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November 26, 2001
The white car was still there on Spring Lane this morning. The doors shut and some of the objects on the grass exchanged for other objects. It was early and I didn’t cycle by the doors to see if she was sleeping in there; I had the feeling that she was. It was a foggy morning and there was condensation on the inside of the windows. I had had misgivings about my romanticizing of the old lady who might have lived in a car. On the first day I saw her she was a rune of solitude, today when I saw the car she was a warning. Perhaps she is not a voluntary nomad but a woman who never found a place or a way to make a living. A woman without friends or family, without income or savings. Without access to heat, healthcare or home. Someone who had lived carelessly without any tenacity of purpose or the ability to subdue her pride in order to hold down a job. Someone who had gambled on never being old and had lived life as if there was perhaps a tomorrow, but little beyond that. Perhaps, when younger, her contemporaries had tried to help her. To get her jobs, encourage her in her skills, to advise her to be a little more prudent in her approach. She balked at their advice, held onto the idea that one day she would settle down and make a great deal of money very easily. It became more difficult as she got older; she was alone in her stubbornness and her disbelief in the future. By the time she saw where she stood it was too late for reform. What could she do? At fifty, with her husband fled, train to be a nurse? The rooms got smaller. Eventually they had no kitchens. The bathrooms moved to the hall, always shared now. Her daughter gave her a lump sum and she bought a car. She drove the car to a lane. She picked the lane with great care. For its appearance, its lack of other people and its name: spring.
November 21, 2001
The perfect inoculation against weariness for the city that you live in: four days in another city. London splendid; return to New York golden. Driving up Sixth Avenue I spot Wallace Shawn outside Balduccis hailing a cab. He is being set upon by his own Thanksgiving shopping contained in several large white bags dwarfing his diminutive stature. Spotting him seems a good omen, he always seems perpetually amused by life, in love with the city and never oblivious to his own good fortune. Odd how one forms these notions about public figures, largely unfounded, based in part on appearance, facial expression, and on his work and the work he chooses to involve himself in. I love his book “The Fever”, he suggests it be read aloud. I thought of it when I saw him and had this longing to get out and give him a presumptuous kiss on his lovely bald pate.
November 12, 2001
When I was a child I don’t think I spent much time speaking as a child. I was channeling demons or mute. The latter, suddenly, seems appealing again. Except for certain phrases. The man on the bench reiterating to all passers by, “Sit with me, sit with me, sit with me.” Though nobody did. To remain quiet, to approach this next parcel of effort without reporting it. Blithe mute. That is what I think will be helpful. So pardon me if I am recondite but sometimes the telling of a thing makes it worse. The not talking cure; more than brevity, silence.
November 13, 2001
On Sunday I went on a long bike ride on the North Fork determined to exhaust the proliferation of roads that grow around Nassau Point and Southold like a system of blood vessels running perpendicular to the shore of the bay. On Spring Lane parked on the grass verge was a white car with the front and back doors open. In the back a woman of 70 or so was reclining with her feet up on the back seat and her back stretched against the jackknifed front seat. She had a container of food which she held up close to her mouth that she was eating from. Around the car, on the grass, were an odd assortment of items as if she were having a yard sale. One item was one of those baby strollers for jogging with that you see svelte young Manhattan couples heaving along in front of them, there was also a small table and chair. We looked at each other and said hello, I cycled on. Her face had contours of wrinkles running concentrically around an oval face. If I had stopped to befriend her I might have found out more, but it is not in my nature to stop and befriend people even though I often wish it were in my nature. I had spent the morning feeling anti-social. So when I encountered her it was somehow reassuring. How do you grow old? There she was, my perfect old lady. Reclining in a car on a Sunday afternoon eating a frugal picnic. Did she live out of her car? One might have imagined her to have been lonely, abandoned by men, women, children, but I had the distinct impression that she was deeply happy. A rune of solitude announcing to me that this was something for the taking without guilt or misgiving. Twice I passed another woman of a similar age walking on a long straight road. I was bundled up, my face wrapped in a red balaclava, a homage to my mother’s fear of the chilled skull. She would go out with her head bound in odd pieces of cloth and wool for the cold and rain. Every old lady reminds me of my mother, to paraphrase the poet. My mother gave me so much sap and on days like this I see that it is not diminished in me, but I fear that her own sap is being drained. The second old lady said to me on my second pass by her, “I think you were smarter than me.” I did not know if she was referring to my mode of transport (wheels over legs), my garb (warm, perhaps even overdone for the day), or my route. I said, “I’m not so sure about that.” You’re an old lady for godsake, alive , hale and walking the roads on a beautiful fall day, walking alone, what could be smarter than that? At one point a deer crossed my path, a hart. I have always loved the word. The whole afternoon left me with a feeling of the allegorical: wise old ladies, healthy adult male deer, many dead ends with beautiful views of water.
November 1, 2001
I walk the seven or so blocks to drop G.’s little blue quilted jacket off that she had left behind at the weekend. She is being charmingly naughty, an act which makes me realize I would be a lousy mother. I just want to laugh. Her grandmother from Kentucky has sent her a baby lion costume for Halloween, one that she has lovingly sewn. It has three constituent parts: a zip up body suit, a cap with ears and a cape/mane made with many shades of thick wool. The suit has a stuffed tail with a tuft matching the mane. Sewing is so rife with love. Coincidentally D. and I had discussed maternal love and sewing over the weekend. Her mother had lovingly recreated Burda patterns while her daughter impatiently fidgeted through fittings. My own mother could never quite submit to the discipline of patterns but she sewed and adjusted items for me with endless patience and few questions. I think the punk aesthetic left her somewhat confused, nevertheless she attempted to follow my directions and several outfits emerged as envied concoctions of that era’s slipshod brilliance: the tartan beaver-grazing mini skirt, shortened from something that must once have belonged to a diligent office goer and retrieved from a Mansion House thrift sale; an old shirt of hers that she had sewn in her youth which we converted from an interesting blouse to a colorful straight jacket; and endless projects involving string vests (string vests may be an Irish/British Isles only phenomenon) and gold lamé. I only know one contemporary who has this ability to throw bits of fabric together into wearable items. The last time I visited her home she was running up an evening dress for the millennium. She was pinning her svelte-self into it in front of a full length mirror while juggling two children under the age of three. Merely witnessing this energy, which was unfolding inside her huge Georgian house in Dublin, made me wilt and flee. Knitting is different from sewing. It accommodates more anarchy if you can give up the notion of following a pattern. Utilizing very fundamental technique you can actually create yourself a quite wearable item if you have even a modicum of tenacity. Why do I find myself thinking of these Victorian and traditionally female pastimes? Something in me, perhaps induced by sojourning out of the city on a regular basis, craves to be more self-sufficient. I have always found these activities deeply rewarding: baking, pickling, knitting. Can gardening be far behind? I even gave myself a hair cut and dye job this week. That’s several less hours performing tasks that are dull but not remedial in order to earn money. My exterior may start to look more peculiar but my interior will be less so. At least this is the hope.
October 11, 2001
I was on the West Side, realizing it is a month later but nevertheless enjoying one of those days that we live for: light strained through prisms of lemon essence, an astringent to every edge, the climate resolved briefly to perfection. A police car with a siren going is accompanying a van East on 23rd street. I continue with the efficient knitting of the self absorption of my days: leaving the dentist, relief at the end of a series of unpleasant treatments, the pain in my jaw retreating, excitement at the prospect of more time on the North Fork. Only the faded underline of guilt beneath the pleasure. I notice the van has the words City Morgue written on it. There is nothing clinical about the van, it is a gray cube van. Shouldn’t it be white? Morgue, America’s charming love affair with older English, mortuary is a more recent term. What are the other words illustrating the archaic strains of American English? What is it carrying? I become fixated on the arrangement of the interior of the van. Is it like the bread van that used to deliver bread to our house? Layers of narrow shelves with deep wooden trays each containing the fresh, soft loaves in waxy wrappers. Are there torsos, limbs, fragments of bodies laid out on trays, in body bags? Parts that were cherished. It occurs to me that dying in a less violent fashion, to die whole, not to be in parts, is a great privilege. I can’t get beyond the imagined horror of the van’s interior, wondering at its system, but only the van brings me close, briefly, to what has happened.