Mark Kozelek, Compassion and Intimate Strangers

So AJ and I take the B train to Grand Street and begin walking, hoping to find Delancey and the Bowery Ballroom. We are lost in Chinatown, and we seem to be the only white people around, which is always a good experience for white people. I like it. We ask for directions, but nobody seems to speak English. We have no instinct for which direction to head, which must be genetic. Just as I warm to the idea of wandering around lost in Chinatown indefinitely, a woman points us in the right direction. Only two blocks away.

I have already decided that I won't be disappointed if we can't get into the Mark Kozelek concert because there is a good chance that the fake ID for which AJ just spent $40 at a deli in the village won't work. The ID is hilarious. It is a "level C non-govermental legal ID", which means that she gave a "truth pledge" that the information on it is correct. It is almost as bad as the time in high school when she and a girlfriend tried to buy beer at a party store with a Hollister card. But she got in, which again reminds me of how much I love NYC. I am also reminded of how the crazy moralizing of midwest parents drives kids onto the back roads with cases of beer.

Mark Kozelek seems tired or down, or just not right. He has been waiting around all day to get into his hotel room and he says he's just not feeling it. He mentions how hard touring is, and at one point he stops playing and says something like, "I don't know, guys. I need some loving." The crowd goes wild with applause and encouragement. Some people keep calling out songs for him to play and once he yells, "SHUT UP!" AJ and I look at each other and smile. I love that we are here when he is revealing this particular aspect of himself on this particular night. I am reminded of Georgia, who said once when I was being critical of someone, "People don't need to be pleasant or nice for me to like them."

I read an interview where Kozelek said that he just wants to make enough money so his band can have health insurance (that is very paraphrased) and it made me think that he probably feels like a trained monkey while touring, playing the same songs over and over, trying to maintain his sense of himself while meeting fans' expectations. I loved hearing him live, I liked his crankiness, and if I were rich I would be his art patron. For sure. And I would buy a big apartment building in NYC and support artists. (Cookie, AJ and I decided you would have a room, anytime you wanted.)

Today on my ride to the airport I heard an interview with Studs Terkel talking about his book Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, which is a collection of oral histories from people, some well-known and some not-so-known, about attitudes toward death in the US. Some of these people he calls "intimate strangers", a term I have borrowed to use for those I have contact with in this blogosphere, this place I am continually trying to make some sense of. There is no doubt that I have been touched by strangers here, and I wonder what to make of it.

Isn't it funny that we are all here in this place at the same time, coming around at uncannily appropriate times with a needed comment, a post that inspires, an intensity and self-disclosure that is refreshing and endearing? Nobody puts herself out there, so buoyant and lively, yet vulnerable, as does Melina. And I will keep an eye out for Cookie on April 18, 19 and 20. There are others, too. I have been wooed, wowed and filled with wonderment here.

Are we doing all we want to do in this life? Are we taking care of the people who are important to us? What the next life brings we don't know, says Terkel. What is important is what we choose to do in this life.

My mind again goes to Mark Kozelek, his gift, his struggle and the toil of all humans. We all are trying to get through this life the best we can. Most of the time we can drive death out of our consciousness. But it will come for each of us, the only mystery is "when"? In this life I hope I can learn compassion, that I can be a good friend. I hope I can be one of the "crazy" people Terkel speaks of...those who put their lives on the line to make the world better...those with compassion enough.

AJ + Mark Kozelek

Getting ready to pick AJ up at the airport a hundred miles away. I'm looking forward to the drive and the music on the way. She will be staying for a week, and she is on NYC time, so I will be sleepy at work for a few days.

One of my NYC highlights was going to a Mark Kozelek concert with AJ at the Bowery Ballroom on the 21st. If you don't know who Mark Kozelek is, go out and buy his newest album under the name Sun Kil Moon called "Ghosts of the Great Highway". I have listened to it so much it is losing some of its magic, so I have switched to another of his albums, called "What's Next to the Moon" which is all AC/DC covers. So nice. He is sort of a melancholy indie rocker with a beautiful voice. Get his albums. I will tell you about the concert, but now I must leave to pick up the infamous AJ. She is a force to be reckoned with! After the concert AJ was deeply in love with Mark Kozelek (until she decided later in the evening that she was deeply in love with a certain club manager). She is so funny.

Last Day

Conflicted, I sit on the pullout bed and listen to the cars on the pavement through the open window. Isn't it always this way on the last day? I didn't see enough, do enough. I didn't learn what I was supposed to learn.

I am sad and lonely and too old to be discovering myself.

Tomorrow I will stand before a classroom full of students and long to be here, in this livingroom, in this city, listening to the tinkle of silverware in the apartment across the way, the sound of a door closing on the floor beneath us, the perpetual hum of the living.

New York Diaries III

Of course a vacation, a trip, isn't as much about physical travel as it is the journey that takes place in your mind. When people asked me what I would do in NYC, I mouthed my rehearsed reply, "I'm going to visit my daughters and see The Gates."

We need to provide reasons for going out into the uncertainty of the big world. And when we return we have memorized the appropriate tales of meals and sights and weather so that those left behind can make sense of our leaving. We return bearing the spoils of our adventure, a photograph, a matchbook, words scribbled on a soiled napkin.

But in this journey, this time, the heart is the place where I travel. I have felt movement where long ago all were left for dead. The flutter of an eyelash from the casket, and I know that I can close the lid, none the wiser.

What will my heart reveal? How do I explore this river, dark red and dense with discourses? If I set out I may never come back. I certainly will never be the same. This is the beauty, and the purpose, of travel.

Weather Report from NYC

New York Diaries II

Overheard at the entrance of Central Park yesterday afternoon:

Daughter: I am confused.

Mother: I'm determined not to judge the art. Just experience it.

Daughter: I don't get it.

Mother: There are a lot of people here, aren't there? People are walking through The Gates like a procession, going slowly. Maybe it would be better if you turned in circles when you walked through.

Daughter: I don't get it. What's the big deal?

Mother: Maybe you really need to be high to fully appreciate these "happenings". That's why they worked in the 60's. Everybody dropped acid and the art transcended the earth where it was placed. It gave you a glimpse of the intransitory nature of reality.

Daughter: I'm hungry.

Mother: The gates aren't saffron-colored. They're orange.

Daughter: It's fucking cold. But why is cold weather more tolerable in New York City than in the midwest?

Mother: You want to get something to eat? Let's get a drink! We can see the other 22.9 miles tomorrow.

Daughter: You've seen one gate, you've seen them all.

The Perspective of Dreams

She dreams of airplanes while her lover,
asleep beside her

Dreams of basements
Deep subconscious places where
Women open their legs to you.

You.
You dream of tall apartment buildings,
the traffic of stairways

You go up
I go down

New York Diaries

Dina moved to New York City two years ago, and now she is a writer living on the East River, taking her dog to the dogrun, enjoying the old Italian neighborhood where everything is a caricature of old New York. I took the subway from Harlem to 59th Street and walked east past the park with the cold wind biting my face, enjoying the excitement that being half-lost brings.

Dina, who gladly left her job at the university and created a new one, is happy. Through her window I see a giant ship glide silently past on the river as endless traffic crosses the 59th Street Bridge. Her husband makes us martinis and we hug again. "Remember the night at the conference when that drunk hippie guy put the moves on you? You tried to avoid him, but he really liked you. Later, when he was sober he thought I was you, and said he hoped we could see each other again."

"Remember when we walked the deserted streets of Omaha and a homeless man appeared, quickly came up behind us and placed his hand on the back of your head? He looked at you and said, "do you see how easy it was for me to do that?"

Later, sitting at the bar at a tiny jazz club, Dina says she loves the organ, that the only possessions she cares about are her computer, her piano and her man. She no longer has unnecessary baggage in her life. I am happy for her. Outside the bar we wait for taxis to take us back to our separate lives. "It sometimes gets very lonely here," she says.

In the middle of the night I fumble to unlock the building door. A woman, standing alone in the doorway smoking a cigarette, smiles. "I'll open it for you."

AJ and Moe dance to Eminem in their little living room. They wave down a taxi, talk smack, dress to kill, give me advice like "tell him you could suck the chrome off a hubcap." God! They are cute and sassy and they think it would be fun if we could all live together.

In their Dominican neighborhood I hear childrens' voices on the street below. Horns honk, traffic speeds by, a man stands on the sidewalk calling to the window above. "Eddie! Hey, Eddie!" And of course Eddie comes down, and the woman with the keys sleeps through the afternoon and California Rolls litter the table in my daughters' living room like little lush islands from which grow tiny succulent green trees.

Falling Down Again

I went to a baby shower a few days ago for Amie, the special-ed teacher who shares my classroom and co-teaches two of my ninth grade English classes. Fifteen special education students are in one of these classes of thirty-two students, and we have gotten pretty good at playing "good cop/bad cop" in the two years we have been partnered. I am fire and Amie is earth. I have never met anyone quite like her, so genuinely compassionate and uninterested in promoting herself. The administration of course, doesn't know what they have in their staff, and doesn't see her rare qualities: pure motive and a kind heart.

One day a student named Rance, who is on Amie's "caseload", fell out of his chair (who knows?) and hit his head. Rance, a bit of a nerd, to say the least, is totally unappreciated by his peers in middle school, but Amie and I find him perceptive and witty and bright. When James, an attention-guzzling, morbidly obese, at-risk gangster-wannabe who sits behind him had the ill-bred nerve to laugh at Rance's misfortune, I lost it. I got in James' face, telling him if he ever laughed at another student in my classroom again I would have him in the office so fast it would make his head spin. (Later I thought "make your head snap" might have been more effective. God! Where do these things come from? I am such a movie whore.)

After class Amie and I sat at our desks eating lunch and I fumed about James' behavior. Amie, of course, put it in perspective. James laughed because he always draws attention to misfortune. It started with him making fun of his weight before other people got the chance. He fends off his peers attacks on him by attacking himself first, and it crosses over to other people, too.

Later I hear Amie talking to James about his grandmother, who was rushed to the hospital the night before, unable to breathe. James lives with his grandma, and he uses the phone in our classroom, but he can't reach anyone. He doesn't know where he will live if his grandma dies. No one else in the family wants him. Amy tells him everything is going to be all right. She is sure his grandma will be fine.

At Amie's shower the women talk about boob jobs and home decorating tips and husbands and kids, and I try to practice being open and uncritical. It is quite hard, and I quickly find myself in the basement with an 8-year-old, one of the teacher's sons, playing the drum set happily until "they" (the teachers) come down and tell us to leave it alone.

Finally it is time to gather in the living room for "the opening of gifts". (Which, I am happy for Amie, but why do people need all of this equipment for a baby? My babies lived on breast milk and slept beside me. I didn't even have a baby bed! But I don't think my peers would appreciate that.) Watching the very pregnant Amie struggle to remove tape from a large box, I quickly pushed up off the stool to help, forgetting I wasn't in a chair and it had no back. I fell backward and there was a mortifying silence in the room at that moment when, hovering in mid-air, I realized there was no turning back. In the ugly aftermath I heard a teacher exclaim, "Is she all right?!"

The next day at school I ask Amie if she enjoyed her shower. She is thankful for all the gifts and is feeling like she is ready to have the baby. I laugh at myself and I tell her I can't believe I fell down! (Although of course I CAN believe it. It has gotten to be routine with me.) She looks at me and says, "My mom thinks you are beautiful. She was surprised that you are so beautiful because she had these ideas about people who teach alternative ed." I mumble, "I don't feel beautiful," but I glance up at Amie, appreciating her magic. I am already feeling better about myself.

Shopping = Death

I am not a good shopper. I would rather wear raggedy old clothes that are falling off my body than shop for new ones. I have never liked to shop.

When I was a little girl Dolly, my energetic mother, would drag me along on all-day shopping excursions. My 5-year-old patience quickly hit the wall and I sought diversion, hiding under clothing racks, crawling quickly on my hands and knees across the hardwood floor to the outer boundaries of womens' clothing.

Social butterfly Dolly, disarmingly beautiful, searched for the perfect explosive mix of sexy and sophisticated in her next Charity Ball formal gown. She shimmied the umpteenth red satin, black velvet, strapless, low cut or tight-waisted dress over her perfectly proportioned hips as I sat admiring her from the littered floor of the dressing room, surrounded by mirrors, a dirty little girl with cobwebs in her disheveled hair.

Dolly wore fire engine red lipstick which I occasionally, while sitting on the bathroom sink, liked to apply thickly to my cheeks like warpaint. But Dolly always made sure to plant some on my face with her lips, marking her territory, staking claim to her little possession.

Later in the day, weary of the smell of fabric, the unfriendly fluorescent lights, the tireless walking in pursuit of fashion, I angrily hid under circular racks of skirts, hunkered down, scowling.

Then I would hear Dolly's loud voice coming from the bright world above me like an angel of guilt, saying, "Well, I guess we will just have to LEAVE her here. She'll have to find her OWN way home," and I would scurry out to face her mix of disapproval and love. She cajoled, held me, made me smile somehow, planted a kiss on my cheek and we were off, bags in hand, to the next store.

My hatred of shopping evolved naturally into hatred of fashion and all that it represented. Photographs of my prim sisters sitting nicely in their ruffled holiday dresses are forever colored by my inability to sit still. I am always reaching for something off-camera with my underpants showing because I just wasn't good at wearing dresses and didn't get the important concept of having to stop life to smile and pose like a "perfect family". And Dolly's attempts to dress me in "cute" clothing (like a "wonderful" hand-me-down faux-fur winter coat of Georgia's) brought stamping of feet and cries of protest. "I hate that damn coat! I have NEVER liked mink!" My mother's horror at my father's vocabulary pouring angrily from my 5-year-old lips quickly turned to muffled laughter as I held my ground.

I won that battle. I didn't ever wear that coat, and I still hate pretentious damn fur coats.

And fashion is still a bloody battle. Since my favorite article of clothing, a Banana Republic gray lambswool sweater (that I purchased for $1.75 at Goodwill, loved and wore constantly) went through the washer and dryer and now would fit only a 5-year-old, I am desperate. I must go shopping. Wish me luck.

Good Traveler

A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler is one who does not know where he came from. - Lin Yu-t'ang

I've been thinking about changing the name of my blog to something that seems less like I am looking back over a long and full life and more like I am in the middle of the messy journey. In a way I think it is stupid to change it, like what difference does it make? But I am restless.

I have never felt like I fit my name. Like my family, it has always seemed like something I couldn't quite recognize or relate to. It was like I had been kidnapped as an infant and couldn't identify with my family or my name - or the town where I grew up or the people in it.

I'm wandering the earth looking for people from my tribe, I guess. And now that I have entered the blogosphere, I see others doing the same. I think. But is anything here as it seems? What a strange place, where people have relationships with people they have never met. I care more about some of the people I have connected with in the blogosphere than people I see face-to-face every day.

Once again I try to analyze this process of blogging. I can sense I have entered a new phase with it. I'm wondering, what do all of us who are anonymously putting ourselves out there have in common? What do we want? Is this a substitute for relationships? Are the relationships formed here just as real as any other? Do we need to know another person physically to truly experience them? This has got to be a burgeoning new field for psychological research.

It feels like I am being tricked with smoke and mirrors, and enjoying it.

Red Sky in the Morning

Red sky at night, sailor's delight
Red sky in the morning sailors take warning

Sideways had to be the worse movie choice to end an already bad day. The movie was good, and it did have the "hilarious" "full-frontal nudity of ordinary people with flabby bodies" factor, which elicited much laughter in the theatre (like What About Schmidt), but it also was depressing as hell. The knock on the door at the end just didn't bring the hope level up enough. This guy's life was pitiful and his future would continue to be miserable. How could it not? I just wanted to warn the woman: "Run! Don't answer the fucking door! Don't let this energy-sucker into your life!"

Which brings us to me. I teach middle school, my marriage has fallen apart and I am writing a novel. And I am a big fucking asshole. The similarities between the main character and me are way too numerous for comfort. Leaving the theatre I heard a young girl say, "Well, I'm never going to be a middle school teacher!" On a day when I was feeling insecure and unwanted and stupid, House of Flying Daggers would have been a better movie choice. I could at least have been soothed by a movie filled with beautiful color and strong women.

When I am struggling color always brings healing. A red cardinal lights on the bush outside my window, transforming the muddy melting snow into its perfect compliment. It brings with it the color of birth, death and rebirth. But green is the color that I desire. I remember the color green in spring! Once, fields of it stretched out like living medicine as I passed by, my pupils open receptors to my heart. Now, without that green I rely on fading memory for sustenance.

What if this year brings no spring? What if my cyborg eyes, wide open and scanning for first living green are locked on this barren landscape, programmed to repeat, empty head jerking back and forth long after expectation for medical assistance is gone.