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.