Broken Windows and Silver Doorknobs

Bad neighborhood. Sketchy. Rough area. Borderline. Ghetto. Have you heard any of these descriptions, however offensive they may strike you? Have you heard either more negative terms or their euphemistic replacements?

Come, take a walk with me.

No. Right now. Don't be afraid.

Observe this block. Schuyler Street. Take in the parade of two-story, two-family houses, built in the 1920s and '30s. Lawns manicured, adorned with daffodils, mulch, shrubs, trees. No litter. Structures not thirsting for paint or carpentry. Across the street, much the same: different architectural styles, smaller, more modest. Up the block, historic Myrtle Hill Cemetery. Graves dating to the 1800s, including that of a Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Several blocks distant, over on Milton Avenue, a house overrun by fallen maple limbs and uncut grass, by weeds, a house choked by its longtime neglect, its metal fence interweaved by sprawling hedge branches, an empty pack of Newport 100s, a discarded Brisk ice tea, a crumpled invoice for car repair, a lone latex glove. An official notice of condemnation posted on a window and door. Blue recycle bins, tires, broken trikes, and split-open trash bags on Herkimer and Emerson. And up the hill, on Pharis Street, overlooking city and suburbs, a pristine lawn with a sign warning against having your dog use the lawn as a private bathroom, in front of a pristine Arts and Crafts bungalow freshly painted yellow, brown, and black, with a shock of red on the door.

Care and neglect coexisting. Pride and privation. Gain and loss. A fabric of multicolored threads and textures, sewn and patched, stitched and shored up. Some more than others, some less, some not at all.

Let's walk some more, keep pace, stretch your stride, down the hill, toward the creek. Oh, you'd rather not, this is a "bad neighborhood"? Be brave. Suck it up. Trust me. Really.

True, that broken, rusted pickup in the driveway looks unsavory, so does the mosaic of tossed Burger King wrappers and soda cups. An eyesore. It makes my eyes sore.

But look across the street, that Victorian painted lady, emerald and cream with surprises of vermilion. Do you see its new siding, every storm window sparkling new, the shiny metal roof? The rebuilt porch? That house could pass for brand-new if you didn't know better.

I am sure this is obvious, but I can't help noting it: we are not dodging bullets, street-corner hustlers do not catch our eye, wondering if we covet their gaze and proffered wares.

Form your own conclusions, as you will. 

In my Age of Coronavirus walks, the gods and goddesses of surprise have been my tour guides.

Surprise, surprise.

If we look for broken windows, they appear. If we search for silver doorknobs, we find them.

p.s. Ever hear the expression "my mind is a bad neighborhood"? (It's popular in wellness and recovery circles and can possibly be traced to an Anne Lamott quotation, but its provenance is uncertain.) As with the physical neighborhoods described above, be careful what you look for. As Leonard Cohen suggested, "look among the garbage and the flowers." You never know what you will find.

Dog Days

After the deed was done or maybe before: she mused "you're like my dog" an elegy a loving postcard mailed to me sprawled there summery spent beside her as she sketched her affection toward Rusty or was it Sandy maybe Rex his loyalty love obedience and companionship so I edged into sleep an afternoon nap against her arm her leg her side as she read, her Rolex off, her diamond stud earrings on the nightstand, cues for unshackling as a prelude to unbridled intimacy. So I gathered I knew what she meant by the canine compliment. I was fine with it not a slight not a condescension but a treasured tableau in her memory's slide show and now mine as well fast forward a decade plus and Doug is dying, everybody knew it would be the last day, a Friday, after Debby had told me the previous Sunday "get up there, he's not coming home, he wants to ask you something," now his last, and my last "goodbye, I love you." Doug in his hospital bed looked at me as I brimmed into tears and he said "it's all right it'll be all right" then he tousled my hair he ruffled the hair on my head as he would have to Divitt the same dog who nearly bit my arm off on the night of Bush v. Gore in 2000 because I grabbed his bone, Divitt, a perfect name echoing the divots of every weekend's rounds of golf, a so-called sport I never played, with Doug or anyone else. I stared into your eyes and I knew it was okay and would be after and forevermore. You asked me to "read something" at a memorial and who knew that request would be such a gift, such a gem, because we never so much as once even swung a golf club together, unlike all those other partners on the fairways and greens who I figured knew you more and deeper didn't they, so why me? Why ask me of all people sort of like what they say about Christ and the disciples he picked why me they all presumably said. Such a revelation, the first of that year, 2005, the discovery of death's secret surprise, death's wink and a nod, the magician's rabbit out of the black upside down top hat. Richard, speaking of golf, six months later, November, in Florida, "let's go hit some, go to the driving range," straw hats, blazing sun, gently kindly "hold your hands this way, yes no that's it, careful, slower, no that's fine" almost hit golfers in the nearby rough but that CLICK! oh God! the sound of it the jolt in the hands resonating echoing into the arms the soul. Richard my brother, we never said half brother, too weak too tired to swing, sitting on the bench, the blistering blaze of light, its merciless scorch. And this was the slide in the carousel, the slide show, freeze-framed, after his death, the ferry to the yonder shore, this the wallet-sized image, the frame of future sentiment and loss, your plantation straw hat the artifact of a Monday afternoon, the farewell in the dark Tuesday morning, you in your bed, did I say good bye or I love you, probably not, though we both knew, to find out later your childhood prayerbook and rosary beads were there under your pillow. Dogstar pointed tooth hair of the dog long in the tooth my life as a dog doggerel mongrel sobs and all that. Then, last year, Maggie put down, across the boulevard from where I sit, tapping keys in the battleship dun afternoon, her eye left open, where did she go, so quickly, invisibly, effortlessly, the hideous simplicity the reckless rudeness of death, to every man woman child dog or leaf, you me and everyone and everything else. I went into my car in the parking lot of the animal hospital. Hospital. Inhospitable Last Exit. A rainy Friday. I wept against the steering wheel. How can I ever leave this parking lot. What can I do. Where can I go. What do I do now. Where's that sought surprise. Under the Tuscan sun, the Syracuse rain.
 

hey, sir!

Walking to the Boulangerie bistro by the coffee shop, I was in a hungry hurry. (The name of the place begs for a spooky underwear promo every October.) "Hey, sir!" I heard but kept walking for a step and a halt. "Hey, sir!" is the perfect intro for a panhandler or evangelist. Someone asking me to sign a petition, or to sell me something. Ask for exactly $1.73 to get a bus ticket to Auburn. As if. Keep walking. I was annoyed, mildly irritated. But I stopped. I stopped and turned. Did he say it twice? Was it an undertone of sincerity blended with urgency that stopped me in my tracks? "Did you drop this?" Or was it: "Is this yours?" A young professional. White shirt and tie. Who wears a white shirt anymore? Even in my corporate life I hadn't worn one since the 1990s. When our company president wore white short-sleeved shirts with a tie, I'd mock him. "Lee, what do you think this is, NASA in the Sixties?" He never wore one again. My interlocutor was Asian American. In his twenties. Is this what they call a millennial? A white envelope sat on the just-rained-on sidewalk. I picked it up. Or he picked it up and handed it to me. I saw right away that it was a bill from St. Camillus, the long-term care facility (nursing home). For Mom. A bill that had come in that day's mail. It must have slid out of my grip holding my laptop portfolio with my other mail, nothing of consequence. If so, I'd've handled it all more carefully. "Thanks." Now I can't piece it together. Did he say this from his Mercedes (Audi? Ford? Saturn? black? white?) with the window rolled down? Or was he walking in my wake? But my thanks was real. I detected an honest civility in his act, an uncommon courtesy. What if it was something terribly important, not just a bill that would be re-sent? An atmosphere of gratitude washed over me. No, seeped out of me, from within somewhere. I could have kept walking, I could have ignored his entreaty. Likewise, he too could have ignored what he saw, something dropping from a stranger's personal effects. He didn't ignore the seemingly minor mishap. Neither did I ignore him, ultimately. My irritation, disturbance, "rude" interruption took on a different complexion and turned things in a different direction. And I hadn't even bought my hungered-for lunch yet. 

Quotidian encounter. 

Small miracle.

sultry summer #haiku

not a leaf turning

birds chirping in slow motion

pavement steam rising

haiku 1 winter 2018

crackling-nostril cold

breath exhalations rising

vertical ice plumes

kit-kat club

Driving upon the snowy, slushy streets of Liverpool, the one in New York, not the one of Beatles fame, I paused because the traffic in front of me had paused, as the parade of vehicles waited for a light (officially called a "signal" by transportation officials) to change (having mentioned The Beatles, I owed you "A Day in the Life" reference). (Notice that the preceding sentence, discursive and parenthetically laden as it is, constitutes one legit grammatically and anatomically correct sentence in the English language. One of the most annoying observations by lay people is that a long-winded or Proustian sentence is "a run-on sentence." Wrong. A run-on sentence has nothing whatsoever to do with sentence length; size does not matter. Go ahead; Google it if you must.) I noticed that the light had indeed changed (with nobody blowing their mind out in a car, by all appearances). The traffic started moving again, imprinting the white-gray mush with snow- or all-season tires' signature treads. A bluish-gray Mazda hatchback inched along immediately in front of my 2007 VW Rabbit (141,000 miles). Without warning, my eyes caught a flash of fuzzy-furry white jumping onto a shelf (not exactly a shelf but I don't know what else to call it) in the back of the Mazda. It was not a projectile of knitting wool as one might purchase a skein of in Reykjavik (not white), as I had bought for soon-to-ex-wife in 2016. It was not some plush toy tossed by a frustrated, hungry, or unruly child sitting in a carseat in back. No. It was a cat! A living, alive, moving cat. A cat whose catface expression conveyed annoyance, adventure, impertinence, play, irritation, and frustration. A cat whose movement was swift and certain. It jumped up, scouted the shelf and the scene outside, and darted away out of my sight. gone. I saw it. It was not a vision. The frisky feline gave no evidence of seeing the driver who was arrested by his or her sudden movement. What evidence could there possibly be? Beats me. It couldn't wave. Hold it. As a matter of fact, it catpawed at the air, as if trying to capture an invisible mouse or sparrow. It couldn't help doing that. Its catnature demanded such alert alacrity. Could the feline  -- I wanted to say felicitous feline, just to be alliterative, but I can't be certain said cat was felicitous or infelicitous -- have signaled a quick wave to me, a hello, an acknowledgment of a fellow-living-creature's presence, a greeting, or a fuckyou message? I'll never know. I can't interview the cat because the car moved along, the cat stayed in the car as I did in mine, and we went our merry human and feline ways. The thing is, have you ever seen a live cat in a car before? Not a cat in a cat carrier. A live-prancing-around-as-if-in-the-wild-or-in-a-living-room cat? (That's a lot of hyphens, buster.) I don't recall ever seeing a cat catting around in a car before. Is it legal? Is it safe? Do dogs mind? (Mice and birds don't mind, as long as the cat stays in the car.) Is there a risk of escape and therefore cats in cars is only a wintry, closed-window phenomenon? Finally, there's the most solemn and deep question of all: why?

winter haiku 5

Tuesday's icy glaze 

brittle and stubbornly slick

in Wednesday sun

winter haiku 4

last night's snow dusting

searing albino light bath

melting flake by flake

 

winter haiku 3

rain craving snowness

January dreaming ice

settling for drizzle

gambol

I walked our dog in Burnet Park, where she gamboled in the snow, merrymaking and frolicking just for me, to give me a smile, as she sported in the fluffy lake effect snow. No. You're right. She did it for pure dog love, total abandon, canine self, yielding to the moment and the next the next the now.

autumn haiku 5

swirling spindrift snow

crystalline cabaret howl

November storm night

autumn haiku 2

vermilion riot

canary yellow pastels

one leaf twirling down 

autumn haiku 1

rolling green meadows / tawny cornstalks sunset-drenched / before bonfire sparks

summer haiku 10

tiny butterfly / wings still on dandelion / white exclamation

This really happened. A moth (is that not the same as a butterfly?) with a black spot or two on white wings landed on a yellow flower. The wings were still. Folded together. A gorgeous moment in the sun. And it is almost, not quite, the last day of summer.

(late) summer haiku 9

one white butterlfy

landing on dandelion

sunlight bathing all

canal haiku triptych

I.

two sunning turtles

abiding our twin footfalls

stone above water

II.

one regal heron

alert shoreline sentinel

tracking our chatter

 III.

shrieking blue jay cry

sweat in the small of the back

wood bridge, dusty shoes

summer haiku 2

black-eyed susans sway

cornflower blues serenade

cumulonimbus 

summer day

AC off. No fan spinning. Siren. Thunder rumble. The mattress creaks. Where are the birds? For that matter, what happened to the dogs? Parched lawns. Other people's AC humming. The curtains swaying. Now the chirps. Tires on pavement. Wind chime.

micropoetry 1a

confetti blossoms white

showers of moment

and memory

spring haiku 11

carnival of buds

grape hyacinths, daffodils

robin eating worm