I was in a funk on an especially balmy day, the kind when there’s a cool breeze coming off the Harlem River that finds it’s way through the alley by our house and funnels out over the backyard. You’d think it was autumn, not the middle of July. I should be happy, I thought, I’ve got so many wonderful things in my life, so much to look forward to; there are so many possibilities manifesting through intention. It didn’t matter, though. I didn’t know why, but I was feeling curmudgeonly, a bit down because, even though I’m excited about upcoming adventures, I thought: What the heck is there to get excited about in the world anymore?
Nothing new under the sun, as they say. The political spectrum is a big bore with two candidates that are going to duke it out while voters think they actually have a choice in the matter, when in fact, the electoral college decides (or the Illuminati, if you’d like to go there with me). Even matters of the environment and how it’s all going to hell in a hand basket seems to have lost its luster, just like the issue of AIDS did once people started living longer on the drugs. Drugs are boring. Drinking even more so. There’s baseball or football, but then again, it’s all become overblown hero worship and multi-million dollar endorsements for more things that people don’t need all in the guise of “sports”. What about Angelina Jolie’s new twins, or Christian Bale smacking his mum upside the head? Eh. I’ve lost interest in anything on TV since I turned the tube off after 9/11 when I was inundated with the onslaught of doublespeak that Orwell harbingered in 1984. It’s all senseless and depressing, and that’s why…I love a grilled cheese sandwich.
F. and I went to Times Square last week to see a new play at Second Stage Theatre. Summes are high tourist time and I don’t like midtown when it’s packed with people. I feel like I’ve drunk too much beer and discover that my teeth are floating in the back of my neck. The throngs filled the sidewalk so much so that we wanted to simply barrel our way through them, knocking each person down like two bowling balls rolling down 42nd Street. A jaded New Yorker, I know, snubbing my nose at the ooing and ahing clamoring crowds outside Madame Toussaud’s, Mary Poppins, and the Hard Rock Café.
On the way home the 1 train stopped at 215th Street – a delay, a red signal ahead, a stopped train, trouble at the end of the line at the Van Cortlandt stop, cats and dogs sleeping together! Who knows what it was, but after seeing a play filled with drivel, annoying characters, and no plot, I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. But we were stuck and, like many things in New York City, it was out of my control. I tried to let go, I tried to be in the Now, to have Presence that Eckhardt Tolle extols, telling myself, “Right now I am creating anger and annoyance in myself,” asking, “What is my relationship to the present moment?” The answer was a resounding: “Screw that Now baloney!” That was my relationship to the present. I turned to F. and said, “I want out of this *#$%! city.”
I hear the readers’ voices softly murmuring and then building to a mob-like shout for an exegesis of what I wrote earlier: What the heck does a grilled cheese sandwich have to do with all of this?!
Getting excited wasn’t a matter of choice for my mom. Each day was a whole nother opportunity for simple little delights. I say “a whole nother” (do you use this phrase?), because it’s the only way I know how to say what I mean, and what it meant for Mommy to live every day that she did here on Gaia, before she made her triumphant transition into the great unknown.
For Mommy everything was exciting. You might say, “Hey, nutjob, you’re full of tamari roasted salted almonds. Nobody can get excited about everything. That’s a bunch of hooey.” Well…wash me down and slap me upside the collar, hang me on the clothesline, and call me a shirt because I say nothing about my mom was balderdash.
If you ever knew my mom, you’d know what I mean. You’d understand that a grilled cheese and fries at a Mom-and-Pop diner after church was, “Out of this world! The best I’ve ever had!” A month later, the same American contribution to international cuisine at another culinary curio had surpassed the previous cheesy delight and took its place in the pantheon of “out of this world”. By the time my mom died, she had probably consumed two hundred and forty-two “out of this world” grilled cheese deluxe platters. If you like diners, you know what’s so special and exciting about the “deluxe platter”.
For Mommy, the meal was exciting. For her, a trip to the post office to buy stamps turned into an adventure. Buying lunchmeat at the only deli in town was an excuse for more excitement. One might think, Poor thing, if only she’d travel to Europe, see the world, then she’d have a real adventure. I’d thought it myself many times. Sometimes I think we live life in a corner of a room, pacing back and forth, and if we’d only turned around, we’d see a whole nother part of the room we never knew existed. I wanted my mom to get out of her corner, to travel after my dad retired, to experience new foods, new people, new thoughts. But, Mommy had her own way of living, of experiencing new foods, people, thoughts. She wasn’t adverse to change, only change that wasn’t on her terms. Actually, I think change was averse to her.
Sometimes I thought she was close-minded, but the more I reflect on her life, the more I miss her and wish I could talk with her on this dimension, and the more I understand that she was living her own adventure, not mine. I think that’s a valuable lesson: I can only live my life and be there for my friends and loved ones as a sounding board, offering advice and suggestions, but not being frustrated when what I’ve offered isn’t heeded. I used to get so mad at my mom when she refused to do something that could take her out of the corner of her room, like flying with me to Sweden to visit her relatives. She was scared of flying and refused to go. I told her, “You have to go!” She shook her head: the stubborn Swede to the end.
My mom loved everything. The cardinal fluttering down to partake of the daily birdseed my dad scattered outside our kitchen window was sublime. Every year, the orange and yellow leaves on the oak trees in our yard were the most beautiful she’d ever seen. The haircut I’d just had from Joe the Barber was the best I’d ever had, outdoing the last one, and the one before that, until any current haircut had exceeded the original one at four years old a hundred fold.
There was no stopping this woman in her excitement for things that most people would find mundane. She was a laughing Buddha, taking pleasure in experiences and moments that I would most likely take for granted.
Looking back on my life with Mommy, I think the most important thing she unconsciously taught me was an astounding, reverberating joie de vivre. She showed me that joy is at my fingertips, just on the edge of the eyes, on the precipice of the mind, if I can only embrace the mordant hilarity that is always on the cusp of my being. It’s there every day, in every way, and it’s only waiting to be recognized.
That got me thinking even more about the world and if I could have, I would have kicked myself in the a-double-scribble. There’s nothing to get excited about in the world? I’m a fool, utterly, resoundingly foolish. When I really thought about it, I came up with a laundry list of things I’m excited about: flying cars, space travel, the evolution of our consciousness, new kinds of alternative energy, the new Watchmen movie coming out in 2009, et. al.
Can I be like my mom and be excited about every little thing? Maybe, but that’s not always me, and it wasn’t always her. My mom wasn’t happy-go-lucky 24/7. I don’t want to create that impression. She had her moments of sadness, of quiet reflection, her dog days of summer. But, more often than not, those days were filled with sunshine. I’m trying to find that balance, and in order to do that I have to recognize the blues one day and the light on another. They’re both part of life and they must be embraced and not judged as either good or bad – they simply are, and they are a part of me at that moment.
I love this city and I’m excited about the life I create every day. Yes, I want to live in Europe, to travel, to publish my books. I’m working towards that every day, but I’m here now. I’ve come to realize that the blues are a part of learning about myself. Recently, I read Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and in it he expressed something that resonated with me. Rather than try to summarize, I’ll simply give a direct quote:
Why should you want to exclude any anxiety, any grief, any melancholy from your life, since you do not know what it is that these conditions are accomplishing in you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where everything comes from and where it is headed? You do know that you are in a period of transition and wish for nothing as much as to transform yourself. If some aspect of your life is not well, then consider the illness to be the means for an organism to free itself from something foreign to it. In that case you must help it to be ill and to have its whole illness, to let it break out. That is the course of its progress.
Rather than look for answers, I want to live the questions, and hopefully, some day, I’ll find that I’ve gradually, over time, found the answers I sought. Maybe there’s lots of shoulds, lots of coulds, lots of woulds, but all I know right now is that when I sit down in the booth of a diner and order my eggs over easy with potatoes and rye toast, I wait and I think of a conversation I once had with my mom about the eggs she ordered.
Mom: “These are the best eggs I’ve ever had.”
Me: “You said that last time. You always say that.”
Mom: “But they’re sooooo good.”
Me: “How can you screw up eggs? You crack ‘em open, fry ‘em up, and slide ‘em on a plate. How can anybody mess up eggs?”
Mom: “Oh, they can. It takes a good cook to make good eggs. And these are the best.”
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Family
Family:
friend
or salt
on an open boil,
honeysuckle picked,
nectar sipped,
royal jelly,
thorny pricks of roses,
or do you come
in doses
of lasting love,
or quips
clipped too quickly
soon?
friend
or salt
on an open boil,
honeysuckle picked,
nectar sipped,
royal jelly,
thorny pricks of roses,
or do you come
in doses
of lasting love,
or quips
clipped too quickly
soon?
I once was a six-year old boy who lived with his family in the netherworld of southern New Jersey. I was Timmie then and I believe I still am. Perhaps part of me is still there, in the woods behind our house, where the idea of family first raised its multifarious head, sometime ugly, sometimes beautiful, but always there in the end with a (wry) smile and welcoming arms that said: you are loved, you little pain in the a-double-scribble.
The woods was the place where I dug cool holes in the ground to hide in during blistering summers. It was a land of moss on which I lay my head, careful not to disturb the caterpillars inching their way near my ears; where I built tree forts that inevitably fell to the ground. It was a place where I ran with my tatterdemalion friends trying to rediscover our secret spots, yelling when we found a clue such as a little stone, a twig, or laurel bush, “It’s this way, it’s this way!”
After any number of excursions in the woods, my family was whom I went home to when my friends and I started disappearing in the dusk, becoming only vague silhouettes. We were twilight woodland nymphs prancing around age-old oaks. We never wanted to leave, but our stomachs rumbled and our thirst was great, and at the end of day we were ready to go home.
My family was my mom, dad, my three sisters, although my two oldest sisters were both out of the house and in college by the time I was seven. More often than not we had a housedog of some kind, besides the beagles in the backyard kennels. Over the years, there was Sniffer the mutt, Bogey the Weimeraner, and Star the Brittany Spaniel. They were indelible parts of our family who left their pawprints on our hearts forever.
Some might say a family is where one’s home is, and hence, where the heart resides. It’s the physical manifestation of the innate need for love and nurturing that becomes something more than just the roof over one’s head and the people inside.
My concept of family changed when my parents dropped me off for my first year of college at Rutgers University just before the fall of1990. To me, New Brunswick, New Jersey was a big city. Now, living in New York, it seems quaint and sterile, like the anti-bacterial band-aids produced by the town’s Johnson and Johnson empire.
I said good-bye to my parents. They got in the truck and started to drive away. My mom cried as she waved. I think she knew that I was beginning a new chapter in the book of my life, and that chapter had less and less to do with her being in it. I was the last child to venture out of the cocoon and Mama Butterfly knew her baby had sprouted wings and was going to fly all by himself. I’m not sure if my dad thought about it that much, but I know my mom did. She was going to miss me and I her, but I was too excited about being on my own to think about that at the time. Looking back, my parents were also beginning a new journey in their lives – that of being childless at home, free to create new lives.
Events like the farewell at Rutgers scene are three-fold: exciting, monumental and bittersweet. The exciting and monumental part was because it was the first time I was going to be on my own, making my own decisions about my life.
Mommy waved, she cried, she knew what had happened. I had left, and perhaps there was a bit of resentment that her baby had gone to a school two hours away, instead of a local one five minutes from home. I can’t say for sure, because I don’t think my mom was capable of resentment, merely a passing heartache. That was the bittersweet part of the three-fold aspect of the parting that was going to redefine family for me.
My new family was the new friends I met in the dorm, and then later, in the many classes I took. There was Roman History with my flushed-cheeked, early morning inebriate professor; 18th Century Poetry with Professor Dowling who on the first day of class implored everyone to throw out their televisions; French Cinema; The Cold War; 19th Century American Lit; Creative Writing; et al.
My family of college friends grew, changed; some came and went, one died at the age of twenty of a heart attack while lifting weights, but the ones that have lasted are those I still keep in touch with, which are all of six people, something that seems to me pretty miraculous. They are still part of my family.
After college, my family grew larger when I met my first business partner, Kenneth. And after we opened our coffeehouse in New Brunswick, my family grew to an excess of hundreds. My family was the coffeehouse friends and patrons until we closed the doors, and I found myself with only one stalwart friend – Kenneth.
Nobody wanted to know me anymore in that town because my business had failed. Looking back I could say that the “family” failed us by not supporting our endeavors, for becoming jealous and petty, but I don’t want to do that. It all happened as it was supposed to and that family dissolved, as probably many other people’s families have.
I couldn’t stay in New Brunswick after that, so I found my way to New York City, and with Kenneth’s introductions, my new work in the film business, and a few years of cultivating friends, I had my New York City family. This became the most supportive, substantive family up to that point in my life and I can count over a dozen people that express their love and support of me, and I them.
This is not to disparage my own biological family, but the connections I have intellectually and spiritually with my New York City family are different than with what I’ll call my “first family”. The meaning of family has become not only my first family, but my friends – people who love me unequivocally and let me be myself, especially when I came to terms with my sexuality.
With my first family’s explosion of anger and confusion over my apparent “choice to become gay”, my NYC family was there to support me and get me through the transition. For my first family, I had changed for the worse into a new Timmie they didn’t know or understand.
My first family has come a long way in this respect. Well, some of them. My oldest sister simply loves me and accepts me for who I am without any judgment; the other two think I’m a sinner and can’t fathom how I chose to be this way. One of those two think the Lord will do something to me to show me the error of my ways. I have to say that their intentions come from a place of love, albeit, a place of love that I feel is misguided. To them I would say I think God’s got better things to do than go around striking down queers, especially since we’re the ones that design most clothes, create timeless art, decorate homes in the hopes of saving Middle America from gingham checked doom, and basically make the world a more beautiful place like we have been doing since the first gay caveman painted on a wall his wooly mammoth-hunting lover Og. What would our world be like without Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Lily Tomlin, Sergei Eisenstein, E.M. Forster, Tchaikovsky, and all the other countless queers who have defined our collective history?
With my dad, we simply don’t discuss my sexuality – at all. It’s better that way.
My family grew once again when I explored the world of Cherry Grove on Fire Island. A bastion and enclave of gay people from all walks of life, I found a new family of friends who were like me, had gone through their own closeted experiences, and could commiserate with me about the lessons we’ve learned and how to find recompense with our loved ones that didn’t fully acknoweldge us for who we are.
Would I like my first family to accept me and my life completely and be able to share in all the wonderful experiences that they’re missing out on, things I can’t share with them because they don’t want to hear them? Yes, however, my oldest sister is there with me and I tell her everything about my life with F. She’s right there with me and is unrelenting in her commitment of support. I thank her for that.
I love my first family very much. They’re a part of me and there’s nothing I can do to annul that, nor do I want to. I’d simply like them to take a leap of faith beyond what they’re told from the pulpit, make up their own minds, and take a concerted step forward into the fold of forward thinking Christians who fully understand the love, kindness, and respect for all living things that Christ preached. I’d like them to live up to the label they’ve given themselves, the moniker of Christian.
F. and I talk about this often, and the only answer to our relationships with our families is to come from a place of unconditional love. There is no other recourse except discounting and alienating them, and I won’t do that.
In the big picture of my life, I’m truly blessed. I have my first family, my family of friends around the country and world, and I have my family at home with F. and Gio. I resolve myself to the fact that my first family loves me dearly and cares for me; I have to accept them and pray for the day when they accept me as Timmie. I’m still the Timmie that they knew growing up, I’ve just gotten to know myself a little bit more.
When I reflect on my life so far, I see that the first twenty-nine years were about getting to know my true self – I was figuring out who Timmie really was. Now, it’s just a matter of living that life and continuing to evolve and grow, taking new ideas and experiences into my life, and holding fast to what the great sage, Walt Whitman, wrote: “You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, / You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.”
I’d like to expand my vision of my family, whether they be friends or relatives, and look at family in a universal sense of the word. My spirit, that which is connected to my Source of Being and thus connected to my soul (which I consider my personality), is part of a family that extends across the spectrum of species. I belong to a family of everything that lives in the universe. Stanley Kunitz writes, “I feel I’m not only sharing the planet, but also sharing my life.” With a family this large, how could I ever be lonely?
My family’s changed again this past year. With F. and Gio I have a new part of my family. The house is now filled with the clicking of Gio’s high heels on the wooden floor and F. painting in the sun-dappled kitchen. Books, art, expression in food, meaningful and sometimes intense conversation, films, laughter, tears, sadness, and love fill the apartment – it’s a palpable energy that says life is happening constantly in all its forms of expression and emotion.
Life is beautiful, life is dirty, and life becomes more sanctified as I realize that my family grows every day like the garden in my backyard. All the members of my family, both close and extended, biological and spiritual, are my lighthouses that warn me of impending danger or joy; they light up the night with hope. They are my solace. They are my compadres on this wacky, mixed-up trip. I sometimes get caught in the muck and mire of it all, but suddenly find myself extricated with the helping hands from my family. They’re on their journey with me, and I with them, and we might just find a little stone, a twig, or a laurel bush like so many years ago when I was a child, one that can change our course so we can turn around and yell, “It’s this way! It’s this way!”
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Anyway...It's Just...Like...Ya Know...Whatever!
There is a New York City tradition that begins at 5pm every Monday throughout the summer. At 4:55pm, whenever I attend this event, I have five minutes of pure dread while I wait, surrounded by hundreds of New Yorkers, bearing blankets, their toes on the edge of the concrete encompassing the large, square patch of park grass. Their faces are sweaty, their eyes dart to the right and left, they scan the lawn and pick out the spot they want and God help the other person who tries to take that spot. I’m talking about the Bryant Park Summer Movie Festival.
Bryant Park is comprised of a central lawn with formal pathways around it, stone balustrades, and borders of London plane trees. An oval plaza with a broad flight of steps flanks the west end on Sixth Avenue, where the Lowell Fountain bubbles. It’s a lovely classically-designed park and the movie festival is something that I think only New Yorkers know about. There might be a few tourists there, but it’s a wonderful little secret gem of an evening for those in the know.
You have to get there early in order to get a spot on the lawn, which isn’t that big. They don’t let you on the lawn until 5pm, and at the time last Monday, the woman MC for the evening said, “Enjoy the movie. Please don’t run.” Of course, everyone, en masse, ran out and threw down their blankets like locusts overtaking an Egyptian wheat field.
I stood towards the back and let them do their thing. I had decided that I wouldn’t experience the terror I usually have by waiting up front with the throngs. I can’t help it. It really is a dread that overcomes me that I can’t control: Will I get a spot? That person looks obnoxious, I better not sit next to him, but what if he gets a spot next to me? That woman smells – gotta stay away from her. I hope I can get the blanket down quickly enough. Those two guys have three blankets! Gott in Himmel!
After everyone had their spot, the MC said, “Nicely done,” and then I walked out calmly, about halfway back from the movie screen, found a nice little spot in the middle, and laid down my blanket. I opened up A Room With A View and began to read. I had four hours to wait. F. was coming at seven with the food and wine. My job had been done. I could now relax in the burning, hazy sun, sticky and moist in the still late-afternoon air of July.
The lawn began to fill up around 6pm, and it was while I waited that I lay back and listened to the conversations around me. During the last visit home, I had noticed with my nieces, and also other people I encountered recently, that the word “like” is used incessantly in conversation. It’s taken the place of any kind of conjunction and, to me, is quickly taking its place in the pantheon of words that are destroying the beauty of expressing oneself in the English language. Like, ya know?
Other words and phrases that have entered our language paradigm of conversation include: “anyway”, “it’s just”, “ya know”, and “whatever”.
When F. showed up and I brought up the degradation of the English language I kept hearing all around me, he said that he had actually realized the same thing on the subway trip down to the park. He had listened to two girls next to him and counted how many times they used the word “like”: 42.
Here is an example of a conversation between two women sitting behind me, talking about a wedding they went to last weekend:
Lady 1: And the other bridesmaid showed up at the rehearsal dinner and she was like, dumb as a stick, like, ya know?
Lady 2: Oh yeah, and like, it was just so, like embarrassing because like all the other people were like from New York. Where was she from?
Lady 1: I think she said somewhere like Kansas or like Nebraska.
Lady 2: Nebraska, Kansas, like they’re all the same.
I was gobsmacked. These women were not teenagers, or 20-year olds, they were in their late 30s, possibly early 40s. I’m not adverse to the word “like” if it’s used as a comparative word or when speaking in simile. For example: “The women’s conversation was like a boil on Job’s emaciated arm.” Not: “Like the women’s conversation was like, the worst boil on Job’s like emaciated arm, and I was like….”
“Like” is also used at the end of sentences to describe a person to whom one is referring. It has taken the place of using adjectives or similes in conversation. The person to whom you’re talking is supposed to know exactly how “like” your subject is, and most of the time, myself included, I go along as if I can read minds and nod my head: “Yeah, like I know what you mean, he’s just so like….” In combination with the new conjunction,“it’s just”, the language falls into a deplorable stupor of ineffectuality:
Lady 1: It’s just like he was just so hot, like….
Lady 2: Yeah, I know, it’s just like….
Lady 1: Yeah.
He was hot like what?! Was he hot like a chili pepper you eat by accident off your plate of General Tso’s chicken, the kind that burns all the way down and out of your body? Was he hot like 92 degrees and 100% humidity in August? Was he hot like a chiseled God among mortal men? Was he smoldering hot or handsomely hot? Billy Crudup or Cary Grant?
Another use for “like” is to use it at the end of sentences so that the other person has to figure out how you feel:
Lady 1: I really wanted to talk to him, but I was just so like….
Lady 2: Yeah.
You were like what?! Nervous with clammy hands? You had halitosis and didn’t want to get too close? You were having really bad cramps and didn’t think it was the right time to hit on Mr. Hotty?
“Anyway” has also become another word that gives a lazy way out of expression, or is sometimes used to change the subject. Along with that, “ya know” also resembles “like” sometimes, in that the person is supposed to know what you mean without you expressing it verbally:
Lady 1: Anyway, like the wedding was so like boring. Like there was no dancing.
Lady 2: I know. I’ve been to a wedding like that before and it was like, ya know, what are you supposed to do, like talk the whole time.
Lady 1: And there was like, no booz.
Lady 2: I know, it was like, like ya know?
“Whatever” has become another excuse to use a dangling sentence not to express yourself:
Lady 1: That was like so much fun when we went back to the motel and like got some wine and got like totally twisted.
Lady 2: Yeah, and when like that guy showed up and he was like all over Becky, I was like, whatever.
Lady 1: Yeah.
Okay, you were like what?! What is “whatever” supposed to mean? I would rather have heard the conversation go something like this:
Lady 1: That was a lot of fun when we bought some wine and went back to the hotel and got really drunk.
Lady 2: It really was, and when that really hot guy showed up and started making out with Becky, I thought, “God, that guy must be really desperate.”
Lady 1: I know, it was really pathetic. I like Becky, but she deserves better than a whore-slut like him.
Ah, while not a conversation that would rank among one in an E.M. Forster novel, nonetheless there are no “likes”, no “anyways”, “whatevers”, or “it’s justs”.
Now, let’s combine all these words and phrases into the ultimate conversation that has beseeched us and heralded a new lethargy of language in our expressively emaciated American culture:
Lady 1: Kelly was like, so beautiful, ya know. It’s just, like, I wouldn’t have like chosen those flowers.
Lady 2: I know, they were like…
Lady 1: Yeah, it’s just like…whatever.
Lady 2: Yeah. Anyway, the service was like really nice, though.
Lady 1: Oh yeah, I was like so crying when she like said “I do.”
Lady 2: It’s just like, ya know, so beautiful a thing to like see and to like be there.
Lady 1: Yeah, when I saw her at the reception, I was like, “Kelly, you are like so beautiful, I’m like so happy for you.” And she was like, ya know, so like…
Lady 2: Awww.
Lady 1: I like wanna get married like so bad.
Lady 2: Yeah, like me, too.
Lady 1: But it’s just like…
Lady 2: Yeah.
Lady 1: Whatever.
Can I make a heartfelt, passionate supplication to all those out there reading this? Be aware of what you say. Don’t take the easy way out. Speak beautifully, poetically, with thought and intention behind every word. Make a conscious choice to throw out the likes of “like” in your daily conversation and maybe the collective conscious will catch on and we can gracefully walk forward through the waving fields of words under the arboreal dell of sublime language.
At 9pm, the previews began on the screen at the front of the park and the audience settled down into a quiet lull of conversation, a few people talking here and there. And when the movie started, after the cheers when Bette Davis’s name appeared, there was a lovely zephyr that graced the lawn and brought a much-needed relief from the heat. All conversation ceased, the credits rolled, and a magical night in New York began. Anyway, it was just like, ya know, one of those evenings when like I was like…whatever.
Bryant Park is comprised of a central lawn with formal pathways around it, stone balustrades, and borders of London plane trees. An oval plaza with a broad flight of steps flanks the west end on Sixth Avenue, where the Lowell Fountain bubbles. It’s a lovely classically-designed park and the movie festival is something that I think only New Yorkers know about. There might be a few tourists there, but it’s a wonderful little secret gem of an evening for those in the know.
You have to get there early in order to get a spot on the lawn, which isn’t that big. They don’t let you on the lawn until 5pm, and at the time last Monday, the woman MC for the evening said, “Enjoy the movie. Please don’t run.” Of course, everyone, en masse, ran out and threw down their blankets like locusts overtaking an Egyptian wheat field.
I stood towards the back and let them do their thing. I had decided that I wouldn’t experience the terror I usually have by waiting up front with the throngs. I can’t help it. It really is a dread that overcomes me that I can’t control: Will I get a spot? That person looks obnoxious, I better not sit next to him, but what if he gets a spot next to me? That woman smells – gotta stay away from her. I hope I can get the blanket down quickly enough. Those two guys have three blankets! Gott in Himmel!
After everyone had their spot, the MC said, “Nicely done,” and then I walked out calmly, about halfway back from the movie screen, found a nice little spot in the middle, and laid down my blanket. I opened up A Room With A View and began to read. I had four hours to wait. F. was coming at seven with the food and wine. My job had been done. I could now relax in the burning, hazy sun, sticky and moist in the still late-afternoon air of July.
The lawn began to fill up around 6pm, and it was while I waited that I lay back and listened to the conversations around me. During the last visit home, I had noticed with my nieces, and also other people I encountered recently, that the word “like” is used incessantly in conversation. It’s taken the place of any kind of conjunction and, to me, is quickly taking its place in the pantheon of words that are destroying the beauty of expressing oneself in the English language. Like, ya know?
Other words and phrases that have entered our language paradigm of conversation include: “anyway”, “it’s just”, “ya know”, and “whatever”.
When F. showed up and I brought up the degradation of the English language I kept hearing all around me, he said that he had actually realized the same thing on the subway trip down to the park. He had listened to two girls next to him and counted how many times they used the word “like”: 42.
Here is an example of a conversation between two women sitting behind me, talking about a wedding they went to last weekend:
Lady 1: And the other bridesmaid showed up at the rehearsal dinner and she was like, dumb as a stick, like, ya know?
Lady 2: Oh yeah, and like, it was just so, like embarrassing because like all the other people were like from New York. Where was she from?
Lady 1: I think she said somewhere like Kansas or like Nebraska.
Lady 2: Nebraska, Kansas, like they’re all the same.
I was gobsmacked. These women were not teenagers, or 20-year olds, they were in their late 30s, possibly early 40s. I’m not adverse to the word “like” if it’s used as a comparative word or when speaking in simile. For example: “The women’s conversation was like a boil on Job’s emaciated arm.” Not: “Like the women’s conversation was like, the worst boil on Job’s like emaciated arm, and I was like….”
“Like” is also used at the end of sentences to describe a person to whom one is referring. It has taken the place of using adjectives or similes in conversation. The person to whom you’re talking is supposed to know exactly how “like” your subject is, and most of the time, myself included, I go along as if I can read minds and nod my head: “Yeah, like I know what you mean, he’s just so like….” In combination with the new conjunction,“it’s just”, the language falls into a deplorable stupor of ineffectuality:
Lady 1: It’s just like he was just so hot, like….
Lady 2: Yeah, I know, it’s just like….
Lady 1: Yeah.
He was hot like what?! Was he hot like a chili pepper you eat by accident off your plate of General Tso’s chicken, the kind that burns all the way down and out of your body? Was he hot like 92 degrees and 100% humidity in August? Was he hot like a chiseled God among mortal men? Was he smoldering hot or handsomely hot? Billy Crudup or Cary Grant?
Another use for “like” is to use it at the end of sentences so that the other person has to figure out how you feel:
Lady 1: I really wanted to talk to him, but I was just so like….
Lady 2: Yeah.
You were like what?! Nervous with clammy hands? You had halitosis and didn’t want to get too close? You were having really bad cramps and didn’t think it was the right time to hit on Mr. Hotty?
“Anyway” has also become another word that gives a lazy way out of expression, or is sometimes used to change the subject. Along with that, “ya know” also resembles “like” sometimes, in that the person is supposed to know what you mean without you expressing it verbally:
Lady 1: Anyway, like the wedding was so like boring. Like there was no dancing.
Lady 2: I know. I’ve been to a wedding like that before and it was like, ya know, what are you supposed to do, like talk the whole time.
Lady 1: And there was like, no booz.
Lady 2: I know, it was like, like ya know?
“Whatever” has become another excuse to use a dangling sentence not to express yourself:
Lady 1: That was like so much fun when we went back to the motel and like got some wine and got like totally twisted.
Lady 2: Yeah, and when like that guy showed up and he was like all over Becky, I was like, whatever.
Lady 1: Yeah.
Okay, you were like what?! What is “whatever” supposed to mean? I would rather have heard the conversation go something like this:
Lady 1: That was a lot of fun when we bought some wine and went back to the hotel and got really drunk.
Lady 2: It really was, and when that really hot guy showed up and started making out with Becky, I thought, “God, that guy must be really desperate.”
Lady 1: I know, it was really pathetic. I like Becky, but she deserves better than a whore-slut like him.
Ah, while not a conversation that would rank among one in an E.M. Forster novel, nonetheless there are no “likes”, no “anyways”, “whatevers”, or “it’s justs”.
Now, let’s combine all these words and phrases into the ultimate conversation that has beseeched us and heralded a new lethargy of language in our expressively emaciated American culture:
Lady 1: Kelly was like, so beautiful, ya know. It’s just, like, I wouldn’t have like chosen those flowers.
Lady 2: I know, they were like…
Lady 1: Yeah, it’s just like…whatever.
Lady 2: Yeah. Anyway, the service was like really nice, though.
Lady 1: Oh yeah, I was like so crying when she like said “I do.”
Lady 2: It’s just like, ya know, so beautiful a thing to like see and to like be there.
Lady 1: Yeah, when I saw her at the reception, I was like, “Kelly, you are like so beautiful, I’m like so happy for you.” And she was like, ya know, so like…
Lady 2: Awww.
Lady 1: I like wanna get married like so bad.
Lady 2: Yeah, like me, too.
Lady 1: But it’s just like…
Lady 2: Yeah.
Lady 1: Whatever.
Can I make a heartfelt, passionate supplication to all those out there reading this? Be aware of what you say. Don’t take the easy way out. Speak beautifully, poetically, with thought and intention behind every word. Make a conscious choice to throw out the likes of “like” in your daily conversation and maybe the collective conscious will catch on and we can gracefully walk forward through the waving fields of words under the arboreal dell of sublime language.
At 9pm, the previews began on the screen at the front of the park and the audience settled down into a quiet lull of conversation, a few people talking here and there. And when the movie started, after the cheers when Bette Davis’s name appeared, there was a lovely zephyr that graced the lawn and brought a much-needed relief from the heat. All conversation ceased, the credits rolled, and a magical night in New York began. Anyway, it was just like, ya know, one of those evenings when like I was like…whatever.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Don't Pet the Sweaty Things!
George Carlin died last week. RIP. Here’s one of the curmudgeon’s lines I love: “Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things.” I grew up with sweaty pets and petty sweats – the two are expected if you want to have a full, rich life. A little dog came into my life last year and his name is Gio. Through him, I’ve reached an understanding that an animal in your life, whatever it may be (a monkey, tiger, chihuahua), can teach you a heap about living as a human here on Gaia. I also found out how attached I am to him when one night last week, amidst the crackle of bottlerockets over Marble Hill, he went missing.
For eight years I lived in an apartment in the East Village in which the landlord didn’t allow pets of any kind. When I say any kind, I mean it. Technically, based on my lease, I couldn’t even have a goldfish. Cockroaches were bueno. In New York City, pests like cat-sized rats lumbering around trashcans and indignant waterbugs the size of Volkswagens in your bathtub aren’t even blinked at – they all go along with the old Ben Franklin adage about death and taxes.
My landlord was an old Puerto Rican woman named Rosa. Her husband was Luis. He was a sweet ol’ guy who loved to drink rum in the afternoon and then stumble out into the hood. One time, I heard him return home drunk only to have Rosa smack him in the face and throw him through the door into the kitchen. (I couldn’t resist watching through my door’s peephole.) After Luis died, Rosa’s mind began slipping a bit. By slipping I mean that one day I was her favorite tenant, the next she was shaking her fist in my face, screaming at me that I was a no good “illegitimate child”. Her growing loss of connection to reality ran like a gradual upslope climb on the dementia graph. When I signed my final two-year lease, there was a scribbled note above the “no pets” clause that read: No hamsters, no goldfish, no washing machines! I wasn’t aware that a washing machine was a pet, but I guess in some circles….
I grew up in South Jersey. The forest was my backyard, a dairy farm ambled down a long slope behind that, and apple and peach orchards surrounded it all. It was a bucolic backyard in which to learn and grow, a place to create imagined stories and alternate universes outside of time. An afternoon in the woods was a lifetime of adventures, and animals were all a part of it.
My grandfather was an avid rabbit hunter and his passion was breeding beagles that competed in trials that tested a dog’s hunting ability. His dogs were blue ribbon winners and he made extra money breeding and selling the dogs. I didn’t know him well. He died when I was four, but I remember sitting on his lap once, a Camel cigarette hanging from his lips. I liked the tobacco and aftershave smell that preceded his entrance to a room.
My dad built a house two miles away from his own home and inherited his dad’s love for dogs. We always had beagles around, a big blue pen in the backyard in which the dogs could run around and hump quietly in beech-tree shaded corners. When I asked why the stud Mike was riding around on Penny’s back, my dad fumbled for the right words, settling for: “They’re playing a game.” Penny howled in a painful merriment and I assumed she was losing the game.
Penny, the sweet mama of the kennel, had puppies every Spring. My dad had built large boxes for the dogs to sleep in. He filled them with cedar shavings. The boxes offered a safe haven from the elements in any season. The top of the box lifted up on a hinge so that my sisters and I could check in on the little nursing puppies. Their hair was always soft and smooth, and when we picked them up to cuddle, they melted in our hands like chocolate on a plate under an August sun.
I always hated to see people park their cars in our driveway and walk away with a puppy. I did my best to disparage Mike’s pedigree and hunting prowess to potential buyers, while my dad calmly squeezed my arm to let me know I should shut my yap. My mom and he had gotten good at that after four children. They never had to yell or make a scene, they simply reached down and gave a little painless squeeze on the arm. Inevitably, one by one, the puppies left the box to grow up and run rabbits. One year, my dad kept two of the puppies. We named them Jessie and Jason. Never before had there been sweeter pups.
We always had a house dog, too. For many years a mongrel named Sniffer lived with us, until one day she walked into the woods and never came back. After Sniffer disappeared, my parents bought me a Brittany Spaniel named Star. She was mine and I was hers. Love at first sight kind of thing. I used to dress her up in scarves and hats and take pictures of her.
Star liked to play hide-and-seek. The game went like this: we had a woodshed off the driveway with an old sliding barn door my dad picked up from a local farmer; I ran into the shed, closed the door, and Star bolted around it as if I was going to pop out on the other side; when I heard her careening around the back corner, I exited and ran after her, leaving the dog to find an open door with no Timmie in sight; I would catch up with her, hide around the corner, and wait for her to take off again, crouching down low and surprising her on her second return.
Star went to be with Jesus the moment she was hit by the car. She liked to follow my mom around when I was at school learning Algebra and what king was declaring the next war in the world’s bloody history. As part of my mom’s daily ritual, she walked down the driveway and crossed the street to our mailbox. Unbeknownst to her, Star had followed her and, as she was crossing the street, a car came around the bend and struck the dog.
When I came home from school my mom cried and told me that Star was dead. We buried her in the backyard and I prayed that St. Francis would take care of her from then on. That was the last dog we ever had. I was leaving for college the next year and my parents would have no more children in the house. They didn’t want any more dogs. They were going to retire and wanted to be free to come and go like when they first married.
I never considered myself what some may call a “Cat Person”, but my own personality is somewhat like theirs. I’m a Gemini: I’m schizophrenic… and so am I. Two sides, two personalities. That’s me. On the one side is the creative, friendly, gregarious and go-with-the-flow Timmie. The other side is circumspect; it wants structure, safety, and often erupts in a vociferously evil temper over things that in retrospect seem rather silly. I walk the fine line between spontaneity and a yearning for 1, 2, buckle my friggin’ shoe.
Cats live this kind of life. One moment they’re purring and loving you like there’s nobody else in the universe, the next they’re clawing your eyes out, devouring them in a primitive ritual like cats before them, under a salmon moon during a lunar eclipse. I see no rhyme or reason to a cat, other than what they see as only normal, and if you lived with me, a Gemini, you’d know it for a fact.
I sat in my apartment one night, alone. I missed having an animal in my life. Foregoing the “no pets” clause in my lease, I decided that a good alternative to a dog would be a cat. A cat is mostly quiet, relatively low maintenance, and I could be gone all day without having to take it outside to pee and poop.
I adopted a cat from Whiskers, a local holistic pet care store. She was black and beautiful, sleek-like. I forget what I named her. Blacky? Midnight? Onyx? I should have named her Sybil. She was out of her mind and took an instant dislike to me. I should have known better. When I met her at Whiskers she cowered in the corner and sunk her teeth into my hand. At home, she climbed up the iron gates over the windows to get away from me. She hid under the bed and when I walked by she reached out a paw to scratch at me, scaring me terribly. She also snuck up behind me a lot and jumped on the back of my chair while I was writing. I broke three wine glasses from fear of living with this foul beasty.
After two weeks of cat hell, the woman at the store agreed to take her back.
I then bought a little Siamese that I named Som Chai and surreptitiously got him into my apartment via a kitty backpack I’d bought.
Som Chai liked curling up on my arm while I worked at my computer. He liked sleeping in the crook of my neck at night. He liked the dried chicken treats and organic cat food I bought at Whiskers. He also liked to climb behind furniture, which was the cause of his death.
He had gotten wedged between the wall and my wardrobe and after I pulled him out he began to howl and wretch, vomit coming out in violent spurts. When I took him to the vet, I found out that he had torn his digestive tract. (Perhaps I had caused it when trying to extricate him from his stuck situation? I’ll never know.) The operation would cost two thousand dollars, for which there was no guarantee of success. I didn't have the money. I had to have him euthanized. This was during a time when I had a terrible case of pneumonia and was out of work for three weeks. The little guy kept me company and showed me much love and nurturing, an instinctual awareness of his owner’s needs. I miss him to this day.
After I recovered from pneumonia, I found out about a Siamese cat rescue in the city. I emailed the woman in charge about volunteering so I could get to know some of the cats – to possibly adopt one. She was enthusiastic. I met her at Petco on the Upper East Side early one Saturday morning to watch over the cats that were put on display every weekend for possible adopters.
I waited outside Petco and sipped a tasteless cup of chamomile tea. A van pulled up, the door slid open, and amidst the meowing of twenty annoyed and freaked out cats, a woman jumped out who looked like the witch in the Bugs Bunny cartoon – the one who cackles with hair that defies hairspray, hairpins flying in every direction. Her coffee-stained sweatshirt, which had a large, cheesily-rendered depiction of a Siamese cat on it, was matted with a thick layer of cat hair. She smelled like a litter box. What used to be white sweatpants, were now beige, a few patches of yellow peeking through. They were too small. I could see the harsh line of her Hanes panties. Was that cat pee on her sneakers?
After volunteering for two consecutive Saturdays I got to know a lovely little cat that I wanted to adopt. Let me tell you right now that adopting a pet in New York City is harder than flying to Sri Lanka and adopting an orphan. Truly. My friends (and landlords) upstairs adopted a child from Vietnam last year, but when they wanted to adopt a dog, they were refused because the animal rescue people felt the stairs would be too much for the dog, even though there was a full first floor to live in and a backyard in which he could romp around freely. What the hell is wrong with these agencies? It’s almost as if they try their hardest not to find a home for these animals. They are completely deranged.
When I asked about adopting the cat, Catlitter Lady emailed me to set up a visit in which the cat would come to my apartment and see if she liked it. I was asked to fill out a lengthy application, give three references with phone numbers and email addresses, my social security number, employer information. I almost expected a urine test. Jeez Louise. All this so she could check me out ad nauseum to see if I was worthy of the cat with whom I wanted to share my home. Give me the friggin’ cat already!
I flatly refused to go through such a litigious process and the emailed response from Catlitter Lady was this: “Well! I guess our screening process works because you’re obviously not the right person for this cat!”
I ended up buying two brother Siamese kittens, but they drove me crazy with their meowing and keeping me up all night to play. After a year of contentious cat issues, I realized that it simply wasn’t working. I checked in with God and saw him on a street corner, laughing under a big neon sign that blinked: Fuggedaboutit!
I adopted the kittens out to a woman in New Jersey where they are currently enjoying a peaceful life sans Timmie. I simply wasn’t meant to live with a cat.
A year passed and I met F. Instant knowing that I wanted to be with him (and vice versa) ensued. A year later we were living together, along with his Shih Tzu, Gio.
Gio has worked his way into my heart, leaving his little pawprints on it forever. He’s the most feline dog I’ve ever met. He sleeps a lot during the day, likes to play at night, is obsessive about his cleanliness, more often than not preening and licking himself as a cat does. He also – like a cat – has his own mind, and if he doesn’t want to play, doesn’t want to be petted, isn’t interested in interaction of any kind, he’ll let you know by simply moving away from you, raising his little nose and black lips in defiance. His hints aren’t masked, his intentions quite clear: leave me alone, Bucko.
I respect that. I admire these qualities in him. I also respect his ability to be completely in the Now. He is the epitome of Eckhart Tolle’s teaching of being present. For Gio, there is no other time but the Now. There is no past, no future. He has taught me endearing lessons on love, respect, and Presence. I love this little guy as if he were my own baby child. He is my Buddha, Krishna, he is the Wizard of Oz, and as one of F.’s friends once said: “He’s Jesus’s little lamby.”
My birthday is June 20th. I hadn’t seen my dear friends for a long time. During the past year, living and commuting downtown from Marble Hill up near the Bronx precluded as many get-togethers as I used to have with them when I lived in the East Village. I decided to have a birthday picnic in our backyard last Saturday.
It was F.’s idea to ask everyone to dress in white. I made white sangria and we all sat outside in chairs and on quilts. It was very Victorian and everyone looked fantastic. Two of F.’s friends from Lancaster, Daniel and Gloria, drove out to stay the night and go to church the next morning at St. Bart’s. After everyone left, the four of us, and Gio, sat outside, sipping Sangria and chatting.
The past few nights, kids in the neighborhood had shot off fireworks. On one night, I ran outside to see white sparkling showers shoot off over the house. Gio has three fears: monkeys, thunder, and fireworks. After the first bottlerocket shot off and cracked across the nighttime soundtrack, Gio bolted. We thought he had gone up the stairs into the house, but a few minutes later, F. went looking for the little guy. He was gone. We looked all over the apartment, under the deck, but he was gone.
F. and Daniel took off in Daniel’s car to slowly prowl the neighborhood while Gloria and I stood vigil out front on the sidewalk, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gio. Daniel and F. made a circle, checked in with us, and then went off again. They were gone for what seemed an hour. I prayed hard and even cried a bit in fear over the lost puppy. Poor little guy. Where was he? He’d never before run off like this, but now he was missing, lost in the winding streets on top of a hill overlooking the Harlem River.
Terrible images and thoughts overwhelmed me. I pictured him being hit and dragging himself under a car to quietly die. The thought of him being mauled by one of the neighborhood rottweilers flashed in my brain. I visualized a van pulling up and swarthy men who spoke in a clicking language taking him away to sell him into white puppy slavery, like Indonesian women trapped in Park Avenue apartments by middle-aged WASPs. I had to stop these thoughts, so I prayed again and gave thanks for Gio’s safe return. The Bible says to pray as if something has already happened, so I do that. I always give thanks for things before they happen, and more often than not (but not always in my own time) they happen.
I engaged passers-by, asking them if they had seen a small gray and white Shih Tzu. Nothing. I asked a fetching older woman dressed in black. She touched my shoulder in sympathy and told me she would be on the lookout. I talked with more people in the neighborhood in that hour than I had in the entire first year of living on the hill.
Gloria walked up from the backyard and we continued to watch. Suddenly, from the east I heard a voice yell: “We’ve got a lost puppy here!”
I looked down the street, heavy oaks and magnolias stretching their branches to create a comfortable canopy that felt safe. Under the orange glow of the streetlight, in the hazy, humid air that diffuses sharp lines and angles, I saw two teenage boys approaching. Next to them, trotting along like a gadabout, as if everything was hunky-dorey, was Gio. I ran towards them and yelled, “He’s ours!”
I reached down and scooped up Gio, hugging him tightly. He was back, and the weight of fear and loss left my body like evaporating water.
I asked the boys’ names: Juan and Alex. They lived over on the next street, Van Corlear, and found Gio in their backyard. They must have had a dog because Gio was attached to a leash, which they unfastened. I walked with them back to the house and thanked them several times. They were kind, sweet, and told me that if he ever got lost again, they’d bring him back. I showed them where I lived so they would know where to bring him, and then they were gone: two skinny Dominican teenagers, whom I’d probably never have spoken to.
Gloria dialed F.’s cell phone and as she waited for an answer, the car pulled up. I raised Gio in the air. F. got out of the car and grabbed him, at once loving and scolding, both of which he deserved, but he was home again, and no matter what had happened, no matter what fear had given him the impulse to flee, there was a comfort in knowing that an animal that was so much an indelible part of our lives, was back in it again.
For me, Woody Allen’s film, Broadway Danny Rose, recently became an undiscovered gem – one of his best. It’s a Felliniesque-inspired comedy in which Woody plays a hasbin theatrical agent. In a time of great despair, he finds hope in the words of his diabetic uncle: forgiveness, acceptance, and love.
For eight years I lived in an apartment in the East Village in which the landlord didn’t allow pets of any kind. When I say any kind, I mean it. Technically, based on my lease, I couldn’t even have a goldfish. Cockroaches were bueno. In New York City, pests like cat-sized rats lumbering around trashcans and indignant waterbugs the size of Volkswagens in your bathtub aren’t even blinked at – they all go along with the old Ben Franklin adage about death and taxes.
My landlord was an old Puerto Rican woman named Rosa. Her husband was Luis. He was a sweet ol’ guy who loved to drink rum in the afternoon and then stumble out into the hood. One time, I heard him return home drunk only to have Rosa smack him in the face and throw him through the door into the kitchen. (I couldn’t resist watching through my door’s peephole.) After Luis died, Rosa’s mind began slipping a bit. By slipping I mean that one day I was her favorite tenant, the next she was shaking her fist in my face, screaming at me that I was a no good “illegitimate child”. Her growing loss of connection to reality ran like a gradual upslope climb on the dementia graph. When I signed my final two-year lease, there was a scribbled note above the “no pets” clause that read: No hamsters, no goldfish, no washing machines! I wasn’t aware that a washing machine was a pet, but I guess in some circles….
I grew up in South Jersey. The forest was my backyard, a dairy farm ambled down a long slope behind that, and apple and peach orchards surrounded it all. It was a bucolic backyard in which to learn and grow, a place to create imagined stories and alternate universes outside of time. An afternoon in the woods was a lifetime of adventures, and animals were all a part of it.
My grandfather was an avid rabbit hunter and his passion was breeding beagles that competed in trials that tested a dog’s hunting ability. His dogs were blue ribbon winners and he made extra money breeding and selling the dogs. I didn’t know him well. He died when I was four, but I remember sitting on his lap once, a Camel cigarette hanging from his lips. I liked the tobacco and aftershave smell that preceded his entrance to a room.
My dad built a house two miles away from his own home and inherited his dad’s love for dogs. We always had beagles around, a big blue pen in the backyard in which the dogs could run around and hump quietly in beech-tree shaded corners. When I asked why the stud Mike was riding around on Penny’s back, my dad fumbled for the right words, settling for: “They’re playing a game.” Penny howled in a painful merriment and I assumed she was losing the game.
Penny, the sweet mama of the kennel, had puppies every Spring. My dad had built large boxes for the dogs to sleep in. He filled them with cedar shavings. The boxes offered a safe haven from the elements in any season. The top of the box lifted up on a hinge so that my sisters and I could check in on the little nursing puppies. Their hair was always soft and smooth, and when we picked them up to cuddle, they melted in our hands like chocolate on a plate under an August sun.
I always hated to see people park their cars in our driveway and walk away with a puppy. I did my best to disparage Mike’s pedigree and hunting prowess to potential buyers, while my dad calmly squeezed my arm to let me know I should shut my yap. My mom and he had gotten good at that after four children. They never had to yell or make a scene, they simply reached down and gave a little painless squeeze on the arm. Inevitably, one by one, the puppies left the box to grow up and run rabbits. One year, my dad kept two of the puppies. We named them Jessie and Jason. Never before had there been sweeter pups.
We always had a house dog, too. For many years a mongrel named Sniffer lived with us, until one day she walked into the woods and never came back. After Sniffer disappeared, my parents bought me a Brittany Spaniel named Star. She was mine and I was hers. Love at first sight kind of thing. I used to dress her up in scarves and hats and take pictures of her.
Star liked to play hide-and-seek. The game went like this: we had a woodshed off the driveway with an old sliding barn door my dad picked up from a local farmer; I ran into the shed, closed the door, and Star bolted around it as if I was going to pop out on the other side; when I heard her careening around the back corner, I exited and ran after her, leaving the dog to find an open door with no Timmie in sight; I would catch up with her, hide around the corner, and wait for her to take off again, crouching down low and surprising her on her second return.
Star went to be with Jesus the moment she was hit by the car. She liked to follow my mom around when I was at school learning Algebra and what king was declaring the next war in the world’s bloody history. As part of my mom’s daily ritual, she walked down the driveway and crossed the street to our mailbox. Unbeknownst to her, Star had followed her and, as she was crossing the street, a car came around the bend and struck the dog.
When I came home from school my mom cried and told me that Star was dead. We buried her in the backyard and I prayed that St. Francis would take care of her from then on. That was the last dog we ever had. I was leaving for college the next year and my parents would have no more children in the house. They didn’t want any more dogs. They were going to retire and wanted to be free to come and go like when they first married.
I never considered myself what some may call a “Cat Person”, but my own personality is somewhat like theirs. I’m a Gemini: I’m schizophrenic… and so am I. Two sides, two personalities. That’s me. On the one side is the creative, friendly, gregarious and go-with-the-flow Timmie. The other side is circumspect; it wants structure, safety, and often erupts in a vociferously evil temper over things that in retrospect seem rather silly. I walk the fine line between spontaneity and a yearning for 1, 2, buckle my friggin’ shoe.
Cats live this kind of life. One moment they’re purring and loving you like there’s nobody else in the universe, the next they’re clawing your eyes out, devouring them in a primitive ritual like cats before them, under a salmon moon during a lunar eclipse. I see no rhyme or reason to a cat, other than what they see as only normal, and if you lived with me, a Gemini, you’d know it for a fact.
I sat in my apartment one night, alone. I missed having an animal in my life. Foregoing the “no pets” clause in my lease, I decided that a good alternative to a dog would be a cat. A cat is mostly quiet, relatively low maintenance, and I could be gone all day without having to take it outside to pee and poop.
I adopted a cat from Whiskers, a local holistic pet care store. She was black and beautiful, sleek-like. I forget what I named her. Blacky? Midnight? Onyx? I should have named her Sybil. She was out of her mind and took an instant dislike to me. I should have known better. When I met her at Whiskers she cowered in the corner and sunk her teeth into my hand. At home, she climbed up the iron gates over the windows to get away from me. She hid under the bed and when I walked by she reached out a paw to scratch at me, scaring me terribly. She also snuck up behind me a lot and jumped on the back of my chair while I was writing. I broke three wine glasses from fear of living with this foul beasty.
After two weeks of cat hell, the woman at the store agreed to take her back.
I then bought a little Siamese that I named Som Chai and surreptitiously got him into my apartment via a kitty backpack I’d bought.
Som Chai liked curling up on my arm while I worked at my computer. He liked sleeping in the crook of my neck at night. He liked the dried chicken treats and organic cat food I bought at Whiskers. He also liked to climb behind furniture, which was the cause of his death.
He had gotten wedged between the wall and my wardrobe and after I pulled him out he began to howl and wretch, vomit coming out in violent spurts. When I took him to the vet, I found out that he had torn his digestive tract. (Perhaps I had caused it when trying to extricate him from his stuck situation? I’ll never know.) The operation would cost two thousand dollars, for which there was no guarantee of success. I didn't have the money. I had to have him euthanized. This was during a time when I had a terrible case of pneumonia and was out of work for three weeks. The little guy kept me company and showed me much love and nurturing, an instinctual awareness of his owner’s needs. I miss him to this day.
After I recovered from pneumonia, I found out about a Siamese cat rescue in the city. I emailed the woman in charge about volunteering so I could get to know some of the cats – to possibly adopt one. She was enthusiastic. I met her at Petco on the Upper East Side early one Saturday morning to watch over the cats that were put on display every weekend for possible adopters.
I waited outside Petco and sipped a tasteless cup of chamomile tea. A van pulled up, the door slid open, and amidst the meowing of twenty annoyed and freaked out cats, a woman jumped out who looked like the witch in the Bugs Bunny cartoon – the one who cackles with hair that defies hairspray, hairpins flying in every direction. Her coffee-stained sweatshirt, which had a large, cheesily-rendered depiction of a Siamese cat on it, was matted with a thick layer of cat hair. She smelled like a litter box. What used to be white sweatpants, were now beige, a few patches of yellow peeking through. They were too small. I could see the harsh line of her Hanes panties. Was that cat pee on her sneakers?
After volunteering for two consecutive Saturdays I got to know a lovely little cat that I wanted to adopt. Let me tell you right now that adopting a pet in New York City is harder than flying to Sri Lanka and adopting an orphan. Truly. My friends (and landlords) upstairs adopted a child from Vietnam last year, but when they wanted to adopt a dog, they were refused because the animal rescue people felt the stairs would be too much for the dog, even though there was a full first floor to live in and a backyard in which he could romp around freely. What the hell is wrong with these agencies? It’s almost as if they try their hardest not to find a home for these animals. They are completely deranged.
When I asked about adopting the cat, Catlitter Lady emailed me to set up a visit in which the cat would come to my apartment and see if she liked it. I was asked to fill out a lengthy application, give three references with phone numbers and email addresses, my social security number, employer information. I almost expected a urine test. Jeez Louise. All this so she could check me out ad nauseum to see if I was worthy of the cat with whom I wanted to share my home. Give me the friggin’ cat already!
I flatly refused to go through such a litigious process and the emailed response from Catlitter Lady was this: “Well! I guess our screening process works because you’re obviously not the right person for this cat!”
I ended up buying two brother Siamese kittens, but they drove me crazy with their meowing and keeping me up all night to play. After a year of contentious cat issues, I realized that it simply wasn’t working. I checked in with God and saw him on a street corner, laughing under a big neon sign that blinked: Fuggedaboutit!
I adopted the kittens out to a woman in New Jersey where they are currently enjoying a peaceful life sans Timmie. I simply wasn’t meant to live with a cat.
A year passed and I met F. Instant knowing that I wanted to be with him (and vice versa) ensued. A year later we were living together, along with his Shih Tzu, Gio.
Gio has worked his way into my heart, leaving his little pawprints on it forever. He’s the most feline dog I’ve ever met. He sleeps a lot during the day, likes to play at night, is obsessive about his cleanliness, more often than not preening and licking himself as a cat does. He also – like a cat – has his own mind, and if he doesn’t want to play, doesn’t want to be petted, isn’t interested in interaction of any kind, he’ll let you know by simply moving away from you, raising his little nose and black lips in defiance. His hints aren’t masked, his intentions quite clear: leave me alone, Bucko.
I respect that. I admire these qualities in him. I also respect his ability to be completely in the Now. He is the epitome of Eckhart Tolle’s teaching of being present. For Gio, there is no other time but the Now. There is no past, no future. He has taught me endearing lessons on love, respect, and Presence. I love this little guy as if he were my own baby child. He is my Buddha, Krishna, he is the Wizard of Oz, and as one of F.’s friends once said: “He’s Jesus’s little lamby.”
My birthday is June 20th. I hadn’t seen my dear friends for a long time. During the past year, living and commuting downtown from Marble Hill up near the Bronx precluded as many get-togethers as I used to have with them when I lived in the East Village. I decided to have a birthday picnic in our backyard last Saturday.
It was F.’s idea to ask everyone to dress in white. I made white sangria and we all sat outside in chairs and on quilts. It was very Victorian and everyone looked fantastic. Two of F.’s friends from Lancaster, Daniel and Gloria, drove out to stay the night and go to church the next morning at St. Bart’s. After everyone left, the four of us, and Gio, sat outside, sipping Sangria and chatting.
The past few nights, kids in the neighborhood had shot off fireworks. On one night, I ran outside to see white sparkling showers shoot off over the house. Gio has three fears: monkeys, thunder, and fireworks. After the first bottlerocket shot off and cracked across the nighttime soundtrack, Gio bolted. We thought he had gone up the stairs into the house, but a few minutes later, F. went looking for the little guy. He was gone. We looked all over the apartment, under the deck, but he was gone.
F. and Daniel took off in Daniel’s car to slowly prowl the neighborhood while Gloria and I stood vigil out front on the sidewalk, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gio. Daniel and F. made a circle, checked in with us, and then went off again. They were gone for what seemed an hour. I prayed hard and even cried a bit in fear over the lost puppy. Poor little guy. Where was he? He’d never before run off like this, but now he was missing, lost in the winding streets on top of a hill overlooking the Harlem River.
Terrible images and thoughts overwhelmed me. I pictured him being hit and dragging himself under a car to quietly die. The thought of him being mauled by one of the neighborhood rottweilers flashed in my brain. I visualized a van pulling up and swarthy men who spoke in a clicking language taking him away to sell him into white puppy slavery, like Indonesian women trapped in Park Avenue apartments by middle-aged WASPs. I had to stop these thoughts, so I prayed again and gave thanks for Gio’s safe return. The Bible says to pray as if something has already happened, so I do that. I always give thanks for things before they happen, and more often than not (but not always in my own time) they happen.
I engaged passers-by, asking them if they had seen a small gray and white Shih Tzu. Nothing. I asked a fetching older woman dressed in black. She touched my shoulder in sympathy and told me she would be on the lookout. I talked with more people in the neighborhood in that hour than I had in the entire first year of living on the hill.
Gloria walked up from the backyard and we continued to watch. Suddenly, from the east I heard a voice yell: “We’ve got a lost puppy here!”
I looked down the street, heavy oaks and magnolias stretching their branches to create a comfortable canopy that felt safe. Under the orange glow of the streetlight, in the hazy, humid air that diffuses sharp lines and angles, I saw two teenage boys approaching. Next to them, trotting along like a gadabout, as if everything was hunky-dorey, was Gio. I ran towards them and yelled, “He’s ours!”
I reached down and scooped up Gio, hugging him tightly. He was back, and the weight of fear and loss left my body like evaporating water.
I asked the boys’ names: Juan and Alex. They lived over on the next street, Van Corlear, and found Gio in their backyard. They must have had a dog because Gio was attached to a leash, which they unfastened. I walked with them back to the house and thanked them several times. They were kind, sweet, and told me that if he ever got lost again, they’d bring him back. I showed them where I lived so they would know where to bring him, and then they were gone: two skinny Dominican teenagers, whom I’d probably never have spoken to.
Gloria dialed F.’s cell phone and as she waited for an answer, the car pulled up. I raised Gio in the air. F. got out of the car and grabbed him, at once loving and scolding, both of which he deserved, but he was home again, and no matter what had happened, no matter what fear had given him the impulse to flee, there was a comfort in knowing that an animal that was so much an indelible part of our lives, was back in it again.
For me, Woody Allen’s film, Broadway Danny Rose, recently became an undiscovered gem – one of his best. It’s a Felliniesque-inspired comedy in which Woody plays a hasbin theatrical agent. In a time of great despair, he finds hope in the words of his diabetic uncle: forgiveness, acceptance, and love.
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