A lot of the other parents dropped off their kids at
college, Mt Holyoake, Vassar, McGill, posting shots of kids we knew in grade school,
moving into dorm rooms where we once lived, and met people we wrote stories
about.
We had a few more weeks in New York before the little one
moved out West, taking in the bits of the odd hot transition into fall, classes,
meetings, parties, covid tests, friends testing positive even with the vaccine,
more tests. Growing up is never simple. We’d barely figured it out before the little
one came into our lies 18 years ago, forcing up to think fast, look beyond ourselves
and help her with a transition, deprivations, moving into this crazy world, one
stroll through the neighborhood as a time, day by day, fall by fall.
I walked past the Gowanus, where the rezoning seems to be
moving forward, condos planned for a flood plane. At Union Street bridge,
workers stand about, an old building – once a hideaway and kids playground, ripped down by the bulldozers,
secret places disappearing along the waterfront.
An old vacant lot where the kids rode bikes away from
cars, now filled with big plans.
“NY,
NY” wrote
Jack
Hirschman
.
“It’s
big
It’s
ugly
I
hate it
I
love it
I’m
free
O
Talk
to me
Can’t
you hear me
I
can’t leave it
I’ll
do anything for it
It’s
filthy
It’s
so sweet
I
adore it
I’m
staying
I’ll
never leave….”
I
feel the same way, not sure I’ll ever find my way out.
On
I rode to Barbes to see my friends, toasting to the end of summer.
Emily’s
25 years in the city,
Occupy
Anniversary coming up.
Josh
was there.
Look.... he said pointing
to bike carrying a tuba riding
by... ahhhhhh the sites and sounds of Brooklyn
summer.
George
Hirose invited me to a show at Clemente
Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center.
“There will be one last performance of “Once Upon a Time on the
Lower East Side” outdoors this evening, Friday 8/20. it has been a blast
working with this amazing group of artists and puppeteers! Come and check it
out …The play is an homage to immigration, activism, neighborhood community
gardens and local heroes! (including my friend and photographer Corky Lee, RIP)…
as part of the International Puppet Fringe Festival…”
On we walk through the city, visiting places we’ve been over the
18 years between that surprise 2002, a new friend arriving and departing, the
eternal tension Freud understood as the ordeals of intimacy of our lives.
Saturday, we strolled through the park, to the west village to
see Tim, past the Chelsea Hotel after a workout, talking about the luminaries, Stooges
and Iggy, Janis and Leonard, Dad and Dodi who hung there.
Off to Metropolitan Museum to meet mom, exploring the Medici
portraits and the
new-woman-behind-the-camera.
We’ve been dragging them to this place with their grandmother
literally their whole lives, connecting ideas from travels and art history,
aesthetics, books they’re reading, on and on and on.
Its fun to be here with you, said mom, as Caroline and Dodi joined
the teenager and I already there.
Off we strolled to the time of the Medici, questions about
friendship and the Earthly Republic:
“friendship
embraces innumerable ends; turn where you will it is ever at your side” says
Cicero in a portrait, among a circle of poets, painters and sittings, subjects
and objects, painting for portraits, writing
about each other, their stories of the
Lives of the Artists Vassari traced.
All afternoon we looked before a late lunch down the street.
The kids went to Tompkins and we made our way back home, reading
on the roof as the sun went down.
They don’t want us to join.
I was in that part before you were born, I think.
They are finding their own city, showing me things.
I saw the Pink Clouds at El Jardin Paraiso and brought them
stickers.
Now they play at La Plaza Cultural for all their friends, on a
first name basis.
The teenager tells me about Vivian Goldman show in Greenpoint.
This time, she lets me come along.
At the show, Vivien reminds us about those days when you just
had to go with a vibe about a person.
That was what the launderette was all about.
And we danced, snapped a few shots,
Dodi from Brooklyn... and Nora from Queens...
hanging tough in between.
Vivian singing about her BFF and Bestie, the
stories about Ari Up and squatters and friends.
Its an odd thing, watching them grow up into their own people,
finding their own city, their own stories and radio shows and music and movies
and directions, from Brooklyn to Berlin, New York to Westwood.
Increase, reduce… coming and going.
Here and gone, departure and return, Freud interpreted
watching the child saying goodbye to his mother, before she returned.
We all say goodbye.
Kids, Parents, we all do.
I spend as much time as I can reading Parisian Lives,
Deirdre Blair’s memoir of writing about Becket and de Beauvoir….
Beckett was a piece of work, thought the his biographer… “He
refused to dine out at one of his favorite locates, so they ate a simple meal
at Beckett’s apartment, during which he kept repeating, “What’s the sense of
living when all your friends have died?”
What a lament…
You’re not deal until you are dead.
Make new friends.
Maybe that’s the point in the book, says Caroline,
chatting.
Maybe it’s not that easy.
But passing is real, so are new milestones.
And sometimes you never quite feel like that again.
Some friends are lost.
The feelings we had with them never quite come back.
The dreaded first week of school is around the corner.
First class. Ready to go. Trauma, policy, field,
another year online. Pandemic still here.
Lynn and Jen say #safetyfirst #CUNYSafeReturn at a demo at
CUNY central before classes start.
I’d been trying to get done with a draft of my
friendship book.
Finishing this writing, San Francisco poet Jack Hirschman
shuffled off. “Rest in Power Jack Hirschman,” wrote James Tracy. “In the 1990s,
you ... opened my mind to poetry of the political imagination. That was the
language of our friendship that always helped us find comradeship.” Jack used poetry to support us all, reading
at the hearing for David, recalling Brad, passed onto oblivion in Oaxaca.
The obits are always a better read, more
telling than the front page, I think perusing Charlie Watts and Stanley
Aronowitz obits in the same edition.
58 years a Rolling Stone, never missed a show, finally joining Brian:
“This is the story of Brian Jones, he was a
member of the Rolling Stones…”
I walk through the city with the teenager,
looking at this part of Park Slope where she went to middle school, or Karate
or to a show at Judson in the West Village or performed with her band, or went a
roller derby practice in Bushwick, back to Tompkins, or a trip to Veselka, in
awe of the passing of time, from childhood to teenage years to adulthood, 18
years, with a best friend who was there when I said goodbye to Keith Cylar in
2005, walking through Brooklyn Heights, my head spinning and to Florida with us
when her grandmother Regina passed later that fall, and to Long Beach, where we
went to the same school, and nine years later when my dad passed, after visiting
the Chelsea Hotel and eating bagels at Yonah Schimel, dropping off supplies
during the pandemic, walking to Red Hook on Sundays, on and on and on.
It all passes.
In a busy city, its not always easy to find new
friends.
I think about what Beckett thought sitting in Paris,
with dozens of people a phone call away, with no one to call a friend.
Sarah Menefee
didn’t want to wake to the news about Jack’s departure.
“I
slept very late today, as though l knew l would wake up to grievous news.
Between asleep and awake l saw a little mirrored body of water surrounded by
vibrant light lemon yellow. Such a feeling of vibrant life and also peace.
Words fail. It just was. Oh heart that turns into the light at the heart of
light! Oh”
“Father,
don't you see I'm burning?” the dead boy told his father in a dream.
Departures and are common.
So are arrivals and dreams.
Can’t you see I’m burning?
Wings of Desire remind of what happened.
There are angles in the streets of Berlin.
Harry was gone.
That’s how the Third Man, began, with a
funeral.
Looking for a friend who’d disappeared in
Vienna after the war.
Then Orson Welles re appeared.
Harry lives.
The long goodbyes are everywhere.
Hello
Goodbye.
Hello.
