You Could Kill Someone With My Grandmother's Matzoh Balls

I am successfully fighting off the urge to snoop. I am in the house of a man I would like to know more about, and I have oopsidentally spilled Guatemalan/Antiguan coffee beans all over his wood floor all by myself.

[Jeez, Leonard Lopate is having a hacking coughing fit. Horrible. “Once you get a tickle…,” he says. cough, cough. “I’m sure this is exciting radio…Let’s go to a break.” cough. Poor radio host.]

What keeps me from poking through drawers and around this computer is a strong sense of wrong…and, to be honest, karmic retribution: I do not want someone doing that to me. But more than that, to be happily honest, I have a calm, good feeling that I can know this man without invading his privacy. He is straightforward, one of my favorite human qualities. He shows me that past is not present, without putting that into words. He is one of those people who say goodnight to acquaintances with a sweetly honest well-wishing. He has crazy hair.

While sitting in this 1950s office chair (that is slightly broken, leans back too far) I was earlier listening to the Brian Lehrer show. He had on two participants in NY Soundmap (nysoundmap.org.)

(Their site description: “The NYSoundmap is a project of The New York Society for Acoustic Ecology (NYSAE), a New York metropolitan chapter of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology, an organization dedicated to exploring the role of sound in natural habitats and human societies, and promoting public dialog concerning the identification, preservation, and restoration of natural and cultural sound environments. The NYSAE's purpose is to explore and create an ongoing dialog regarding aural experience specific to New York City.”)

I was so interested in this idea when I first heard about it. Holy crap, I thought, I should pull my mic (Electrovoice RE-50 multidirectional) out of a drawer and start aiming it at the sewers! The sky! The cat on the corner! (Frank.) Then I listened.

It was semi-interesting. To be honest, I did and did not correctly identify the sounds in the samplings they played as a guessing game. What interested me were the sounds I recognized: a dog lapping at a pond in the park, children in swings in a Carroll Gardens playground. Some sounds are intrinsic in your body. What was not as interesting as I’d hoped was the single-layered, stop/start nature of listening to pieces of the map on a radio talk show. I love the idea of layering sound—as the speakers suggested they are considering doing a historical map of New York sounds. Layer it with the present, and we can begin to see this island as the dynamic, stratified, bedrock-deep city it is. THAT would be amazing. (I want to write a book/paint a painting/create something that is as multilayered. And I want to do it now.)

“It changes once you get within someone’s emotional blast radius.” This was from the mouth of Tom Bissell, on the radio right now discussing his new book, The Father of All Things. The book is about taking a trip to Vietnam with his war-vet father. I love this image: an “emotional blast radius.” It leaves me chilled, remembering that there is a particular emotional explosion zone you need to keep back from, can never really penetrate, never really should. [See: Not Snooping, Above. Kind of.]

I just turned in a newspaper piece on a woman who smuggled precious materials through the Middle East many moons ago. [See: Some Earlier Blog Post, In Which I Wrote About Meeting This Woman’s Son.] (Yes, I will be vague here. Stop stalking me.) This woman went through her journey in her 20s, but has not changed too much so many years later. She still is willing to take off and live outside her world—in strange places doing out-of-the-ordinary things (sorry for the lack of specifics. Truly, they are fascinating). She allowed me to do that these past few months by getting to know her, by allowing me to write about her.

As I finished up the story a couple days ago, I realized I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing in the world. Writing a story that interests me, hopefully interests others. I was working hard to get inside her past, to see her travels, her emotional self. I was consructing sentences, stringing together words like daisies on a chain, so happy. Like a child. A self-satisfied, self-important child.

Coming up on Leonard Lopate: “We want you to weigh in on the Great Matzoh Ball Debate—Firm or Fluffy?” If you were not raised a Jew in New York, you know not the importance of this argument. In my house it, was my grandmother’s “baseballs” versus my father’s fluffy ideal. I liked the baseballs, oddly.

Happy Anniversary, Chicken's Body

Again, it's been too long and I have much to tell.
It's a problem similar to, as my friend says, "pelvic congestion," only of a nonsexual nature. Things that have not come up and out my "wordhole," as another friend says.

So instead of all the mottled goods inside my head, I will here, now, present to you the song I was reminded of today.

It was my birthday this day. Yesterday. I became 32. One year before the Jesus age, of course. My ex-brother-in-law, who I have known since I was 12, has a random poet's mind. He once left me the following brilliant voicemail, in college (before there were cell phones, when I would manically pick up extension phones all over my tucked-in-the-Romantic (capital "R")-woods-of-New-England campus and check my voicemail many, many times a day—in the library, between class, post-post-modernist critical theory literature deconstruction class, etc. (literally "and so on" beyond what I have the attention span to name right now).

The song:

"It came from a chicken's bo-dy.
It went inside my bo-dy.
The particular chicken is mis-sing.
I can't find my bo-dy."

Needless to say, this remained on my voicemail for an entire year and was played multiple times for the benefit of friends, who wondered at the sanity of my then-brother-in-law, just as I cackled at the rhythmic fantasy of this impromptu song, loving that I was somehow related to a man of such a strangely convoluted mind.

All these years later, I realize I had sublimated the chicken song.

But then.

Along comes a voicemail today (yesterday) from my ex-brother-in-law (on my portable cellular mobile telephone today, yesterday, March 21, 2007):

"Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear _____ _____ [nickname only my father ever called me—I began to cry here]
The particular chicken is mis-sing." [Grand, happy laughter here.]

I walked the rest of the block to work with a sunshine smile on my suddenly older face.

The past is not gone, I thought to myself—it has been called up to meld with the present, and for this, I am glad. Happy anniversary, chicken's body. You are one lucky chicken.

Saturday

"I have one short story that is a page and a half. It is absolutely perfect."

She said this to me at a universal table—the kind that serves as a gathering surface for smoking, beer-drinking visitors to a dark and dusty loft. A small laptop was open and off. Cigarettes rolled loose on its surface. Her eyes stared mine down and her oatmeal-colored coat snugged her slim frame like a bathrobe. It was 2 p.m.

"Mm," I nodded.

I wanted to like her. I want to like her.

Behind her, busy preparing to leave the house, is a young man with eyes like the sea who is silently humming around these two women. One was once his lover. The other is his lover now. A worn blue shirt hugs his chest and behind him is a bed with new pillows and sheets bought the day before at Century 21, the discount department store near the Terror Hole. The pillows are still tumescent.

"I don't know why I can't send it."

The woman at the table continues to talk. She has an indeterminate offer from a publisher, but no impetus to send her recent stories even though all it would require is a click of a mouse. A mountain trek of a click of a mouse.

"I have to go," I say.

His eyes meet my eyes and pull me from the room, into them. We gather our bags, coats, scarves and hats. We leave.

The woman remains at the table.

This Was a Dream

Our class was seated at a large table, a conference table, long and rectangular. The room was cavernous; the windows self-contained but expansive. My phone rang.

"Hello. Mr. ____ would like me to invite you to come stay with us for the summer to thank you for caring for his daughter when she died."

"I'm sorry. What?" I said.

"When you cared for ____ in your home. When she died."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I told the woman.

The class had quieted down and I became aware they were listening to me. I made no effort to hide this conversation, to speak in low tones.

"You know, your brother-in-law, he helped, he was there. You will come stay with Mr. ____ for the summer. He wants to thank you."

I began to feel like I was arguing with someone who had dialed the wrong number. Only there was a dead child floating about this conversation, and the reference to my brother-in-law made sense somewhere inside me.

I offered that perhaps I could recall caring for this girl, but that I certainly did not see her die. The lights in the room had gone out while I was speaking. The professor at the head of the table and the other twenty or so students were highlighted by twilight from the windows, their heads each surrounded by a gray glow, a nimbus.

I hung up the phone. I recounted the conversation to the room, who had already heard it.

I awoke.

Variety is the Spice of Nothing You Can Eat

There have been so many logged notes in my head that I've been wanting to write about here. For once, real life has been getting in the way.

You know. Real life. And a motorcycle. (Andreadingworkfriendsloversarthappinessmiserysleepingnotsleepingblap.)

Just now, i asked an anon sales guy (they are on a different moon from reporters and editors in newsrooms) why he's been on crutches for the memorable past. He cla-clunks around our tremendous office very slowly. Cha-chick. Cha-chick. I have never spoken to him before.

"What happened there anyway?" I ask him. He is short and heavy and generally pleasant seeming.

"It's a long, long story," he says. "It involves unrequited love."

We leave it at that.
(Cha-chick. Cha-chick.)

This morning I overheard a couple of oldish women in the locker room at the gym. They were on the other side of my row of lockers.

"She was orphaned." [Pronounce: awe-fand.]

"What do you mean?"

"Her mother died. Then her stepfather died. Then her father died, then her stepmother." [Some approximation of this death-progression. Pronounce: muthah, stepfathah, fathah, stepmotha.] "And then her mother's sister didn't want her."

From there, I lost them amid the sound of hairdryers. I picked the thread back up with:

"And then he left her for a much younger woman. I blame society for that. That it's become okay to do that."

And then I wondered about the merits of not doing that.

And then I left the gym.

I know a man who shears off parking signs for entire blocks so he won't have to move his car in the morning.

My ex-brother-in-law used to sneeze when he had to pee.

The other night I met a space hipster [read: "tremendous dork"] with a "fetish for hospital bracelets." I blame myself for accruing that information because I asked him why he was wearing one.

"Fucktard" is my new favorite word.

What You Do and What You Don’t Do

More lists.
Because one can’t write full sentences on two hours sleep. (Wait. One just did. And another. Pity the newspapers of New York tomorrow, for I have forsaken them…)

List:

Thick cold rain.
Industrial streets.
New York Irish bars.
Middle-aged hockey guys.
An unreturned handshake.
A helmet. A motorcycle.
Chatter.
Coruscating laughter.
Avocadoes.
Eyes like the Mediterranean.
Cigarette smoke.
Saturated droplets. Black scarf. Motorcycle flying.
A coal stove.
A metal shop. Welded things.
Whirling 1930s notes. Subtle dancing. Red wine in juice glasses. Orange stove glow. Patter on skylights.
A leak on a floor.
A ’63 Chevy pickup and the smell of gasoline.
The thonk of a knuckle on metal.
The West Side Highway.
Black coffee in a paper cup.
An IOU.
A noxious puddle.
A walk around.
This computer.
A meeting convened.
A media shakeup.
This computer.
Eyes closing.
This computer.