“momentary flashes of perfect communion”/ Too Loud a Solitude/ End of August
August 12
It was a hard landing back in the crazy USA, back into our contradictions and struggles, catching up with everyone, chatting about the authoritarian turn, grasping at our democracy, navigating the vortex. Trying to catch up with the teenager before they run back to Boston for college, spending a few nights in Princeton with Mom, who is stabilizing, back home for a bit, but no one’s for sure for how long, before she makes her way elsewhere. She lost weight, got it back, finding some footing, taking us into the fall. Conversation with the teenager and family on the way back home,
Princeton to Brooklyn, and back.
You have to read this novela, says the kid before we got back, referring to, Too Loud a Solitude, a novella by Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, tracing a story about a protagonist who picks up books in the trash, works at an incinerator plant, meets a gypsy, he falls in love, before she is swept from the streets, killed in Auschwitz. Reality is sometimes more than we can bear. Hrabal writes:
“Lost in my dreams, I somehow cross at the traffic signals, bumping into street lamps or people, yet moving onward, exuding fumes of beer and grime, yet smiling, because my briefcase is full of books and that very night I expect them to tell me things about myself I don't know.”
I guess it's why we read, to learn about parts of ourselves we “don't know” , to learn about others, to walk through their days, the thoughts of others, to be more whole.
“When I start reading I'm somewhere completely different,” writes Hrabal. “I'm in the text, it's amazing, I have to admit I've been dreaming, dreaming in a land of great beauty, I've been in the very heart of truth. Ten times a day, every day, I wonder at having wandered so far, and then, alienated from myself, a stranger to myself, I go home, walking the streets silently and in deep meditation, passing trams and cars and pedestrians in a cloud of books, the books I found that day and am carrying home in my briefcase.”
I wonder the same thing, looking at the world, the books people leave behind, I hope to dig through for myself. There have been books that gained dust and had to be thrown out again. Others, Howard Zinn’s history that I read, one bathroom trip, one page at a time over a year.
“Wait till you get to the end, then we can talk about it,” says the teenager for much of August, till we get home. Between Princeton and the Lower East Side and back to Princeton, then Brooklyn, I finally finished.
And we both gush about what happened.
I look up from my daydream, having a coffee with Mom.
Trump sends the National Guard, says the paper, looking about the world, in Mom’s kitchen in the country. Reading about the chaos, I peruse stories about "blood thirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth" that Trump calls out. Seems like protesters to me. I've been arrested dozens of times by the DC Capital Police. They are professionals, out to allow First Amendment expression and maintain control. Who will police the police? What could possibly go wrong here? Is NYC next? Authoritarian regime much?
The teenager and their mom drive to the Jersey Shore.
Mom and I stay in Princeton for a few days.
That afternoon, we took a stroll to Marquand Park, “a 17-acre (69,000 m2) arboretum and recreational area located in Princeton, New Jersey. It contains walking paths, a baseball field, and attractions for children such as a sandbox and a play structure.” My brothers and I played there in the 1970's. Our kids, a dozen years ago. Mom and I took in the day, strolling about, sitting under the trees here, greeting friends.
Aug 18
Back to the book I'm supposed to be finishing, looking at the city and the world. Poetry books greet, with stories of lost dreams and friends, gogo and beats, old songs, from the Maverick Room to Santa Monica, City Lights to Hyde Park....
Activism follows.
Join us to call out the Governor, says Ken, tempting me with a road trip / action. .
Still hoping we drive to the country to talk to the governor, begrudging the governor to stop this pipeline through Rockaway Beach, offshore through Coney and State Island.
"Gov.Hochol... No Williams pipeline!!!" we scream.
The afternoon brought us back to Brooklyn for a walk.
I see a cat in the butcher shop on Court Street, a band outside Buffalo Exchange on Boerum Place, a cat missing one street down, and Baby C reading down the street. That was until the rain poured ...and the sky turned orange… Back to the movies, back to Paris, a bookstore and another chance meeting, reminded of something that happened at Shakespeare and Company across from Notre Dame.
Jarno and I talk about the Kalevala, the Finnish epic that Rexroth was reading.
The strange scenes in our minds back home....
And things start slipping away.
I descend back to old thoughts, long ago road trips, beaches and hikes through the woods... that day we found the cemetery, looking at the names... and the weeds crawling up in between. The day Dad smiled looking about his family's long past in Moultrie. I read his marked up copy of Rexroth's Autobiographical Novel, thinking about Studs Terkel and our time in Chicago.
Feet not quite on the ground.
Aug 19
Word of more ICE raids.
Six year old detained by ICE in NYC.
Jacques Servin wrote:
“Had a crazy time last week coming face to face with American fascism…”
Aug 20
Gene and Emily, NYC buddies meet up with me, holding court at Barbes, chatting about the summer that was, the struggles, trips away, Russia, Ukraine, our insanity, a deal with Russia is out of date once the ink dries. Did Zohran Mamdani sign the letter opposing the Williams Pipeline project? 131 other electeds have gone on record opposing it. Beloved Barbes, jazz on a summer night, and a slice on the way back home. The teenager is packing up t shirts, getting ready to go back to Boston. No longer the kid that talks at you for hours about everything. They are onto their own things. Best summer ever. They hardly last.
Aug 21
A final road trip of Summer, the teenager and I, up, out of town, to Hudson, listening to Pete and Woody, taking in the lush beauty of the Catskills, exploring old barns, ruins, a wheat silo on side of the road, jumping out to check out the plants overtaking an old car, a crumbling barn, back over the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, to Mawignack Preserve, hiking, skipping stones, looking for the perfect skipping stones, skipping them along the Catskill Creek in the afternoon light, running past the park — referred to as the “place where two rivers meet” — rendered on canvas by Thomas Cole, of the Hudson River School. Looking at the sun reflecting on the water, we talk about it all, the music, the feeling, magic road trips through time. They ask me to drop them off, to hike to meet a friend, to sleep on a boat on the Hudson. No problem. I watch them hike away, with their pack and sleeping bag, checking in a few times. They found an old deep skull, they tell me, as I find myself on a detour home through Van Courtland Park, in Yonkers, down the Hudson, magic light shining on the water on the way back home...
Aug 22
Mom and I sit outside in the garden listening to the crickets. Do you hear them? She asks me. "The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever" wrote EB White... We watched Julia cook, and Charlotte sew, and laughed about it, taking it all in…
In hospital, out of the hospital, here, there, not here, not there, back here, for the moment, glad for a quiet moment together.
Aug 23
Summer road trip, part two. Hanging with mom in her garden, a message from the teenager found its way to my phone. 'Change of plans, Phoenix and I are camping in katterskill falls trail head, if you want to pick us up there tomorrow! ' Perfect, I reply, enjoying coffee with mom, talking about Alexander the Great and Napoleon and the french revolution. Wake up early the next day, making it back up through nj, up 87 to 32 a to 23, past the crumbling catsskills lounge, the summer hikers, to katterskill falls trail head, hitting the trail, through the majestic forest, back to our fave crumbling farm stand, to lunch at the village dinner in saugerties, where rico, who used to give music lessons on smith street, says hi. And we listen to blaze and dolly and dwight and robert earl keen, and pidgeon pink, and browdie buttons, and moonlight in marin. The dylexia is strong in this one, says the teenager, paraphrasing James Early Jones. We talk about pete and woody, and swam in the hudson, in the delicious water, recalling clearwater, greeting indian point, strolling about the old boats at King Marine Ltd, on 6th St, Verplanck, dreaming about life on the Mississippi, looking at the water, where Train understood:
“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.”
Looking at the water, water is freedom. So are trees. We make our way South, the sun sparking on the hudson, singing roll on columbia, dreaming about, surf movies, goodbyes, greetings, hero’s journeys, living off the grid, thinking about visiting franklin and eleanors in hyde park, on their sweet 16, about past journeys up and down the hudson, still thinking about frankie cosmos, past old cemeteries, getting sad about what happened to blaze foley, saying goodbye to all that, as utah phillips talked about the wobblies and the obu, and the 3o minute general strike, workers taking over the means of production once and for all.... dreams still matter.
“the skies gone out,” sings Bauhaus, a reminder of our trip to see them three years prior in Berlin after the first day of school. It all blurs from there.
“...history is but a hallucination…” says Rexroth, tracing his tale of lost characters in his Autobiographical Novel of his early life up to the mid-1920's,
Walking about “momentary flashes of perfect communion with others”...
He leads us through the hotels and coffee shops, through burlesque bars and strip joints, where girls sway and read poems, through Studds Terkel’s Chicago, the Chicago Dad and I knew, the late night conversations, listening to jazz, drinking coffee long into the night.
I'm gonna tell the story of my life, he tells his kids, telling them a mythology of the city, Chicago, its speakeasies, wide open, readings, taking notes on napkins, writing about Sappho.... "when-we-with-Sappho"... recalling the anarchists and Haymarket martyrs, Emma, the civil war, and the dream of our lives. He’s lost without his mom, estranged and connected, drawing others into the vortex of his life, the poets, elder statesmen, supporter of the beats, Allen Ginsberg, of Gary Snyder, tracing a collective mythology.
It all blows through my mind, Bear and friend asleep in the back after lunch.
Sometimes they don't want to talk.
Dad, they say, putting me off, like Bilbo pushing Gandalf away, Good Day.
Is it a good day or are you telling me to piss off?
The latter.
They nod.
I tell disjointed stories, they tell me, falling asleep.
I think about his story, their story, hiking and sleeping on the trail, all of our stories. Finding their own story, their own praxis.
Seems like just a few days ago that you jumped back in the car, on the way back home from Boston at the beginning of summer.
Now it's August before their sophomore year.
Tracing a similarity or two, a dead grandparent, lost girlfriend, I draw a few comparisons.
No Dad, they say. No.
We chat about Kundera or Napoleon or Josephine or Philip Roth’s series, “The Other Side of Europe”.
What is that, I ask.
Says Roth:
Back home, they play banjo, with falls around the corner.
Bike around the park.
And I finally prepare for class.
Baby C and I hit the beach.
It's not the clear waters of Croatia, but there is nothing like an afternoon at Brighton Beach, doing crosswords, people watching on the boardwalk, reading the ny review of books, the last day before classes start.... watching the shadows, the birds flying about, people swimming, the people strolling in the magic hour ... off to Coney Island ...holy Coney Island....
August 27th
First day of classes fall term, over and out. A whole new day begins. Greg and Emily held court at Barbes. And Damian reads poems on Orchard Street. His poetry collection, The Hood Shall Inherit Its Homes, captivates the room. Joe tells stories about moving here, finding his New York. Clayton expresses concern. Yet reminds us to stay positive. Damian's homesick for a city that no longer exists. Fly talked about street lights, sketching portraits of peops. Just back from Oregon, Willa greets me. And Helene talks about Nico 1988, the trails of summer, the chapters she’s still tracing. Village Works brings us together, through time.
August 28th
The end of summer, baseball games, and concerts, a little chat about love and death, Napoleon and dr zhivago, trauma class today, one student recalls dreaming about not being in jail, waking to the contrary. At the beach, we explore the jokes, gossip, friends, faux pas, cyclones, on down to the end of the line, cyclones win, all these years later, union colleagues a out, brooklyn summer, poetry, democracy on the ropes,.a few fried clams, foul ball and pop flies along the way, it's good to try to make sense of it all with a friend. On the train home Ray recalls Boris' line from love and death:
"What if everyone resorts to violence, and that's the end of the world"..sonja replies,
with the line, "That's the point, Boris. That's the point"...
'get home safe' said a woman asking for money ...
Boris and Sonja went on...
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.
Sonja: Oh don't, Boris, please. Sex without love is an empty experience.
Boris: Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.
Aug 28th
The teenager and I stroll through Brooklyn to drop off their summer reading books. Too Loud a Solitude, the book of the summer, recommended by the drummer of one of the bands they saw last night. We chat about the quaker society of friends and Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, John D'Emilio's biography of Bayard Rustin, their friend’s mom who was one of the original homesteaders at Bullet Space. Read Ours to Lose by Amy Starecheski, her oral history of the squatters here, I suggest. I feel like I wasn’t around enough, I confess, the old cats and the cradle song playing in my head. It was a great summer. Get over it Dad, they tell me, reflecting on friends, working, couch surfing, hiking, sleeping in the woods, sleeping on boats, the joys of diy bike repair, and road trip after road trip through time, our ride home from Boston in May, as the summer was just beginning.. Books returned. Banjo tuned, onward.
They put an “Don’t forget the streets,” harm reduction sticker on my bike.
Looks good Dad.
A few road trips, a bust at Trump Tower and a few strolls through time.
Was it enough? I never know.
It's not simple knowing how much is too much vs not enough.
How to get it right?
We stroll through the Brooklyn afternoon, chatting, looking about, stopping for coffee, and a snack, telling me about their days, a burgeoning interest in the history of the quakers and anthropology, DiY activism and harm reduction, social justice fundraisers at punk shows, straight edge culture, music.
Like Too Loud a Solitude, the novel of the summer they showed me, they’ve found a bit of something out there.
And I get ready for the second class of the day.
In town for a night, James invites me to dinner with Vassar buddies that night.
I ride out to find them after class, chatting with my old buddies for hours.
None of them had any better answers.
We’ve known each other since high school and college, when we were the ones separating from anxious parents.
I recall my Dad’s anguish.
No acknowledgement of what we went through, he told me, with a grimace after the high school graduation party.
Of course it was always there, I thought, looking back, riding home to say goodnight and goodbye to the kid.
Au 29 to 31….
A final summer trip to LA for a reading the next morning, with the alarm clock going off at 430 AM, just a few hours after I lay my head down.
A lot of living to do these days, not enough sleep.
On the way, we hear Mamdani on record to oppose the Williams Pipeline.
LA is bittersweet and wonderful as always (blog forthcoming).
