The Last Meal

Once there were tons of diners. 

In those early days of learning to raise myself, these diners were breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• They were the kitchen I didn't know how to cook in.  

• They were dining room I knew how to sit in.

• They were the counters where I drank coffee all night and made friends over cigarettes.

• They were the quiet corners I wrote awful poetry and promising books.

• They were the theater of neighbors' doings and the place of street-life commerce.

• They were conference rooms when art needed to be discussed and plans needed to be made.

And more important than not, they were often where I began journeys toward love, wooing and being wooed over soup and easy eggs, sometimes in deep night, sometimes in mornings after.

The University Diner was one such place.  

They close Wednesday.

So I thank you, University Diner for the many meetings taken in the window booths, the breakfast specials when the blues descended and home fries were necessary, the 2:00 am tea at the counter where I learned how I mistook lies for love, and a Thanksgiving dinner, resplendent with canned cranberry sauce and pearl necklaces, a dinner so warm and welcoming, it felt more like home than any holiday/family dinner I had ever had before.

Sunday Memories Of L'Shona Tova

In Lieu of Flowers... was originally posted on October 1, 2008 as an obituary for Florence who had died the previous morning. Since Rosh Hoshanah appears in the English calendar differently each year, she in death has become as unpredictable as she was in life. Wouldn't have it any other way.

In Lieu of Flowers...



Tell the truth.

Tell yourself the truth.

Don't let your bullshit compromise either of the above.

Don't lie. Unless you're drunk. Then really don't lie.

Don't steal.

Accept hand-me-downs.

Look fabulous in your own clothes. They may have started out as hand-me-downs but they're yours now. Proudly recount their lineage. Never feel ashamed about that.

Never take a taxi.

Walk everywhere.

Don't wear a coat in winter.

Carry your own weight to the point of pathology. Better to err on independence than not.

Refuse to lose at the hands of cowardliness, mediocrity, stupidity, and the need to blend in.

Suffer aloneness at the risk of fitting in with any of the above.

Refuse to feel fear. If you do, ignore it and keep going. Just like Florence did that night during a World War II blackout under the Manhattan Bridge by the movie theater (now a Chinese market).

Always put your work first.
Always do your work.
Always put your work first.
Always do your work.

Rage against the Machine. Even when it looks like it's related to you.

Risk being laughed at by morons when you do something no one else is doing. Just like when Florence put on those roller skates in 1972 and skated up and down Grand Street and all those people laughed at her and then a couple of years every one had disco skates.

Start your entire life over at 60 like you were a 14 year old. Because on some level, you still are.

Fight back just like Florence did all the times someone mugged her or tried to mug her during the 1970's.

Don't EVER quit.

Know that that beer, that sandwich, those shoes, that jacket, those pants, that avenue, that movie house, that proper grammar, that street, that bar, that woman, that dance, that etude, that sonata, that scale, that subway, that bus, that hotdog, that boardwalk, that beach, that ocean is Your New York.

It Was Hers.

In Honor Of Love That Blooms In Autumn

Perhaps spring is the correct time to grow, but who said you had to follow the rules.

It's sometimes Autumn streets, filling with long shadows shimmering like perfume into evening walks, that invites kisses and care and delight.
**

Related Posts:

Sunday Memories:  Autumn In New York...

The Sign Of Things To Come

That brief moment on the way home tonight, the air changed.  Crisp, not like an air conditioner, but like a different desire. 

On the first night like this, I miss the passion Florence walked with, a sweater and scarf readied for new times.

**

Related Posts:

Autumn In New York

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Another Walk To Hope: Part II

Sunday Memories: When A Picture Is Like A Song

Sunday Memories: "Not Coney. Coney Island."

Sunday Memories: Another Small Small Small World After All

Frites

I got into the cab all heartbroken, because that was my constant state of being in those halcyon low-tech days before loneliness gotten hidden by the smokescreen of the internet. 

On my way to a small shoot, a vintage dress and heels and tons of make-up piled on my lap, I was in no mood to pretend to be romantically torn by forbidden love for the artistic screen. 

But I had been asked by the filmmaker I liked (versus the one who didn't even bother to learn my name) and I'd be dancing with a favorite friend of mine to a slow 1950's love song. 

So, after scribbling a secret message on the door of the cab for who I thought was the love of my life, I stared out the window.  And that's when I noticed it. 

The sky.

Oh there were a billion versions of New York cloudy gray skies, but this wasn't one of them.  I had only seen a gray sky so filled with such light in Nijmegen, a city in the Netherlands no one outside of it ever heard of.

I loved that city.  It was the Philadelphia of Holland.  A good friend lived there and it was where I'd go to escape what seemed like unending unhappiness. And although I may not have known how to pronounce any of the street names in Nijmegen, I knew how to find my favorite little corners.

I was so happy, staring out that window, to be some place else, if only for a brief second, that wasn't filled with self incrimination.

...when out of nowhere, the cab driver said, "The sky looks like Europe." 

"I was just thinking that.  I was thinking it reminded me of a city in Holland where a friend lives."

"My brother lives in Holland!"

"Where!?"

"Oh, you wouldn't know it."

"No, tell me."

"Nijmegen."

The frites shop his brother owned and ran was one of my favorite little corners, one I visited every day for lunch.

***

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Upstairs heard the fire alarm go off and called their next door who called all the phone numbers they had and when we didn't answer any of them, they called downstairs who had the keys...

Afterwards, everyone said oh don't worry, they had done that too and one even carried around a little kitchen timer because these days remembering anything was a thing of the past.

I was just grateful that someone pulled the cat from underneath the chair and carried him out to the hallway where all the neighbors kept him company until the smoke cleared and it was safe to go back in.

It takes a village to raise a child, and sometimes it takes a village to accompany someone to their end.  But in between birth and death, the village takes care that everyone, including the cat, is OK.

***

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Sunday Memories: Nina

The Long March

Rodriguez at the Highline Ballroom in New York City

It may have taken many years for his road to lead him back to what he was born to do, but the failures along the way never defined him.  A spirit unassailable, he was who he was, whether he was singing to thousands or doing back-breaking manual labor.  

It is a lesson fiercely clutched while living through unseen years and warring with words that ebbed and flowed like killing tornadoes and brutal drought.


***

Searching for Sugar Man

The Official Rodriguez Site

The Long March

Summer Reruns of Sunday Memories: The Men's Park

Originally posted Sunday, August 31, 2008


This is The Men's Park. Men used to play here.



They played chess and sometimes checkers but mostly chess on these stone boards.



We were always told NEVER to go into The Men's Park.

So, of course we did. Not a lot, but enough to feel like we were breaking rules and tempting fate.

Once there, The Men utterly ignored us as we hung around the chess table, bored out of our minds with a stupid game that didn't include punching and running really fast.

The Men weren't too thrilled either with sweaty, snotty, fidgeting dirty kids interrupting their concentration.

I could see the canopy of trees in that park from my bedroom window.

Bigger than the rest of the trees in the playground, they were the clock of the seasons. Glimpses of green would let me know when summer was coming. And then all too soon, hints of wind and leaves getting darker with other colors would let me know when summer was preparing to leave.

Summer Reruns During Brutal Writing Blocks: A Labor Of Love

Originally posted September 8, 2009


Florence said you had to train to stay home and work at your art all day.

El said she felt passionate about mixing her CD.

Dana said the writing comes when it comes. Like a rash.

O'Keefe said he knew his paintings were good but it was too painful to discuss.

I said living with what was inside me - the images, the thoughts, the stories - while trying to stay human was like a vampire trying to keep his best friend from becoming a meal.

And De La Vega left reminders on a cardboard box toss to the trash man that art comes where it comes and comes when it comes and like birthing it can't be returned to hidden recesses.

On The Ferry Monday Morning

The sunshine was still there but the coils of wearing responsible socks and shoes had already begun their tightening.  That didn't stop tourists or languid commuters from staring into horizons hoping extra days of freedom appear.

Summer Reruns: Sunday Memories: a) Inheritance b) Neighborhood c) Heritage d) All Of The Above: Part 3

Originally posted August 15, 2010

When the old people die in the old neighborhood, usually it's their kids who clean out the apartment.

But sometimes their kids send their kids who don't know what's what.   Or sometimes there are no kids so it's the niece or the nephew or their kids.  And sometimes it's even the kids of the neighbors next door  - complete strangers - who clean out the life of a person who has no kin and no connection except to the people in the photos they leave behind.

Which is how Laurel found all these old photos tossed in the garbage. She brought them home so that a discarded life and history could always have a home.
This is Delancey Street. The Delancey Street Florence roamed. The Loews Delancey in the backbround still looked like that when we went there on Saturday afternoons.


Laurel thinks this was taken on Orchard Street. The boy, the mother, and even if she was the sister, the young woman relegated to the back.  We all hoped the picture was taken when he was back for good. 


On the back of this, in beautiful fountain pen cursor, someone wrote "Herman. He played for the Czar." Since the only Russians who came to America in the early 1900 were Jews, all we could think was this was a Jew who played for the Czar. That was a big, big deal.

Did Herman ever make it here or did he die there, probably in a pogram or in the camps?

Me, Laurel and Joyce looked at this guy and we all said "He looks familiar. That place looks is familiar."

This picture, every inch of it, is a picture of one of those rare delicious moments I had as a kid - the evening dark, the clock early, the smells recognizable, the accent my own.

Summer Reruns: a) Inheritance b) Neighborhood c) Heritage d) All Of The Above: Part 2

Originally posted August 12, 2010





Laurel and Joyce’s Uncle Joe and my Uncle George were friends.  They both played trombone. This was taken at the picture studio on Rivington Street.  Wittmyers. 157 Rivington. 

But after the war, both of them left New York and that was that. The only thing Uncle Joe wanted from New York was his trombone.  His mother mailed it to him.

Summer Reruns: a) Inheritance b) Neighborhood c) Heritage d) All Of The Above: Part 1

Originally posted August 10, 2010

Another on-going series of New York stories




Joyce and Laurel’s father and his family grew up next door to my father and his family in the tenements on Henry Street. Not the hip, over-priced, badly renovated, tons of cache, faux-street-cred tenements of today but the rat-filled, roach-saturated, filthy, over-crowded tenements of yesterday.

Their great-grandfather and grandfather had the stables down the street. They were the blacksmiths.  Laurel and Joyce say it like it is, no bullshit.  Maybe that came from the horses because you know you can’t bullshit a horse.

My grandfather taught himself English, showed up to whatever work he could get, despite suspected depression and was pro-union (although there's speculation it was just an excuse to be self-righteous and punch other people besides his wife and kids).  I think workers should be fairly paid for their work and I’ve shown up to every job I could get despite suspected depression.  Yeah, I got a temper but unlike my grandfather I keep it in check.

After the co-ops were built and the tenements disappeared, our families all got new fancy apartments near one another.  In our world fancy meant elevators, hot water, toilets inside the apartment, no rats and less roaches. Trees too.

(Dana's husband, George was one of the couple of men who got those co-ops built.)

Every once in a while, Dolly their mother would say "Let's go visit Florence" and they would come over and sit at the kitchen table, watching the trains going back and forth. Both of them knew the plaid "lumberjack" jacket from LL Bean and the Kedd sneakers Florence always wore.  No one in the neighborhood looked like her.  So it made sense they would remember.

They also knew we all walked everywhere.  Spending carfare was a very serious decision and if it wasn’t necessary then we didn’t.  And by necessary, I mean if the destination was less than an hour away by foot, the answer was no.  Even if it wasn’t, like Gramma’s, we had to walk back. 

Laurel and Joyce still live in the old neighborhood that was built on top of the old-old neighborhood.  I come downtown for tea and talk.  As I walked in the door, Laurel said, "Betcha walked here."  Of course I did. And although I’m not wearing plaid, it’s clear to see from my sneakers to my jacket, I got Florence’s fashion sense.

Both of them point out the window to a new, ugly, blue high-rise rising on the other side of Delancey.  “Blue Smurf dick,” they both chortle.  Like I said, no bullshit.

Joyce reminds me they played with my hair during those visits.  I don’t remember.  But something inside me remembers more than what they did with my braids.  I will probably get details wrong and forget about dates and lose track of which family did what, but I don't get wrong the neighborhood.   Because, sitting at Laurel’s kitchen table, my lower east side accent returns full force and I talk like I was six and home again.

Inheritance. Neighborhood. Heritage.  All of the above.

Sunday Memories: My First Date With Bond. James Bond.

Baby Jupiter watches a James Bond car chase

Although he went to public school, he was a good Jewish boy, which is why we had to wait until after Shabbos to go to the movies.

It was my first date ever and I suspect his too.  

There was a double feature of James Bond movies playing at the Grand Street Loews (pronounced LO-EASES).   Having been schooled in Gene Kelly musicals, the height of my relationship to action flicks stopped at In Like Flint and the Pink Panther movies.

I don't remember which Bond ones we saw.  I do remember B. and Cindy following me and the good Jewish boy down Grand Street, shouting-singing "the closer you get, the better you look!"  That was from a Clairol Hair Dye TV commercial and the sexiest song they knew.  After "we must, we must, we must increase our bust, the bigger the better, the tighter the...".

I also remember the good Jewish boy feeding me Certs during intermission and me accepting as many as he offered because Certs was considered candy and candy was hard to come by until I figured out how to steal dollar bills from my dad.

Our post date reunion happened at the doorway of 7th grade homeroom where he presented me his baby teeth.  We went our separate ways after that.

But it didn't matter.  Bond movies weren't in my immediate future in those days.  Florence had other plans and sent me off to the Elgin Theater on Eighth Avenue when Eighth was the refuge for hookers not good enough for Times Square.  The Elgin was on its way to becoming a porn palace before transforming into the Joyce, but in the brief moment of still being an art house, I became one with Fellini and Truffaut.  Their movies unfolded a picture of the constant world inside my brain - a world I did not know how to say out loud in English, let alone Italian or French, but a world I so desperately wanted to live in.

James Bond's adventures movies were watched in between the Naked Gun movies - something to marvel at and get lost in wild stunts and other locales.  It wasn't until today that I found out those old Bond movies meant as much to little boys as Guido in 8 1/2 meant to me.  The Mariner, sitting me through Goldfinger, glowed and delighted with every gadget and "technological" advancement Bond used to thwart the bad guys and girls.  It was the unfolding of the world inside his brain, one any boy would so desperately want to live in and certainly one that would inspire a gift of baby teeth.

**
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The Delight Of Being The Shoe On The Other Foot

There was once a contest series in New York Magazine or the Daily News or maybe it was the Village Voice when it still had a voice.

Because the internet wouldn't be invented for another twenty or thirty years, each week you mailed your answers in on an index card.

One week the question was:  What could New York use more of?

I wrote in:  Less tourists.

Little did I know what the future would bring.  I also did not win.

In the rare travels away from home - home now defined as a few blocks' radius and an apartment as rare as the dodo bird - activities have been kept to family care and visits.  And the amazing Goodwill store near my father's garden apartment.

But love is impossible to say no to and after a plane ride to a city, often considered in the same breath as New York and one of the only two places Florence ever flew to, we joined the crowds of tourists tromping from one pretty attraction to another.

And as rickety old cable cars threw themselves down hills that were straight out of ancient video games or some prehistoric comic book we all screamed and cheered and interrupted the peace and quiet of neighborhoods sick of people like us.

More Encore Memories: A River Runs Through It

While Her New York is on the road, a memory about a memory.

Originally posted Sunday, June 1, 2008

Starting at the door and ending up at the back wall the counter swirled like waterways you see on picture maps taken from far away ... like the moon. I sat there for years.

Open twenty-four hours a day, it was my refuge into illusion I belonged to a world outside my door. Today Starbucks and myspace does that for my predecessors. But then, no internet, just real living space offering real living bodies I recognized, a favorite spot where I could write or read or stare out the window hoping "he'd" see me, and come in to renew love (he did several times). That counter kept me going.

The two old ladies (the counter guy called them Jurassic Park) fed me coffee which is all I ever bought and once Zina even patted my hand when, staring at a finished love poem that didn't have a happy ending, I started to cry. At 3am, when I couldn't sleep or after a night of futile socializing was afraid to go back to an empty apartment, I was almost always the rare female there, surrounded by men talking non-stop into a personal darkness from the florescent safety of the formica counter -

*** the 4 foot 9 inches cop who insisted the Thompkin Square Park Riots was the fault of only one or two corrupt cops and the guys at the 5th Street Precinct were straight up and honest

*** the Robert Redford look-alike who loved astrology and whose daughter didn't talk to him and in five minutes you could tell why

*** the unshaven, slightly slovenly, plump "theater-something-or-other" with papers sticking out of his beat up portfolio who talked in ferocious whispers to the Robert Redford look-alike

*** the famous artist who sat and looked for who would be his next subjects in his next famous murals (never me even after 17 years of us facing each other)

*** the short-order cook who announced his marital problems while flipping late night food onto the grill and demanding explanation from the counter guy about why his new bride would get so upset after he locked her out by accident. Again. For the third time. And did any of us think he was trying to tell her something because he didn't think he was HE JUST FORGOT!?

Then the owner's son went to restaurant college, renovation came, light fixtures changed, new murals were put up and the counter was amputated into a brief moment of not worth sitting down. The Jurassic Park ladies insisted it would be the same, hugging me on the street, urging me to come back, and I did, briefly. But it wasn't same. The borscht was served in smaller more expensive bowls, the pierogis became Northern California inventions filled with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes and soon Jurassic Park was gone and in their stead were new waitresses who were young and tight and pretty and impatient to the many new diners who thought they had found an authentic East Village eatery because they were treated so rudely.

And soon after that I recognized only one face in the new Christmas mural - a tiny memorial to an old drinking buddy who died of a heart attack on the corner of 7th and B in 1979.

Sunday Memories Encore: The Corners Of My Mind

While Her New York is on the road, a memory about a memory.

Originally posted Sunday, June 8, 2008

The corner between our buildings and the barrel park had a special secret passage way wide enough for all of us to slip under until one day we were suddenly almost too big. And then shortly after that it was cemented up and we had to walk around to the gate like all the adults.



Before lobby doors were locked and kids were imprisoned inside their apartments for all their play dates, we ran wild from building to building a hide-n-seek game that spanned the entire housing project, almost peed on ourselves giggling as we hid under all the stairs.



And then one day this corner stopped us all when jumping rope B. called "leaders allowed!" and jumped in backwards on a Spay and I followed, not going to let her get the best of me I catapulted myself through the air to jump in on the "J" and when I hit the bricks they all thought I was laughing but the sound didn't stop and people came running from the other end of the courtyard and someone ran up to tell my parents who never ever got interrupted ever about our playing outside unless of course we did something really really wrong like go on the roof or make fun of A. until she cried. Even though Florence thought an ice pack would make my left arm better, finally my father realized it was serious enough not to take the bus but actually take a rare taxi ride to Beth Israel where they put my arm in a sling, and which I quickly slipped out of because I didn't want to ask anyone else to tie my shoes. So the following week they put me in a sling wrapped to my body and I spent the next two months looking like a one-armed lady with a big lopsided tit, being forced by Florence to practice all the right hand parts of my piano lessons, and made to learn cymbals for the stupid student orchestra performance of "Love of Three Oranges" which of course at the big concert I screwed up and just slammed the right cymbal into the left crash crash crash because I didn't know where we were but I knew it was the end and there were many cymbal crashes at the end and Mrs. K the conductor couldn't stop me for all the glaring she did.

Guest Artist: Gabriela - Every Time I Visit Granny

Gabriela lives in the only other city that feels as home as New York.   

Welcome to Her Buenos Aires

Every time I visit Granny, I visit not only her, but her past and all her  memories... when she was young and when I was a little girl.

There's a quote from Pasolini that says that the editing of a person's life (like a movie montage) never happens until that person is dead. Of course, others do that editing.   

So, every time I visit Granny, every story about me, heard a thousand times, changes every final cut of my own self and I find myself doing a tiny rough cut of my life.

I love that moment.  The Past is a big sea where the tide always changes, where pains and fears come up to the surface, but where hidden treasures emerge too.

Yet, like the sea, memory needs to rest so it can continue remembering.  Let the memory rest, let the memory be calm, so I can sail into present seas.  It's in there, when I allow myself to forget, that a feeling of freedom rises, a safe optimism about the future, where anything and everything is possible.


That lets me stay right here, right now, sailing through a sea that I cannot edit, as it transforms itself into the air of this present moment.

Guest Artist: Paula - "My Pinano"

A old Jacob Brothers Piano Upright Grand

Paula had it shipped from her Grandma Emma & Great-Aunt Lee's in Philadelphia to Nassau County and then, finally, to her home in Suffolk County.  

After reading an article in the New York Times about the dumping of pianos into the trash, she sent this picture and some history.  

The Jacob Brothers Piano Company was established in 1878 as a large retailer in New York and Boston.   They described themselves as "one of the most progressive and successful concerns in the piano industry, with several retail stores in the city of New York and in other important cities of the east."   They also stated their pianos and player-pianos "durable instruments, their finish being exceptionally fine and the tone quality satisfying".

There is no mention of Jacob Brothers after about 1955.   And I wonder what shift and change in New York led to their disappearance.

However, Paula's "pinano" is still here.   "It is very damp here", she wrote me, "and it doesn’t stay in tune long but I love it dearly."
 

**

Paula, an old, dear friend is the twinkle in a witty observance and the soft of a breeze.  Born in New York City Sloane Hospital for Women, as it was called then, she lived in the Bronx until she was 12. Then she was dragged away to Nassau County - "very annoyed".  She has repeatedly dazzled and inspired me with emails filled with poems and photos from her life that sing the secret heart of soul, cat or others. 

Sunday Memories: Television, Old School

Someone once told me my sister and I were part of the less than 1% of Americans, born after a certain year, who grew up without a TV.

Even with my sneaking into friends' houses to watch the Addams Family or other forbidden shows broadcasting on days not Friday, the bottom line was that there was so much more to look at in our city life and with way fewer interruptions. 

**

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... by nook and by crook and by any way that gets you there...

Sunday Memories Of A Guest Artist: To Love To Be Loved

  Paula and Mr. Ishmael, a.k.a, the baby boy cat

Photo by Shelley Glick

Untitled 

[I know now the beloved]

by  Gregory Orr

I know now the beloved

Has no fixed abode,

That each body

She inhabits

Is only a temporary

Home.

That she

Casts off forms

As eagerly

As lovers shed clothes.

I accept that he's

Just passing through

That flower

Or that stone.

And yet, it makes

Me dizzy-

The way he hides

In the flow of it,

The way she shifts

In fluid motions,

Becoming other things.

I want to stop him-

If only briefly.

I want to lure her

To the surface

And catch her

In this net of words.

**

Paula, an old, dear friend is the twinkle in a witty observance and the soft of a breeze.  She has repeatedly dazzled and inspired me with emails filled with poems and photos from her life that sing the secret heart of soul, cat or others. 

Madeline's Lawn

I thought Madeline lived in a neighborhood somewhere near me.  That's because the ubiquitous fields of ivy covered both our landscapes.   Took me a little while to figure out Paris was not in Brooklyn or above 14th Street.

In later years,  an explosion of potato plants and coleuses and lots of lawn-like patches appeared as the city transformed into a manicured and remodeled visiting destination and/or exclusive enclave.  Or whatever kind of locale needed constant landscaping. 

I didn't realize what I had missed all these years until yesterday, when I opened my eyes and saw a rolling stretch of ivy.  I was back in the soft, cool shade of wishing I could visit Madeline.

Signs Of Times No Longer Welcomed

Photo by Jacques

I saw the sign hanging on the Bellevue psych building iron fence from a moving bus.

I thought under "No Loitering" someone had scrawled "NO HOME". That made sense to me.  You're asking me not to "loiter" but I have no home so what do you want me to do?

This was the kind of picture Jacques (former guest artist) would take.  A Frenchman in New York reinterpreting and rediscovery this city's heart and soul for us all. 

So, I told him where to find the hanging sign, even drawing him a map since I couldn't remember the exact street.

After lunch, Jacques flew into the office on his way to some meeting and said, "I found the picture, but it was not home..."

There in his photo a different story appeared.  Instead of the heartbreak of having no home, it was the never-ending story that sought to crush love and soul and another human being. 

The question that popped into my head about the person who had scrawled that was a question Florence always asked me.

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

**

The work of Jacques is posted from April 24th, 2012 to May 6th, 2012.

Sunday Memories: The Truth And Nothing But...

On Delancey, right next door to Frank's hair salon, there was a little newspaper-candy-cigarette stand.  The  old man owner never really shaved or if he did it was a couple of days ago.

On the visits to Frank's a couple of times a year or returning from the weekly shop at the Essex Street Market, that candy shop beckoned like a mini-Ali Baba's cave, promising magical and spectacular candies.  But the firm rule of no sweets, rare gum and a once-a-week hostess cupcake/ cola at Grammas held.  That, however, didn't stop my six year-old heart from longingly dreaming of having my way with every delight in that shop.

And then one day...

Florence, fresh from a cut, nothing much else - she was one of the rare ladies in the neighborhood who didn't dye or tease - was buying a New York Times or maybe a pack of cigarettes and, in the brief second she looked the other way, my hand zipped up to the window counter and quickly slipped a penny stick of gum into my pocket.

Perhaps I took it out and started chewing it or was admiring it or transferring it to a safer pocket, but somehow Florence saw that stick of gum in my sweaty little palm and, and knowing SHE'D never allow an unauthorized piece of gum onto my daily menu and that I had no obvious means of income to buy anything, demanded to know where I had gotten that piece of gum.

She had taught me never to tell a lie.

I was marched right back to the candy store and there I apologized to the candy story owner and then, shamed but with great reluctance, returned that single stick of penny gum. 

**

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A New Year Encore: In Lieu of Flowers...

Encore: "Let the rain kiss you... Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops..." Langston Hughes

Originally post on Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Even the homeless man wheeled his hand truck under the awning. But I threw myself forward hoping the clouds growing dark were lying or at least not telling me the truth for a few more blocks.

...and then it rained and the two old ladies cared tenderly for one another as they prepared to step into the storm.



Their love.  

I cried later after the storm had finished.

Going Up The Country Got To Get Away

I had high school and college friends who lived there, but it was an island of incomprehensible circles that really didn't quite reach 360 degrees, so if I went there, it could have only been a couple of times and I think we needed someone to guide us in.

Then one night in the 80's someone I really shouldn't have been kissing took me there to kiss.  It was the only place in the city where you could go to in the middle of the night and kiss and because nobody was there nobody saw you.  And the mugging risk was only medium-high

After that fiasco ended, I found myself returning during the day and then other nights and then more days and then soon, if I wanted to get away from the city but not suffer a long commute, I came here.  And soon I took friends and family and the people I got to love, not just kiss under cover of darkness.

These days, the fountain is fixed up, there are tons more plants and flowers and birds and dogs.  And sitting in cool night on an old bench, also fixed up or maybe a new bench that was made to just look old, there are tons of people kissing. 

**

RELATED POSTS ABOUT NATURE

Men In Trees

Hope Springs Eternal

Sunday Memories -The Call of Nature

A Car Ride to the Doctor

Sunday Memories: The Stoop

Everyone sat outside during hot summer, air conditioning still only used for special times and fans not as strong as the occasional breeze.

Lining Broome on benches, beat-up lawn chairs facing Grand, covering stoops all over, everthing got watched, everyone got noticed, nothing got missed.

Coming back from someplace not often ventured to from the Lower East Side, maybe a concert or a walk to Chinatown or even 'uptown', we'd walked the normal gamut of sidewalks lined with neighbors and strangers alike.

Now, bars line nearby streets and nobody looks out.  They're looking at TVs or each other or their cell phone, seeing nothing, noticing no one, missing everything.

The Constant Tearing Down

Rostropovich, with a full sweep of his bow, poured out Bach in front of this wall that, before the world's eyes, was being dissolved by hammers and picks and the words of thousands of angry people, fed up with borders that broke or crushed or killed.  Friends told me I stayed glued to the TV, insisting we should all be there to support this moment of history. 

Years later, that wall disappeared into tourist souvenirs pieces, sold at flea markets and fairs and I even bought some as gifts for a few dear friends.  

But it didn't die.  That wall reappeared in other lands and in many hearts.  And the endless efforts  to bring it down happens day after day and night after night, maybe not with hammers and picks, but always with words.

 **

RELATED POSTS:

Brief Peace in Late Night

  

While Everyone Else Was Having A Good Time...

....we wandered empty streets and forgotten alleys, and remembered a city unadorned and unconditionally embracing.

Sunday Memories: What The Stork Brought

 It's hard to see them, but look as closely as you can into that little corner.

It is summer and the babies have hatched.  As they have for the last thirty-six years, maybe even before, like when Bernard Hermann was growing up here dreaming music that could fill a movie screen or even when Sidor Belarsky lived here, his arias soaring up to the high ceilings, like the young sax player who now lives on the 2nd Floor and practices to open windows.

In between the music that fills the building now, it's the cooing and chirping I listen for, especially in summer.

***

RELATED POSTS:

Pets of Our Lives: Part One - Pigeons

Sunday Memories: Part Nine: A View From A Kitchen

Sunday In The Park With Springtime

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Freedom Of Religion

What that light offered him, besides the little bugs flitting around it, was a chance to look up and believe in miracles.


***

RELATED POSTS

God Of My Understanding

In The Still Of The Night The Sound of Silence...

In The Still Of The Night The Sound Of Silence Revisited

In The Still Of The Night

Men In Trees

The street filled with all these happy men throwing up ropes that magically reappeared as a ladder.

I had never seen a tree get climbed.  Not in real life.  Maybe in picture books of kids who didn't look like anyone I knew.  Those picture book trees looked like they had steps and the trees I grew up with were tall and thin and had no steps and they lived behind barriers that said don't walk on the grass and don't touch anything if you accidentally do walk on the grass.

The trees on the block I had lived on for 36 years always reminded me of the socialite ladies in New Yorker cartoons. Tall and elegant and certainly not to be climbed. These big guys just scampered up.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for Asian Beetles."

"Oh."

"We are checking all the trees in New York City."

"All of them?"

"Yeah. We're almost done.  It took five years."

The guys told me the trees I respectfully hadn't climbed for 36 years were called London Plane and the pretty ones that told me spring was here by their pink-white flowers were Ornamental Pear Trees. 

All I could think was what a great job.  What a great, great job.

Sunday Memories: His New York His California His Home - Christmas in July

On one of the last summer nights there,  I took advantage of his distraction by a book of jokes he had read dozens of times.  Quickly opening drawers and closets, pulling out more dirty linens and clothes for yet another load of laundry, an unexpected box festooned with holiday cheer appeared.

There inside were all the bow ties he had worn to work, day in, day out, year after year, being a father, being a husband, being a provider, being an on-time employee, no matter what the heat or the cold or the rage or the loneliness brought.

When I got old enough to know my colors and tall enough to peer into his bureau's drawer, I got to pick out which one he'd wear that day.  I did that until I left home.  And he continued to wear them until that company, after twenty-five years, fired him.

He must of brought these bow ties to California, optimistic and hopeful there would be opportunities to wear them, maybe with joy, maybe in love, maybe toward happiness.

***
Related posts:

It Was His California

Sunday Memories: The First Home

Sunday Memories: A Winter Coat

Sunday Memories: A Tale Of Two Brothers

His New York His California His Home: Part One

His New York His California His Home: Part Two-"One Step At A Time Dammit"

Sunday Memories: His New York His California His Home-Part Three

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: This Is Why This Is Good

Evolution of The Wheel, East Village Style

Tour Bus

Bible Bus

MTA Bus

East Village Bus

New Media, Old School Style....

a.k.a., how someone came up with the idea of the kindle.

SPECIAL ENCORE FOR A SPECIAL PRIDE DAY: The Lionesses Rule The Pride

Posted while Florence was declining, I was in touch with the woman she had been in love with, involved with and in war with since they were teenagers. Today, with gay marriage now legalized, I wonder what their life would have been like if only the world had loved their love as they had.

**


1982
All the other gay seniors rode. In the convertible, on the bus, in wheelchairs.

But not Florence.

She walked.

She was in her 60s. She had waited her entire life to walk down a street as who she really was. And she wasn't going to give up that walk for anybody or anything.

Sunday Memories: His New York His California His Home-Part Three

It had to have been twenty-five years since all three of us were in the same room.

What unfolded was a living moment of the memory I loved the most, a rare one of childhood being happy, almost like the families I saw in picture books at the library.

It was when the whole family was home at the same time, probably a Sunday afternoon.  Florence would be practicing in the other room, billions of music molecules building her cocoon from family life.

The three of us would gather around the Formica folding and extending kitchen table, before us that special maybe once-a-week but probably more like once-a-month bowl of ice milk and potato chips.

Then Dad would start telling jokes and jokes and jokes, as many as the notes pouring out of Florence's fingers.  And we would laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.  Belly grabbing, tears pouring out of our little girl eyes, nose snorting, almost peeing but refusing to go because no one wanted to break the spell with a bathroom break, full-out laughing.

I wanted those jokes and that ice cream to last forever. Like the magical replenishing bowl I once read in a fairytale, I wanted that fun and joy to never end.

At some point Florence would appear in the kitchen door reminding us it was our turn to practice.

Just a couple of days ago, the crisis of care needing to be brought into this place he now calls home, we sat together briefly, less than two hours.  He may not have remembered who had visited him just that morning or if the physical therapist was coming the next day.  But within minutes of us sitting down, just us three, jokes and jokes and jokes poured out and my sister and I, like little girls, laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

***
Related posts:

It Was His California

Sunday Memories: The First Home

Sunday Memories: A Winter Coat

Sunday Memories: A Tale Of Two Brothers

His New York His California His Home: Part One

His New York His California His Home: Part Two-"One Step At A Time Dammit"