Originally posted 11.01.2005

Here we have the first day of my favorite month, my very dear grey, my lovely drear, which I begin by loving first for what it isn’t. It isn’t summer, lush and overblown and bright. And it isn’t for summer people, who are probably the majority—all those who like walking on the beach and getting caught in the rain. (I too like getting caught in the rain, but in the city, in an alley, with an umbrella. A big one. Preferably while watching rats.) It isn’t for grilling out or bike rides or lingering in a crowd.

The pitch and vibration of November are perfect for someone of darkling temperament: July is too bright, April too soggy, and February has little going for it save being short. But what November lacks in open-faced friendliness, it more than makes up for in sensuality.

I love November’s honest light, more true and less of an assault than summer’s burning gold, revealing late-autumn’s topaz hues in leaf-shed clarity. The leaves will fall, some driven by rain, others merely by their natural end, and many will leave behind imprints, ghostly photo-fossils in memento mori. This month the sky will descend, heavy with migrating birds, smoky and thick at the horizon. It smells of wood fires and seed pods—the same ones we’ll shake and rattle during the Bacchanalian watermelon dance six months from now—and of cold rain, dusty sweet decay, and first snow. What crosses the tongue as we toe into winter are tastes that make the rest of the year worth it: amber scotches, sherry, and cognac; black coffee and Russian caravan; acorn squash and sweet potatoes: all things deeply orange and yellow, even the greens tingeing purple. And it’s the best month to thank yourself for giving up vegetarianism in one word: roasts.

But what’s best is the way November touches skin, seeping in through plackets and cuffs, up hems and sleeves, through even the thickest thatch of hair to the scalp. It touches softly, without insistence, a trial kiss. Like love from a stranger, a polite benevolence that asks for no return.

Originally posted 10.26.2005

Last night, sorely in need of a trim, I put my head once again in the hands of my capable hair lady, Holly, who consistently pulls off a feat no other New York hairdresser has managed to accomplish: cut my hair without making me cry.

Once upon a time, I put great faith in the transformative promise of a good cut. As a child, I loved having my hair cut, the raggedy ends held up in a comb and trimmed even, then released to flop wetly against my cheek. Loved watching other people’s haircuts, too, sitting rapt while the stylist deftly manipulated some lady’s willful curls into a smooth pageboy. After a particularly important cut I received in 8th grade (the one that took me from girl-next-door with braces to girl-next-door with hip, slightly edgy for La Crosse, haircut), I started to view all women as falling into two groups: those whose hair worked, and those whose lives would be changed if they would just give up on that pathetic, stringy, lank collection of dead cells parted down the middle and clasped back in cheap barrettes doing absolutely nothing for their long faces except to make them look even more horsey and sallow.

Hard to believe that was me. The last time I gave anyone with scissors permission to do anything they wanted (and meant it) was, oh, letsee here, 1992? And I think it was more along the lines of, ‘this perm didn’t work. Let’s cut it off and start over.’ And earlier than that, in the spring of 1989, I went from waist-length to chin-length without a whimper. With a smile, even.

But now, when I slide into a new chair, face the hairdresser in the mirror, and say, ‘if I were to give you carte blanche with those shears, what would you do?’ and they inevitably tilted their heads and squint and place their hands, palms down, about two inches below my shoulders and say, ‘first we’d bring it up to here and then, hmm, maybe some piece-y bits around the face…’. Nope. You lost me at ‘up to here.’

It’s ridiculous, this stuff. It gets trapped in subway doors (really), car windows (yes indeed) and my fly (don’t ask). It clogs drains. Some days it veers dangerously into Bradyland; others, Laura Ingallsworld. Also, I’m troubled by the suspicion that without it I’d be invisible. Sexless. To wit: it doesn’t matter what else I’m wearing (glasses, saddle shoes, sweatpants), if the hair is down, I’ll solicit male attention whether I want it or not. The reverse is also true: stilettos with fishnets, red lipstick, a top that borders on bondage wear…and a chignon. Nothing. Not even eye contact. The bums don’t even ask me for change. So at some level I’d like to defy convention and slice it off. See what happens. See if the rest of me carries any weight at all.

But I’m a little too far gone for that. About two years ago a sweet friend bought me an expensive cut in a chic midtown salon. For what seemed an eternity this handsome man with an impenetrable accent fussed and straightened and snipped and adjusted…. And at the end my hair was shiny. It was swingy. It was…shorter on one side. After the adjustment at least three inches (seven months’ growth, people) were gone. I did manage to get to the subway before crying. At least credit me that.

So now I’ve got Holly. She’s Indian and she knows long hair. I went to her two years ago for eyebrow threading (yes, I need it; I’ll show you a picture of my brother if you want to know why). She’s kind of bossy and declarative and rather possessive (‘You pluck your eyebrows? Not any more. They belong to me now you do not touch them’), which is oddly welcome in this life where it seems like I’m responsible for making up the rules for almost everything I do.

Often, when she’s done trimming or coloring my hair, she’ll play with it. But unlike Suzy, my favorite hairdresser from the Madison days, who used me as a model to try out complicated, long-hair styles she saw at trade shows (“this one was used in ‘The Titanic’”), Holly makes me feel like a younger cousin sitting, perhaps, at the kitchen table, picking at a plate of broken papadam.

She likes braids, specifically, and while she usually gives me one more-or-less sophisticated plait ending in a ringlet, last night she twisted the mess into two, starting at the temple. It was cute, sort of—I looked like a 10-year-old schoolgirl with laugh lines. As she arranged the braids over my shoulders, she caught my eye in the mirror and grinned. “I think we have come to a very com-for-ta-ble place in our relationship,” she said, in her delightfully clear and rapid accent. Dry-eyed, I nodded. I couldn’t agree with her more.

Originally posted 10.19.2005

Last night I found such incredible bliss, an ecstatic mix of simple delights that form a happiness so deeply satisfying I can barely imagine anything better. Perhaps people who delight in their children experience something even brighter, but I’ll have to leave that open for guessing.

All together in one spot: people I adore, live music to listen to and to play, a taste of good food, sip of good wine, the visual cheer of a candlelit bistro with windows open to a spirited street, reaquaintence with friends not forgotten (Izzy! Sterling!), enthusiastic praise from formidable musicians, and the promise of more to come.

This happens more and more often to me these days, as the financial freedom granted by a steady job has made me, well, better company. That is, I can afford the H3, the glass of wine, and I no longer have to field the question: how is the job search going? (Right up there with: been playing out much? Still seeing that guy?)

But even this, well, maybe it’s just been so long in coming. I cannot take such joy for granted, and so there is always a slice of me standing outside myself, watching the good time and whispering in my ear: this will never happen again. Not this way. Not these people. Never again this moment.

As though I’m just a visitor even in my own life, renting this body, borrowing these friends, trying this town on for size, and that I’ll have to go. And I, who used to be the last to leave the on-in or the jam, who would linger after races, or stay to close the bar, do just that: go. I have to get up early, I have to run…or maybe it’s something else.

Toeing the edge of joy, perhaps, I’m just a little afraid to do more than test the water, for fear of finding that my trial membership has expired, my visa run out, my lease revoked. And I wake hours before I need to, wondering what it takes to truely believe that any of this is mine, and wishing I could filter the last line of this poem from the 3am synapse loop.

— from The Traveler Has Regrets, GS Fraser

Night with its many stars

Can warn travelers

There’s only time to kill

And nothing much to say:

But the blue lights on the hill,

The white lights in the bay

Told us the meal was laid

And that the bed was made

And that we could not stay.

Originally posted 10.08.2005

Excerpt from an interview with an orthopedic trauma surgeon who worked on a mobile hospital unit treating victims of the hurricanes.

“This is my read on things: if you’re a law abiding citizen and you need to work within the confines of established rules, you shouldn’t be there the first two weeks, because there are no rules. There’s no electricity, there’s no food, there’s no water, there’re no showers. In the first wave of deployment you need to pick up the people who can work problems, who can come up with innovative ways to solve problems and get things done, and I think that we had a lot of those people in the first two weeks. I was amazed by the innovation.

“The first night we were staying at the hospital, there was no light. We were in a Kmart parking lot and there were dead bodies on the Kmart roof and there were dead bodies inside the strip mall buildings. There’d been a 35-foot tidal surge where we were, so everything was under water. So one of our paramedics combined with one of these local evacuees who was living in a tent in the parking lot to recognize that we had generators, and there were these light poles that never did go under water, because they were high enough, but they just weren’t working because there was no city electricity. So they opened up the light poles, disconnected the power lines that weren’t working and connected the generators and turned them on. Then we had the only area in Waveland that had light, and that was within three hours. So we could then work at night at the hospital. And that was just somebody thinking smart and out of the box that allowed that to happen. We probably violated all kinds of rules, but who cares.”

Originally posted 09.30.2005

I blew off my run this morning. It would have been eight miles, probably incorporating two-thirds of the clockwise park loop and a swing around the cemetery, dawn only beginning to break in the last few miles. But I stayed in bed, in the comfort of soft cotton sweatpants and a fuzzy sweater, smooth sheets, down pillows.

Crazy, crazy girl.

It felt like taking care of myself, this counter to what most people consider productive self-care. Even worse, I skipped breakfast. No cold yogurt with frozen blueberries, chopped walnuts, a handful of granola. Just coffee in a teacup, brewed from a wasp-waisted mocha pot, four ounces, five, black as death and slightly chewy.

My little rebellion. How I’d rather live, so minimalistically. Less output, less intake. All that shopping and chopping and cooking, the vegetables and proteins and grains. It’s exhausting. And all to support one superfluous activity, marathon training. All those calories burned and I still can’t allow a scone for breakfast. So what’s the point?

I remember the bliss of that trip seven years ago, my suspension from reality, 10 days in Edinburgh during which I subsisted on a daily egg, an orange, a half-pint of Guinness, and whatever handful else. And I walked and slept. It was a regression, of course, but tempting in recollection; a deviation from the immoderation that now defines me. Always this battle between the type A and the type Zzzz.

My running shoes are in a bag at my feet, and I’ll probably attempt to make up the run late-afternoon when I’m uptown picking up the race packet for a half-marathon I don’t want to do. And the hunger will never really flood my stomach, but will only distract my head so that I nibble and nosh on whatever’s close at hand, never really satisfying. Nowhere near that egg, that orange, and that half-pint of Guinness.

Originally posted 09.29.2005

Stella is a name that used to conjure up certain images: the tragic-romantic Stella Kowalski; Stella by Starlight. Short for Estelle, who has a bit of a mustache problem and is somebody’s great-aunt, Stella I always pictured as solid, but definitely girlish, the object of someone’s long-time affection.

But three years ago I moved to Brooklyn and Stella became the wall of stubbornness between me and the execution of basic household maintenance. The hand that holds the phone that calls the plumber belongs to this woman, 10 days older than water, short but vast, who lives on the third floor and climbs the stairs with a three-pronged cane.

My heart goes out to the old woman. She has suffered tremendous losses in her life and she’s doing a job she shouldn’t have to do any more: tending to an old building as falling apart as she is. But why, when one of her favorite tenants has a complaint, must she become part of it?

Two days after I accepted the fact that the kitchen sink would never empty itself again, despite heavy doses of caustic treatment, I return from work to find the sink still plugged, no note or message from Stella or the plumber. She answers on the third ring and, before I reiterate the problem, says she wants to look at it.

I’m familiar with her M.O. No matter what the damage is, Stella must investigate and attempt a repair herself. So she painstakingly pulls herself up the last flight of stairs, lumbers into my kitchen, and declares the drain not a problem. “The water will go down dear. It just takes a while.” When I tell her that the water has been there overnight, she grasps the long plastic chopstick at sink side and desultorily pokes it into the drain. After a few more minutes of peering into the sink, like a cat at a mouse hole, she admits defeat and says she’ll call a plumber. A real one.

This is kind of a surprise, because Stella will usually call in a bevy of non-pros, who usually make the problem worse (and more expensive), before enlisting an expert. I wish I had a dime for everyone who tried to fix our toilet last year. Likewise, I wouldn’t mind financial compensation for every day that we had no electricity in the living room two years ago, or for every winter’s day we went without heat or hot water. “Just put on a sweater,” she says. “Spring will be here soon.”

On her way out, I show Stella the other problem: the pull chain for the bathroom’s sole light fixture no longer pulls. “Michael will be back in a couple of weeks,” she says, referring to the exasperated young handyman who lives, about three weeks out of the year, on the ground floor. (The rest of the time, he lives in Rome, where Stella can’t call him.)

“That’s really not acceptable Stella,” I say. “We have to turn it on and off by tightening or loosening the bulb. We can’t put the shade back up.”

“Michael can fix it,” she says, affecting selective deafness. “He’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

Originally posted 09.27.2005

After my last post, I haven't known what to write. Nothing seems that important in light of the devastation of the Gulf; this former resident of a northern Mississippi state is suffering some sort of survivor’s guilt. I sent money. Discussed taking a paid leave to volunteer down there, though I don’t know what I could do.

But we get on with it, right? My obsession with online newspaper accounts of the flood has ebbed; my brain is no longer 80% New Orleans-centric. (Note: even before the flood, that city occupied room, a lot of it, for years. Any given day, at least 15% of my being is listening for a brass band, my skin remembering the bloom of humidity in late-spring Louisiana.)

I’m more than a month into my job now. Feeling at turns completely useless and wondering whatever the hell did they do without me. I’ve been at peak mileage for marathon training that same length of time and I’m living in what I can only guess to be an athlete’s body. Really. Not just thin, not just fit. It’s all tough and resiliant. The calves seem like someone else’s.

There was a man in my life, but there isn’t any more. He wanted too much too soon, in startling contrast with the one before him, who wanted less than I could possibly not give. I do feel like the gods of romance are having their fun with me, and would appreciate them to knock it off. They sent me Mr. De Boer 13 years ago; haven’t I paid my dues already?

Ah, and the music. I’m giving it far less than I want, but it’s still working out. It’s really starting to flow, to be an extension of me. I can do it now when I’m tired. There’s a strength that didn’t used to be.

So. Enough about me. How are y’all? Leave a comment (unless you’re the spambot that attaches links to porn sites, in which case, please desist) and let me know how you’re doing. I have no idea who visits this blog these days.

Originally posted 09.05.2005

The first time I rode a bike through Treme, a light spray of pebbles struck my backside. I looked over my shoulder and saw a group of children standing in the street, empty handed, watching me. They weren’t menacing, but they weren’t laughing either; the message was clear: I wasn’t just a tourist, but a trespasser, and I wasn’t welcome.

The New Orleans Jazz and Cultural Heritage Festival was the lure that had drawn me, but just as I often find I prefer the cookie to its eponymous chocolate chips, so I found the city, and found more of it every year. This past year in particular, as a more serious distance runner, each morning covering greater swaths of city and park areas, moving outward in a concentric circle from my lodgings. Through the Quarter, up and down the river walk, the downtown, along Esplanade, weaving in and out of side streets at their odd angles off the main thoroughfare. Even through Treme, where it was too early for rock-tossing children, and the men standing on the corners at 6:30 paid me little mind. I started getting to the fest grounds later and leaving earlier, spending time alone outside of the weekend, searching for and finding quiet spots, my own private New Orleans.

One early evening, I treated myself to a glass of wine at a bar on Rampart Street, around the corner from Gentry House on St. Ann’s (the street from which, as you head out of the Quarter, you see the arch of Armstrong Park in a bit of an optical illusion, as though it brandished the street itself). The bartender was a pretty young woman with a big smile, all “welcome to New Orleans, is this your first visit?” and a walking calendar of events for attractions that might interest me: music and barbecues, all-day line-up and all you can eat.

I guess it was obvious, despite my desire to either belong completely or to be a fly on the wall, that I was still a visitor. A tourist: viewer, listener, voyeur. There to take pictures, spend money, support the economy. I was certainly happy enough to engage when appropriate, to rent my bike from French Quarter Bikes; to pack myself off to the Music Factory for a little Astral Project, or my yearly reunion with Mr. Bohren; pick up a coupon for a $1 Abita at Ol’ Toone’s; my annual coffee and beignet at Café du Monde, despite my dislike of chicory.

I don’t know much about how my friends there are faring, except that they’re alive. Some fled the city; others stayed behind and will probably be evacuated. I am utterly heartbroken over the devastation wrought by this disaster, admittedly more so than I would be if I weren’t so emotionally attached to that strange and beautiful city. Having witnessed the poverty there and the vulnerability of the infrastructure of many neighborhoods, I can’t imagine what will be left standing.

I also can’t imagine the impact that this catastrophe will have on the music that is so strongly identified with that part of the country, so uniquely American and so important to our cultural identity. New Orleans and the surrounding areas are the strongholds of Cajun and Zydeco, cornerstones of southern roots music, not to mention the area’s unique brand of R&B and its ongoing jazz tradition. We’ve learned that both Fats Domino and Irma Thomas have turned up, and I found through his Web site that Spencer and family fled to Oklahoma. But it will be some time before we know the status of more obscure musicians. And there will be those we’ll never know.

I feel tremendously fortunate to have seen New Orleans the way it was, and to have had the chance to fall in love with it as I did. I’m worried about my people there, and about the integrity of that historical town. But there’s something more, perhaps deeply selfish, that pulls my heart apart. I’m a creature of habit, even on vacation, always searching for the home I can’t quite find. One of the little paths I’ve worn has been swept away, and I don’t know what I’ll do without it.

Originally posted 08.07.2005

Todd and I met up Thursday night to hear a free concert at Castle Clinton: McCoy Tyner and his trio. I was afraid this might be like every other attempt we’ve made to see each other this summer, the last minute call, lack of direction, and ultimate failure in meeting. The, I was there, where were you? outcome. Especially since I couldn’t remember exactly where Castle Clinton is, as I can never find anything in a park, and didn’t know if he was there already, or on his way, or stuck in traffic, or parked in Jersey City and waiting for the PATH. And he doesn’t have a cell phone.

But we managed to find each other and were among the last few people in, finding standing room only at the back, where the sound was muddy and the audience a lower caliber of jazz listener. The ones who talk a lot and line up their beer cans. But free is free, and McCoy Tyner is McCoy Tyner, with those fourths and modes. Some of my favorite stuff in jazz, right there, even without a violinist.

Afterwards, we sat on a bench outside the castle and caught up. His mom and sister and nieces are on a cruise, which he feels his mom was bullied into. She doesn’t want to go on a ridiculously big boat and eat her way through a 10-day vacation under the Caribbean glare. But the rest of the family doesn’t see it that way: who doesn’t like a cruise? It’s for her own good.

He’s lost weight since the near heart attack. “You think?” he asks? “Oh yeah you have,” I said, looking at his belly. Or where it used to be. “Aren’t your pants falling off?” He admits they’ve gotten loose. Salads are the center of his diet now. And his mom gave him a Foreman grill, and Nancy gave him a seasoning rub and chutneys she made in her kitchen. Lots of people checking up on him, making sure he’s got the right things around to eat. The way women take care of men, sons who left home long ago, bachelor friends on their own.

We watched the fountain outside the castle. It’s flush with the ground and consists of water jets in a pattern that spurt and collapse at various levels. It’s programmed into a little show, and if you watch long enough you know what’s coming, what’s the pattern. It’s clearly designed to encourage interaction, and it succeeds. Children dart in and out of the jets, soaked and giggling; lovers smooch over the bubbling water.

I make a motion to leave and he says, “not until you run through the fountain.” A dare? He knows I have no sense of play. No kids in my life, no dogs, I’m out of practice. I can run across fields, up and down hills, over fences, calling on-on all the way, but actual frolicking is not part of my lifestyle. Still, I feel I’ve been challenged to show my sense of humor. And the fountain is inviting. So I pull off my sandals, bundle up my skirt, and dash into fountain just as the jets collapse. A few of them burst upward at apparently random intervals, but not near me, and after a couple of minutes walking around dry from the ankles up, I return to Todd’s side at the bench.

“I guess it saw you coming,” he said.

Originally posted 01.17.2005

The first night back, I sleep a solid eight hours tucked between the cool, silky cotton sheets on my childhood bed, the low-throttled window fan kicking in a sweet-smelling midsummer breeze. No Flatbush sirens, no whine from the Blockbuster air conditioner, no ambient city light, no wonder I sleep so well.

I make arrangements with my dad over breakfast to walk him home from his office at lunchtime. Since his retirement this spring, he’s had to give up his own office where he’s written and counseled students and graded papers for some 35 years, but the university set aside space for him to write in the corner of a small library.

So, what is it with men and directionals? “Walk in the front doors,” he says, “and take the elevator to the third floor.” So far, so good. “Then head west toward the Minnesota bluffs.”

Head west toward the Minnesota bluffs. See, if it were me, I’d say turn right and walk down the hall, but there’s something admittedly intrepid about heading toward the great rock formations of a river valley. Or even just the river itself, as though I were tracking game along its banks, or searching for the wreckage of the War Eagle (a steam boat that went down in 1870 after an unusually long run of 16 years). But when you step off an elevator inside an office building, it’s pretty hard to determine west from a hole in the ground, so I just turned right and walked down the hall until I found him.

It’s not a bad setup. He’s got a desk for his laptop and a side-table for his materials and two speakers from the late 60s that host one photo apiece: the black and white profile fiddler Rick shot of me at a bluegrass jam, fiddling (natch), and my brother’s high school senior picture, a.k.a., the last-known decent picture taken of Ethan.

The problem is the library itself. Or the content therein. It was set up by dad’s colleague Bendickson, and all the materials have to do with morbidity. Funeral rites throughout the ages. Drug addiction and death. Suicide as a hobby. No one has stopped into this library in the two months since dad’s been set up there, and it seems unlikely to me that anyone ever will.

Not a healthy place for a man who is presently wallowing in woes of the flesh. The cancer, he says, is the least of his concerns, though I don’t know if I buy that. What’s really got him fussed up is the blood pressure, the insomnia, and the back pain, which has him in anguish. The way he describes it, as we leave the building (and head southeast, toward 20th street) is that his spine, particularly the lower lumbar area, is disintegrating. Collapsing. This makes no sense to me. He doesn’t have osteoporosis or any degenerative disease, and it seems to me if your spine were crumbling you’d be in a wheelchair. But that’s what he says, and I have no doubt that, whatever the actual condition, he’s in a lot of pain.

He’s been falling apart physically for years. The accumulation of daily bad habits and overwork: too much alcohol, punishing workouts, no social network, unresolved heartaches and regrets. He used to run 8 miles a day, sometimes alternating with a one-mile swim. As the running became problematic, this gave way to long bike rides. Nothing wrong with being physically active, but I don’t know if he ever enjoyed it. It was more penance than pleasure or poetry. Now he can walk a little bit.

“It’s not much, but this walk, to and from the office, twice a day, that’s pretty good, isn’t it?” he asks me as we amble along 18th street. He has three different routes, he tells me, to keep it interesting. And this street, still paved in brick, is his favorite. One-way, the walk is maybe 2/3 of a mile. It’s better than nothing, as exercise goes, but not by much. “Can you walk any faster?” I ask, “get your heart rate up a little?” But he says it hurts too much when he pushes the pace.

“I wish I’d been more sympathetic to my mom,” he said. “I thought she was just being lazy, the way she wouldn’t leave her house to get any exercise. Or do anything. But she never really let on how bad it was. Stoic.”

Yeah, stoic. She pickled herself pretty thoroughly in stoicism and Scotch.

This condition, he tells me, is hereditary. As is the blood pressure. (And the pickling?) I can’t quite believe this could be my future. That my body, so resilient and adaptable, so straight and pain-free, will ever bear more than the weight of battered vanity. At 36, I run better and faster than ever, have more dexterity and strength in my hands, and less pain in my body than I did ten years ago. Is this descent inevitable? Will my time on top of the mountain be so brief?

He talks about trying to let go of the desire for expertise in some field, to be the foremost scholar on something, because there will always be someone ahead of him, no matter what topic, even the political development of Latin America, which he feels is woefully under-studied and misunderstood. “Because, you see, you want to leave a legacy of your time here,” he says.

I know. I’m his daughter. “The imposter complex,” I tell him. “The things I’m good at feel too easy, like I’m not trying hard enough, or going deep enough, or understanding thoroughly enough. But if we all felt that way, nothing would ever get done. And no one would be able to drive a car.”

I tell him that, although he may not have nailed down one particular area in a way that satisfies his legacy lust, the breadth and interconnectedness of his knowledge (from two decades of reading the Economist, he says), make him my favorite authority on almost everything. “When people ask me what you do, well, “anthropologist” just doesn’t work. It seems too small a discipline to incorporate all of what I think you are: economist, historian, political scientist, scholar.”

This description lifts his cloud for a little while, and maybe he was able to see himself through my eyes, which, though only recently 20/20 in the literal sense, have always seen the world around me as honestly and diplomatically as possible. This he has known of me all my life.