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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.
October 10, 2001
I’ve been meaning to leave New York for so long that it’s become one of those comforting embarrassments that you carry around like a stuffed animal way past the developmental sell by date. I’ve been meaning to leave New York for fifteen years; I had intended to stay for a year. The vanity of plans in a city of such seductive powers. My friend C. is a producer by profession and as with many talented and successful people her professional skills are often evident in her personal life. While I was slowly maneuvering around the idea of terrorist attacks acting as a catalyst to pry me out of the city she was in a car scouting the North Fork for houses. Before a considerable portion of the populous had settled on flight as an appropriate response, she had managed to procure a house, at what seems a ridiculously nominal rent, with four bed rooms, a fire place and a kitchen in which you can imagine performing endless, complicated and deeply satisfying culinary rituals. Her rationale in renting the house was not to escape the fear of terrorism, it was to “cheer us up.” Producers are often in charge of morale.
I’m not sure how one would make a living out there—a job at the Cutchogue McDonalds—so weekly stints in the city are still required. But I find myself wondering why I have prolonged the wearing of such an ill fitting shoe—permanent residency in Manhattan—for so long. “If in doubt, run away,” has frequently served as my motto. Economic necessity, moral paralysis? That part of a life that grows up around you in a city as you get older: a lover, friends, the unfounded conviction that you have to persist with your role as an extra in the drama of a great metropolis? Medical needs, the ability to get a shrimp stuffed squid at 10.25pm on a Monday night? I think I’m ready to relinquish them all, presuming that the lover and friends will visit. Especially when I think of the shed in the garden that M. sat in on Sunday working at her laptop. Returning from my bike ride I looked at her through the window and thought that there are few visions as pleasing as watching someone enjoy their work undisturbed. She emerged amazed at how much work she had done.
The house is ours only until May, but I suspect that this venture that C. so beautifully produced in her producer way—with certainty, without misgivings (though she might argue otherwise), and with a deep conviction of the possibility of outcomes that parallel and exceed dreams—has finally broken the seal of my self-siege in Manhattan. I’ve been crying wolf for so long with regard to city departure and finally there’s a train in the station that permits, even encourages, those that have been hallucinating wolves for years to board.