Before It Disappears, More Brief Moments

Goglog said most of the 14th Street stretch had been bought by a developer and wouldn't be there much longer, Vanishing New York passed on the news that Applebees and Johnny Rockets were probably headed to Coney Island, and NYU continued to think it owns public land.

There was a story I grew up with, passed around the Lower East Side.  It had happened. In Brooklyn.

A village had been condemned to death by the Nazis.  The villagers picked one person to escape and go tell their story so their deaths would not be in vain.  The man they picked somehow made his way to safety and then to America.  Relatives of the villagers were in Brooklyn and he came and for three days he told the story of the village, the murders, the Nazis.  At the end of the three days, the man died.

We are much luckier than those villagers.   When you don't get shot, sometimes you get to go on to find new ways and create new lives.  But, sometimes, even if you don't get shot, destruction strikes.  I do not want to die after telling the story of my village headed to destruction.  I don't want my village to die either.  But, now it seems more important than ever the story gets told.

Avenue A Bus looks at 14th Street.

Some things have continued on.

The sunset over 37th Street

Allen and Grand.

Back staircases in walk-ups


Real New Yorkers.

But some things didn't.

St. Vincent Hospital, now becoming luxury condos,

Florence.

 **
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Crossing Delancey on the Avenue A

It was rush hour on the Avenue A which is why the walker lady with the sheitel and a hat had rushed the door in front of the wheelchair who was wearing a cap my dad used to wear.

Everyone chimed in with the bus driver for her to move out of the way, but all she heard was noise until he waved her back.

The old man in the wheelchair only had one leg, one eye, an orthodox beard and one friend as old and hairy as he was who wheeled him into the parking spot on the bus for wheelchairs. 

The 4:30, hurtling down to the East River, was packed, what between the teachers and the kids coming home from school, the hospital workers getting out, the errands being finished, the subway riders transferring over.  The wheelchair's friend moved back a bit,  and hanging out by a pole, pulled out his New York Post and started reading.

The walker lady got a seat from someone, one of the single seats along the windows.  The woman behind her, who was fighting middle age with a vengeance, tapped her on the shoulder.  "Your wheels are on my bag."  The walker lady couldn't lift her walker, so finally the middle aged woman moved it for her, hugged her freed bags and glared at me. 

"What could I do..." murmured the walker lady.  Her accent, I hadn't heard it in years, but it was born of diaspora and several languages, one barely spoken anymore and I was suddenly back in the courtyard with the old ladies chortling in this woman's voice "monkey monkey" when B. hung upside on the railing.

Three tiny girls with huge backpacks of school books teetered in the aisle because the driver, no matter how many tattoos he had, was a cowboy.  The walker lady patted her walker seat.  "You wanna sit here? Come.  Sit, sit."

Yeshiva boys with matching loafers got on.  "Hi Ari, you Ok?  You doing OK?" one asked the man in the wheelchair.  "Yeah, yeah," he said, shifting himself in the chair and going back to staring out the window.

The Puerto Rican woman, my age, jeans and a warm parka, grabbed a sudden free seat across the aisle from the walker lady.   Their eyes met.

Beaming smiles and little waves across small space, the Puerto Rican woman asked, "You OK? You doing OK?"  "Nothing to complain about, nothing to complain about, everything good good," the walker lady said, then asked "You? You OK?" "Yeah, yeah.  Everything good." 

An elderly lady with tons of bags got on and eight people jumped up to give her a seat but she refused, instead gave it to the young woman who was blind instead.  No one had noticed the cane, just the pretty face, nicely made up.   The old lady and the young woman spoke Spanish to one another as polite strangers do.

More people got on, more people said hello to one another, more people got up to give more people their seats.  The African-American man, had to be at least 75 or 80 but only from the gray all over, he was very fit, said no, no, I'm fine, thank you.   Even if he wanted to sit down, that generation? Nah. You don't take a seat from a lady.

The little boys in the back being escorted home from school talked loudly to their earnest moms who shopped at Whole Foods and now filled the Lower East Side privatized co-ops with relief because it was affordable housing to them.  One little boy shouted questions that had words he knew you weren't suppose to shout in public.  "Are you pregnant?  Did the house make you pregnant?"  And his tired mom said, "Yes, that's it..." laughing to her friends.

And then Columbia Street came and the wheelchair and the friend and the yeshiva boys got off and suddenly the bus was empty.

Dana was waiting.

I was only half an hour late and there was much to cover.  Boy, was that bus packed and everybody talking, I said. I'll probably write about it tonight.  Well, she replied, you hear the best stories on the Avenue A.

**
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Sunday Memories: Hot Lunch

We were talking about the difference between men artists and women artists when Kosky said, "well, there's much more pressure on women socially."  He wasn't expected to show up or do things or be all available.  He could disappear or send his regrets or not even answer at all and no one would question it.  He was an artist and had important work to do. 

I, on the other hand, had struggled for years to not answer the phone or not show up or not agree to help out.

I thought about that when I pulled out the old skillet this morning.  It was the one I had used several times a week during junior high school.  Home for lunch, I would whip up eggs, dunk in some bread, and fry away on the skillet while Florence kept practicing.  French toast was the only thing, besides a bologna sandwich, I knew how to cook for myself.   

There was nothing unusual about any of this, until much, much later, when I repeatedly heard the anger and judgement about women who chose their vocation over the needs of others.

It made me think of Lucien Freud who was almost herald for his refusal to be part of the many families he created.   His children, at least according to one of his daughters, had to meet him on his terms if they wanted any connection with him.

Cooking up french toast this morning for the first time sine 1972, I thought about how Florence, despite a crippling civil war within, managed to reclaim small spaces in which she could be, not the words of Mom or Wife or Teacher, but herself.  I thought about how in order to save herself, she taught me as much as she could about self-sufficiency and then sent me out into the world quickly so that both of us could survive.

And so, we both did. 

**
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Taking Flight Into The Unknown

Elisabeth singing at the Blue Note

It's not just the stolen walks in between chores-jobs-obligations to commiserate about the blank page glaring back at us or sneaking out again to that movie series, not once, not twice but sometimes even three times no excuses or no explanations needed.

It's not getting that the grind of the tour (unloading the van singing loading the van driving to next gig repeat a billion times) beats staying at home hands down any day.  Or being terrified broke freelancing rather than secure full time working so another stab at that blank page can be attempted. 

It's not even understanding the so-call choice of living so precariously and being whatever this is we are makes sense because to choose otherwise would mean you might as well die inside and we both know a whole lot of the walking dead so no thank you.

It's standing shoulder to shoulder or drink to drink in the middle of a brutal night of loss or disappointment and holding the space for better times so writing and singing can still go on even when everything inside wants to stop.

And sometimes it's even more than that.  It's listening to her song unlock my own words and then filling that blank page with a surprising story.

**
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Going Where Its Warm

 Albert is blind.  But he can find love in three seconds flat.

We had just stopped by Social Tees Animal Rescue's new home on 5th Street ("Right by the Police Station" the sign at the old place said).  The Mariner sat down, interested in patting the adorable French Bulldog hopping about.

He never got the chance.  Before anyone knew what was happening, Albert jumped up and made a home in cozy spaces only I had gotten to visit before.

Obviously Albert had never read a romantic novel or seen a romantic movie where if it was Hollywood, after much loss and anguish there was a happy ending you knew didn't exist, and if it was French, after much loss and anguish there was a miserable ending that only made sense to the French or those committed to misery.

No.  Albert knew that love was warm and always three seconds away.  All he had to do was go forward.  And sometimes, that's all you gotta know - with love, with art, with heart, with life.  Go forward to where it's warm. 

Albert isn't up for foster care or adoption, but there's a bunch of kittens, cats, and dogs who are.  Ready if you are for love being warm and only three seconds away.

**
Jupiter, my three seconds away from love.  That, and any chicken he can get from me.

**

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Clayton's been documenting the lower east side since like forever.  Because when you can prove it happened, nobody can erase you.

Clayton Patterson at the

Angel Orensanz Foundation on Norfolk Street 

There's no one Jewish story from below 14th Street.   There are hundreds and thousands.  

I am not, as someone once suggested, just like the people on Seinfeld or from that movie about my neighborhood.  Nor were any of the people I grew up with.   My mother, my friends' mothers, were complex people, striving beyond the bad jokes about us.

And now, because of Clayton, there's not just one book proving it.  There are three.

**
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Days Like This

photo by E. Lohninger

"One day at a time" is way too long.  I'm only capable of handling 20 minutes at any given moment and that's on a good day.

It is hard to carve and coax love out of one's failed past, broken-hearted role models, and Fred and Ginger movies.  Even An American In Paris offered only fantasy as a road map. (yeah show me a broke artist who picks the poor girl over the heiress....)

But, like time passing or a kid getting taller, its presence, during many twelve hour walks through the city, unfolded imperceptibly until one morning a note sent to a friend recounting the previous twenty-four hours was filled with words like "laughing" and "fun" and "good" and other similar happy descriptions.  There were no recognizable words like "struggle" or "fight" or "confused" or "frustration" or "despair" or "futile" or....

If I hadn't written that note, I would have never known how I had laughed all night (which is just like dancing all night only you get to sit down).   I would have never notice what once was foreign in my life was suddenly present.  I would have never have noticed my life was becoming different from what I had known for so long.

So, imagine my surprise 780,000 minutes later (which is approximately 39,000 20 minute segments) that what once was different now seemed normal. 

Happy Valentine's Day to the Mariner.

**
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A Poem Becomes Her

The picture of her and Baby Boy, snapped quickly with an old Instamatic and real film, has been in each and every old Filofax lugged about in handbags and satchels.  A photo in a phone could never be this loved, bent from being taken out over and over again to show life and love, history and family.

When there is great beauty, there are fewer words.

I keep scooping up pens and cameras, attempting to tell a poem offered by fading light on a city street or a cat's heartbeat, or sorrow and loss, or the inevitable journey people I love take into the unknown.

"There needs to be another word for what we are to each other than family because it is so much better than that," she said recently.

Poem.  Poem works.

 **

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: MINDBENDERS 2 COMING ATTRACTIONS!!!!

 

Read the excerpt, The Man Who Didn't Die from Ted Krever's sequel MINDBENDERS2: UNDER THE RADAR


Ted Krever, author
Video by Adrian Garcia Gomez

Sunday Memories: On The Road

You can't quite see it, but my father, Seymour has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

And you may not recognize it, it now quite redone, but this was a stretch along the East River by the Williamsburg Bridge.

My parents always biked.  Not in any special lane, not with helmets or fancy spandex.  Regular shoes or sneakers.  They had sturdy Raleigh bikes, and an L.L. Bean saddle bag and they went places.

Just married, Seymour turned to Florence and said, let's go! Without gear or extra clothes, they traveled for days.  Later, Florence wrote excitedly to the woman she had always loved, telling her that after several days, their clothes had become unbearably dirty.  Seymour went and bought her an entire outfit of new clothes.  Both of them barely out of poverty, this was a big deal.  (Even after my father had a full time job, my sister and I could count on one hand the times we bought new clothes.)

They travel up and down the Jersey shore and all over the city.  They traveled uptown and across, and when I was 12 or 13, I too took to the road on one of their Raleighs, biking to babysitting and soon, on my own, to City College with my violin strapped to my back.  Occasionally, a cigarette dangling from my mouth.  No helmet, no fancy spandex. Regular shoes or sneakers.

Florence quit smoking in her fifties, but she continued to bike into her late sixties until I think the bike got stolen and she couldn't replace it.  That or we sold it or gave it away because she wasn't wearing a helmet and besides, if you walk, you get to eat along the way.

***
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Subway Rat

I think that boyfriend in 1977 was complimenting me when he called me that.

But here are the things that are normal:

• knowing which door to stand at so I could walk straight out to the street 

• the many ways to get from point A to point B, and if I didn't know, calling Baby Boy (until he was eight years old and got bored with it), because he knew the entire MTA system - buses and subways and could map you from anywhere to anywhere, usually in multiple routes.

• riding without holding on because it was too crowded and the pole was too far away, not realizing until recently that it was just like surfing, just without the cold water or the sharks

• hanging out in between cars in the summer because the Lexington IRT never had any air conditioning in the summer, only in the winter, and it had air conditioning in the winter because it never had heat in the winter (that was the 70's and 80's)

• walking from one car to another, and when the young kid cop stopped me and said "hey that's against the law - didn't you see the sign?" I said, "Oh?  I thought that was just for the tourists."

• NOT knowing which damn color goes with which line.  They're called the BMT, IND and IRT for fucks sake.

***
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Our Westerns

"He's a cowboy," Florence would hiss.

I'm not exactly sure where she got her terminology.  She was in her sixties the first time she went west of New Jersey.  Maybe, watching westerns as a girl in Bushwick or the Lower East Side, she got the idea that only a cowboy would drive a vehicle reckless and fast through millions of cow-like traffic.

It wasn't until Bucko's blog that it dawned on me that the world of the cowboy was a bit larger than Blazing Saddles and New York City bus drivers.  (I am purposely ignoring the two westerns I was dragged to see in 1981 at the St. Marks Movie theater because they were being screened with irony.)

So, as the M3 bus driver barreled down Fifth Avenue, zipping in and out of billions of cars and taxis and pedestrians and those bicycle rickshaws, imagine my surprise when I heard myself mutter, "Cowboy!" 

***
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The cat doesn't understand Dutch and only begrudgingly shares his couch corner with her.   He is tolerating our three decades plus ability to spite over 3000 miles of ocean and land in order to talk non-stop about every single person in our lives, whether we both know them or not.  It doesn't matter.  What we do know is the air and light and sound of each others' city, the laugh of the ex-lover and the cooking skills of the current one, the lilt of a family member's voice, the rubble left from a parent's failure at care. 

She is the one, who after Florence died, gently coaxed, "Don't chew," and each time I returned to that night and redid my actions like it would change history, I would hear her.  "Don't chew," I'd repeat and again let go of my delusion I could make the past different just by raging at it.

There is much to cover in her few days in New York.  In between rationing out dozen of pieces of licorice and taking one of our meandering walks that now illuminates another land than the one she visited in 1982, we re-become each other's diaries.  It is too dangerous to commit to any evidence, in Dutch or English, where we have buried the bodies of our many adventures, unless of course we write it as fiction.

So we recount to one another, relieved the memories will die along with us.  She does the remembering of events.   I do the remembering of emotional processes.  It had been a similar division of work when, as young women, we traveled together.  I could remember how, in the appropriate language, to ask where the auto bus was and she could understand the answer.

Now, we are the old ladies we once peered at when we were twenty-two.  We grumble about young people and their cell phones.   We discuss preparations necessary for illness and funerals.  We say, "Leave that for me in your will" or "I will leave that for you in my will".  We try on much different fashion than we did years ago, enjoying styles that only adults used to wear.   We no longer drink Southern Comfort or Jenever.  Although I'm still open to it.  We exchange, no matter what, breakable heavy objects to carry back to home. 

In the whirl of time, we hold each others' footsteps, the ones we took towards love, through loss and then back into unexpected life again, and we bear witness for one another of how amazing and surprising life turned out to be.

***
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"Tonight I can write the saddest lines." - Neruda

Orchard Street

It was the only stoop on the block that still looked familiar.

The Old Normal

The sign on the door said "Careful - wet paint in hallway".   Clearly the work hadn't begun. 

The peeling paint off the wall and the cigarette butts and empty packs littering the stairs - it was just like home when home was anywhere me and my friends could be who or what we were or weren't. 

It makes sense in new nice neighborhoods rising from factories into tri-plex multi-million dollar lofts with triple pane windows and spectacular views that hallways get to change too. 

Before paint and work erased yet another haven, normal to us, a quick glimpse, remembering littering stairs, smoking, and glaring at the people, stepping over kids like me and my friends, as they trudged up and down heading from work to street to more work to life that didn't include multi-million dollar nothing.

Sunday Memories That Become Part of Now

The old chairs inherited from Florence, the beat-up table left by a old friend and roommate in 1979, the table clothes found at yard sales in 1998, the dishes collected over twenty-five years from different restaurant closings, the forks a moving neighbor left up for grabs in the lobby, the vase carried back from Spain in 1988, the serving spoons Florence got from Mrs. Applebaum's apartment when she died in 1981, wine glasses quickly purchased today from the thrift store across the street....

Then me and the Mariner opened the door and let the cat out to greet friends who over two or eight or twelve or 18 or 37 years joined in once again to welcome another birthday.

**
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Winter Encore: Sunday Memories: A Winter Coat

Originally posted December 4, 2011


Although the date on the picture says "Aug 67" more likely than not my father took this picture in the winter but using the camera sparingly (after all, film was expensive and so was processing) he didn't finish the roll until the summer. So probably every season was recorded in one roll of film.

This was my winter coat for several years.  A couple of sizes bigger than me (of course) and grown into (of course), my father called this my Joseph Coat Of Many Colors.  When the musical came out I became very confused.  THAT coat didn't look like mine.

I also didn't realize that Joseph, as a son of the desert probably didn't need a hood on his.  But this was how I understood this coat, bought second hand or handed down but clearly a coat that that traveled through other lives before reaching me.  I wore it as the mantel of a man in the midst of sibling rivalry but destined to heal his family.  This of course led to many years of therapy.


And these were my parents' winter coats.  Judging from the angle, I must of taken this picture.

Florence was still wearing winter coats then.  I suspect she gave them up around the same time she gave up skirts and men.  Her coat was a Harris Tweed bought probably at Macys or A&S or B. Altmans or Gimbels.  It was expensive.  At some point she relined it.  Forty-four years later, it's still in great shape and I wear it.   Being shorter than Florence was then, I look like Little Red Riding Hood, only without the hood or the red.

My father's coat was, I believe, a Hudson Bay, also very expensive.  Or it  could have been an LL Bean.  It was his winter coat until he moved to  California in the 1980's.  It is still in his closet.  Just in case the  weather suddenly changes.  The last time I checked, it was dusty but  ready to go.  For a brief moment, he and I talked about giving it to my then boyfriend who was unprepared for the North American winters.  However, I suspect he clung to that coat the same way Florence discarded hers.  A reminder of other times and other weather.

The Long Road

I was too busy standing up and singing along and being proud to be an American, included in that word like never before, to take a picture of the television.  This is from the New York Times.

On days like this, remembering that the promise of the Constitution wasn't just for some but for all of us, I miss Florence a lot.  She would have heard that this land was her land too, not just parts of the Village or a couple of friends' living rooms.

And on days like this, I wish my gramma and my bubby were here to see this.  They fled from the Old Country to the New World because of the promise of the Constitution.  They would have heard that the promise wasn't just words, but real lives thriving.

Look! A woman justice swearing in the Vice President!

Look! Us and all our family and friends and neighbors and co-workers in the crowd, on the podium, everywhere.  It's not just that scumbag Republican who gets to be there.  We do too!

Listen!  That's Brooklyn up there, where our families lived before moving to the lower east side, and that's our anthem, sung like it was meant to be sung!

But most of all,  my gramma and my bubby would have heard "Thank you".

The long road of their flight from that Old Country to this New World had not been in vain, even with the brutal poverty and horrible violence and crazy-ass people hating them because of what they were, not who they were.

They took that long road and, because of that, their granddaughter, standing up proud in front of the television, gets to live in a country that allows her the freedom to vote, to protest against the government, to own property if she can ever afford it, to practice the religion of her choice, to fight for change so the promise of the Constitution continues to be for all, not just some, and to love who she damn well feels like loving.

Shona Tova, Shona Tova, a new year for all of us, a new year, indeed.

**
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Sunday Memories: Along Came Bialy

Both sides of the family have a long relationship with bialies.

My dad's family came from or through Bialystok on their way to the new world.  My dad and his brother, Uncle George were bar mitzvah'ed at the Bialystok Synagogue on Willet between Grand and Columbia.  They all ate bialies.

Florence grew up over Kossar's, the bialy store when it was still on Hester Street.  It moved around the corner to Grand when Dana's husband, George convinced everyone to trade the tenements for nice high-rises that had hot water and plumbing inside the apartments.   They all ate bialies too.

Kossars always closed for Shabbos.  So, during summertime, me, Cindy and B. would wait until sunset and then some, and then stroll down to the store on Grand and Essex and get the first hot, fresh bialies straight from the ovens.  It was - pre-breasts and boys - the highlight of our Saturday nights.

Come to think of it, it was - post-breasts and boys - still the highlight of our Saturday nights .

The store changed hands but the bialies didn't.  Ok, maybe a bit more doughy but the one time I complained to the counter guy they weren't cooked as much as they used to be, he yelled at me to toast them if I wanted them crunchier.

Then one day someone suggested I give up gluten.  She said that everything ailing me sounded more like gluten was the problem rather than early dementia, laziness or inferior genes.  I reluctantly said goodbye to most of what I loved and ate and things improved. 

Bread, bread and butter, bread and gravy, bread and anything, pasta, more bread, cake, bagels and most of all, bialies became more and more relegated to the past.  However, so did all those annoying problems I thought were early dementia, laziness or inferior genes.

However, there are several ways to connect to one's well-being and one of them is the spiritual reunion with one's people and the past.  So, one night, late and tired, braving the cold, I took a trip to Kossar's and got a bialy.

And even though the next day was hell, that meal was the best of many, many meals over many, many months.

**
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The Eyes Have It

Three New Yorkers looked into the future.

All three included food.

**
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Répétez, S'il Vous Plaît

When it comes to writing or music or painting or dance or any other hellish vocation you are condemned to do, there is no end.  The "going off into the sunset" of movies never happens.   Except when you die. Then there's a sunset, but you're dead so you don't know the sun is going down on you.

Beginning can feel futile, especially if finishing feels like death and not finishing feels like death that won't come.  Either way, the terror of sitting down to find out only makes those options worse.
When I was still imprisoned in music studies, Florence would order "Répétez!" and demand "Commence!"

When I escaped clef notes and bar lines into words and paragraphs, she'd say, "You know writing is really just rewriting", and "Sitting down is half the battle."

She also said, "Show me a dirty house and I'll show you a woman of character."

Thanks, Mom.

But,  I had to clean the house first.   

**
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 My sister and I never thought "oh that's art" as we passed it every day on our way to school or violin lessons or, in my case, jump rope.   Looking at those three women was  like looking at a family photo - as normal and intimate as maybe the way my friends with televisions looked at the Brady Bunch.

The only thought either of us had was "oh, is that Mommy?"  We were not talking the rich looking ladies there.

Later, after we stopped calling her Mommy, Florence would bitterly laugh as she recounted how we repeatedly asked her if that was her.  She also laughed bitterly about how people told her she looked like Katherine Hepburn.   Clearly, she had a couple of looks.

Finding out years later "The Critic" was, in fact, art was like finding out your favorite kindergarten teacher had found the cure for cancer (she didn't).   Or that your sweet, funny uncle was a brilliant rocket scientist (he actually was).  

And then after that, I found out Weegee had, in fact, given Florence that picture himself.  Hard to get the straight story on it - there were several.

• He gave out prints to pretty girls on the lower east side as a matter of course, so it was no big deal.  
• He was crazy for Florence and wrote her a love letter which got separated from the photo when she had it reframed.  
• The letter was sealed up when she got it framed, and if we unframed it, all would be revealed.

The only thing I ever really asked of Florence was to give me the picture when it was time to be given.  She was hiding decline, but knew something was up.

"Take it now," she said.

"No, it's yours and it belongs in your home.  Just put a note on the back of the picture."

On the untouched backing, still sealed as it had been when it was reframed probably in the 1950s, there's a pink stickie taped there that says 'This will belong to Claire'.  

**
Related Posts:

Sunday Memories: For My Sister's Birthday

Sunday Memories: The Exhaustion of Diaspora: Part Seven

Letters At The Speed Of...

I finally went through the two boxes of letters from Florence's life that I had hidden away years ago after I brought the rest of her estate home.

The first box was packed with a ton of handwritten mystery notes, both in her elegant penmanship, and in others. Pictures of people we clearly weren't related to, obits of girlhood friends, two 1934 post cards from an uncle hiding out in Ubekistan from the anti-semites in Kiev, poems and letters from the girl she grew up with the one she loved, my father who she never spoke to again after 1977, my sister's missives from age three into her 50's, and attempts from me to either be a good daughter or to break through to something akin to understanding.  It was a collage of her life.  Up to a point.

The second box was after that point.  Packed with greeting cards warbling love and pop-out hearts and cute animals professing forever-yours, piles of letters from her and from a lover twisting in desire and missing and sharing of the day, and notebook pages and pages scrawled by a furious spurned girlfriend sobbing, raging, pleading, demanding, begging, defending a relationship that suddenly didn't work anymore.  No matter what card was open, what letter unfolded, desire and pain opened and unfolded with it.

There are few, if any, such letters in any boxes I have tucked away.  Everything in the past decades have become more and more immediate and transient, allowing a history to be easily deleted into electronic garbage pails.  And the mysteries of love gone bad or good or just gone have been unraveled through modern versions of therapy and self-help and Oprah.

These days offer the zen of Now, a space between 'then' and 'soon'.  In that cradle of peace and with some clicks on a keyboard, a living letter appears in a friend's face, a letter that lasts as long as words are spoken.  That unshackled moment might be made at the price of a story constructed from colorful animal pictures that get piled into a box, but, staring at all those letters and cards and notes, I was left just as puzzled by the secrets that died with Florence as perhaps anyone, seeking answers about me. might be staring into blank screens and electronic garbage pails, only to find them empty.

**
Related Posts:

Letters From The Deep: Part One

The Exhaustion of Diaspora: Part Six

Sunday Memories: The Exhaustion of Diaspora: Part Seven

When A House Become A Home

Tales From A Hard Day's Night: Mieux La Chance, Que L'Address (Better Luck Than Skill)

Becoming Beauty, Becoming Home

Jim Hendrix moved to New York when anyone not rich could.  He knew the East Village streets were where he would continue becoming who he was inside.

Uliana also moved to New York when anyone not rich could.  She knew the East Village streets were where she'd continue becoming who she was inside.

Before she headed east and village, a friend gave her this photo of Hendrix because he knew she loved Hendrix.  Where ever she lived in New York, it hung on her wall. 

She wasn't a musician, but just like Hendrix could make a guitar sing like never before, Uliana could make women's beauty (and a couple of men) sing like never before.

She was a sculptor, a painter and a magician when it came to hair.  She'd eye your head, pick up those scissors and brilliant music would pour out into the world.  Afterwards, you'd look in the mirror and see how you were always meant to look like.  It's just that before Uliana touched you, you had never seen it.

Real estate and life and years and the East Village changing, at some point Uliana needed to move her Hair Salon to a new location, but she didn't want to move off 9th Street.  A real estate agent showed her a basement space only a couple of doors down.

Uliana didn't know what it was, but something about the space felt just right. 

"Did you know Jimi Hendrix used to live here?", the real estate agent told her.

**

Uliana's Hair Studio

321 E 9th St
(between 2nd Ave & 1st Ave)
New York, NY 10003

(212) 475-4302
New York City Search
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Sunday Memories: Get On UP!

Tony Walker and Michael Apted

signing autographs at IFC

(photo by T. Krever)

Every seven years rushing to the movie house to find out what happened next.

Then last time - 49 UP - we noticed there was a lot of gray hair in line.   It was no longer a great series of documentaries.  It was us.

And seven years after that, counting the days, rewatching 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49 during a week long marathon, getting in line almost as long as Les Miserable (but way more interesting), talking to two thirty-something, they were still just watching a documentary, but we were waiting to re-visit our heroes, peek into a mirror, see familiar touchstones of daily life in the fifth or sixth decade of life.

And, maybe even get an autograph after....


***

Related posts

The UP Series at First Run Features

 Joni's Coney

The Belated New Years

The Untitled Store

The piles of boxes, metal shelving units, the beat-up floors and every possible piece of merchandise made out of cloth packing every square inch - these were the stores we knew just like we knew Macy's or Kleins or Gimbels or, if you needed something really nice, B. Altman's.

This one is one of the very few left on Orchard Street. Surrounded by art galleries with incomprehsible crap in their windows and boutiques selling clothes that looked like what my grandparents wore, only a billion times more expensive.

This store has sheets.  Cotton sheets.  Last year, another walk down the stairs to the florescent-lit cavern, the sad-looking lady, old-time orthodox, younger than me, but looking like my Bubbie, sold me a great fitted one for just $10.

"You look like a nice couple, you need shirts? I got very good quality dress shirts?"

The Mariner got a great shirt for $25.  He couldn't say no to that lethal combination of sad-complimenting-Bubbie-looking lady.

A year later, I needed sheets. Cotten sheets.  I had splurged on a set at Marshalls during another Dad visit in my defensive-stress-busting-shopping activities.  The sheets sucked.  Clearly, if I wanted good ones I was going to have to go back to the old neighborhood to get them.

She hadn't changed a bit.  Younger than me, still looked like my Bubbie.   Pulling out piles of plastic bricks filled with matching sheets and pillow cases.  "This is a nice one, Bloomingdales."

"It's ugly."

"You like this one?"

"Sateen, don't want sateen."

"Sateen?  No.  Cotten.  What about these?  Wash beautiful, people tell me."

"They're ugly too.  I like this one."

"OK.  $30."

With the extra pillow cases, $40 and she wouldn't bargain.

Then, with a look at the Mariner, she said, "You look like a nice couple, you need shirts? I got very good quality..."

**

Related Posts

The Belated New Year

Sunday Memories:  How Lovely To Be A Woman

The Secret Of The Fruit Man

Sunday Memories - A Visit from Another Her New York: "It Looked Chaotic But It Was Quite Organized."

His New York His California His Home: Part One

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

The Belated New Years

Central Park 2013

The first real New Years had also been in Central Park. We were 13, or 14, or even 15 years old.  There was a party and not just any party but one with boys and after we all gathered at the 72nd Street apartment to shake hands and see who was cute, we headed off to the bandshell to dance to a rock and roll band.

The park was practically empty.  After all, it was 1973.  But who cared!  We jumped up and down in rain puddles, thrilled about the years to come.  Nothing felt as good as my very first kiss with that cute boy that night.  That quickly changed when my friend's mother caught me necking with that cute boy and let me know exactly what kind of girl I was.  New Years and kissing didn't feel that good for a long, long time.

Three decades later, the park way way less empty and much more busy on New Years Eve.  After all it was 1999.

A couple of hundred runners danced about in costumes ready for a 2-mile trot and fireworks.  Generous friends had invited me along, knowing my 39th year had been a high-speed fiery descent to bottom.  I remember standing in the crowd of healthy, tall runners who were all shouting happy wishes for the run-into-the-new-year and thinking "I must become the joy I want because I sure as hell am not going to be joy just standing here this depressed in a crowd of skinny tall healthy people shouting joy."

I barely made the two miles, jogging in practically last after the group of 95 year olds who were basically strolling along.   But,with each aching miserable plop of my feet I vowed through gritted teeth I'd never have that bad a year again.

A vow takes time.

It was fourteen years later than that joyless New Years and literally four decades after my first real New Years kiss. A New Year had come, the park now packed with billions of people, and trillions of runners,   After all, it was 2013.

The fireworks like zillions of umbrellas bursting colors above our heads, good friends, their children, the promise of a new year and the gratitude of a damn good past one, me and the Mariner danced and shouted joy and kissed with delight a new year, a new year, shona tova, a new year.

Sunday Memories: Loneliness

Over the olives before the dinner, she said, "wait say that again about loneliness..."

Loneliness wasn't like a top-40 song sung in the 60's by a waif-like boy walking along British puddles while every waif-like girl watching that little movie screeched forward profoundly sure she was the one who could make it all better, if only she could walk with him.  Besides, that boy was getting a lot of action being so forlorn, no way he'd give up that easy way to get laid.

No.   Loneliness was more like how Florence and I had both traversed our city the same way; walking through life, going from bed to job to dinner table to the familiar sidewalk towards the familiar brick apartment building, at each stop sparkling out charm and entertaining conversation, but in between visits all these tiny corners appearing out of darkness, offering space for everything we did not, could not say.

"Wait, explain that..." he said over meat and rice and salad and wine.

Well, breaking karmic chains was making sure Florence's grief would end, end with me and perhaps with the younger ones or maybe with anyone.  It didn't matter she was dead.  That never mattered.  So often we were just emotional sound loops of our parents' secrets.   Who were loops of theirs and theirs and theirs and...

It was like quitting smoking, quitting loneliness was.  Putting it down slowly, over and over again; each day, instead of a secret silence,  now filled with words said out loud in bed, at jobs, over dinner, on the familiar sidewalk towards the familiar brick apartment building until one day all those dark corners were just visual echos of everything we had not, could not have said and loneliness was just a memory.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

When a friend got knifed to death, I got off the messengering bike, put on a skirt, a real bra, clean shirt, snappy beret and hit the many employment agencies on Fifth Avenue in the forties.  It was too hard to pedal  in midtown traffic when everything hurt so much inside.

It was 1977 and entry-level jobs could be found if you showed up to plastic chaired florescent testing rooms with battered typewriters and sharpened pencils.  I found out I was good at adding and subtracting, but sloppy on accuracy when retyping the paragraph about the brown fox that was quick.

An index card with a company's name got pulled out, a call got made and I entered these doors to be interviewed by a man whose eyes never left my breasts.

Finally, off the housekeeping-housecleaning-bikemessengering-babysitting route, I got to sit down and sit still in order to make money.

The other night, Christmas in full bloom, wandering during a work recess of a job I sit down for, weaving in and out ice skating and cute shops, the Mariner and I bumped into these doors, barely unchanged from almost forty years ago.

So hard to remember one day to the next, the word winter, or the fact I had seen one of my favorite documentaries with a good friend.  But standing at these doors, I remembered the 8 a.m. hustle of many girls in many heels, much perfume, tons of makeup and me waiting to enter elevators that rode us to jobs we sat down for.

**
Related Posts:

Tales From A Hard Day's Night: Mieux La Chance, Que L'Address (Better Luck Than Skill)

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Holiday Rerun: COUNTING THE MIRACLE OF LIGHTS

While recovery begins from flus and jobs....originally posted December 19, 2010


On our side of the Williamsburg Bridge there were barely any electric menorahs in our windows.  Our menorahs, old brass or faux silver with blue inlays to represent Israel, lived on tables and had old melted candles of muted colors, candles bought in the same blue box made by the same company from any store on the Lower East Side.

So it was the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge that every year as it got colder and colder I would watch carefully.  There, the tall projects would burst, window by window, into brilliant colored lights rarely seen in the homes I knew.  I counted them, like counting flowers in a garden.

Encore-Sunday Memories: Visiting Santa

Originally posted on Sunday, December 26, 2010



Why my Jewish parents did this or what they were thinking will forever remain a mystery.

Every year when the blinking lights went up and the store windows filled with moving animals, toys and people, my mother and father, my sister and me would leave the lower east side where nary a Christmas tree could be found and head to Macy's to look at all the Christmas decorations.

In those days, the corner window squeezed in between the Nedicks doors had a special Santa throne. We would wait in the freezing cold and then he'd suddenly appear out of the chimney or a beautifully wrapped box and the crowd would go wild as he waved through thick glass that blocked the sound of our cheering or his 'ho ho ho's.

He also lived on the 8th or 9th floor in Santaland. We may have visited him on more than one occasion but I only remember this one time.

I was in fifth grade and it was not going well. Especially math. I was worried. My father, I think, brought me up to Santaland which for some strange reason was almost deserted. I didn't quite get the "ask Santa for presents" deal. I knew it was my dad or my mom who produced the eight days of Chanukah presents. And our God which we never discussed was busy with plagues and lion dens and Israel.

I was kinda big to be climbing onto Santa's lap, but desperate times call for desperate acts. There was only one thing I really wanted that couldn't be gotten anywhere except from someone who made happy dreams come true.

I perched my ten year old self on his knee, and when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I told him. I want to pass math.

It recently occurred to me, 40 plus years later, that maybe he didn't hear many requests like that. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable. Passing math was beyond my own abilities, asking my parents for help was beyond theirs and our God was busy with more important things. It was going to have to be up to Santa.

As if it had already happened, he decreed, "You'll pass math."

And so it came to pass that when fifth grade ended many months later, I had passed math.

Traces of Love

In the world we called our own, this is where we stood before heading off to Coney.

The Delancy Street stop is now all fancy and cleaned up.  But, East Broadway still looks like home.

Miracle on Grand Street

It wasn't just the miracle of the 8th day, when the oil surprised everyone and didn't run out.

It was also the miracle of family, friends, neighbors and strangers who ran up and down 11 or 21 flights of stairs, bringing food and water during storm days and making sure light stayed the course, just like the oil did, all those years ago.

**

Related Posts: 

Day of Miracles

Time Flies When...

Guest Artist Dana: Encore - "One Day I Wrote A Sentence"