Encore: L'Shona Tova

Originally posted Tuesday, October 7, 2008


I go to Little Gdynia to meet Doc for a meal.

Faye is there with her grandson. Her husband, Leslie is now gone a year at least. That means she'll be able to say kaddish at the services next week for him. All I see is that day he boasted how she was the smartest math teacher in the world as she gently put his arm into his jacket. They both survived the war and the camps but met each other here in New York when they came to start a new life, a new year.

Faye is now drained, her eyes watery. She may be facing 90 but she can't quite see it. Her grandson talks animatedly to her, like he is trying to live six lives for her so she isn't so damn lonely dieing without the man she loves.

I go over to say Good Yontiv. The grandson tells me he now is in Los Angeles. No, not the TV business. His girlfriend got into rabbinical school. Thank G-d, I say. Faye beams.

Five men yell and laugh in the back. The Right this, the Left that, Stalinism and....

Doc skips in. Pierogis and kielbasi and little cups of soup. Sour cream, sauteed onions, I have a chocolate egg cream. Talk pours out faster than delicious rain from another season, mothers and lovers and hopes and grief and hunger and peace and dreams. Desire.

For a new year for a new year for a new year.

The men all laugh and voices rise into chords from a Schoenberg symphony. Suddenly a glass breaks on the tile floor.

"Mazel Tov!" we shout to them.

"What!? Now you're married!?" one shouts back.

"No! You're married." we retort.

Faye's grandson is waving to me from the door. I jump up, a kiss on Faye's cheek. She says, pointing to him, kvelling like crazy, "This is my grandson." I don't say I know you told me. I just grin a billion smiles for her so maybe the joy evaporates her permanent tears. I feel my own eyes soften with age each second.

Doc makes me laugh just when I'm swallowing mushroom barley. We talk about all the meals we ate on Yom Kippur. I win. Two years ago from the 35th Street Chinese bakery a pork bun for breakfast before I realized I was eating tref on the holiest of the holies. She's runner up because she made dinner reservations this year for right after the fasting begins.

Since it's between Rosh Hoshanna and Yom Kippur, we don't count the kielbasi.

The men, windbreakser, comfy shoes, relaxed pants, those faces we know in our fathers our uncles our neighbors our lives.

One says, "you sure we're not married?"

"You are," we say. "But to him..." pointing to his old friend.

"Oy! him!?"

"What? You thought you were going to be happy?"

"Wasn't the first two times...."

"Good night, girls," they call to us, leaving with little bags of dessert or dinner.

"Good night, Good Yontiv, shona tova, a happy new year..."

A new year a new year a new year...

Sunday Memories: Our Facebook

If we weren't at the Door, we were at Nedicks.  And if we weren't at Nedicks, we were in the park.

And if it was raining, we were all under the Arch. 

***

Sunday Memories: The Door

Sunday Memories: Fast Food In Fast Times

Sunday Memories: Autumn In New York

Sunday Memories: ... A Little Rain Must Fall

The Door

The Best Of All Possible Worlds....

Voltaire published his book secretively.  A satire, it was sure to piss off the mediocre assholes who thought their new clothes made them look smart.  Or rich.  Or thin.  Sure enough, Candide was a hit and the assholes banned it.  But does anyone remember their names or even care?

As diners close and an old man running a neighborhood newspaper-stand  fights $800-an-hour lawyers working to evict him, a real city still stands.  Or in this case, sits.  Being reminded that no matter what century or country it might be, mediocrity can and will continue to be challenged.

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

The Lights Of Autumn

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.

***

Related Posts

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Burning Down The House

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: The Days Of Frostbite


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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Sunday Memories: The Truth And Nothing But...

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.