Pickled

Today was my father's 89th birthday, except that he drank himself to death at 72. So I guess it doesn't count for much, does it? Two days ago my sister turned 61, I wonder if she was sober enough to remember. I have no idea since I haven't spoken to her in about two years. My other sister will turn 55 in October, but she won't be celebrating because she drank herself to death at 51. Is it just me, or is this totally stupid?

Tracks

I left my muse in tears in Grand Central Station on a thursday morning. It broke my heart to see her like that, eyeshadow smeared with tears, her lip trembling under the black lipstick. The wings on her shoulders hung like prayer flags in the rain. Her fishnets were torn and her boots were scuffed, and she was tearing pages out of her copy of the Tao and setting them on fire with a pocket lighter. She was trying so hard to look bored and jaded, but it just made her look even younger than she was. A train whistle wailing across the plains in the deepest dead of night, moving always farther away, that's what her sorrow was like.

I didn't mean for it to be like that, it's just that when I get anywhere near train tracks I get hungry for leaving. The last thing I ever wanted to do was make her cry. But I think too much when I'm in her arms, and tonight I just wanted to hear the rails sing. I just wanted to chase the sunset. I know when I get where I'm going she'll be there waiting.

The First Warm Night Of Spring

Lamplight shining through the trees, the buds are opening. Moonlight through soft clouds. Candle light on the tables, smoke and hunger in the air. They all want, and their want makes the old heartbeat, that never quite goes away, drum a little faster.

They think they invented the want, they don't know it's built into their blood. Their hands are amazed when they hold it, they wonder how anything could make them so proud and so scared all at the same time. It makes them feel even younger than they are. They don't know it's been there since Stonehenge, since Thebes, since Nineveh. Since Ice Age, since Olduvai. But they feel it in the river of their blood like the breath of a goddess.

They move with slow reverence, with the weight of all the ancestors watching. He takes her hand.

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!