Please don't give....advice!

I hadn't been back to my meditation bench in ages, so this morning, I decided to sit awhile. The bench was difficult to find in the underbrush. 

 

 

While contemplating the clouds, I started thinking about my daughter...

...how great it is to have her home after her first year of college—and yet, I've already wrecked it. I vowed before she arrived, not to give advice, not, unless she asked for it. But there I was the other day, driving around in the car, telling her what she should do, what she should say, and, worst of all, how she should act! The response wasn't good. A nineteen-year-old doesn't want parental advice. How could I have forgotten from my days of avoiding my parents at all cost, just so they wouldn't ask me questions about my life or try to share their feelings? College kids have experienced enough of the world to get along without outside interference. By this age, parents aren't necessary, except to pay the bills and keep the light on at night. It's not a personal thing, I keep telling myself; it's a cruel reality, one I'm having trouble accepting.

~~~

Another cruel reality is the one that's unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm no engineer and I certainly don't know a rat's ass from an off-shore drilling rig, but I've joined the millions of people who are fed-up and angry about BP's response to the oil spill. According to Andrew Revkin, the blogger who writes for "Dot Earth" in the NY Times, it's time for the federal government to step in and push BP aside, to stem the flow of oil. Comments on his blog yesterday ranged from "way to go," to "you don't know what you're talking about," to "it's all Obama's fault," to "no one knows what they're talking about."

 

Pelicans trying to land as oil hits shore (photo credit: media3.washingtonpost.com)

And then there's Tom's p.o.v., which I've been thinking a lot about lately. We were in the back yard looking at his artichokes (you can check them out on Flickr), and talking about BP's failed containment attempts. He pointed way off in the distance to the Griffith Park Observatory, five miles away, about the distance the oil is spewing out of the earth, and said, it would be like aiming for that spot and trying to hit it...under water, impossible to do. 

 Rube Goldberg sausage maker
or
 Drawing of BP animation still that illustrates "Top Kill"

His point: we're deluding ourselves thinking we can drill without triggering a disaster, drilling deep into the earth, cutting into flesh without it bleeding. We've allowed exploration five miles down with no idea of the consequences, no proven solutions if things go wrong, all the while allowing powerful oil companies protection by sweetheart deals and handshakes from regulators and politicians, as reported in the LA Times this morning.

We Angelenos keep driving our cars because we live in a city that can't seem to envision a workable public transportation system— like they have in Europe or in New York— to get us from one side of the city to the other. (Yes, I know the argument for taking the bus, but my job is near the Beverly Center and I can't spend two hours getting there and then two back, even though the poor of this city must, and do, do it, but I can't, I won't, and that's why I keep driving). And the circle remains unbroken, and we keep spinning our wheels and drilling for oil to feed our cars, harming every living thing in its path. 

Memory

 Still from the video, M_E_M_O_R_Y

The act of memory— how it circles around to condemn you, or to lift you up to give meaning to your life— struck me as particularly poignant on my trip back East last month.

For instance,

Tupolev Tu-154, the Soviet-era plane that crashed in Smolensk

Wojciech Seweryn, the Polish artist and community leader from Chicago, joined the ill-fated flight to Russia with the Polish president on April 10, to pay tribute to his officer father who'd been slain by the Soviet secret police in the Katyn Woods in 1940. Wojciech, the artist from Chicago, died only a few miles from where his father, the Polish officer, had been killed.

Which got me thinking about my own memories, memories about my family, about living in New York, about how the act of remembering—or its opposite, the act of forgetting—shapes one's hand. 

What is memory? Is it who we are, or who is remembered?  
And, so, to that, a video about memory:

After New York City... a deep slumber

I'd planned for months to go to NYC, planned every detail, everything I wanted to accomplish, which I did, but regrettably I neglected to make any plans for coming home. Once back, I fell into a deep sleep from which I've had trouble waking. 

Everything in Los Angeles is overwhelmingly bright, all white, dazzling light. I'm hypnotized by the white light.

 white everywhere

I feel like Snow White after taking a bite of the apple (get it, the apple?). The white houses here remind me of Greece, a country I've never been to but wish to visit, although I keep flashing on the recent rioting in the streets. What anarchy! What burning images!

This image of rioting in Greece looks like a scene out of Wagner's opera "The Ring."

Disoriented: feeling lost or confused, especially with regard to direction or position.  

It must be my job. Before NYC I had no problem teaching all week, but now I'm dragging myself to work. How much longer can I teach English to immigrants at night, when they seem not to be learning a thing?

Ehsanolah M., one of my longest running students, is a modern day Job, experiencing one failure after another, yet he keeps on trying. He's a religious man so he'd never believe that the gods are against him, but God keeps tripping him up: Ehsan sets his alarm for 4:30 a.m., but this morning, he tells me, he fell back to sleep and woke too late to get to Shul for morning prayers. He rushes there nonetheless, but misses the last prayer. 

He then trudges back home and finds his car is leaking oil. "The car is no good" he says. He's been saying that for a very long time. He takes it in to get serviced, but by the time he gets home the car's empty of oil again. By 9 a.m. he packs a big black garbage bag full of cheap clothing to sell and takes the bus downtown to L.A.'s garment district, walking for hours up and down Santee Alley, Olympic Blvd, Twelfth Street, Wall and Pico, but no one is buying. He walks and walks for "little benefit," and with his feet hurting, and makes not a farthing. He comes to class exhausted and sits with his head in his hands staring at the page, not knowing how to answer the simplest question. He's been out of work ever since I began teaching, almost two years now—with no money, no prospects, no way to support his family. English is the last thing on his mind.

Ehsanolah M. and his teacher

New York was so thrilling, I could have stayed forever, going to museums, having lunch with friends, writing with my friend M in her beautiful apartment, but this is real life, not as thrilling when you get right down to it.

Poets House

POETS HOUSE

Poets House at Hudson River Park

I want to call my mother—tell her I'm in New York City. Oh, and by the way Mom, there's a Colgate Clock right across the river from the Poets House in lower Manhattan, the exact same clock that sat across from Dad's store (a warehouse actually) in Louisville, KY. My mother would take me there as a child to have lunch with my busy father, where he'd sweep us out the front door and deliver us to Akins Restaurant to have the famously good hot plates of turkey and mashed potatoes. The bridge over the Ohio River, heading towards that clock, was the only route I knew to get out of town, to get away from my parents, the same ones I recall now as I sit down to write. 

 Colgate clock in N.J.

The Colgate Clock is a dot across the river, just north of the Statue of Liberty, which is an even smaller dot through my camera, and across the river too from the Irish Hunger Memorial, which recalls the Irish potato famine of 1845, and those who made their way to America, with Billy Collins calming voice reciting verse over the loud speaker. The Memorial is just down the street from the Poets House (my destination, if I can ever get there), and on the top is a good view of the clock and a kite sailing by.

Irish Hunger Memorial

I don't know why I've been thinking about my mother on this trip, but twice— twice!—I've sat down to write and she's been right there, letting me know I forgot to tell her my plans; in fact, why haven't I called, and why didn't I let her know I was going to New York for a month, where the shopping is fabulous and the knishes oh so good? I sense it's my fault I forgot to call, but then I remember that's all wrong, she died five years ago.

A theory for my mother's presence is that I'm on the East Coast, the port of call for my family. My grandfather and grandmother came through Ellis Island from Poland in 1908, or so I assumed; but when I checked the Ellis Island database for a Jacob Hildebrand, he wasn't listed; even Tom looked last month when he was on Ellis Island. At the Tenement Museum a few days ago, I asked our friendly tour guide, an artist and second generation German immigrant named Jason Eisner, if that was normal, people passing through without being recorded, and he said Jacob should have been there... but he's not.

(By the way, the Tenement Museum opened my eyes to the true poverty immigrants had to endure on their arrival here...not so different from today.)

 

 Friendly tour guide at the Tenement Museum on the lower East Side

Did my grandparents come under an alias, or under my grandmother's maiden name, Shereshevsky? Or did my grandfather take his brother's name, the one who shot off his big toe so he wouldn't have to fight in the Russian Army? Unfortunately, no one in my family has the answer, as no one knows the Polish village where Jacob and Rosa lived or where they landed. It's all speculation on my part that they were here before they headed to Louisville. I sense them on the lower East Side when we tour the tenements, but I don't really know if that's true.

But for argument's sake, let's say they landed here: still how does that explain my mother's presence and wanting to talk to her? Inside the Poets House, which I finally enter after much procrastination, I sit down in the lovely peaceful library, with the beautiful blue couch.

The first book I pull out is a collection of poems by Grace Paley, one of my favorite NY writers. Almost immediately I find this poem, untitled, about Grace missing her mom. My socks are knocked off by the similarity:

   Some days I am lonesome    I want to talk to my mother

   And she isn't home

   Then I ask my father   Where has she been the last twenty years?

   And he answers

   Where do you think you fool as usual?

   She is asleep in Abraham's bosom

   Resting from your incessant provocation

[Let me stop for a moment: I really love this line, how Grace is an ever-present provocation to her brilliant surly father, even in her old age]

continue....

   Exhausted by infinite love of me

   Escaping from the boredom of days shortening to Christmas

   and the pain of days lengthening to Easter

   You know where she is   

   She is at ease in Zion with all the other dead Jews.

This poem gives me hope: maybe my mother is there too. 

But sadly, she's not here in NYC. This city is only for the living— for eating, shitting, making money, loving, walking the children to school, working hard at artistic pursuits, going places on the dysfunctional subway, observing hairstyles and Hasids, enjoying the cold rain, trying to catch a show, going with the flow. 

And sadly for me I'm leaving tomorrow. I will miss this city, so full of life.

Marina Abramovic and the peonies

One of the things I wanted to do while in NYC was see the Serbian performance artist, Marina Abramovic, at MoMA, but when Mekko and I went last Thursday evening, Marina and her crew had taken off for the day. So Monday morning I went again, using a friend's membership card. Good thing too—people were standing in line all the way back to Sixth Ave. I slipped in through the front doors, straight up to the second floor gallery, where Marina sat staring at a bearded man.

Marina Abramovic staring at man; man staring back

Marina's stare was inward, soft and somewhat collapsed, but the bearded man sat upright, trying not to blink. I walked around the gallery, looking at the pair, but after a few minutes, I lost interest; what was I missing? What was I suppose to glean from their stares? I went up to the sixth floor, to the large retrospective of Abramovic's work dating back to the seventies. I hoped I'd find the answer there.

 On the way up, looking down; another participant

On the sixth floor, a gaggle of African American teenagers pushed past me, giggly with delight that they'd soon squeeze by two naked ladies to get into the exhibit (at other times, a man and a woman). But the passageway through those naked bodies was a passage into a much darker space, a space with little air, and no joy, full of images of blood and bloody bones, cutting and instruments for cutting, tasks of brutality and torture. When I ran into the giddy teenagers again they seemed downright depressed, unsmiling. 

In one room, a naked woman sat on a bicycle seat attached high on a wall, her arms and legs extended into the air, with her crotch the only visible contact point (Luminosity, 1997). The artist describes this performance piece, with the "luminous light," as being about the transcendental quality of the human spirit. But for me, it was a scene out of Abu Grahib—more terrifying than transforming. I asked the guard how long the woman would be in that position, but she'd been instructed not to tell; the only thing she'd say was that there were alternating performers throughout the day.

I still didn't get it.

When I left the exhibit I went into the bathroom, where I stood in line transfixed by two young women looking at themselves in the mirror. Now, that was interesting.

bathroom at MoMA




~~~

The day before I had visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens; the sun was out, the air was warm. Russian women walked arm-in-arm, old men held their wives' frail hands, intellectuals talked about the existence of God, children ran around each other dancing under the cherry blossoms. The fragrance of the flowers made it hard to move away from the lilac grove.

At the peony monument, people stood in astonishment at the brilliant colors and different varieties in full bloom, a sensual pleasure that took your breath away.

Tourists almost fell over backwards into the flower beds to get pictures— snap, snap, snap, snap!—everyone tried to drink up the beauty with their cameras. It was impossible to get enough of the day; we were all united under a glorious blue sky, walking in paradise.

Agnus!

I completely forgot about Agnus until I saw the Williamsburg Public Bath House the other day walking down Bedford Ave, and remembered: I used to go to the bath house on the lower East Side, Tenth Street, wasn't it?  So this morning I went to take the baths, the steam, the dry heat, the freezing cold pool of the Russian and Turkish Bath House, built in 1892, the first of its kind in the East Village. Agnus, I was positive, wasn't there any longer, and sure enough new Russian women had taken her place. But they all remembered her, and well, who could forget Agnus? Not quite five-feet, wide as tall, short dark hair and probably a day's growth of beard and [warning: pornographic images forthwith] with the most expansive humongous breasts known to man. Here's how I remember Agnus: 

I'd go to the the baths at least once a month, paying a few kopeks (i.e. ridiculously cheap) for entrance and a massage. I'd start in the Russian room where women sat taking in the heat, at least 120 degrees, then they'd douse themselves with buckets of cold water. I'd work my way steadily from steam room to hot sauna, alternating with dipping into a pool as freezing cold as the Blue Hole of New Mexico. (Although pictures are forbidden, here's one I took from under my robe this morning, avoiding any naked ladies.)

  inside the bath house

After about a half hour of shvitzing, I'd have a massage with Agnus. She'd beat my body with a brush of oak leaves, called Platza, still used today. Agnus' center of gravity was located low to the ground, giving her the strength of a mud wrestler. She'd knead my sore muscles like a loaf of challah. At times I could feel her big floppy breasts bouncing up and down on my back but I thought nothing of it. Back then no one dressed for dinner, if you know what I mean. It's different now, the masseuses wear clothes and some of the patrons wear bathing suits. But for the most part everyone's still pretty relaxed. Eighties punk rockers and Agnus might be gone from the lower East Side scene but the bath house, and its loyal customers, remain. 


After my soak, I walked down Tenth St. through Tompkin's Square Park, from Ave A to B. Since last here, the needles have all been swept away and the homeless uprooted. In their place, young professionals, tulips and squirrels.

East coast black squirrels are very handsome, don't you think?

I finally made it to my lunch date with Cynthia...

 Cynthia at the Cafe Colonial on Houston

Cynthia is one of my oldest friends from our theatre days in New York, when she designed a gigantic lizard tail for a performance piece I did at the Theatre for the New City, which is still there! Cynthia went on to design costumes for big-time movie directors but has returned to working on a smaller scale. Maybe it's true, the more things change the more they stay the same. What does that mean exactly? One gets the feeling in New York, at least, that a fancy facade has been constructed over much of the city, obliterating wide swaths of the original blueprint, which is true, but if you look a little deeper, the authentic spirit of New York is still strong, pumping a creative force that is neither rich nor poor, old or new. Perhaps when you live here permanently, you know the truth of that more than someone like me just passing through.

Lost in Chinatown

The good thing about staying in NYC for longer than a few days is that I get to explore places I've never been before. Take for example Columbus Park, in Chinatown. This little park used to be called Mulberry Bend Park in the 1800s, located in what was known as the Five Points district, where gangs and criminals of all stripes hung out. It was a dangerous place full of treachery to be sure, as Charles Dickens noted, but was also home to a wide mix of people—Chinese, Irish, Italians, Jews—basically, every poor immigrant in the city. I wandered into the park for the first time the other day and came across large groups of men and women playing Chinese chess. French tourists strolled by as if they were taking in the Bois de Boulogne, admiring the trees and gardens; but for me, it was the faces.

chess aficionados

After the park, I wandered across Hester Street, heading east, across the Bowery:

Said the man to nobody in particular, "I'm gonna tell you all about it, so stick with me." 

Across Hester Street, down to Division Street, then back around to Mulberry St, which was full of fruit and smelly fish. Chinatown can be such a dense maze of people, noise and traffic that you can get totally turned around and lost, like the medina in Fez, Morocco, where you need a guide to find your way out. That's how I felt today in Chinatown: Please, someone, point me in the direction of Broadway and Canal!
 
Above Canal, at Kenmare and Mulberry Streets, I saw these three auto mechanics, performing a hacky sack ballet. Don't try this in your garage.