Daydreams, Bookends, and Peace Marches that I Can’t Find
It's Monday morning and all I can think of are the trials and tribulations, the dreams and visions of The Artificial Silk Girl and Madonna in a Fur Coat, our book club readings, tales of Weimar era longings, compromises, drunken mistakes, the friends we make when we are lost in art galleries in new cities, the yearnings which grip at us. "My head felt like an empty swirling hole," wrote Keun. "I created a dream for myself and rode up and down the streets of Berlin for hours on end, all by myself. I was a movie and weekly newsreel all by myself." Who isn't when you arrive, lost wandering, staring at a painting you fall in love with at an art gallery, by yourself, chance encounters changing everything as they did for Raif in Madonna and the Fur Coat. Sigh. I think about Keun, her fur coat and her nights out with Joseph Roth, wandering through Alexanderplatz.
It gets its claws in you, said Kafka, referring to home town of Praha. Its hard to get out.
You could say the same thing about Berlin. Its not easy getting out.
Still, other adventures make their way through my mind.
They blur in a cavalcade of stories passing, evening after evening, afternoon after afternoon.
A seaweed collector grapples with algae he sees taking over in Rob Magnuson Smith’s new book, Seaweed Rising. This is a surreal story about a place not unlike ours, in which college professors and drifters stumble from bar to bar, lost in their lives in Cornish fishing village, half alive, undead, finding and losing themselves in the mystery of it all. This could be us. Perhaps it is?
The community preacher said the same thing at Judson last Sunday. The mold is non binary. Look at it, learn from its web of interactions, ever-evolving, twisting and morphing, biodiveristy revealing itself as a vast unknown, beyond our comprehension.
Years ago, Rob told me about John Cheever, looking at his stories of suburban ennui, ever meandering from his mind into New Yorker stories that used to hang on the news stands. I read them all night long, story after story of drunk swimmers and unfortunate reunions, frustrated longings and sublimated love, too much booze, amidst the chuckles and banality of it all.
My Rise and Resist buddy Tim Murphy follows this thread with his new novel, Speech Team A high school friend takes his own life. Old friends commiserate, reading a suicide note he left on facebook about a teacher from years before, a coach who said cruel things and encouraged him to read Walt Whitman. I found myself reading it late into the night, a fly on the wall as friends converge to confront their old mentor, his mind fading, ever disappearing, joining the seaweeds, Alzheimers gripping, memories disappearing, breaking down, as the body remains behind, our condition ever absurd.
Old tapes from friends linger, a Beatles song about missing an old bandmate, saying goodbye, a basement tape from John still hits; Paul remembers a last meeting. “Think of me every now and then old friend” says John before saying goodbye at the Dakota, weeks before he had to leave. And the band bids adieu, part of the soundtrack of our lives.
“All we are saying is give peace a chance,” John sang, inviting us all into his chorus. I’m still looking for it. It's hard to find.
Are you going to the demo today, asks Kate. What action? Emergency action at the NYTimes. These are hard days. Hospitals bombed; kids with cancer displaced. No one wants this. Why not peace? They pulled it off in Ireland and Rowanda, even South Africa. Why not Israel, I think on the train to a demo, wondering about which of all the news fit to print actually makes it into print. I arrive on 42nd and 8th, greeting friends, standing with signs at the New York Times, rise and resisters, queers for climate, act up, healthgappers, years and years of seeing these friends, Jenny and Ann who I was arrested with, facing trial after trial, wars, occupations, lawsuits, protests and counter-protests, missing Tim and Mel, who would have been here with us, all of us heartbroken with another war, cars honking, still at it through history.
After screaming and holding signs, Anne Christine and Kate and I catch the train home.
Kate tells us about New Alternatives and the struggles of the homeless queer kids she works with, still arriving every day, living on park benches.
Anne tells us about, “Stop the Coup 2025 A New Action Tank A Reporting, Community Education, and Mobilization Initiative to Counter Project 2025, the US rightwing blueprint attack on gender and democracy The Problem: The radical right has released an extremist electoral playbook for a soft coup, an 877-page document called Project 2025, backed by now-75 conservative groups and Koch family money. It openly calls for the dismantling of the federal government and giving special ‘supreme’ powers to a President – a step toward autocracy, and Christian theocracy. They hope to elect Donald Trump to enact their vision. Project 2025 also calls for complete erasure of gender and LGBTQ+ identity from all federal rules and regulations. “This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists,” it states.
Together all the way to Jay Street, we chat away, before I transfer to the F where I run into Savitri, gorgeous and heartbroken about the world, getting ready for Earth Church.
In the Gowanus, a man bumps into Caroline in the street, threatening, menacing, mumbling, “Morte.”
The streets are on edge with a tinge of violence, anger, and desperation. Protests are sites of counter protests. Cyclists contending with cars speeding.
People are out dancing late whenever they can.
Asleep, awake I find myself on the train at 1245 am on my way to North Brooklyn for Fashion is Dead... An Unfashionable Dance Party, dancing into the night, greeting, shaking, zooming and wondering, shaking with the late-night party characters, taking in the scenes from the city, the street murals, protests and dance parties into the evening.
The next morning, the little one and I talk about Blaze Foley, living in the woods in the trees, sitting by the road, doing his time, going nowhere, living in a treehouse with Sybil, who watched it all, living to tell the tale.
Off to Princeton to see Mom, thinking about Jane's Addiction, drugs, pain alleviation, and pleassure, taking in the colors of fall, red, yellow, and green, fall light on the water, on a gorgeous afternoon.
I’m looking for peace in the world, but I can’t find it in myself. All the non-violent communication sessions remind us: it starts with us. But I can’t find it.
There is peace out there.
I can feel it. But I don’t have it. I long for it. Still, conflict grasps at me, on the way from Brooklyn to the West Village, off to service at Judson, to Union Square to the march for Gaza from Union Square to Stonewall.
Sitting in Union Square Ray and I talk about it all, missing the march, that i was never able to find. The sunshine feels lovely, but I'm lost. We all are, even when we know the way down to West Forth, and Washington Square. I find myself walking East, stumbling upon a free store and stories of a strange lost time at Earthchurch at Ave C, grateful for everyone, seeing all my friends, JK, Dasha, Billy, Savitri.
“Children are dying, one dead every ten minutes,” says Billy wearing his white collarless preaching outfit. “What a riddle we find ourselves in.”
I’m sitting with Ted, from Ethiopia. Peace feels elusive there as well.
“People are out in the streets every day,” Billy goes on, massive marches all over the city.
“50 hours ago we were in Times Square,” said Billy, flashing back to his quarter denter of preaching in and out of Times Square. When the Dutch colonized the place, three rivers intersected there.
Today its filled with cops.
“Nothing kills like war,” Billy preaches. “War is violent.”
“Its unsafe to sing,” the police tell him, ushering the choir out of the red bleachers. The choir continues. “This is private property,” they tell him. People are starring now. The choir doesn’t stop.
“Isn’t peace a good thing?” wonders Billy. “Stop dropping bombs. What's so dangerous about peace?”
He looks down the river and buildings, with TV sets, the monoculture thats taken over.
“Times Square used to be a place for the odd, for strange preachers, Jimmy Hendrix impersonators, and other desultry characters, people acting differently, bumping into each other, across from 24-hour movie theaters showing porn flicks, Chip Delany taking notes in the front row. Don’t let your children come into the Disney Store. Put down the mouse,” preaches Billy, referring to our civil disobedience at the Disney Store of November 1999, his face turning red. “Don’t come in here. Put down the mouse. New York is a place for difference,” says Billy. “Put down the mouse!”
“This is a song for all those people crossing borders right now, on the move,” says Savitri, introducing the final song of the service.
Afterwards, I say goodbye to Billy and Savitri, Dasha and JK, friends through the years, still looking for something here. The electric organ is ripping, just like the full tilt boogie band, those high notes gripping.
Dreams and nightmares, demolition crews and demons, heartbreaking, the sounds of jackhammers, keeping me up at night, joining me as I ride back to Brooklyn.
The teenager and I talk about the last days of Blaze Foley;
Townz Townes-van-Zandt sang about their days on the road:
“Headed down to Alabam'
Cause some trouble if I can
Aw, buddy, would you like to come along?
It's a place I never been
And you know I could use a friend
They say they'll give us twenty bucks a song..”
I’d love to come along. I remember 1989, when Blaze left.
I think about my journey down that highway, listening to Jane’s Addiction, thinking about everything that happened, the classes I teach, the jazz bars I go to, the friends I run into, wondering about the feelings, that grip, the demons and demolition crews, the shadows which chase men, the bombs and peace marches I still can’t seem to find.
Teaching downtown on Wednesday, Streetblog reports,
I’d rather be with Blaze laughing in the woods in the trees.
No comments:
Post a Comment