.

“No holds barred” must have been the instructions. “Give them everything this cold and sunless November’s got to give. That ought to keep them away.”

But these people were not to be deterred or denied. They had stories and poems to read. I think they believed that if not central heating, then these poems and stories would keep them warm, huddled together in words and memory— they looked to me for leadership- I have led them through the labyrinths of memory, the paths of fear and uncertainty, through cycles of drought and fecundity— but never have I needed to find them a heater.

Not that anyone demanded I find them another room or to get maintenance to put the heat on or to find blankets— one student did quietly, unassumingly, unobtrusively, humbly, walk up to the thermostat on the wall, but I told her it never worked, that we could never control our own temperature, or anything else for that matter, in these rooms, much like the world outside. Then she quietly, not so much sat, but dissolved back into her chair.

Then Ellen read her story of an acrobat turned accountant, flippant, yet delightfully calculating.

As soon as Ellen finished reading, two more students came in- they had been waiting in the warmer hallway until Ellen finished. I looked out at the students and by this time I realized that none us was that young anymore and might actually get pretty sick from this. If anyone had to go, let them go with their boots on and not their coats.

When I finally picked up my cup of coffee again it was ice cold, not ice coffee cold but hot coffee cold, and that’s when I left the room to look around for a warmer room.

The first two I tried were locked but the third was open. Its windows were closed and immediately it felt slightly warmer. Then I asked the student who looked the coldest to come with me to test it out. She said it was much better so we moved.

On our way out, Lillian, a former high school teacher and fine poet, told me, “Thank goodness. I think everyone had already agreed to burn their canes to keep warm.” I imagined it might be as a form of protest as well (much like those young men who burned their draft cards or women who burnt their bras back in the 60s) against frozen cruelty, not to the aged so much as to aged writers. I mean I had heard of Kafka’s definition of poetry as the ax that could break up the frozen seas within us, but I didn’t think he meant it literally.

And like the children of Israel grabbing their belongings, their pens and notebooks; their bags; their canes and walkers, (I would not dare compare myself to Moses though my beard was turning whiter by the moment) my students walked and stumbled, and wandered towards the promised land— Room 6301— where sunlight poured through the windows, warmed their bodies, and set their words and memories on fire.

Story Time

2010-11-29T14:36:00.005-05:00

The moment I walked into the Juvenile Reading Room at the Brooklyn Heights Library, I felt like a kid. Chairs were set up kind of horseshoe style with the podium up front. I sat alone for a while. I’m always early I even get to my own reading before anyone else.

Shouldn’t I be entering fashionably late? Shouldn’t I appear with that cocky laid back look like “hey, I’m the writer, so you can wait” or at least like that apologetic, harried writer, so busy, so lost in his own thoughts, he had forgotten where the reading was.

But there I was, nerd early as my friend Mark used to say. So I took a seat and looking around I noticed the wall was full of children’s drawings, so that I might easily be at a reception for a five years old and under abstract art exhibit.

I thought about asking the library for apple juice and cookies for me and of course my potential audience.

In fact, speaking of audience, as of five minutes before the reading was to start, there was no audience. So I listened to a father out in the reading room reading to his young child. He didn’t have to be quiet. Reading aloud to children in the children’s reading room was actually encouraged.

On a quiet Saturday afternoon in late fall, it had sounded quite nice, quite soothing. For a moment I was a child again, listening to my father’s wild stories of mad Germans putting cats and dogs in their sausage machines, while snug under my warm blanket on a cold Sunday morning. I immediately decided I was not going to read “The Hotel,” my post-holocaustic story about a bus trip to Dachau in which the narrator discovers a thirst for death and desire he can never quench.

No, I thought to myself, not a good day for that. On this beautiful late fall day, blue, sunny and cold, what better story to read than “Soup,” this one about the futile journey of a man in search of the “perfect” soup which he realizes in the long run only his mother could ever make.

At exactly 1 P.M. I wandered into the hallway and spotted my friend and student Ellen. “No one knows where this reading is being held,” she said, just a little exasperated. The woman in the lobby sent me up to the woman on the second floor who had no idea . . . but anyway here you are.”

It’s true no one in the library seemed to know about this reading. There were no fliers or announcements over the loudspeaker. Last time, a woman who appeared to be homeless sauntered in, listened to Sybil and me very attentively and then asked about how she could go about publishing her memoirs. Again, there were no fliers posted anywhere, nor any announcements, so I imagined the word must be out on the street but not in the library.

Then, almost as if Ellen’s anger had filtered through the library, others started showing up. There was my old friend George Held- whom I hadn’t seen in about 15 years– coming “all the way” from Manhattan who would later be the only one (though many already had it) who bought my book.

Others soon followed, members of my senior citizen writing class, members of my undergraduate literature class, assorted friends and colleagues, including Liz Eames (without whom this blog would not be happening) and her baby Catherine who would listen to both me and Sybil with wide-eyed wonder and nary a peep the whole time except a little bit near the end of my story, which perhaps she feared with her baby-like instinct would never end.

Sybil came too, my co-reader, a wonderful poet who knows how to make an entrance, fashionably late, with a writer’s laid back, confident, albeit never cocky look. Sybil, as usual read some great poetry, though her voice betrayed her at times and while she searched her bag for a lozenge, I noticed the baby Catherine’s look of uncertainty and measured anticipation, providing Sybil with a narrow window to get started again or she, still being a baby of course, would not be responsible for her own spontaneous outbursts.

The whole time, I couldn’t wait to get up there. I don’t know what gets into me, but there’s something about a sunny blue cold late fall November day, the afternoon sun slanting through the large library windows that, a deep poetic restlessness perhaps that like Ishmael in Moby Dick, not only makes me want to knock people’s hats off or follow funerals, but to read and read and read, stories, poems, book blurbs, undiscovered recipes, until the beginning of December or at least until a baby cries.

And when I got up there, I said I’d be reading “Soup” so if they had the book they could read along and George called out, “Page 7!” and so I began as if I were reading this story, which I had read so many times before, for the first time, as if I were reading not just to my students and friends but to my own child.

Fear of Not Flying

2010-11-19T10:29:00.008-05:00

On my way to Houston for a conference the other night I suddenly developed the fear of not flying. It’s a terrible feeling. I guess it’s a little bit like the doctor’s office- you know you wait in the waiting room and then after an hour or two they call your name and put you in another little room where you wait again and just keep staring at all the little things you will be either probed with or which will be inserted inside you. This would be the equivalent I suppose of actually getting on the plane and then waiting in line to take off.

Then there’s this airline, just as I suppose there’s this doctor, or many airlines, or many doctors, where you wait and wait and wait and they finally make an announcement that you will be boarding shortly, though you’re not sure what shortly means because you’re already past the boarding time which is still posted, which has not changed once since you sat down, and you start to believe them again because what choice do you have, until you realize there is no plane yet in sight on which to board.

Then you start thinking things like well that means that all you can hope for is that the plane is at least taxiing in your direction but you know that when it finally comes to a stop, people are going to be blocking each other in the aisles taking their luggage down from the overhead compartments and costing us even more time and then they probably have to vacuum a little bit and then . . .

This particular airline is the one we flew once (my wife and daughter and I) when my five year old daughter asked for the chocolate chip cookies and she was told they were all out. The CEO of the company happened to be riding with us that day and told her that the next time she came she could have all the chocolate chip cookies she wanted. The CEO was forced to resign just a few months later. Whether it was because he overpromised chocolate chip cookies or just presided over massive system screw-ups like letting people sit in the plane on the tarmac for ten hours during a snowstorm, we’ll never know.

When one of the passengers asked if the plane was delayed, the agent at the counter just kind of looked at him with a rather sheepish smile to which the passenger responded, “ I guess that means no.”

I really envy people who have all that patience. I grew up believing that Christians got all the patience and the Jews got none. I remember traveling to Florida when I was a kid and if a plane was delayed any more than a half hour an old Jewish woman would go up to the counter and start complaining: “My husband has a heart condition and can’t sit too long,” “we got here two hours early and for what?” “Is there a manager I can speak to?” “If the plane leaves too late will you still be serving lunch?” “You can be sure I’ll never fly . . . again!”And that was all from the same woman!

Now people (even some Jews) don’t seem to mind waiting at all. Some take out big sandwiches or the fried chicken they saved for the plane. Others have their laptops, iPads and Pods, cell phones and blackberries. Even old people sit quietly reading AARP Magazine or Reader’s Digest or try to figure out their cell phones.

On the way back from Houston, the gate area was filled with members of the Paralympic Soccer team which just won a national championship. My first thought, of course, was my God how long is it going to take to get all these people down the ramp, out of their chairs and seated on the plane.

When I first saw them, I saw a mass of people in wheelchairs and it bothered me because it always bothers me to see people in wheelchairs because like most people I don’t want to think about something like that happening to me.

Then I noticed how happy and proud they were, having just won the championship, and the good will and camaraderie and playful kidding they engaged in- despite being in wheelchairs- while I sat impatiently, unhappily in my seat waiting to go on the plane.

I always think I should be able to control things, that everything should happen just as I want it to happen and what pisses me off all the time is that it doesn’t.
Then I look at the paralympic team and I notice that not one of them is complaining about the plane not leaving on time, or threatening never to fly this airline again.

Instead, one of them asks the agents if someone could take pictures of all them holding the giant major league size trophies. This is when I realize there’s something about life, and there’s something about the way certain people- for whom life has not always turned out the way they would have liked it to- think about life that I don’t understand and unfortunately may never understand.

So all I can do for this moment at least is force myself to be a little more patient, so I decide that once I get on the plane, no matter when that might be, I will order the chocolate chip cookies, and when they tell me they’re all out of them, I’ll just smile pleasantly and order the chips instead.

November in My Soul

2010-11-10T14:41:00.008-05:00

New York really never stops being New York. I can’t walk in the street or ride the subway or just go out to get a cup of coffee where I don’t get an idea for a story or a poem.

Sometimes it hurts there’s so much to write about.

On a street corner just around the block from my house there’s a restaurant like so many restaurants I see in my neighborhood that doesn’t know whether it’s a coffee shop or a diner or a pastry shop slash diner slash coffee shop slash something. It’s been around a couple of years and has alternated between not being very busy to being empty.

Recently, it was more empty than anything else and it seemed certain it would close down pretty soon. But like all good entrepreneurs who have lousy restaurants in residential neighborhoods with bad help, they came up with a brilliant idea. Have a midget wearing a bowler hat pass out menus in front of the restaurant.

Who can’t see this working?

Whenever I see empty seats in a subway car during rush hour, I get suspicious. This time I could not find a homeless person spread out across several seats . . . but what I did find, slowly, a bit more insidiously than usual, a horrific odor whose more than lingering presence needed nothing human to accompany it nor identify it.

It’s the kind of odor you fear will stay with you long after you’ve left the train-you begin to yearn for the kind of smell, of leaves, of bread baking in the factories of Long Island City, of your mom’s perfume when she tucked you in at night after coming back from a party, or soap the girl you’re afraid to ask out always smells like, the gasoline when your father filled the gas tank on the way to the country, bacon, coffee, steak, oil, suddenly you yearn for it all and feel for a moment that maybe this is it- maybe this is how the world was supposed to smell all the time and the odor will never leave you again.

Just a few days earlier I walk into a subway car and a baby, being held by her father (there is no mother to be seen) is crying uncontrollably. He pats her on the back and on her chest repeatedly, but she cannot be consoled.

A homeless man who occupies only one seat is nevertheless in the kind of death-like stupor that seems to bring his head and as a consequence, the rest of his body closer and closer to the floor.

The baby keeps crying.

A Latin troubadour serenades us with his guitar- cheerful on the surface, yet plaintive between the strings- the train rattles rhythmically through the stations- the baby keeps crying.

Standing next to the homeless man, just above his head, I think about one of the characters in my short story “The Cat," “Envelope Face” who when he shakes his head things fly out of his hair, “some dead, some alive.”

So I move just a little to my right. The baby keeps crying.

The troubadour finishes his song and passes his hat along but no one puts anything in it— it may be bad timing on his part since everyone, though they pretend not to be, is too distracted by the baby’s crying. Besides, it’s usually the hip hop guys, the break dancers that get something, rarely your Latin-American troubadour.

Then, suddenly, the baby stops crying.

Everyone looks at her. (It’s like when a car alarm that’s been going for hours suddenly stops and you wait with a hopeful cautiousness).

The father looks at her. She looks at her father. She starts crying again.

Suddenly, a young African-American woman gets up from a seat opposite the father and baby, gently takes the baby from his arms, holds her against her chest, pats the baby softly on her back she stops crying. This time it seems for good. At least until she goes back to her father again.

I feel for the father. I remember my own daughter in China from the moment I first tried to hold her and every other time I came near her she cried uncontrollably. “I should hire you,” the father said to the woman, keeping his sense of humor. Of course this might have had nothing to do with the father’s situation. It might have been a case of a diaper needing to be changed— but it reminded me of how helpless you feel and how embarrassed you tend to feel especially when a complete stranger can console your baby when you yourself can’t.

But the father did not seem embarrassed at all. He was just grateful, and I think like the rest of us, a little in awe of the moment itself, of the surprising kindness of a stranger on the F train. It was no longer just about him or his baby, but that a woman reached out, lent out her heart for a few moments to a total stranger and truly what more can we ask of any human being, what more to give us hope in the goodness of others, and what more to erase my own cynicism for a few minutes?

Then I looked over at the homeless man whom I spurned like everyone else and wondered who was ever there for him, whose heartbeat did he ever feel against his own? And whose heart would ever be there to console him?

After all, isn’t he just as human as the baby? And isn’t it so that just as the baby will one day be a woman, this man was once was a baby?

I think about this now as I leave the silent train, hoping to keep it all in my busy head until I can write about it.

Reflections on Halloween Night: The Predictability of Scariness

2010-11-03T19:40:00.003-04:00

In Park Slope, this Halloween night as every Halloween night, fathers dressed as homicidal maniacs dripping with blood push their babies along in strollers.

I wonder if it’s the costume that’s supposed to scare us or is it the idea of a Zombie pushing a baby in its stroller that’s supposed to scare us.

The babies are usually dressed as assorted insects or jungle animals- the mothers, directing the whole scene, put on the perfunctory witch's hat and carry along a Poland Spring water and some cheerios.

None of this is really very scary- at least not in a Halloween kind of way- it’s what I call the certainty of scariness or the predictability of scariness- it’s too self-conscious, too staged.

What might make it a little scarier would be having no mother/witch there at all and having a baby (not real?) hanging from the father’s mouth.

Perhaps there are things, unimaginable things, that even Halloween night cannot bring out of our darkest sides.

In other words, there is danger of bad taste even on Halloween.

People can dress up as Zombies, killers, monsters, TV sets, microwaves, Sarah Palin, but only in good fun, only when it comes from a lighter, more engaging part of our dark side.

As for my own parents, I don’t remember them actively engaged in Halloween. My father sat in his underwear and watched TV waiting for me to return with my bag of candy.

He liked Baby Ruth the best.

When my daughter sorted out her candy on the dining room table she asked me what I wanted. Without thinking- because there are so many choices- I said Baby Ruth.

I am truly my father’s son.

It’s the nuts I think. I don’t like nuts ordinarily but these nuts are. . . how shall I say? Not quite as nutty?

Getting back to the true spirit of Halloween, I would have to say that this time something finally did scare me— something that I did not expect to see, something that seemed to move out of the range of predictability.

Before the crowds in all their different costumes begin to make the streets unwalkable, I am alone with my dog and I notice a lone figure ahead of me, coming towards me, what looks like an old man with a cane and a very pronounced limp. He is also alone, not part of a group of reveling friends or receptive audience. He seems determined to get somewhere as quickly as he can but of course his advanced age, his limp is holding him back.

He seems to be only focused upon himself, his oldness, how he can be the best old person with a limp he can— what makes him all the more frightening is his plainness, his matter of factness- his lack of self-consciousness as if he were playing a role for no one in particular— the fact that he is not scarred or bleeding or wielding an axe- he is quite normal except for his mask, the mask of an old bitter man, as if his face were more an x-ray of an actual human face, like those faces that appear to us in our dreams, in flashes only, glowing in the brightness of death.

I can’t take my eyes off him. He is actually scaring me, scaring me more than anyone I’ve ever seen in a parade or standing at my door trick or treating.

Then I realized what it is. This is the old man who has appeared in so many of my nightmares as a child. The man with the terrible limp, with the cane, maimed, deformed, evil in every possible physical and spiritual way who did not seem capable of ever catching or catching up to me but always does, always just behind me one grasp away no matter how fast I run away.

This time, he shows no interest in catching me. Instead he turns the corner, suddenly disappears and I wonder if I ever really saw him at all.

This is Halloween too.

Seeing things and then not seeing them.

It’s like your own life and death meeting for a fleeting moment.

It’s like having a big party in your dark, dank unconscious and your child, your precious child, who this year happens to be dressed like a bee, is the one who escorts you home and then gives you anything you desire from her magic bag.

Interview with a Mitch

2010-10-31T13:08:00.003-04:00

A few months ago I happily announced that I had been blogged.

Now I am pleased to say that I have been interviewed about my book, background and current projects.

Many thanks to Greg Tague at Editions Bibliotekos for his interest in my work and in my story.

It was a surreal and flattering experience to be interviewed by Chanda Persaud who asked questions that got me thinking about my work, my roots and how things change in life and in writing.

From Here To There and Other Stories

2010-10-26T11:06:00.003-04:00

Available November 15 at Barnes & Noble and Amazon, Patty Somlo’s collection of stories, From Here to There and Other . . . is a book of contrasts, of repression and freedom, location and dislocation, of the real and of the magical real, of the weighted details of our everyday life, and the limitless possibilities of the human spirit.
Her very first story , “From Here to There,” sets the tone for a journey of body and soul, of reason and imagination. From the opening line we are drawn into her world:
In the middle of the night, a plane flying from here to there
Disappeared. Just like that. The bright green line moving inexorably Toward land and the quick, steady beep-beep-beep marking hundreds of
Traveled went right ahead and quit. A space in the vast universe of
air opened up.

Clouds parted for a moment but then drifted back. The atmosphere all around
Made a strange gulping sound, amazed that such a modern capable convenience
Could simply vanish. A collective gasp went up all around.

From the outset, we as readers become fictional passengers, soaring, disappearing really, to a point of no return, our imagination, our systems of belief and disbelief becoming suspended, quite willingly, in midair. Like all good literature, these stories connect us as human beings, our bodies-from the very dust from whence we came to the dust to which we all return-but more importantly to the constant urgings and desires of the human soul which will manifest itself in these stories in wondrous ways, as a thread growing out of a woman’s mouth, as the wings of the bird women (mythological or perhaps not so mythological entities) who “. . . are able to fly to the next life and come back again . . . can visit the dead and lead the living to that place, so the journey will not be such a sad one.’”

The key phrase here seems to be “that place,” the “There” in the title story. Indeed it is a “place” off the existential radar, and it is this uncertainty of desire, of transcendence, as opposed to the certainty of detail, of the quotidian consistencies (the consistency of ordering the same donuts every morning, the consistencies of morning tea) that creates any meaning that can hold our lives together.

The exiles, the immigrants, the isolated and alienated of these stories, must reconcile themselves with a haunting or even repressive past as they struggle to survive an alienated or desperate present always striving towards a hopeful but uncertain future.

This collection of stories is reminiscent of Classical tragedy in its exploration of human limitation and the enduring, relentless human urge to transcend those limitations, ultimately impossible perhaps in a physical sense, but not in the spiritual, as the physical struggle that must lead to spiritual triumph.

In the story “Dust,” it is ultimately only the dust of a man’s shoes that can “travel across the border between Mexico and the U.S.” and even this dust –representing the man himself—is so fragile, so impermanent, that the rain might yet turn it into mud “never to be heard from again.”

In the story “The Fence,” Alejandro cannot physically escape to freedom, yet ,magically “dust particles he’d kicked up, when his feet went out from under him, lifted into the air . . . in minutes . . .the dust particles migrated over the fence, descending grain by grain, slowly, onto the other side.”
In Patty Somlo’s stories, the journey from “Here to There” is not without its dangers and uncertainties.

Ultimately, once on this journey of the imagination, of the body and soul, of life itself, there is no turning back, there is only the courage, endurance and persistence to continue that journey wherever it may take you.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story

2010-10-18T12:20:00.007-04:00

It’s kind of a funny thing to think of a movie about a suicidal teenager checking into the psychiatric ward of a Brooklyn hospital as a “feel good movie,” but that’s just how I felt- after leaving “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” the film based on the novel by Ned Vizzini– kind of good.

One of the problems about movies that take place in mental hospitals or wards is that they take themselves so damn seriously— so seriously in fact the patients take on some inhuman form, demons that inform our worst nightmares. I remember when I was a kid growing up in Queens how those bars on the windows of the Creedmor Psychiatric Center would do strange things to my imagination.

I thought of it as a giant prison where the inmates walked around with hatchets dripping with blood while old hags cowered in the corners and screamed all night. There aren’t too many feel good hatchet movies around these days.

I can’t really remember whether they even mention in this movie whether there were any bars on the windows. And when Dr. Minerva (played by Viola Davis), the ward Psychiatrist tells Craig (Keir Gilchrist)- who checks into the hospital because he’s feeling suicidal- that being depressed or Schizophrenic is an illness like Diabetes is an illness, it made me think that maybe if someone had told me that, I wouldn’t have been so scared whenever my family and I passed Creedmor on those Sunday afternoon drives.

There’s a real gentleness about this movie and a real effort not to make you feel scared or hopeless about mental illness, but hopeful things can get better, that all of us, mentally ill or not, have an awful lot to deal with in this world and that we’re all in this together and any one of us could be one more stalled or crowded train, one more gas or electric bill away from ending up where Craig ends up or even his friend Bobby (Zach Galifianakis), and why would it have to be such a goddamn nightmare all the time.

One of the really nice things, no two of the really nice things about this movie is that 1. No one kills themselves and 2. No one gets a lobotomy at the end. I appreciated that. It’s always nice that Craig, though feeling as if he has come to the precipice of life- a la Brooklyn bridge- he doesn’t jump. He’s confused, but sensible, even for a teenager.

Ironically, it’s spending five days in the mental ward where his compassion (helping a depressed middle aged Egyptian (Bernard White) find his life again- lending Bobby- the inmate he befriends (or is befriended by?) a blue dress shirt for an interview and his creativity flourish. You almost feel that if more teenagers spent a few days in a mental ward (rather than the Army, for example), a compassionate mental ward where if someone speaks too loud, even the inmates might complain, they might find a lot more compassion about the world and maybe feel a little better about their own situations. If not, they’re free to join the Marines.

In the film, Craig has friends, a family he really cares about and who really care about him, even if his father is a little thoughtless when he first comes to see him, mentioning things (an application to a summer academy for the highly intelligent) that have only added to Craig’s suicidal thoughts. One day he doesn’t show up because of, as Craig’s mother explains, a “client crisis.” Craig knows it’s just an excuse, but still, his relationship with his father, emotional and otherwise, is stable enough for him to accept it as another “dad will be dad” incident.

I like that.

I like that Craig has not killed himself because he has a good family and that he has a good family to go back to when he gets out. Okay, so we can’t dislike Craig, we can’t dislike his family, we can’t really dislike his friends (they’re just silly teenagers), we can’t dislike the inmates, not even the old Egyptian guy— Craig’s roommate— who won’t get out of bed. Can we at least dislike the psychiatrist, Dr. Minerva who makes, that’s right makes Craig stay the whole five days because it is the policy? Well, no, we can’t dislike her either because she’s just doing her job with a little extra compassion thrown in which Nurse Ratched never had.

Even when Bobby has the one semi-violent episode in the film (he knocks over a bunch of bookcases) Craig never feels afraid and neither was I and I suspect the audience wasn’t either. You never get the feeling that anything, anyone, is going to spin too far out of control. It’s a very self-contained film, nothing spills over the edges or outside the lines. This film is not a sit-com (always desperate for that laugh every few lines) nor is it a film that ever takes itself too seriously.

It is what it is; things happen the way they happen, funny or sad, because that’s the way life happens- funny or sad.

It is a film driven by its own sincerity.

This is kind of a funny story because it’s a human story. We walk out of the theatre not feeling terrified- this is really an anti-nightmare film that might even make you (dare I say it?) feel good about life?

Well, maybe better about it, but I did not once think “There but for the grace of God go I” because even if I was “there,” things might not be so hopeless.

Maybe it’s more of God’s grace to let us into places where we most fear to enter. Anyway, be sure to enter the theatre and see this film. You won’t be sorry.

Also in the Film: Emma Roberts, Lauren Graham, Jim Gaffigan

Dog Haters

2010-10-07T15:32:00.014-04:00

The other night, not two doors down from my own house, I got caught red handed.
My Park Slope neighbor has a large sign on her tree that says, CURB YOUR DOG. I wonder how the tree feels about that. She also has a sign on her front gate that says CURB YOUR DOG.

She and her husband are dog haters.

Even though more than 20 dogs live on my block alone, there are still some dog haters left, people who think dogs are dirty nuisances who kill trees with their pee and soil their little front weed gardens with poop. When it comes to parking their dirty little cars in front of a tree or renovating their houses for the umpteenth time this decade with all the toxic dirt dust and noise that accompanies those little year-long endeavors, you don’t see me putting up any signs on my tree or front gate that say, PLEASE NO CARS or PLEASE NO CONSTRUCTION.

Nah, they just hate dogs and usually the people who walk them.

One time I was walking past a neighbor’s house across the street and before I realized it, one of my dogs started peeing on her little weed garden. Suddenly I heard perhaps the most shrilling tirade of invectives coming from any window since Hitchcock’s Psycho.

I couldn’t believe it was me she was directing it to. I mean just a day earlier she was asking how my daughter was enjoying pre-school.

No, dogs do things to these people.

Not good things.

They get dog rage.

They foam at the mouth.

Since that day, she has only given me dirty looks, that kind that say, “I’m watching you all right and that little dog of yours too.” Thank you Wicked Witch of the Western Side of the Block.

Oh, no. These are dog haters all right. They must have all had some traumatic early childhood experience with a dog. Maybe as a child they stuck their finger in a dog’s eye and the dog bit them.

To these people only people are worth knowing or caring about. When it comes to these people, my wife and I feel the opposite.

Just last Saturday night I took my dog out at about 9 P.M. and he peed right away and in front of Curb Your Dog’s house. I mean I meant to curb him. It’s just that he’s 14 years old (90 something in human years) and really had to go. But just our luck, right in the middle of things (en media res as Sophocles might put it) there were the Curb My Dogs themselves walking down the block.

They had seen it all. My dog and I were caught red-handed.

Mea Culpa! I wanted to cry out but instead pretended nothing happened and crossed to the other side of the street.

When I looked up again there she was, my neighbor, Curb Your Dog, herself. My dog barked at her. He’s not very diplomatic.

“Can I speak to you for a moment?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“I think it’s very rude and un-neighborly of you to let your dog pee in front of my house.”

“Sorry,” I said, “but my dog is old and sometimes . . .” but she didn’t want to hear this. She just looked at the ground as if more dog pee might materialize beneath her feet. She was a dog hater and all dogs, old and young, big and small-- were the same. They poop and pee in front of her house and not their own house. My dogs won’t pee in front of their own house (or in back of it either for that matter) other people’s dogs pee in front of my house and my dogs pee in front of other people’s houses. This is the law of nature. Didn’t she know that?

“You see,” she went on, “I don’t want to put a strain on our good relationship as neighbors . . .”

What good relationship? I wondered. We hardly ever said a word to each other. She put giant CURB YOUR DOG signs all over the place, her husband sawed wood in the backyard all summer and we couldn’t hear ourselves think.

I guess she meant we don’t have a bad relationship as neighbors because we never tell each other anything that’s bothering us about each other— until now.

To be honest, I saw Curb Your Dog’s point. I didn’t like dogs, strange dogs, peeing in front of my house either.

Of course it’s the owner’s fault. It’s always the owner’s fault. The human factor. I would never blame a dog for anything.

Then again, it’s never easy owning a dog, especially owning 4 dogs like we do, who, to be honest, DO NOT ALWAYS CURB OUR DOGS.

Having to walk dogs several times a day all you want, all you can focus on is getting that dog or dogs to do their business and the longer they take, the less discriminating one becomes about where they pee.

Sometimes you just want to get home. It’s late, you feel like crap, it’s cold and raining, the last thing you’re thinking about is curbing your dog. Just pee, you tell them. Please, just pee, anywhere, and life will be very good from now on. Extra biscuits, hamburger meat on top of the usual slop I give you, anything, just pee!

Ah, there’s no greater feeling of satisfaction and success, for you, not your dog, when he finally lifts that leg. And conversely, there is no greater feeling of failure and a nagging sense of incompleteness, when one or more of your dogs do not “go” and you go home knowing you might not yet be in for the night.

I suppose this going or not going, this going here and not there, is always going to be a problem, a source of conflict within oneself as well as one’s neighbors, until somehow we can train our dogs to use the toilet. But this is not the reality and dogs are a reality and if all the dog haters would only smile, just a little smile when my dogs pass their house (and did not pee in front of it because I did not let them pee in front of it) just a little pat on the head once in a while (not me, just the dogs) just to be neighborly, and who knows, maybe on those cold and rainy nights I’ll actually remember that- fight the nasty impulses of a tired dog owner– and curb my dogs.

Writers in the Rain in an Unreal City

2010-09-17T19:40:00.006-04:00

About the latest Brooklyn Book Festival, my friend Liz Eames made a good point: “Everyone was a writer but no one was a reader.”

For sure, it seemed my friend Gregory Tague and I, sitting at the St.Francis College table, trying to sell our books, me the one I wrote, Greg the ones he edited through his newly minted publishing company, Editions Bibliotekas, had to justify why it was we were sitting there and not- in the eyes of all those writers and wannabe writers passing by us or passing us by- they who were sitting there instead.

In other words, “Who are you?” they seemed to say. “Are you nobody too?”

The “big” writers, Rushdie, Ashberry, Auster, were performing indoors on this wet and windy afternoon, safe and warm and at a reasonable distance from the occasional paranoids or schizophrenics who examined and cross examined us, tested our minds and our patience, told us wild stories of a twisted imagination as if giving themselves up as living fodder or material for our own future stories.

It began with the Russian woman and her giant suitcase on wheels who asked if she could leave it with us beneath our canopy, out of the rain. At first I said no, but when she began to look at my book, to read the reviews on the back cover, to skim through the table of contents, to ask if I had been interviewed on C-Span, I finally relented and let her put her bags in a dry corner behind us.

It was only much later after she kept coming back, hovering around us, spouting invectives about a corrupt government (ours) that had thrown her and husband out of their apartment that I realized she would probably not be buying my book. By then it was too late. She already felt at home (perhaps for today this was her home) comfortable with us and began showing Greg her own writings from an orange composition notebook.

It rained pretty steadily all day and people waited on a long line to get tickets to see and hear the “real” writers indoors- inside Borough Hall or the St. Francis College auditorium.

I thought of T.S. Eliot’s Unreal City . . . "under the brown fog of a winter dawn/ A crowd flowed over London (or Brooklyn? Manhattan?) bridge, so many . . ."

Had death undone the “unreal writer,” the writers who flowed to us in the rain, the forgotten, the unknown, the desperate writers who all had something to say, something they wanted us to hear but we could not, would not listen to.

At times, as we sat alone beneath the canopy in the pouring rain, a lone and mysterious suitcase on wheels still standing behind us, our cards and fliers blowing away, to be crushed and soiled beneath the wet shoes of the multitude rushing to hear the “real” writers, those anointed by the priests of literary taste, what is good and not good, those who appoint and designate others for greatness.

As for us, our books were getting wet and we needed to push them even further back on the table. People, interested only in getting out of the rain stood in front of our table, oblivious that we were even selling books.

One man was interested we were selling books, but more interested in why we were selling our books and why Greg was bothering to publish books and finally, an hour later, after he moved on from Greg and over to me, why I bothered writing in the first place.

I kind of expected him next to ask why people even bother reading and finally, why they even bother breathing.

With his rather silly white and wet floppy hat, and just the slightest Mephistophelean grin, he seemed like a messenger from the hell of my unconscious.

“Well,” I told him, “as writers and publishers we want to both contribute to and share in the human experience . . .” and that’s when I saw that devilish grin start to get wider and suddenly I knew that that was exactly what he wanted to hear and if I actually continued talking that way, he’d eat me alive, devour me whole, but more importantly, perhaps, never leave our table.

So I said, “But the truth is of course I have a big ego like most writers and don’t let them tell you anything different and I want people to like me and recognize me and love what I’m saying and buy my books and . . .”

Then I saw it, saw how the muscles and nerves in his jaws and that thing, even that ineffable thing behind his eyes began to relax. “I appreciate your honesty,” he said. I asked three other writers the same question over there and they just gave me a lot of bull about . . . but you were honest with me. I appreciate that.”

And then he left.

He just walked away.

“Look,” I said to Greg. “He’s gone.”

“How did you manage that?” he asked.

“I think he appreciated my honesty.”

But was I being honest? Did I really mean what I said, or was I just bitter about my own situation that day? After all, hundreds of people came out in the rain to look at books, even to buy books, to listen to writers, to ask them questions, to think of themselves, maybe, just maybe, not only as writers or wanna be writers but readers too and that maybe this Book Festival is a great thing because maybe it is a great thing to, yes, to share in one of the great common human experiences left to us, which is books (whether we write them or read them) the idea of books, the feel of books (I did not see a single Kindle or Nook or iPad) and though I was careful not to say it too loud, I think I left that day, though soaked and still forgotten--believing in the wonder of books.

Unperched: The Author as Father

2010-09-13T14:17:00.007-04:00

I cannot pass my neighbor down the block Dorothy’s house without her wanting to introduce a neighbor of hers, a young writer working on a novel, who just moved in next door to her. I think I made the mistake once of telling her I’d like to meet him, so ever since she cannot see me without telling me whether he’s home or not and if he is home whether or not I’d like her to ring his bell and introduce us.

I’m usually not in the mood or else I’m on my way somewhere else which I usually am if I’m passing Dorothy’s house, or anxious to get home from having been somewhere else, like work, so I tell her next time.

This evening, the evening of my reading at The Perch Café around the corner, is no exception.

“I just saw him!” Dorothy tells me.

“Oh, yeah?” I say. “Just now?”

“Yeah,” she says. “He just left his house not ten minutes ago.”

“What a shame,” I say. “Maybe I can catch him later.”

“That’s too bad,” she says. “I mean he was just here.”

I cannot describe the disappointment in Dorothy’s voice and in her face, as if this meeting, this meeting not particularly, or at least not enthusiastically sought after by either me or the young writer, was the most important meeting since Reagan and Gorbachev, Napoleon and Goethe, Pound and Eliot, or perhaps even Stanley and Livingston.

I’m on my way to The Perch Cafe to do a reading, my second one there since last May. I’m supposed to meet my friend Marilyn for dinner and whoever else shows up.

When I get there, about 6:05, Marilyn is not there yet. I start to look at the menu and realize I don’t have my glasses. I cannot read my stories without my glasses so I go back home to get them.

On the way home Dorothy stops me again and says, “You wouldn’t believe it! He just came back. Not two minutes after you left. If you want I can ring his bell . . .”

But I tell her how I’m in a hurry now, how I have to get my glasses and then get right back to The Perch where I’m doing a reading. I tell her to let him know and maybe he can meet me there. Then she gives me his card. This pleases her as if we are getting closer to meeting, although in reality nothing has changed. He will neither come to my reading nor will I call the number on the card. When I pass by her house once again, after retrieving my glasses, she doesn’t say anything but just smiles, a satisfactory smile as if she has done all she can, at least for today, to
bring us together although in reality . . .

When I get back to The Perch, Marilyn is still not there. I order an iced coffee although what I really want is a glass of wine, but I know that any alcohol in my system won’t do me much good, will flatten out my voice as well as the stories.

At about 6:20 Marilyn shows up. She got lost. Before we even order any food, others start arriving. There’s Francois Snapping Turtle and his wife who go back to the garden to sit.

Later, shortly before I read, I will glimpse Francois and his wife sipping white wine at a small table near the door looking like Maurice Chavalier and Hermoine Gingold singing “Yes, I remember it well,” from Gigi.

In a few more minutes, Florence arrives, my 90 year old student who has never shown up to class without her daughter. She asks me if someone might give her a ride back to the subway later only because the walk back is uphill.

In a few more minutes Jason Dubow, an English professor from St. Francis arrives with his entire family, including his two sons, 9 and 11. This is the first time I start to think about the "adult content" in the short stories I’ll be reading tonight, "Cherry Orchard" and "The Homeless." Don’t Jason and his wife care?

And if not, whatever that reason might be shouldn’t I feel the same way and not have sent my daughter home earlier with my wife? Should I have explained to her how it’s my characters doing and saying things and not me?

Still, I know she knows I’m the one writing those words, creating those situations, and finally, reading it all out loud to strangers.

To my daughter my fantasies are my reality; I am my imagination; my imagination is me.

No, when Angela screams at Tony in "The Cherry Orchard," "Fuck you Tony!," it’s me screaming "Fuck you Tony!," and when Tony shouts back "Fuck you Angela!" it’s me shouting back "Fuck you Angela!" and when Tony digs his fingernails into Angela’s ass, it’s me digging my fingernails into Angela’s ass.

For her I am the inventor, the creator, the god who made these characters out of the flesh of my own imagination. It’s not them. It’s me! They don’t exist, but I do, and if I am not Everyman, at the very least I am every one of my own characters.

It’s like when the Victoria’s Secret commercial comes on TV, she always tells me not to look at it because even if I’m not thinking what she thinks I’m thinking, to her I’m thinking it anyway, and what could she possibly think I’m thinking?

This is what scares me. This is why I send her home. And when I finish reading the two stories, I look up and there’s Jason’s two young boys, looking exactly the way they looked when they first walked in, a bit indifferent, somewhat bored, and most likely wishing they too had already been sent home.

See You in Court- Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday

2010-09-10T17:55:00.005-04:00

I'm heading over to Brooklyn Borough Hall this Sunday, September 12, for the Brooklyn Book Festival.

Colleagues and friends will be joining me at Table #3 where you can pick up copies of my book and Gregory Tague's book.

You can also check out Salman Rushdie, Paul Krugman and those guys.

I'm looking forward to this Sunday- it was a great day last year. I met fellow writers and lovers of fiction and managed to sell a few books. If you make it out to the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, come say hello. I'll even sign a copy of my book for you.

Brooklyn Book Festival
Sunday, September 12
10:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Vendors: Outdoors- Cadman Plaza/Borough Hall
Programs: Borough Hall Courtroom & St. Francis College

Check out all of the Book Festival Events

See you Sunday- rain or shine.

Will be Perched this Evening

2010-09-07T12:20:00.002-04:00

Tonight at 7pm I will be reading at the Perch Cafe in Park Slope.

I hope I can repeat the success of my last reading at the Linger Cafe. No matter what, it's bound to be a good story.

Hope to see you there- more information here if you need it.

New Jersey Transit: The Consistency of Ospreys

2010-09-01T19:31:00.006-04:00

I’m in a bad mood this morning as we head back from Cape May on a NJ Transit bus.

No coffee.

No food.

No tolerance for anything or anybody.

My wife and daughter know this. That’s why they bought me a coffee mug that says “Rise and Whine.”

On the bus this particular morning, there is a woman talking to herself, with conviction, but patiently, with compassion, as if one self has had a long history of not understanding the other self.

As the bus moves towards Atlantic City, it stops at Wildwood, where a long line of people get on. There is an old man and his daughter. The man looks like the guy in Texas Chainsaw Massacre who cuts off his friend’s legs because he thinks he’ll be better off without them.

Right away, before anyone finds a seat, he starts cursing another woman in language far too strong for 8 in the morning. Apparently, some disagreement might have started while they were waiting for the bus to come. The woman curses him back, no holds barred, and threatens to literally throw him under the bus.
These foul mouthed threats of physical violence go back and forth for a while until the old man’s daughter manages to calm her father down.

But just when it seems everyone has finally calmed down and found seats, one woman who looks like one of the women in Texas Chainsaw Massacre drinking coffee with her friend while some poor girl is locked up in chains under the table, comes on the bus with her husband. Once on the bus, she walks up and down the aisle looking for a seat, screaming to her husband, “I can’t stand. I can’t stand up. I’ve got to sit. I just had knee surgery!” Finally, a young girl offers her seat, which defuses this crisis for a while.

Overall there seems to be a lot of tension on the bus, a prevailing negativity that comes from human beings behaving badly. And perhaps for a reason. Many of the people on the bus seemed to be headed for very low paying jobs (like many of the Mexican immigrants who quietly sit in the back), some to no jobs at all but just straight on, like us, to Atlantic City.

However, unlike us, none seem headed for or coming from a vacation. Wherever they might be going, they seem frustrated and angry, a feeling much worse, much more profound, than missing their first cup of coffee in the morning.

Whatever the reason for all this, I feel badly for my ten-year-old daughter. Rather than getting into the more profound reasons why people might be acting like this, I tell her that people can just be like that sometimes: loud, angry, foul mouthed, stupid, unpredictable, unstable, that people will be people.

But my daughter shakes her head as if she already understands this, that she has no expectations good or bad when it comes to “human beings” as she calls them. In fact, she actually says to me, “Yeah, I don’t like human beings very much.”

How sad, I think, that she feels this way, and how sad that I have not and cannot prevent her from feeling this way. It seems to me now she is trying to grow one of those shells she held in her hands just a day earlier when we went on the Salt Marsh Safari in Cape May.

It was a knobby shelled Whelk which most people don’t realize is alive at all yet is quite capable of rearing its pulpy legs, gripping onto a mussel and then cutting it open with the edge of its shell. My daughter also liked the Ospreys, sitting on top of their nests,those majestic hawk-like birds , monogomous, tenacious ,loyal who remain consistently optimistic in a world that becomes more and more impossible to live in every day as human beings continue to make a mess of it--see recent BP oil disaster.

Certainly, my daughter— whose life began in turmoil— whose biological parents were forced by an inhumane government policy to abandon her on a street corner in Nanchang, China— would be attracted, perhaps instinctively, to these wonderful, majestic birds, would naturally crave their instincts for consistency, loyalty and compassion.

Still, I try to tell her that perhaps it is the very inconsistency, the differences, the unpredictability even of human beings that makes life interesting. Would you want to hang out with a knobby shelled whelkin or even an Osprey every day? It might get pretty boring. Don’t you like that all your friends are different but still interesting in their own way?

That even when they act badly somehow you always get back together again, that is our ability to be forgiving and compassionate towards others and especially that we don’t eat each other that makes us special? “I guess so,” she says. This, at least, is a start.

Then, hitting upon a sudden, yet timely, metaphor I tell her how life is kind of like the stops along the bus route of the NJ Transit, full of unpredictability. Who knows who will come on next? Will it be a future best friend or someone we’d like to throw under the bus?

Either way, life is a challenge, I tell my daughter, a test for our own compassion and toughness in a harsh world that only we, as human beings-- as imperfect as we are-- can make better. Then she really starts to smile. I become hopeful.

“So?” I ask her. “Do you still feel that way about human beings?” “I don’t know,” she says. “But I do know you need coffee, Dad. You definitely need coffee.”