Shimmery...Odiferous

If I do not die of this flu by July 4th, I will be on a rooftop in midtown, watching the Grucci Brothers’ lights make floating smiley faces in the sky with people I love. Life, minus illness, is good.

Life would be better, however, if I had remembered to apply deodorant today. But the city dances for me anyway, smelly and sickly though I am, even when I merely croak and stink at the city. New York has an incredible tolerance for the croakers and stinkers, even if New Yorkers do not. This is why I love both on a cellular level.

Illness Also Gives You Time to Write

I drink chamomile tea to calm a raging red throat. I listen to Bebel Gilberto to calm a transitioning soul.

Two men were trapped this morning in a construction site not five blocks from my house. I heard the helicopters, but saw the close-ups on the news. I believe they are both free from their pit—an enclosure seemingly caused by the collapse of a large canary-yellow machine.

I am merely trapped in my apartment, awaiting the subsidence of a virus that has invaded every cell in my body and invited its friends along to party.

So I will tell you about my favorite plant.

I have a plant that has lived with me for 14 years. It happily stares over a view of Manhattan, and has for nearly six years now. (It regrets, however, that its view of the skyline is now disrupted by a high-rise construction in Brooklyn.) It has spindly arms and broad, flat leaves, like the palms of hands. Sometimes I choose to count how many shoots are growing from its base, and I get to as many as 21 or 22. But I can never understand why I so rarely need to pull off a dead stalk over the years, how they disappear when I feel like I have been paying attention. This plant is a good companion. A mystery though. Like so many others I keep nearby in my life. Comforting, but mysterious. Mysteriously comforting. So I don’t ask (too often) why or how it molts so clandestinely.

The water was out for 13 hours yesterday. I went out into the street around 9 p.m. to watch the block’s children run back and forth on the sidewalk. Men covered in light brown dust trained their eyes on the trench they had run through the middle of the road. Stage lights illuminated their work.

I can’t think of a more interesting piece of New York than the part that runs beneath it. Miles and miles of pipes and wiring running past shards of Dutch pottery or African tools. Who knows what is beneath the streets, truly. Every so often, archaeologists declare a major find here, and I wonder back to the people who made this very spot their homes before we did. And one day archaeologists will discuss us, these early millennials, and hopefully, we won’t look too destructive to their land, although I have serious doubts that will be possible after what we’ve done here.

But I’m not in the mood to preach, as I so rarely am (am I ever? Fuck, I hope not). So I will tell you about the article I am about to read in The Atlantic Monthly.

It is called “The Monster of Florence” and it is by Douglas Preston. It concerns this: “Between 1974 and 1985, seven couples—fourteen people in all—were murdered while making love in parked cars in the hills of Florence. The case was never solved…”

Have a great day.

Because Awakening Is Tiring, Here Are More Words by Ghosh

“She imagined the animals circling drowsily, listening to echoes pinging through the water, painting pictures in three dimensions – images that only they could decode. The thought of experiencing your surroundings in that way never failed to fascinate her: the idea that to “see” was also to “speak” to others of your kind, where simply to exist was to communicate.

“In contrast there was the immeasurable distance that separated her from Fokir. What was he thinking about as he stared at the moonlit river? The forest, the crabs? Whatever it was, she would never know: not just because they had no language in common but because that was how it was with human beings, who came equipped, as a species, with the means of shutting each other out. The two of them, Fokir and she, could have been boulders or trees for all they knew of each other, and wasn’t it better in a way, more honest, that they could not speak? For if you compared it to the ways in which dolphins’ echoes mirrored the world, speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing that you could see through the eyes of another being.”

— from Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide”

Being Sick Is Incredibly Boring, But at Least You Get to Read

“The melody surprised her, for it bore no resemblance to any Indian music she had ever heard before – neither the Hindi film music her father liked nor the Bengali songs her mother had sometimes sung. His voice sounded almost hoarse and it seemed to crack and sob as it roamed the notes. There was a suggestion of grief in it that unsettled and disturbed her.

“She had thought that she had seen a muscular quality of innocence in him, a likeable kind of naïveté, but now, listening to this song, she began to ask herself whether it was she who was naïve. She would have liked to know what he was singing about and what the lyrics meant – but she knew too that a river of words would not be able to tell her exactly what made the song sound as it did right then, in that place.”

— from Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide”

Two of Everything

Every day this week, there is no water in my building. Men come with loud machines and break through the street’s asphalt to fix water main pipes. The water on the street goes off for 10 hours. Brown dirt slips through gray.

I wake after the water is off, so I dip into pots and glasses and bottles I have filled from the taps the night before to wash my face, brush my teeth and attempt to flush the toilet. I do, however, feel dry here. In my hands. There is a sense of drought I feel in my hands. Every time I do something in the house, I want to stick them under running water to rinse off dust or food or something randomly sticky, and each time I have to restrain myself. I think of the millions of people in the world who don’t have running water, and my mind starts reeling because of how much I have been spoiled by this simple, but complex, convenience. I told a friend about this the other night, and she said that in Seattle, where she now lives, the water company details how many times a month you turn on the taps. She said it’s usually something like 700 times.

And every morning at 7:30, I am startled awake by the shake of my building from its roots. Unsettling. Be gentle to this building, I want to tell the men with the machines, it is 104 years old.

Because I was up so early today from the manmade earthquake, I watched a documentary called “Keep Not Silent.” Once I got past the stilted name, I saw a heart-hurting film about Orthodox Jewish lesbians in Israel. One woman has chosen to spend every night with her lover, but return home each day to care for her six children. The most remarkable story in this film, to me, however, is the woman who 20 years earlier decided to allow herself two decades to see if she could adapt to a straight life style. Marriage, children, fitting in with her community. Twenty years. I wonder if I could ever have, or need, such patience, and what I could possibly need it for.

I also never weighed fully this problem of a conflicted nature. I feel lucky to have entitled myself the tripwires necessary to accept my inconsistencies and dualities, but I better understand now how some people don’t have that capacity—socially or religiously.

Last night I hung two prints above my desk. One is green/blue, the other rust/yellow. They are of the same matter, but one is cool, the other warm. They give me unexpected peace.

People Who Listen (Or the Beauty of Engagement in the World)

One of the hardest things to find in the world, I am realizing, are people who listen. Really listen. It’s clichéd, maybe, but I am mystified when I find people who do—it sticks out into the air like a tree branch you can swing on.

Last night, I went to a friend’s engagement party. There were a handful of people there I hadn’t seen in a couple years, people I’ve known for about 10 years, amazingly. They are smart people. Successful professionally—steeped in what they do: urban planner, lawyer, doctor, editor, nurse practitioner…etc. One has a baby, two are getting married this summer, two are already married. All have found what they believe are their partners. (“Don’t worry, said one, an ex-boyfriend of mine, “fifty percent of us will be divorced soon enough.”) But what makes them remarkable, I realized last night, is that they wanted to hear each other. They took time to listen. To enjoy one another’s stories, to appreciate one another’s being in love.

The more I listen to friends, the more the world opens up. Forgive me, all three of you readers, I feel a bit drugged lately. Like if I ever took hallucinogens (which, you can imagine, would be no good for dear McBickle) this is how it would feel: like the edges of life are crisp, but each moment is nestled in a ruffly bough. A bough in a bower. A bower with birds.

I feel like a small animal, say, a tiny lizard, who can jump from leaf to leaf in this perfect space and explore whole new universes in each of their veins.

[I now return you to your daily, non-tripping programming. (Unless you are a couple of my specific readers. In which case, I return you to your daily trips.)]

And the Universe Smiles on the F

The F train has been an adventuresome and glorious train of late.

Tonight, there were two men singing when I entered at Broadway-Lafayette. They sat across from each other and sang folkish songs with guitars and harmonicas. I have never seen anyone perform on the subway without walking around, asking for money. These two guys would just sing and say “Thank you” at the end of each song. They were wonderful.

“We’re from Arkansas,” one said at the end of a one number. “We’re going to Dublin tomorrow.”

They both had beards.

One song they sang had a chorus that repeated, “Take a whiff on me.” During another song, the man with the darker beard turned to a passenger and said “hi” between verses. I smiled at the five or so other people in the car, and they smiled back.

I approached the two men and asked them a couple questions, reporter’s notebook at the ready.

“I work for a newspaper,” I said.

Their name, it seems, are the “Damn Bullets.” And they really are leaving for Dublin tomorrow.

“Aw, we should stay in New York and get in the newspaper,” one said to the other.

I have never tapped my toe so hard on a train trip. The world is stunning tonight. Glimmering.


Separately, last week I was on the F train and heard an announcement that I absolutely loved:

“Thank you for riding New York City Transit,” the conductor said. “We move New York, above ground or below. We run this city.”

I Saw a Tree Called a "Monkey-Puzzle Tree"

And I saw red lilies, lilies the color of dried blood.

I was on the grounds of the Barnes Foundation, an estate that houses paintings that were collected by a man named Barnes, who was an inventor of some kind of chemical whose name sounds like “argyle.”

His house is set up salon-style, with tremendous numbers of pastel-foggy Renoirs piled on top of many by Matisse and Cezanne. On a wall, imagine three Renoirs with a de Chirico to the upper left, a Van Gogh to the right, and a Tintoretto thrown in for good measure. There will be six other paintings hung like leaves on top of each other just because, not to mention a Christian saint or two from the 15th century. Now imagine room upon room like this, and figure out whether you would stop to study the Rousseau with its foresty depths, or the Soutine with its decrepit figures. (I chose the Soutines more often than not.) It was disorienting at first, and I found myself visibly shaking my head from side to side as I discovered quickly that there was no curatorial rhyme to the arrangement of work. Okay, I thought, see what draws you, and enjoy it.

There are three panels there by Matisse—two struck me deeply for the beauty of the women depicted in them. He had a way of drawing lips that looked like Clara Bow’s and hair that flowed beautifully black.

The one Goya kept me shivering because the man’s face seemed to move and have something new to tell me for each second that passed that I stared at it.

A slightly oversized pink-toned little girl’s head painted by Soutine had me riveted, and vaguely upset.

I ended the day in a garden that had red lilies, lilies the color of dried blood, and I know now, and even knew somewhat then, that I felt content.

Puzzle

I am trying to understand why a person of words is drawn to a person of silence. I think it is about more than quieting the mind. I think it is about learning to trust yourself.

Bix Beiderbecke

Bix Beiderbecke is possibly the best name a man ever had.

I thought so all those years in the early mornings when I daily listened to Phil Schaap's radio program, "Bird Flight" on WKCR. Picture a guy holed up in Columbia's overflowing radio station for 25 years with records and papers about to fall on his head as he takes you each morning through take 1, 4, and 7 of Charlie Bird Parker's "Salt Peanuts," or somesuch piece. Please, you'll understand my love/hate of this show and Phil Schaap himself if you look here.

My favorite post from that site?

"Phil Schaap Drives me Crazy! Sorry, just had to get that out of my system. For the last 2 weeks (at least) on his program BirdFlight he has been going over in excrusiating detail (detail repeated ad naseum) the first Charlie Parker record date: 5 tunes. 5 tunes in 2 weeks of programs! each solo repeated over and over and over and over. And the tiniest detail repeated over and over and over and over....

Make him stop, O Lord: Please make him stop!"

I dreamed last night that Charlie Gibson was seated at the next table over from me in a restaurant and he was jonesing for a cigarette. Poor Charlie.

That's the Only Time I Would Live in Bburg

I just overheard a designer offering up choices for a wire service photo to an editor:

"Do you want 'Terrorist Zarqawi,' 'I-Went-to-College Zarqawi,' or 'I-Live-Off-the-Bedford-Stop Zarqawi'?"

Choices, choices. (You know you know what she meant, New Yorkers.)

The she said, "If I were a terrorist, I'd definitely live in Williamsburg, too."

It's Like a Pantyliner

Here's my wisdom for the day: Always have a backup. In this case, a backup man. Or Dan.

Blind date arrives to meet blind date at a bar. Woman sees man who is potentially blind date (she vaguely might recognize from his picture).

"Are you Dan?" she asks him.
"No," he says. He stares at her.
"Wait," he says. "What did you say?"
"Are you Dan?" she repeats.
"Yes, actually, I am Dan, but I don't think I am the Dan you are looking for," he says.
"Ah, I suppose you aren't then," she says. "I'm meeting a blind date named Dan, and I thought you might be him."
He contemplates this.
"Well, if he doesn't show up, let me know," he says. "I'll be here."

Woman wanders over to bar, locates correct Dan. Bizzaro World recedes into candlelit background.

Fin.

[And, to stick with this week's theme: "These are not the droids you are looking for."]

Make It Stop…I Can’t…

Tips for Men Who Clearly Have Issues:

1. Do not show up on a date wearing khakis and a white-and-blue-striped Gap button-down shirt ca. 1992 with a black polar-fleece vest on top of that, as well as a black fedora. Any one of these items are a no-no; in combination, they are a nuclear meltdown of the most depressive order.

2. Do not immediately choose the seat near your date that allows you to face the door because you “have a price on your head.”

3. Do not order juice-heavy alcohol drinks that come with maraschino cherries. Don’t ask me why, just don’t. And don’t go up and get a straw so you can suck said green drink down faster than you already are in the hopes of alleviating your absurd nervousness, which is manifesting itself as huge gulping motions and bug-eyed responsiveness.

4. Do not, DO NOT explain that the tattoo on your shoulder is from “Star Wars” and make your date guess what it is, only to excoriate her when she's totally wrong, twice:

“It’s kind of Death-Star looking,” she ventures.
“Nope,” he says.
“Um, okay, it looks like the ball Luke bats around while his blast shield is down on the Millennium Falcon?”
“No!” he says, absurdly firmly.

And definitely, after this exchange, do not say, “God, a girl ‘Star Wars’ fan really isn’t the same as a guy ‘Star Wars’ fan.”

5. Finally, one last piece of advice before I puke: Do not admit to playing Dungeons and Dragons. EVER. And, please, God, do not admit to STILL playing it. For the love of all things holy, never, ever, please please please, do not do this.

The woman who is exposed to such horrors is instructed to head to the nearest Jewish nunnery. I'll see you there.