Thanksgiving Morning

Rain falling soft on the statue of Nathan Hale outside City Hall Park, rain like tears on his bronze face, always looking southward down Broadway. Rain falling as the sky goes from black to grey. Rain falling in 1975.

Rain glistening on her strawberry hair as she kissed him good morning in front of the statue, rain sparkling on the shoulders of his pea jacket. They walked east across the park and up the ramp onto the bridge, walking up into the fog and the clouds. Rain hissing on the grey river beneath them while they kissed in the middle of the bridge. Rain walking with them right up to the door of the little diner at sunrise.

She held her coffee mug in both hands and looked at him over the brim; he loved looking at her eyes through the steam. On the night when they'd first kissed, just a couple of weeks earlier, they'd stood looking into each others' eyes for more than an hour, still as bronze statues themselves, on a rooftop so close to the bridge that  the traffic drowned out every other sound. He'd never felt anything like that before, and he never would again.

They finished their breakfast and walked back out into Thanksgiving morning in the rain.

An hour later in Prospect Park with the gravel crunching under their shoes on the hiking trail and the rain making the leaves shine like prayer flags from Atlantis. She takes out her journal and does a sketch of the polar bears' den, just a quick drawing before the page can get soaked. The bears are sleeping in their den; very new lovers are the only people who find a morning like this beautiful.

By noon they'd made it to Coney Island. No place left to walk to, but the foam and the sand still tossed and rolled just like they do in the summer. Only now they were the only ones watching. The rain was blowing out to the east, toward Jones Beach and Montauk and all those miles of waves and sky. They watched the back edge of the storm pass overhead and the sun broke through, turning the spray into glitter.

The Night Of September 11

Took a walk on the Promenade tonight, because I didn't know what else to do. I had a candle in one pocket, a camera in another. Casey came with me, and he knew it wasn't an ordinary evening walk. The people on the street were acting different, more people than usual were petting him, telling him how cute he is. More people than usual were acting like they weren't the only souls on the planet who matter.

Then there were the lights in the sky, the two shining towers of  bright blue light so square and straight you could almost believe they were solid, instead of just luminous reminders of what we'd lost. You could almost see yourself walking up to the base of those lights, going in through a door made of metal and light, and taking an elevator to the top, up in the clouds, just like in the old days. Only now the towers of light were so much higher than what they'd replaced. So high that when you looked up at the top they seemed to bend forward over your head. They were like pedestals of light, put there to keep the stars from falling down into the pit. The pit that is all that remains of what was there before.

At the flag pole I lit a candle because I didn't know what else to do. I put it in a glass and set it on the paving stones in front of a child's very earnest crayon drawing of the towers. I knelt down to take a picture of it and Casey leaned up close against me. Now I know I make fun of him a lot, but at heart he's a very intuitive dog. He knew what I was feeling, even if I never could have come up with a word for it. He knew it had something to do with the bright blue lights in the sky and the candles on the pavement. Maybe he didn't know the why of it, but he didn't need to. For the rest of the evening he licked the hands of everyone who petted him. It was just his way of doing what he could.

After a while I walked him back home again, because I didn't know what else to do.

Eponine

I met Eponine on Pearl Street, just a block in from the river. The fog was so thick that at first I thought she was just another shadow, but she has that glow about her that you can never really mistake, no matter how hard you try. The old army trenchcoat hung loose on her shoulders and brushed the cobblestones. She's still so tiny, still just sixteen. The mist sparkled in her long dark hair. I took her by the hand, slipped both our hands into the pocket of my jacket.

We walked north on Pearl, the fog turning to mist and then to rain. She told me she remembered when the street got its name, from the hard packed layer of crushed oyster shells that was its first pavement. It's still there today, sleeping under the cement and the asphalt. "But how could you know that?" I asked. "You've never been in New York before tonight, and you're only here now because I thought about you so hard last night." She laughed and shook her finger in my face, "Too true, Jim. You really must control this thing you have for young French girls. I could understand how you felt about Joan, she was so beautiful, so brave and so crazy, and she died like a hero. But me? What can you possibly see here?"

God, I wish I had a mirror that could show her the answer to that....

I took her to the little bar where my friends and I always drank,  back when this corner of the waterfront was the center of the world for me. It's not there anymore, it's been gone for years now, but that didn't seem to matter tonight. We took the little table by the corner of the fireplace and she stretched her hands out gratefully to the warmth.

Smell of wood smoke, smell of brandy, touch of Eponine curling up against me, pulling my arm around her shoulder. We talked all night, about pain and kindness, about hunger, about hope. When the sky began to grow light outside she sat in my lap and threw her arms around my neck. I kissed her, even though I knew she'd died so many years ago. She kissed me, even though she knew what a coward I was. Then she stood up and walked to the door, the morning light on her face. She smiled and blew me a kiss, winked and said, "I'll see you later, love!"

 

Another Sunday

Nobody saw her, slipping out of the window frame. Funny how they never did. In the beginning she moved slowly, carefully, sure somebody would catch the movement in the corner of their eye and blow everything for her. But over time she realized they only see what they expect to see, and she relaxed.

In the window frame her body was stained glass, and when she moved she sounded like wind chimes, so far away you could barely hear them. When she stepped down into the aisle she was made flesh, but even then nobody noticed her. Not even with the long white robe, not even with the wings. It amazed her that people could be so blind and still function in the world.

The priest left by the rear door, thinking about what to eat for lunch. The big main doors bumped closed behind the last of the congregation. The only movement in the church was the smoke rising from the wicks of the candles the priest had blown out. She stood for a moment watching it, then slipped into the ladies room.

Ten minutes later she stepped out, hair day glo yellow with streaks of bright pink. Mini, fishnets, low boots. Hot pink tank top that showed off the little wings tattooed on her bare shoulders. She looked about sixteen and she looked joyful. Hand on the doorknob, she turned back and smiled at the altar. I'll be back tonight, God, kneeling in the stained glass at the foot of the manger. It's who I am and I love it. But right now it's my day off. Yay!

The Last Week Of June

There's no other sound in the whole world, just the slapping of her sandals on the empty sidewalk. And even that doesn't last long, the warm wet air smothers it and it disappears into the summer quiet of a heat wave afternoon. In the momentary darkness of her shadow the pavement cools for a second, then heats up again as she moves on, the instant of relief coming and leaving so fast there's no time to appreciate it. The thought makes her laugh, one short sound that might have been bitter, or sad, or just accepting of the truth of that metaphor.

She kept walking south, the ocean on her right and the town on the hill on her left. At the center of town she walked out to the middle of the street, stood on the yellow line. She flickered like a ghost, in the heat shimmer rising from the pavement. She took a cigarette from her t shirt pocket and lit it, took a long deep drag. Right now she really needed to feel defiant and rebellious, and she really, really didn't want to cry. Not here, not now. She put the cigarette between her lips and squinted against the smoke, against the tears. She stuffed her lighter in the back pocket of her jeans and started walking. And she prayed she'd never pass this way again.

Rain

Rain again, rattling like pebbles in a tin can, hissing lonely in the empty streets of friday night. Nobody's even watching because they're all so tired of it. The rain is tired of itself, so it spends its time dreaming.

In its dream each raindrop is a grain of warm dry sand, floating down to the dry streets, rolling along the dry curb stones and making sand rivers that sound like the memory of a snare drum as they pour into the storm drains. Sand puddles fill the low spots in the streets like the opposite of tide pools and wait for someone to jump in and splash them empty. Sand is rolling down windows and walls, and making dunes in the empty parks.

The rain's happy inside its dream. In here there's no cold and wet, just bright sunshine on hot yellow sand. In here the grains are polishing each other bright as they roll down the dry warm streets. In here nobody hates the rain.

Jane and Sarah

Jane and Sarah are so much alike, even though they've never met. They might even be sisters, I'm not sure. They have the same eyes, and when you look it's hard to look away. Sometimes you might see stars and comets, sometimes just a mirror showing your own reflection. Sometimes you see the world the way you always wished it could be. Each one's a magician in her own way, but you don't want to lift the curtain to see how the trick was done. It's enough to just feel the wonder.

Jane's my muse, my sometimes co-conspirator, my favorite acting student and the first person I think of when I hear some incredible new music, or find a singer who totally moves me. She's my friend. I'm not sure what I ever did to deserve her, but I hope I keep on doing it forever.

I've never met Sarah, but whenever I look at my life so much of the soundtrack is her music, her words.

Jane and I have walked in the sun, and sat in darkened theaters. We've shared meals and secrets, laughed like fools and taken away each others' tears. A long time ago when the bottom fell out of everything I almost crossed a line that would have turned us into a train wreck, but she stopped me short with the gentlest smile I've ever seen, and she laughed and told me, "Screw romance, our friendship will last forever!" I had a hard time believing it back then; now it's something I never think about because it's so true you don't even notice it.

I got to share the evening with both of them last night, and what a gift it was. All those people we didn't know, sitting in the dark with us and watching Sarah sing, watching her sway in the moonlight under those haunted trees while the lightning flashed and the summer rain fell as gently as a cloud of ghosts. Did we lose it, watching all those memories rise like fog? What do you think? Laughing together is so good, but crying together....that's a whole other level. If you've never been there I feel sorry for you.

Later when it was all over and the lights had come up and the rain had come down and we were back in the world as it is, we walked in a slow trance down Seventh Avenue. It was one of those nights when you actually notice the stars, reflected in the wet pavement. Thank you, Jane!

Mothers' Day

She wished she'd never seen him, not once in her sweet short life. That was her mantra, walking through the puddles on the side of the highway. The rain was so soft that it wasn't rain at all, it was some gentle creature lighter than mist and stronger than fog. The wind blowing off the bay smelled like a wet towel. The water ran off the edge of her poncho and down her bare shins, she wished she hadn't worn shorts. At least her backpack was dry under the poncho. If the rain stopped she might even be able to make a hot meal for dinner. The foghorn was blowing sad on Liberty Island, or was it Cape Sable? In this wet curtain she couldn't tell anymore. The road goes on forever, but she felt like she'd been on it at least a week longer than that. Her name is Rachelle and she's sixteen years old. She might or might not be pregnant, but that's not important here.

What's important is the rain, and the chill. It's like breathing through a mask of snow, and every time a breeze from the ocean slaps her face she squints her eyes against the salt spray.She's thinking hard about hot coffee, hot soup, but the next town is still so far ahead, so many rainy steps away.

The road's rising now under her feet as she passes a deserted beach, a bath house boarded up since Labor Day. It's steep enough that she's breathing a little harder as it climbs the headland. From here it rolls for miles along the tops of the cliffs, winding in and out of the low clouds. The crash of the surf so far below is like the soundtrack of a daydream. That was when she saw them.

Right there on the double white line down the middle of the highway, right there in the wind and water. Just an old pair of shoes splattered with the rain. They're worn and dusty and not much to look at. Were they his? Of course they were his, would you have it any other way? Right there where he'd walked out of them and into the rest of his life. She could almost see the wet fooprints, going down the highway for a little way before starting to climb into the rainy sky. She lined her own shoes up so carefully with his footprints, and wondered why it always had to end like this. She wished she'd never seen him, not once in her sweet short life.

Rory's Blues

Watching the tape, he thinks about a teenage girl's bedroom, stuck between Brownsville and East Flatbush back in 1969. The walls are plain white and the furniture is heavy, plain and old. The curtain he's closing over the window is plain white. It looks more like the room of a nun than a teenage girl. Except for the bookcase, painted in day glo colors with swirls and stars, peace signs and cartoon dolphins leaping out of cartoon oceans. He taught her how to draw the dolphins one long warm sunset evening, sitting on the roof hoping for a cool breeze. He sketched in chalk the dolphin that she embroidered on the back of her black denim jacket, white chalk transformed to a hundred shades of ocean and sunset. It's hanging on the bedpost at the foot of the bed, where she's sitting untying her sneakers.

The girl on the tape knows what she's going to do is wrong but she's too hungry to care. She just needs the emptiness inside to go away, no questions asked. Fumbling, clutching, tearing the shirt off the boy who's now married elsewhere, needing. Just needing.

Back in the bedroom he remembers the girl is singing along with the stereo. She's wearing bell bottoms and a blue denim work shirt. Her long brown hair is in a ponytail and she has a red bandana around her neck. He loves her so much he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. In some deep part of himself he knows it will never be like this again, so he tries to remember every detail as he kisses her eyes, her mouth, her throat. As he opens the first button on her shirt.

On the tape the dream castle burns up into a mess of wrinkled sheets and averted eyes. She's already hungry again, and she already misses him while he's still standing in front of her. On cue her mother comes home early, takes it all in and understands in one sad glance. He feels bad for her but worse for her daughter.

Back in that other time they are lying still, arms around each other. She's somewhere between crying and giggling, which is usually a good place to be. He's feeling a warm stillness that he can't think of a name for. After a while they sit up and look in each others' eyes. You'd need a thesaurus to describe that look. They get dressed even though they don't want to; her mother will be home from work soon. They walk out into the June light, arms around each other's shoulders. Time for pizza.

He's rewinding the tape and feeling bad for the girl on it. She deserved better than that.

Algerian Wine

One day I saw Jesus on the waterfront in Montreal. He was standing by the railroad tracks that run along Rue de la Commune, looking up at the copper statue of his mother on the roof of Bonsecours Church. The expression on his face was like a book of hieroglyphs, full of meanings if you only knew how to read it.

One day I saw Jesus on the waterfront in Montreal. A little girl of about eight was bouncing her rubber ball along the curb where the cobbles meet the river when it skidded under the railing and down to the deep black water. The tears in her eyes would have broken your heart. Nobody noticed Jesus as he climbed over the rail and walked out across the waves to where the ball was bouncing downstream. When he brought it back to the girl not even the soles of his sandals were wet. He kissed her cheek and brushed the tears away from her eyes, and she giggled, "Merci, Jesu!"

One day I saw Jesus on the waterfront in Montreal. He was sitting on a bench in Place Jacques Cartier, eating a smoked meat hero. The sun was on his face and he looked so happy I couldn't help smiling. He laughed and said, "Man, I've earned this sandwich!"

April Showers

Sand pouring from a broken hourglass
onto the skin of a muted snare drum
abandoned in the grass with only the sun
for company,
that's what this rain sounds like tonight.

Why it sometimes sucks to have a past

There's a dead man under the floorboards of your heart. You didn't kill him, that was his own idea. But you didn't help him either. And he rolls a little with each heartbeat as he lies on his back under the floor, and his arm waves like he's calling you to him. But it's only a reflex, and it doesn't mean anything. On the good days you never think of him at all. On the bad days it hurts so much you can't look in a mirror.

Daylight Savings Time

Just watched the little clock in the corner of my screen jump from 1:59a.m. to 3:00a.m. Earlier tonight I'd gone through the house manually changing all the other clocks: my wrist watch, the stereo, the clock radio, the tv, the vcr, the answering machine. For a few hours they were all out of synch; if I wanted the real time I had to look here. Now they're all back in balance with each other, now it's the same time wherever you look in my apartment. Like most big changes in time or season, it brings back memories....

Like some time in the mid eighties, at a closing night party for a show I'd helped produce. It was at the home of a lesbian couple, one of whom was one of my favorite people in the world, as well as a sometime drunken makeout buddy. What can I say, alcohol made her curious. We sat in the back yard looking up at the huge clock faces on the Williamsburg Bank building in downtown Brooklyn, just a couple of blocks away. At the stroke of two the hour hands, lit up in colored lights, began to move at speed visible to our eyes and went straight past two to three a.m. We clicked our beer bottles in a toast and kissed. My girlfriend was inside, kissing the other half of the lesbian couple.  At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened.

Or the year my mother died, and her wake spanned the weekend when the clocks changed. A month or so earlier I'd broken up with the girl who I thought would be the love of my life. A couple of months before that I'd lost the job I thought would be my life's work. And now my mother was dead. It really wasn't a good year. My ex and I left the wake together and went to Rocky Horror at Eighth Street. Back then they ran videos as part of the pre-show, and that night the video was the J. Geils Band with "Love Stinks". No thought, no question, she and I jumped up on stage and joined the floor show, gave that song all the hurt, all the sorrow, and all the laughter and relief we both were feeling. Much later on, as the sun was rising, we made love in a secluded corner of a large park in Queens. I walked her home, went back to my place, showered, changed clothes and went back to the wake. To this day I bless her for that night.

And tonight, as the rainy night loses one hour of its life, given over to man's greedy hand,I thank the night for its gift. May we all use it well.

 

Letting go, at last

Step off the path.
Step into the wind.
Walk on the rain.
Walk on the sunlight.
Climb stairs made of snow
to a window of starlight.
You're almost home now.
Goodbye.

What kind of love on the Pope's last day?

The Pope has probably seen his last daylight, and all evening the screen has been full of film clips and sound bites of people praying for him. At least that's what they call it. All praying for him to get well and stay here with them. Sounds to me more like they're praying for themselves. Don't you love this man? Hasn't he done enough for you? Can't you pray for an easy passing for him, and a happy awakening in a better place? I'm no Christian, and on most things I'm pretty much the mirror image, the direct opposite, of everything he believes in. But I've always respected him because he's lived his beliefs. And I think he deserves better than all these people asking him for more.

The night before Easter

This night feels like a tomb, cold and still, nothing moving in here. All hope left outside the cold stone door, where it will be warmed by the morning sun. Hopefully.

Thinking about Easter a long time ago, maybe 1959. Everything was a sunny day and a brighter future. Everybody loved Ike, and everybody wanted a home in the suburbs with a fallout shelter in the basement. The Dodgers were gone and the Mets hadn't yet come, but I was a Yankee fan so none of that mattered.

That was probably the first year I was old enough to go to the Easter Vigil service on the night before. In the Catholic school culture of the time this was a big deal, a kind of rite of passage. We went to Saint Matthew's, on the top of the hill called Crown Heights. I'm sure it wasn't as big as I remember it, or as grand, but that's how my memory sees it to this day. Even in all the old photos we found in my aunt's house after she died, the sun is always shining on the grey stone church and the yellow brick school, and we were always in our Sunday clothes. Getting your picture taken was a much bigger thing in 1959.

Walking into the church at night was always so strange. All the tall stained glass windows that let in such bright Sunday morning light were dark and somehow sinister looking. Luminous saints and Bible scenes turned black and muddy in the night, even the window showing Christ's resurrection looked more like the monster rising from under your bed. All the statues and paintings were covered with purple drapes, looking like mournful ghosts. The altar was bare and no candles were lit anywhere. No matter what the weather, it felt cold.

The only part of the service I remember today is the making of the new fire. At midnight all the lights would be turned off except for a single lamp shining down on the altar, and the priest would, literally, strike a new flame using flint and steel. The rest of the year the candles were lit with wooden kitchen matches, sometimes even with a Zippo lighter. But here, at the pit at the bottom of blackness, with the Savior cold and dead, nothing artificial would do. If you wanted light you had to make it with your own two hands. The spark from the flint would land in a little pile of tinder and the priest would gently blow it into life, then use it to light the tall Pascal candle that stood on one side of the altar. The flame from that candle was used to light all the others, as midnight passed and dawn, though still somewhere far out over the Atlantic ocean, was surely on its way.

All these years later, and 1959 is faded into sepia memory, but that image stays with me, that picture of the spark lighting the tinder, and that idea that knowing how to make your own light was a really good thing.

Good Friday and the Triangle Fire

(March 25, Good Friday, is also the anniversary of the Triangle Fire in 1911.)

Late night, late March, Good Friday night and the smoke from a million incense burners in a million churches has been extinguished for the night. The believers mourn for a man who died two thousand years ago. Was he the Son Of God? I don't care. He lived like he was, that's what counts.        

 A little more than nineteen centuries later, in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in Greenwich Village, a spark landed in a pile of rags and did what sparks do. Almost two hundred people, mostly teenage Jewish immigrant girls from the Lower East Side, went up like incense smoke into the cloudless blue sky.

The next day dozens of the police who responded turned in their badges and resigned, too sickened by what they'd seen to ever do that job again. They said most of the girls jumped from the tenth floor windows in twos and threes. The sight of them stranded on the window sills, fire behind them and sky in front, was more than anyone could take. Their bodies hit the pavement one after another too fast to count, with a sound people later prayed to forget. But everyone said that when they jumped there was no panic on their faces. They held hands or wrapped arms around each others' waists and jumped from one world to the next with no apparent fear.

The first true love of my life was a teenage Jewish girl from Brownsville, granddaughter of one of the few survivors of the fire. Every year on the anniversary he would light a yahrtzeit candle for all the friends he lost that day, but he would never talk about it. Even half a century later it was still too close for words.

I was thinking of him tonight, hoping he found some peace.