About a year or so I came across a couple of pages of writing on a yellow legal pad, something I must have written in the late 1970's or 1980's while I was staying at my parents' house in Queens for a longer period than the usual weekend visit. Don't remember why. But I was going stir-crazy for sure. That I remember.
Here it is.
 |
| 65-19 78th Street, after an outdoor clean-up, 1952 |
The sky is
pink at night, a lurid color, hinting at some violence happening somewhere, not
so far away. I hear police cars
heading east, south, west, every direction, just not down these particular
streets. Only chance, of
course. “Don’t go out at night,”
he says. “A woman down the street,
she was attacked, and they took her purse.” No saying exactly when this was, or how, or even why. Maybe she’s the only one. Maybe she’s one of thousands. Maybe
rapists and muggers and killers with long knives are crouching behind the few
pathetic bushes that pimple the tiny five by five plots of grass that reside
redundantly before each nearly identical house. Maybe. I don’t
really know. It’s easier just to
stop going out after dark. Except
to the mailbox or to the corner. I
kind of enjoy sort of sneaking out to the mailbox, defying danger, as it were. All those hairy dark men won’t get
me. If they’re there. Which I doubt.
But why push
it. There’s a black world out
there–not just evil people, evil things–but the raw, unbuttoned grotesqueries
of life itself. Sloppy houses,
dirt, unkempt people who are all right otherwise–you never know, give them a
chance, right? Things said and
done that you wouldn’t believe.
Everyday. Things to be
afraid of. All of them. Yes, even nature. Scrape, scrape scrape, each
morning. Neighbors raking leaves
off chipped cement sidewalks. What
a mess. Nature itself, so filthy,
so disorderly. Just a few miles
away, the sea. True, one must travel miles of too narrow streets, traffic
lights, turn onto tightly compressed highways onto other highways that all look
the same, all built too long ago, under-maintained, rutted, with rusted dented
railings that bear the marks of accidents, years of accidents, weedy shoulders
on which reside the deserted wrecks of more recent disasters vandalized
now–each day another tire gone, door hanging. And beyond that, just another couple of miles–I know it’s
out there–the sea breaks on the shore carrying the rumblings of water from far
away to New York City which, to the sea, is just another place. Here, this tiny part, is a complete universe. The smallest one I’ve been in for a
long while.
Keep it
away, keep it away. It must be that there are too many risks–could that be?–letting in the sea, all that
unkempt life. Is that it? Risk of what? I have talked with many people this week, and yet, with
one exception, the world, the rest of it, has not entered this small universe. Women in their sixties and seventies
who can’t drive, never did. While
their husbands were alive they transported these women. The women served their husbands, served good
food I’ve no doubt, agreed with them or went along. (I‘m just guessing on the
evidence, the ready simple phrases, the sighs, “Well, that’s just the way it
was,” which passes for thought.)
Another phrase, about the world “What can you do?” No choice, you
see. One cannot hope to change
anything, much less one’s own self.
Her husband and mother to care for, for nearly fifty years. He worked, she cared for both. In a tiny house–another in one of those
endless rows. Finally, finally,
because it was a strain, they both died, and she was now free to roam the world
(and she travels mightily, even to Russia, but it doesn’t show) and move to an
even tinier place. Big sigh. Acceptance. But wait. She
has a friend. (I hear this all from my mother. Is the story screened at all, I wonder?) Her friend, frail and old now, was
building a boat, a goddamned cabin cruiser, in the basement of her tiny
home. Yes, really. He began it years ago when he was in
better health, and has had to let up when he grew too weak to lay wood,
beautiful wood, carefully smoothed and sanded and fitted. But surely here is a romance, a story
of yearning and hope and desire and beauty. That’s what I think, but that’s not how it is told. He just stopped, you see, and now they
have to get rid of it. (Will it
fit through the door? Can it get
to the sea?) Maybe he built it out
of instinct. Maybe he had nothing
better to do. Like a weaver bird knitting
its delicate nest–what else could it do?
The right
thing to do, of course, is to have a nice house, something well kept up, you
know, always dusted, always neat, good solid food, not too spicy (spicyness
allows that unwashed world to enter), nothing extreme, muted colors are safest
but bright ones would be all right if the house was really nice and the car
large, comfortable (no stick shifts) and clean. And the husband in a good job (doesn’t matter what kind, that
won’t be discussed) and the wife (not me!) a good housewife, nothing
extreme. No job for the housewife,
but if there is one, best it have a low profile. Of course it won’t be discussed. Except to say, “How’s it going? Is it all right?”
“Yes, it’s all right.”
“Good, good.”
One can get
by here with very few words. “Look at that. They never clean it up. Even in the winter.
The snow. They don’t
shovel. It’s a mess.” (Fall leaves cover a brief skirt of a
yard, the sidewalk, a car.) “Oh,
look, it’s really beautiful today.
I wish it wouldn’t get cold.
Look at the color on the trees.”
(Eroded shades of dark red, an occasional yellow, mostly brownish
trees–pollution-resistant oaks–lining the highway.)
Those aren’t
the few words, just some that come to mind when I think about the sea, such a
few short miles away…
The words to
get by on have to do with food.
What shall we eat today, how should we make it, where to we need to buy
it. It’s bought European style, a
bit here, a bit there, and takes an enormous amount of time. It is the main event. It doesn’t allow for other highly
theoretical main events. What
could they be? No time to see the
ocean until at least perhaps Thursday of next week, if there’s no traffic, if
the weather’s nice, if, if. Keep away a possibly frightening search for other occupations. (What else is there to do? In such a city?)
If there’s
rain, close the windows, keep inside.
If snow, move it away. Sun,
stay in the shade. Tick, tick, tick.
Don’t
analyze. No need to question. Ask why? Why? Avoid unpleasantness. “You know how it is.” “That’s the way it is.” “Well, what can you do.” “That’s nice.” “It’s not the way it used to be.” “The politicians, they’re all the
same. What difference does it
make?” “Everybody’s lazy, they
don’t care.” “They’re only out for
a buck.” “People don’t keep things
up like they used to.” “Well, I
don’t know.”
Sigh.
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