the guez

Siren Song

2023-11-14T16:51:00.000-05:00

The Aged General heard it first. When he was a boy, there had been stories told of such a thing, the kind of stories one whispers in the dark. Never in his long and illustrious career had he ever experienced one, but he was smart and quick to understand. From the first note, he knew what was happening, and he jumped up to shout a warning and cover his ears. But his hands moved slowly, as if they were under water, and his voice lodged in his throat and came out as more of a strangled cry. “It’s a si-“ was all he was able to manage – before the sound overwhelmed him.

Afterwards, no one was able to describe the exact melody. A female voice, mournful, all could agree on that, a single voice sounding like multitudes of simultaneous voices. The melody was unlike anything they had ever heard, with overlapping harmonic tones. The key was minor. No, not minor, said the music theory experts, some sort of a variation on the Aeolian mode - no the Phrygian mode - no, not that either. They debated it for decades after. Treatises were written with much controversy and disagreement, but this much was known: The waves of sound stretched and pushed, embedding themselves into the flesh, vibrating into the very muscles of the heart, the tissues of the gut, the soft mass of the brain.

It was the most beautiful song anyone had ever heard. It was an exquisite agony to hear. The vibrations relentlessly pushed, putting microscopic breaks in the tissue of their brains so that the Militants looked in the faces of the children they held captive, and suddenly they saw their own children, their own mothers, their brothers and sons. And in those faces, they saw, love and trust and confusion and hurt. And suddenly the horror of what they had done shook them to their core. They wept. With the song quaking their bones, they put down their weapons and gathered the captives into their arms and cried so deeply their bodies trembled.

At the same time, the Soldiers looked at their bombs and felt suddenly that they were pointed at their own families. With a shudder, they took their hands off the triggers. They powered down the weapons. And the sky was suddenly quiet for the first time in weeks. And with that quiet, the melody grew and swelled.

Where did it come from? What was causing this madness? The General wept, looking around for the source of the sound. Not far away, the Leader of the Militants kneeled to the ground in the tunnel and wept also. What have we done? Send them home, he said. And in a line, the captors took the hands of their hostages, and together, they picked their way carefully through the tunnels to the stillness outside and across the border to where their desperate families waited for them. And the families reached out their arms, until they touched their lost loved ones, finally at long last, bringing them into their arms, staring into their eyes, afraid to even blink should they lose sight of them again.

The sound reached the Cabinet Ministers too. And the melody pulsed and shook their hearts, their guts, their mind. Some felt the sounds shake them so hard they worried they would have a heart attack, others felt an urge to rush to the bathroom. When they looked at their maps, their eyes blurred so that the people they were blockading were their own sisters, their grandmothers, their children. What have we done? Send in more water, turn on the electricity. Bring the injured to our hospitals, quickly, we must save them before it’s too late.

The song pulsed into the delicate nerve endings and proteins of the brain, vibrating painfully so that each side looked at the faces of their enemies and saw only their own. The Soldiers dropped their weapons and struggled to rescue those trapped under buildings. The Militants dropped their own weapons also and rushed to their side, each sweating equally at the task. We will help you rebuild, each said to the other.

There. A Soldier and a Militant saw it at the same moment. The source of the sound. A figure floating in the ocean. Long flowing hair that twisted black as night, skin a mix of green and white. Her mouth was open, but no sound came directly from it. Instead the sky above her vibrated the tones. What interest did such a creature have in the world of man? Her song shook the buildings, it colored the air. The deaf could feel it with their gut; covering ones ears was useless. The two men on the shore lifted their rifles. Guns which once felt so light, felt as heavy as a truck. But they knew, they must succeed. They must achieve victory. And somehow they sensed, they could only achieve this act together. Each raised the sight to their eyes and aimed. They fired. They were crack shots, each of them. Neither one missed. The creature didn’t stand a chance, she didn’t even try to flee. In one shot each, both men shot the creature dead.

And just as quickly as it began, the Siren Song was silent. No one looked back to see what became of her, if her blood was red or black. Did she sink back into the sea or float into the sky? Did any living thing in the sea mourn her or collect her remains? That was of no consequence. All rushed back to their war.

The silence was a relief. The vibrations released their hold on their bodies and the pressure on their thoughts. And with the silence, their vision cleared. The Leader of the Militants shook his head. Kill them all, he said. Launch the missiles now. The Prime Minister blinked and rubbed his chest where his heart still ached. Why did you stop? Send another round of bombs. The Soldiers and Militants looked at each other, working side by side, saw the opportunity, and reached for their guns.

And that was the end of it. A legend that Soldiers and Militants each would tell their surviving children.

Until. From behind the rubble, came a new sound, hopeful, small. A young girl, her face covered in brick dust. She opened her parched mouth and started to sing. She sang the melody as best as she remembered it. Her voice was tinny, barely audible. One of the Militants laughed. What a feeble try. But then he turned, because the melody was somewhere else, joined by a young woman in the corner. Her version was a little different. No one quite remembered the tune. But she sang it all the same. One more voice joined in, from a young boy who was tone deaf and clearly didn’t remember the song. But somehow that didn’t matter. The tones grew more confident as more people joined and sang even louder. It wasn’t long before the space reverberated with the song.

The Militants shook their head, confused. The song was not so strong. It left them able to see, but conflicted. Wait, what do I do? What is right? The Soldiers rubbed their eyes. They looked at the people they were just helping. Are they family or foe? Are we the same, or different?

The people saw what was happening and lifted their voices stronger. You’ve got to hear this, someone said, and recorded the tune, and passed it around. Others learned the melody and sang along where they stood, dropping their work. Even those alone at their desks, those reading the news and weeping helplessly, joined in and sang to their walls, their hearts pouring out. And the sound swelled and grew and spread, past the desert. It went north and east to the wider continent. It went south to the continents beyond. Growing and spreading, pulsing through hearts and bones and finally into the tissue of the brain and the subtle muscles of the gut, so that each saw in his enemy, someone no different from himself.

What is the plan? asked the pundits and diplomats. Where are the borders? asked the lawmakers and foreign brokers. Either side looked at the other. They had no idea. But when they sat at the table to figure it out, each saw in the eyes of the other, something they would never in a million years admit. But the people in the room, they recognized it for what it was, and they sang long and loud until their voices were hoarse.

february 2019

2019-02-09T12:49:00.001-05:00

“I have died many times,” Lanie said to me, listing offhand just a few of the experienced that changed her. These were “before and after” moments, moments after which she grieved for the person she thought she would be, for the life she thought she would have, for the person she once was. She had to “die” and then emerge as someone else. “That’s part of growing older,” she said to me.

Looking at Lanie, at this person whom I admire and respect so much, but whom I met only after the events that currently shaped her and brought her to my life, it was comforting somehow in my grief. So many different layers of grief. It was difficult to see where one ended and the next began. How to peel it apart to determine the provenance of this darkness versus that one.

We’ve had a rough time of it lately, I would say, thinking first of my friend whose simplicity of life choices I had found myself relying upon as a kind of barometer, until that simplicity blew up in her face and the tragedies came barreling down in a twisted macabre comedy. Motherhood ripped from her so violently, first slowly, and then all at once. And everyone talking about how strong she is. But I don’t feel strong, and even being close feels like getting crushed and buried in darkness.

They don’t tell you about this part of growing up. The part where doors close and options get narrower and there is an overwhelming sense of loss with every passing year. And you have to decide whether to let go, and grieve and die a little bit so that you can change into someone new, or to hang on and hope and wait. Like that time in February where you think spring will never come. But invariable, it always does. Eventually.

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a saturday night

2017-11-04T12:39:00.000-04:00

On my way to the city from Brooklyn on a Saturday night. The energy is mild, but 8:30 is still early by New York standards and it’s summer. I walk past the girls on the platform in their short skirts and thick eyeliner; their hair is beginning-of-the-night perfect. They wait for the train, shifting their weight from foot to foot, radiating hope and desire. Maybe tonight will be the night. Maybe something will happen. Or at least, it will be fun. Their laughter is loud, nervous.

Then I’m up the stairs and on to the sidewalk, back in the familiar buzz of the street. The mom getting ice cream for her daughter, the couple walking from the restaurant to the bar. The night hasn’t really started yet. Nearby, a driver in a car and a driver in cab play a game, mimicking each other as they tap lightly on their horns while waiting for the light to change. The driver of the car is in his 60s, but the delight on his face makes it clear what he looked like as a young boy. Toot-toot! Toot-toot! A call and response. Then the light changes and both drivers move on.

The city. My city. For better or for worse. Walking east from the train, past a few stoic brownstones, past the strip with the bars only starting to fill up, ignoring the rush of cars like a river beside me, past the coffee chains getting ready to close for the day, past the place where the uniqueness has been ironed out and replaced with wealth and homogeneity, rounding the corner towards the big bright hospital.

Inside, it’s quiet. And bright enough that it could be day time. Standing in line at the lobby, I show my ID, then head up to the ninth floor where in a little dark room, loud with the whir of a medical-grade air purifier, baby Anya sleeps, pressed deep against the cushions of her crib. She wears a hospital gown too large for her - a yellow one with little lions on it. She sleeps deeply, (always a good sleeper) her breath even and regular.

This little room, it’s a spaceship. The Saturday night summer pulse of the city has no meaning here. We might as well be a thousand miles away from the street below. The baby sleeps, the purifier whirs. Outside the room, the nurses work and gossip, but even that feels removed from this space. All the other children on the floor don’t seem to exist.

So strange.

Once, not that long ago, Zosia and I used to be those boots-clad Saturday-night-girls, dancing in dark jeans, flirting with boys in bars, filled with that what-if-tonight energy. But that was before I married Michael and our Saturday nights evolved more often to peaceful, quiet home-life times in Brooklyn.

But this. This is new. Writing by lamplight in a dark hospital room while Zosia’s daughter fights off leukemia. Watching her as she sleeps, breathing deep against the cushions of the crib.

grows in Brooklyn

2017-04-20T01:29:00.001-04:00

“We got a tree!” Michael said when he first saw it, sticking his head way out the window of our living room to view the scraggly, adolescent thing below, just ten feet tall, it’s branches too thin, baking in the summer sun. It didn’t look like the sort of tree that could necessarily survive the summer.

When a new tree is planted in this city, it is beloved by the whole neighborhood. Trees are not taken for granted here, but are welcomed and tagged. They are the subject of sidewalk conversations with the neighbors and much inspection.

And on one misty and drizzly day, when the world had that brown and blue hue particular to mid-summer, we took it upon ourselves to put up a dog fence around our tree and plant some flowers under it. That day, our neighborhood played a scene that could have been on Sesame Street.

Next-door-Sue’s eyes got dewy when she saw us working in the rain, and she went upstairs and brought down some fertilizer from her apartment. Upstairs Tom said that he’d make sure that no one would throw trash on it. “Because as soon as people see any trash, the think it’s ok to throw their own down.”

Downstairs Bernadette offered to keep it watered regularly. Some lady walking her dog helped me carry the soil from the store down the block. Next-door-Kim lent me her shovel and next door-Richard let Michael use his circ-saw to cut the boards for the fence. Then Old-Michael from next door - still struggling to walk after his stroke - brought out a chair, sat down and held court: “Don’t worry about the back, bring them all to the front,” he directed, gesturing at the flowers. Richard dragged out a bucket of soil from his own garden in back. The super from the building to the left of us caught me worrying over the little shoots and said, “Don’t worry, it will grow, it will grow. But you need to extend the fence to the back to keep the dogs out.”

All afternoon and into the evening, everyone walking by stopped and smiled and said, “Nice work! Beautiful garden!” with the same sweet face that they would give to a new baby in a good mood; until, by the end of the day, as we cleaned up in the dark, I was convinced that this little corner of Brooklyn was the best place on earth.

A week later, Deborah from downstairs said to me, “I caught a woman letting her dog pee on that tree, and I let her have it! Unacceptable!”

That was last summer. Our little tree survived. It grew taller. It thickened out a bit. I’ve thought about pulling some branches off it to decorate our marriage canopy, but I think it’s still too thin for that. I’d rather that it just keep on growing.

a different kind of loss

2015-11-14T13:43:00.000-05:00

“They are parakeets,” the guard said. “Up in the tower? Yeah, those are parakeets.”

“Oh really? I always thought it was parrots that lived in this cemetery.”

“You can tell the difference by the way their tail feathers are shaped. If they’re pointed at the end, it’s a parakeet. If the feathers are spread out like a fan, then it’s a parrot. I should know. My lady was a parakeet.”

“Yeah?” Zosia inched toward the exit. The sun beat down on us - exuberant, late-spring heat offering to furnish the sweltering summer to come. Greenwood Cemetery was green and pink, abloom with flowers, heavy with bees and humidity. It was hard to believe that just five weeks ago, Michael and I had trekked through this place in the monochrome of snow, clouds, and granite.

I shaded my face with my hand.

“She’s buried over there.” The guard gestured over to a modestly sized catacomb near his booth. Topped with a green copper roof and dotted with a few tombstones like a small, granite garden, the building gave no evidence of a clandestine pet burial. This man could never afford to be buried in the elite and glamorous Greenwood Cemetery himself, but his job did come with some perks.

“The family that I got her from was named Russo,” he said. “And it turns out that this is the tomb for another family named Russo, so I got lucky.”

“Wow”

“It was really hard. Really hard to lose her,” he said. “It was a long time before I was ready to let her go. I kept her in the freezer for two weeks before I could do it.”

“Birds live such a long time,” I said. “You must have been very attached.”

“She died young,” he said. “She was only twenty. And she died of a broken heart.”

“Oh no.”

“I started seeing this woman. And my bird didn’t like that one bit. She got really sad - and mopey. And then she started laying eggs. She never had laid any eggs before. One of them got stuck inside her and she got sepsis and she died.” His face constricted with the memory. “And then the woman left me.” He sighed. “ And so I lost both of them.”

“Ohhh.”

“I don’t want another bird,” he said. “Never again. They’re too needy. They get too sad when you’re not home every day. This bird, she used to follow me around, saying ‘Matthew, Matthew.’”

“How-“ I opened my mouth to say, just as two cyclists rode in past the gate. The guard put up his hand and his voice changed.

“No bikes. No bikes allowed in here.”

“Oh, sorry, we didn’t know.”

“You’re welcome to lock them outside and continue through the grounds on foot.”

“Oh, we don’t have a lock with us. I guess we’ll come back another time.”

“If you put them over there,” the guard gestured in the direction of the Russo catacomb, “I’ll keep an eye on them. I promise you, they won’t get stolen on my watch.”

autumn in the city

2014-10-21T22:31:00.000-04:00

Our weekend commenced with bold intentions that fizzled with the rain and the cold. Instead we found ourselves doing domestic things; setting up the new internet, cleaning the kitchen. Then drinking coffee at the French restaurant across the street and looking up autumnal activities on our phones.

“We could go to the ocean park by the Rockaways,” I suggested. “There will be sand dunes. We can walk in the rain and enjoy the melancholy.”

“Hmm.” Michael contemplated this. "I like the idea of going to a sad ocean park, but I don't know what we'd do there together. I won't be able to have my melancholy thoughts.”

“That’s not true!”

Michael looked at me. “You do little dances and stuff."

Kid Stuff

2013-12-27T00:08:00.003-05:00

I suppose I should preface all this to say I am not Another Girl in Greenpoint anymore. I have become Another Girl Priced Out of Greenpoint, and have flown nine miles south, to a little birdhouse with Michael.

Moving in with someone is a very adult thing to do. It’s a time for plans. And cutlery. Discussions about duvet covers, and the arrangement of books on bookcases.

I’m not sure how it started. Maybe it started with the prevalence of sidewalk chalk in our neighborhood, used not to ironically point out some over-priced artisanal sale, but to naturally draw out a map to the buried treasure, under the outlines of a hopscotch court, right next to a giant star and a hippo-person. This was chalk that we tread on every day through the spring and summer.

Or maybe the mosquitoes started it? One night in early spring, the mosquitoes found the holes in our screens, buzzing and biting us awake all night. I sighed, ready to suffer through another summer, but Michael had other plans.

“We’re going to re-screen these screens,” he said. “But first, I got us a net.”

“A net? Like a mosquito net?”

“Yup. A bed net! I ordered it this morning.”

When the net arrived, he was excited like a boy with a new toy. He hurried to set it up over the bed, then pulled back to survey the final result. “Oh,” he said. “That’s not really what I had in mind.”

I looked it over.

“I thought we would look like explorers,” he said. He squinted at the billowy white netting that hung from the ceiling to curl delicately over the bedframe.

“It’s a Princess Bed!” I exclaimed, suddenly joyous.

“It looks silly. Maybe I should take it down.”

“I’ve always wanted a Princess Bed! Ever since I was a little girl!”

Michael looked at me. I could see him calculating the value of his manly identity and his dream of sleeping like safari explorers, pitted against the prospect of a good night’s sleep free from mosquitoes- in a Princess Bed.

“Let’s keep it? Please?”

He sighed. One of those big Charlie Brown sighs. The Princess Bed stayed.

Then there was my purchase of a laptop backpack. I tried to buy something client-friendly, but when it came time to click “Purchase,” I chose a colorful pack over the more professional black one. When it arrived, I frowned at myself in the mirror.

“Do you think it looks like a little girl’s purple backpack?” I asked Michael.

“Yes,” he said.

I contemplated this. “But it’s so pretty!” And so the girl backpack stayed. (So what? I'm a female director and small business owner. And I have a pink backpack.)

And finally, there was my mysterious addiction to Survival Craft. Now I don’t normally play video games. But for some reason, this spring, I became someone obsessed, devoting hours of my life, losing myself in the world, dreaming about it. For a while, Michael played it too. We sat side by side making plans.

“I’m going to build a road,” he said.

“I’m going to build five houses so that I can explore more of the island!” I said.

When his mom came to visit, she couldn’t understand it. Video games?

Once on the subway, I was lost in my game, when I noticed a ten year old kid looking over my shoulder. “What game is that?” he asked. And then we were off, talking a mile a minute about zombies and werewolves and the best way to build a house, until his subway stop arrived and his mom dragged him away.

Normally in New York, grownups are invisible to kids. but this spring, I was perfectly visible to them. Maybe it was because of my pink backpack, the Princess Bed, our awesome video game, my new streets decorated with sidewalk chalk, and my park filled with kids chasing balls? I don't know, but it was nice.

the beginnings of goodbye

2013-03-22T14:18:00.001-04:00

I wrote this back in February of 2010. And now, given the circumstances, I think it is appropriate to post here.

I discovered Greenpoint by accident on a really good day. K had just finished cutting my hair in the courtyard of my building to the accompaniment of B’s sound effects and singing. “How does your hair get so BIG?” His explosive poof sounds illustrating my giant hair’s refusal to be less giant, even under enthusiastic sheers, made it hard for K to cut straight from the laughing. We were twenty-three. Terrified. A year out of college, broke, and clueless. And only sometimes aware of how happy we were. It was a Wednesday and none of us had anywhere to be, so we decided to leave my apartment in Williamsburg and go exploring. The three of us, one with a lighter head, set out for a walk in the new spring warmth, talking a mile a minute, sometimes singing, pointing out the things we found beautiful. We walked in circles. We lost track of time. But then we were pointing again and again and again. Look at the tumble of rocks by the river. Look at those crisscrossed pathways above that factory. Look at those tiny bakeries with the pastries that smell like jam. Look at the way the trees make a canopy over the brownstones. Look at those wild cats, see how they stare at us? Everything was beautiful.

We ran laps around McGolrick park, eyeballed baskets of plum tomatoes at the grocers, peeked our noses into overgrown gardens, tried to count how many of the houses were magic, and walked with our heads tilted back to see to the top of the houses. When the sun finally set over the river and a hush of darkness fell on the streets, we rested our feet at the Pencil Factory and sighed. K said it before I could. “One day, when I get a job, I’m going to move here.”

I have lived in Greenpoint for a while now, long enough to see the majority of my twenties pass. Just a hiccup compared to the old lady who has lived in my building longer than I’ve been alive. So I feel a little silly saying that I love this neighborhood as if it were a person, but it’s true. I love the unassuming, straight-lined architecture of the factories by the river. I love the tumbles of gardens on the smaller streets. I love the expression on the face of the grocery cat on Manhattan Ave. I love how the man at the hardware store once put his hands on his hips and said “Wellllll?” when I walked past, waiting to hear how the paint looked that he had sold me earlier that week. “It looks beautiful,” I told him. Whenever my family visits from out of town, they say, Greenpoint feels like Israel, or like Holland, or any place that feels like home.

I play this game when I walk home from the subway, and try to memorize the houses on my block. I can’t do it yet. I know there’s the one that looks like a magic castle with spiderweb grates on the windows, and there’s the church with musicians often playing in the front yard. I know there is the tan brick building with the old man who used to sit outside and say “if only I was young again.” There’s the brown house with the rickety wooden porch where that guy used tell everyone “nice day, nice day,” no matter what the weather. That’s just the left side. The right side is harder. It goes church, garden, garden, garden. I haven’t memorized the gardens yet.

It’s different here than in other parts of Brooklyn. I’m not sure why. There’s something about the proximity to the river, being able to smell the water on clear days, or the way the neighborhood is bookended by dramatic warehouses and factories that sets it apart. It’s a partnering of a small village feel with something darker and more exciting, especially when you try to park your car down there at night. The neighborhood doesn’t have that upscale quality so common to Park Slope or Fort Greene. It’s Greenpoint. It’s grittier. There’s bad stuff here, a sewage treatment plant that makes the north end stink on rainy days, an oil spill under the water that oil executives make only a show of cleaning up. You can go for a walk in the quiet of the night, snake your fingers through the fence at the Newton Creek, hang your head over the water and feel like you’re on an adventure. Is the water really flammable? Has anyone tried to ignite it? Then you can take a different way home through tree-lined streets and discover a homemade garden sculpture tucked away between two apartments.

During the mayoral debate this year, the incumbent declared that he was all for preserving neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods. But in Greenpoint, he said, where there’s space for it, he plans on putting massive new housing- lines of forty-story condos all along the river.

Nothing is permanent. All things end. But knowing that can change your perspective. And so when I walk back from the subway, I try to memorize my home before the crowds get here with their giant, sterile towers. One house at a time. Church, garden, garden, garden.

digital dawn

2013-01-17T15:04:00.000-05:00

Text message from Michael to me at 7 am: " Napoleon commands such a strange place in history. Every time I read these references to him, by men not a hundred years removed, he is referred to with a certain reverence. It would seem that even a royalist begrudges him his place, and even his detractors pride themselves that he was, after-all, a Frenchman. "

Struggling to think of a response, through a sleep-fog, I finally reply: "You left your charger here."

Morning People...

on soup and science

2013-01-02T12:26:00.002-05:00

Sometimes when I'm making dinner, my mind wanders to Archimedes sitting in his bathtub. He was so excited to discover that the volume of his body elevated the water in the tub, that he yelled "Eureka!" and jumped naked into the streets, thrilled to the teeth with his new discovery.

Obviously, this man had never made soup in his life.

That makes me wonder if Archimedes had a wife, and if he ever posed his mathematical quandaries to her. Maybe she was standing in the kitchen that very afternoon making soup, watching the water level rise according to the volume of the vegetables, wishing her husband would hurry up and get out of the bath so that they could eat before it gets cold.

And then came the winds

2012-11-19T22:59:00.004-05:00

This is not a blog about the hurricane. Or maybe it is. It is about the winds that came in and blew things around this month. Hurricane Sandy was one of those winds. It was a wind that blew out the power in Manhattan, filling our house with guests for a week. It was a wind that wrecked the restaurant where Michael picked up a Sunday shift; the unexpected days-off giving him a new softening between his shoulder blades and an easy laugh on Sunday mornings. It was a wind that brought news of my best friend’s engagement, marrying her to a very different future from the one we laughed about on innocent college walks years ago.

The wind came and blew away my confidence in a video client, helping me to let go of yet another job that was to be my “big break,” leaving behind a sort of emptiness and the itchy feeling of abandoning a script unshot.

The wind blew in my friend’s lives as well. Making one man (a friend of a friend) take his own life, and another leave his girlfriend without a word of goodbye.

“It’s just windy!” I said to Emily on the phone.

“That is a perfect way to describe it,” she replied.

Then there was an election. And a war.

And Rachael got kittens.

Phew!

the plan

2012-08-23T22:14:00.000-04:00

The plan was to- well there was no plan. The plan was to fly to a faraway continent and have an adventure. But a relentless exhaustion paired with a mild fever and a midsummer cold made the prospect of adventure incredibly unappealing, and as my heavy head and sick spirit contested, I was Burnt Out. So burnt out in fact, that with some show of drama, I stepped off the airplane right before it was to fly away, grabbed my suitcase, and took myself home to bed, unsure if I was a coward/weakling or a person of great will, but relieved to be sleeping in the northern hemisphere, in quiet old Greenpoint with my cat under my arm. I had just finished three weeks of travel and work/travel and work, and was, as they say, done.

In the morning, I made a list of all the things I would do on my new vacation in Brooklyn, and then proceeded to ignore the list. Instead, I spent a week napping and reading on couches, beds, parks and park benches. It was the kind of laziness that used to accompany school breaks, when I would melt into the couch watching movies. “What did you do today?” my mother asked. “Nothing,” the reply.

I can’t remember ever being this sleepy. And to think, I had plans to write a song, practice multiple instruments, visit museums. A list fit for a Capricorn. But instead, I was simply content to sigh, to close my eyes, to disappear into a novel so that the book-world seemed more real than the real-world. Watching fractions of movies, feeling the shiver of wind in the leaves of the trees, taking the ferry on a whim – just to sit in a new patch of shade by the water and watch babies toddle around. Disinterested in company, finding spots away from the crowd, no desire to see friends. Sleeping and sleeping. Folding into stillness.

The real world looms just outside of tomorrow. Grown up life with businesses to run, goals to achieve, scripts to write and people to convince that I’m not afraid of anything. But in the meantime, I have one day left to contemplate the play of light on water, and I will do it with delight.

summer

2012-08-05T23:04:00.001-04:00

I spent the better part of my childhood summers under water: summercamp, grandparents’ pool, beaches, lakes, swimming holes. Summer meant water. Summer meant being submerged, the lifting of my hair in the enveloping cool, the constricting feeling of my lungs in the evenings after holding my breath in the deep end all day. I took it for granted. Summer and swimming were synonymous.

Then came adulthood. Then came New York. The reflection of heat bouncing off concrete to more concrete. The oppressive humidity, the crush of traffic to the beaches, the polluted river one block away. When I first moved to Greenpoint eight summers ago, I put wet washcloths in the freezer and draped them on my shoulders during the heat waves. In the evenings, I went down to the river and watched the water lap the pilings on java street but didn’t dare dip a toe tip in. The river's smell of earth and water drifted up to my living room window and made me wild. Such an ache to swim, to dive into that river polluted by my elders.

When we walked past the old abandoned swimming pool, we tried not to look at it. They’ll never fix that pool, I was told. Or if they do, it will be in ten years and by then we won’t be able to afford to live here anymore. Summer in New York became about finding ways to leave. Dreaming of lake water upstate or on train trips on the LIRR. I adapted to a seasonal sadness.

Time passed. Rents went up. The first of my friends fled to cheaper territories. Art and culture came to the abandoned pool, and with it came city funding and without the time feeling so heavy after all, something changed in the city bureaucracy and the pool re-opened.

My first morning swim came three days later. 7:30 am. Early-morning stillness, sun sparkling off the blue, rows of swimmers breathing in rhythm with each other. Padding barefoot along the quiet to the little ladder at the edge. So big, it was originally built to hold 3,000 people. Sliding down, the sudden sweetness of the water on my skin, the lifting of my hair in the enveloping cool. And with it, an underwater sigh. The joy of summer has returned.

It seems such a silly thing, that a public pool born of city planning and reborn of elbowing budgets, could make me feel so happy, could make me sit with damp hair in my living room scribbling in a notebook before work with a few rogue tears in my eyes. Maybe it has something to do with childhood. Or summer. Or maybe, I just love swimming.

June 3, 2012 7:45 pm

2012-06-03T22:31:00.000-04:00

Sitting in my bedroom window chair, looking out onto the greens and burgundies of early summer on Milton street. The breeze lifts the curtains and carries with it the scent of potted jasmine blossoms. I have tilted the chair so that I am floating above the street, as out of doors as one can be while sitting by the window in one’s bedroom. I peer between the windowsill irises to the outside, where the sky is moving through blue-grey and grey-blue and a sometimes-dash of purple. Below me, three old Polish ladies stand in a triangle on the sidewalk and compare their sandals. They lean against the garden fence and take off their footwear to view them more thoroughly. I float above them and see the pink plastic insoles versus the black rubber insoles, discussed with some attention in a language I don’t understand.

The air is soft but the wind stirs things up. And I am overcome with sadness and nostalgia. Nostalgia for nothing. Or maybe nostalgia for this moment.

of mice and men

2012-02-26T22:57:00.000-05:00

This is not my story. It is Michael’s story. But I like it so I’m telling it as I remember hearing it.

There was a time when Michael was a bartender at a fancy restaurant in New Orleans. During his shift, he was often sent to the far corners of the restaurant where other people didn’t go. Once while searching for a jar of olives in the wine cellar, he heard a terrible sound. He rounded a corner to discover a mouse stuck on a shelf, its bottom glued fast to a trap. It was screaming in a mousey way, struggling helplessly to free itself. Now if any of you have ever encountered a mouse in a glue trap, it’s a pretty terrible sight. Far from the quick and grizzly death of a spring trap, the glue trap keeps its victim in a slow, terrible contest until the mouse starves to death. Michael knew, and the mouse probably knew too, that it would never get out of that trap alive, and the torment would continue- for days.

Michael contemplated his options. The restaurant was set to open in a little under an hour. It was a restaurant where an exterminator had been hired specifically to kill the mice. And it was a restaurant in New Orleans no less, where men were not expected to care about the fate of its vermin. Conflicted, Michael grabbed his jar of olives and then lifted the trap and the mouse attached to it out of the basement. He walked up the stairs into the main floor, and hid them- one end still shrieking, the other end still stuck- next to the trashcan. Then, he stood nearby and waited.

A sous chef darted by on an errand.

“Hey, man,” said Michael, as casually as he could. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” The chef rounded the corner, leaving Michael alone. From behind the trashcan, the mouse squealed its displeasure.

Finally, he decided to own up to it and ask the head bartender what to do.

“I had the same problem last week,” the man said. “George told me to cut its head off – start at the back of its neck, where it’ll feel the least pain. I took my wine key and I pressed it on the neck until the head popped off. Then I went home and threw up. You can do that if you want, but I’m never doing it again.”

Michael looked down at the little mouse. “I’m not going to do that.”

“Well,” said the man, “There is one other way.”

Michael looked around him. The restaurant was set to open in half an hour. He would need help for this. “Where am I going to find someone to help me save a mouse in the state of Louisiana?” He surveyed the wait staff. There was macho Joe and angry Alison. Behind Alison was Winny, the hippy waitress who never wore a bra. Bingo. He took Winny aside.

“I have a situation,” he said, and described his predicament. “Can you help me? It means you’re going to be late for work.”

She thought about it for a second. “Yes.”

Michael and Winny huddled in the corner of the parking garage behind the restaurant, staring into a shallow pan of water where mouse and trap and glue and tail remained stuck together. The mouse had stopped struggling. It lay meekly, waiting for death. For a long time, it seemed that nothing was happening. Then slowly, the glue began to dissolve. Winny touched her hand to the mouse’s tail and one millimeter at a time, pulled it off the tape. It was free! In a flash, the mouse darted off under the cars and disappeared. Michael half expected it to turn back and look at its saviors, but it never did, and meanwhile, they were late for work.

The next time he found a mouse in the basement, Michael didn’t need Winny’s help. He snuck out the back door with his pan of water alone. He had the thing submerged and was just about to pull it off the tape when he looked up and saw Bob standing above him. He was caught. Bob was one of the manliest, dude-est, men-men in town. It was said that he threatened to shoot people if they crossed him, and he walked around town with a definitive swagger. He looked them over.

“You saving that mouse there?”

Michael straightened. “Yep.”

Bob eyed the pan of water, the crying creature, the young bartender pulling it off the tape.
There was a long moment of silence. “I guess everything’s got a right to live,” he said finally, and walked away, leaving them alone.

making a history

2012-01-25T00:33:00.002-05:00

My father makes things. He has, so far, been a cartographer, a filmmaker, a soldier, a photographer, an inventor, and a businessman. He speaks four languages. He is ambidextrous. He has lived in all three worlds and has seen many of the faces of poverty and wealth. My father has three names- one for each country he’s lived in. Unconventional, stubborn, eccentric, with a mode of problem solving that drives my mother crazy, he is filled with stories. This is one of them. I hope I get it right.

My father was born in Tunisia, in Tataouine, back when it was a tiny village in the desert. His father, my grandfather, ground wheat for a living. They lived in a hut with no electricity- mother, father and half a dozen siblings. My father talks of adventures climbing palm trees, of hitting birds with his slingshot, of making fantastical shadow puppets with the kerosene lamps. He talks of speaking French in a grade school where the teacher smacked him for writing with his left hand, forcing him to switch.

Now, my father never had a birth certificate. He also grew up too poor to have a proper Bar Mitzvah. But when the time seemed about right, he assembled his family in front of the temple, wrapped himself in a tallit, and took a photograph. This was his Bar Mitzvah picture.

He saved the photograph for years, this near-perfect record of an event that never happened. I’ve seen the photo. It’s faded and yellowed. My father is young and fresh-faced. He is surrounded by brothers and sisters and mother. But no father. His father couldn’t be there, even for the photo.

A lifetime of years went by. My father moved to Israel, then to America. He struggled and failed and struggled and won. He grew up and he grew old. The world changed around him. And when the age that we guessed for him reached about seventy, he taught himself Photoshop using tutorials he found on youtube, cursing at his failing memory, squinting at his notes. Then he scanned that old Bar Mitzvah photograph into the computer, and he scanned an old photograph of his father, and he Photoshopped his father into the photo. There.

He put this new picture into a digital folder with all of the other family pictures, so that when the screensaver came on and zoomed smoothly over pictures of his children at their weddings and fancy bar mitzvahs and vacations, his picture would have a turn, my father, fresh-faced and rosy, wrapped in a tallit with all of his family beside him, celebrating the joyous event of his Bar Mitzvah, outside a synagogue in the desert.

for faces

2012-01-10T21:44:00.000-05:00

Sitting on the couch cushions, on a night that didn’t feel much like Saturday. Crawling up against his chest, like a cat. A sigh. A letting go of the workday, a kind of easing. Into slowness. The little reading lamp over the chair. The shadows between the kitchen and the window.
“Everyone says I should join facebook,” he said, soft and sleepy.
Tracing the leaves on his arm. “Don’t join facebook.”
“I said -You should send me the pictures you took- and they said –We’re going to post them on facebook.-”
“Don’t do it.”
“And I said, -Call me the next time you want to hang out.- And they said –But we’d invite you on facebook.-”
A sigh. “One day, we’re going to break up,” I said to his bicep, “and you’re going to join facebook. Then you’ll post pictures of yourself with your new girlfriend online. And I’m going to look at them.”
“Why does your brain go to these terrible places?”
“I don’t know,” I said, closing my eyes against all the pictures I’d seen. Burying my head into the present, the thick weave of the couch, the smell of bar soap, the extra warmth of his body in the here and now.

way home

2011-11-16T00:46:00.001-05:00

There’s something special about the place and time where I live, a feeling that is intensified by the speed it's all changing. My friends and I live now in this neighborhood as if there is an end date. One day we won’t belong here anymore. That knowledge colors all my experiences in Greenpoint.

It was midnight on a Friday night and I was biking home from a dinner party. It had rained earlier in the evening, and my clothes were still damp from the ride out. I raced myself home, trying to build heat against the wind, hurtling past dark shapes on the late-night bike path, crossing invisible lines through neighborhoods, counting each crossing as a leg of a straight-line journey towards my bed and the promise of sleeping soft and warm. I swept past factories and more factories and the lone Hasidic man on his way home. Then glossy plastic condos, too-bright against the night. The smell of water, the river close but invisible. Other cyclists wizzed towards me and past again, all slate shadows and blinking headlights, tunneling home in the dark.

I was on the last leg of the journey when one of the shadows on the path suddenly looked familiar. Biking equally fast in the other direction, a blur, a shadow, a face- Ange! We saw each other and lit up. Hello! Circling each other like puppies. The cold forgotten. Pulled over to the side of the road to compare notes. Where have you been? Where are you going? How tired are you? What do you think about motion graphics?

Then, coming from the south, another bicycle slowed down. We looked up to see Jeffrey, also biking home from his weekend, recognizing us. Hello! A party! He pulled his bike to the side of the path. We talked of old roommates and first massages and how much we missed the coworking space. We scratched indian summer mosquito bites. We tried to see which of our helmets was the least ugly. Then two bicycles approaching us slowed down. Hello! Two friends of Jeff, pulled over to the side of the path to laugh about coincidences and ask if we wanted to adopt a kitten. Then it was 1 am and we were five cyclists on the side of the Kent Ave bike path telling stories.

When I got home that night, it was far later than I had planned. As I settled into bed and felt sleep lift me away, I thought to myself, there is something special about this place and time where I live.

No<->Space

2011-08-21T20:50:00.007-04:00

Oh Brooklyn Coworking,oh place of many names, what words could I use to describe your edges, your curves, your science, your politics? Do I start with your quiet block of flowering trees, your white-washed exterior? Should I introduce you with your tangles of morning glories? Should I speak of activists, of collective art and theory, of debates long into the night with great minds from Italy and Queens? Do I start with the boys who live in back, the Havemeyer street boys, of warm soup on rainy days, the banjo yoga practicing on afternoons, the sharing of kindnesses. Do I talk of the way this place and the people in it fit me more than any other place has, more than any single lover? Do I talk of patriots and ex-patriots and sweaty lectures with people poured into the floor? Do I talk of dinner parties and dancing and standing silhouettes smoking outside windows? Do I talk of words and Not an Alternative and Zizek and Badiou? Of Germans and Italians and participation and design?

Do I write about how I caught this place at the end of its time, after six years or ten years of activists and organizers gone married, theorists with babies on the way. Makers of art and change long past the angry college days of their youth. Of adults and plywood and cardboard and youthfulness with history, youthfulness with stories. And the falling, falling, without admitting, without using the words.

Hot summers at Coworking, playing frisbee in the rainwater sticking clothes to hot skin, digging up cardboard cutouts of Brooklyn made before the rents were so high. Candle-lit Sunday Suppers of food shared and plates washed together, passing the sake, colors rich against white walls.

Winters at Coworking, pots of tea, frost on windows, hugs and sweaters and the warm glow of lamps on books against the 4 pm dark. Trudging in blizzards to shake snow off boots and sample Zane’s bowl of dates.

Springs at Coworking, watching Jason frown on seed beds, waiting, waiting for the little buds to grow into twenty feet of flowers and vines. Seems impossible. “Taking forever,” he mutters. Giddy, jumping, passing around slices of peaches.

How to describe people with the same glint in their eyes, the same youthful dance, Ange’s twisty-turny kitchen dance, the songs and the music and the bicycles. “I can tell how much you all love each other,” the newest visitor says at the sight of us. The way we linger with our eyes, the lighting up of joy when we see each other- that spark of recognition. The affinity of people all a little odd, making different choices in their lives, seeing each other.

Everything in life is temporary. I learned that lesson years ago. I have learned a thing or to about letting go. But still. The word has been so over-used that we don’t even say it, except to say it with the numbers, raising our voices over the jackhammers sculpting condos out of concrete, the profit that the landlord can get by raising the rent 240% and pushing us out to wander lost without a place that seems more home than home. Leaving me to huddle over my notebook in one last attempt to save it in writing. Oh dear Coworking, if only I knew the words.

snips and snails

2011-07-14T21:16:00.001-04:00

I am standing up in the old rowboat, surveying the situation: the trees between the heat of the sky and the shady spot of the lake, the water deep enough for swimming, the rocky outcropping tucked just out of sight of the No Swimming sign. We drift.

“What we need is a rope,” I say.
“I have a rope,” says M.
“You brought rope?”
“Yes, because I am a boy!” Triumphant, he buries his head into his backpack, and I sit back and think about the rhyme, about snails and puppydog tails and some other line that I can’t remember, and how most boys are so much more fun than most girls when it comes to adventures, except for maybe Ange who knows how to build a snowfort and can tell you what trees are safe to eat. I lose myself for a moment, running my hand through the water, thinking about how this boy is more fun than most boys too, listening to the splashing against the side of the boat, watching the dragonflies zip around.
He emerges. “But, because I am a boy,” he says, “I left the rope in the car.”

oh hi there

2011-07-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

It makes sense, I guess, that the silences in one part of one's life would cause silences in others. Eight months since I last wrote one of these. Oh the tales I could tell if only I would. But I am moving on, skipping ahead into summer.

in 35mm

2010-11-28T23:37:00.008-05:00

It’s interesting, this getting older thing. In so many ways. But the way that I’m thinking of now, is the feeling I get when I look at old pictures of a person I’m dating. Not pictures of him as a child, but pictures of him as an adult, years before I met him. Here he is, much younger, but still grown-up. He looks different from how I know him- his hair, his clothes, the expressions on his face. His scars aren't there. He is in love with someone else. He thinks, maybe, that he is going to marry her. But then he doesn't. Then other things happened and he got older and his face changed and his body changed, and now here he is with me. Not a single cell in his body remains from that time. It’s a strange sort of jealousy.

into absurdity

2010-09-02T13:13:00.008-04:00

So I have, this month, been faced with a moral conundrum. And being a (over)thinker, I found myself caught in a labyrinth of internal debate and personal conflict. This conflict has had me agonizing for weeks over the definitions of words and their numerous meanings as interpreted by myself and different kinds of people, and wondering if my or anybody else’s personal interpretations matter one way or another when these meanings can just as easily be simplified into RIGHT and WRONG. Navigating my way through seas of grey area, thinking even of religion and its relevance and irrelevance, postulating theories to friends and knowing all the while that I was still being swept against my will (or maybe with it?) in the direction of WRONG. “Will you stop Spanish-Inquisitioning yourself?” Abi said, tired of hearing about it.

One night, still tormented, still undecided, I set out on my evening walk. But this time, I felt for a moment, that I somehow belonged to the bad people that lurk in the dark. That somehow, I was the trouble that people fear when they can’t sleep at night. The street seemed darker than normal, ominous. Too quiet.

Just then, slipping out of the darkest stretch of Oak street, an old woman hobbled toward me. Crossing herself twice, she approached at a fast clip, looking straight at me. I looked back, hoping for a sign. She stared. And then. She said: “God help me, I should have gone to the bathroom before I left! I hope I make it!”

before earth

2010-08-09T19:40:00.006-04:00

     If you want to compost your vegetables in Greenpoint, there’s only one place to do it, at the North Brooklyn Compost Project. They’ll take your greens and give you fresh compost for your plants, but you have to volunteer once per summer in exchange. Last summer I managed to wheedle my way out of volunteering, but this year, someone trapped me, and I found myself headed to the compost pile to give my time on one of those hot, humid mornings where the air sits on your arms and weighs you down, the kind of a day that make you hate New York. I tried not to be grumpy about it, even when my roommate fled to the beach. It was only a two hour shift after all.
     The compost project was set up in a busy corner of the park, between the dog run, the farmer’s market, and the farm share. It was 11 am, and the corner was crowded with the early risers, people that I rarely see in the neighborhood on saturdays. I stood there next to the steaming piles of decay and looked at the farm share across the path. There, all the couples were collecting their groceries, looking as if they’d been awake for hours. They lined up in bright domesticity, smiling large at each other, holding their dogs on leashes, picking out bunches of strawberries and plump vegetables, handed a fistful of flowers to take home at the end, packing it all onto their bicycles and riding home together. I was on the other side of the path, in what seemed like a different universe, breathing in the smell of rot and not-yet dirt, feeling as if I’d been single for a hundred years. Mine was the world where the colors were all brown and earth-wormy, and muted. Divided from the greens and vibrant reds and bright couples buying flowers. I looked wistfully over to the other side of the path. This sucked.
     “I feel as if that is the life side of the park and we’re stuck on the death side,” I said to the woman next to me.
     “Oh no!” she said, her face lighting up. “I grew up on a farm. Compost is as much a part of it as those fruits over there! It’s all the cycle of life and growth and rebirth. They need us!” I thought it over, looking at the woman, trying to think of a response. “Still, their side of the path does smell better,” she said.
     I sighed. “That it does.”

...
Though of course, there are never just two sides to any path. Even pretty ones in the park on a summer saturday.

cookies

2010-07-29T23:16:00.005-04:00

    This morning, I caught myself muttering, half-awake, in the shower, "....cookie road.... coookieeee roadddd......." I think I REALLY wanted it to be the weekend. It made me think about how the new little bakery next to my house has imbued my saturdays with a sense of vacation. Just sitting in the shade under the bright orange awning, sipping a coffeedrink, nibbling on a macaroon, watching the people walk by...like Europe in a cup.
   One weekend I was out of town and I called Katerina. All she said was, "hello?" But I could tell by the tone of her voice where she was.
   "You at cookie road?"
   "Yup!"
   It is that kind of place.
   But this morning it was thursday, and so instead of orange awnings, there was the oppressive subway heat and the commute into Manhattan. But soon, soon... I thought about the bright cookies piled neatly on their racks and tried to figure out what to order when the time finally came. And then discovered I was half an hour late for work and should really get out of the shower.