Mrs. Dalloway

I am reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. The book, a paperback edition published decades ago, had been sitting on my nightstand for ages. Isn't "nightstand: a quaint, old-fashioned word, rather Victorian, suggesting reading and domestic habit and a hint of orderly bliss and harmony? Not that I have that gospel to preach this evening. Would that I could. The novel is A Day in the Life (which was termed the #1 song by the Beatles in a special edition of Rolling Stone magazine on newsstands now) of Clarissa Dalloway and her privileged if angst-ridden world and those around her. The words are delicious, the sentences stringy and sinewy, the cadences charming, the characters perplexing and intertwined (none more than Septimus Warren Smith, fresh from the horrors of the War, and his Italian wife Lucrezia). I like this work, today, better than the work of Marcel Proust. And doesn't Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine owe a tip of his cap to this book, since his book explored lushly not a full day but a lunch hour? "It had no plot," you'll hear someone say as a negative comment against a movie or novel or story or you-name-it. That critique typically rankles me, not that I should take it personally. Who the feck cares if it has a plot? We all know Hamlet or Macbeth or Tony soprano will die, but we watch it anyway. Ooops. Trapped myself there. "It" in those cases refers to productions that have a dramatic arc. Fine. I'll grant you that. Maybe the whole "plot" business, or the fixation on it, bothers me because I transfer that to the "God has a plan for me" saying. I get it, but I don't see the Divine Power playing with us like puppets or marionettes. Yet I have experienced "grace" and "providence," so perhaps I am a confused and sloppy thinker or feeler. Where was I? On the street in London, or the park, just after lunch, inside the head of clarissa and her band of drawing-room characters. Carry on.

Waiting for the Street Sweepers

On Sunday night I was fortunate to find a parking space on 107th Street, yards from leafy Riverside Drive and down the block from Broadway and West End Avenue. The space -- so close to where I'd be staying for the night -- was a surprise, and free.( Isn't this what we mean by gratuitous?) The only condition, so far as I could discern, was that my comfortably wedged-in vehicle had to be moved from this sanguine-spurring spot between the hours of 9:30 and 11 a.m. Monday, to permit and facilitate the cleaning of that northern side of this east-west street. (Manhattan's street grid is eminently logical.) Being neurotic (now, we like to call it OCD; for a decade or so it was anal-retentive), I checked the sign about parking permission at least three and four times and surveyed other cars to confirm further the legitimacy of this piece of vehicular real estate. A car in back of mine seemed to have one of those anti-theft attached to the steering wheel. So Nineties, I thought. Things looked safe and secure, but I'm not naive. Gotham is surely not free of all crime, nor is your hometown. I was very tired, so awoke as late as I could Monday. Blaring sunshine and body clock had votes on this matter. I purchased a Times and read part of the lead story on the Zimmerman acquittal and realized the demonstration I had encountered Sunday evening on First Avenue might have been the same one that converged later onto Times Square, as pictured. I was hungry. A bagel shop on Broadway looked appealing. I went in. Long lines. Slow progress. It was already 9:10. I pictured my car being ticketed and towed. I left. I went up the street to the Manchester Diner. I started to order a bagel but grew more nervous about that concept we call time. Just give me a corn muffin, please. And a tea. Breakfast tea. With cream. no sugar. I walked to my car. still there. Everything fine. But already people were moving cars to the opposite side of the street. A few may have been sitting double-parked in their vehicles. The promised furnace heat was only simmering at this hour. Picture a stream of cars lining up double-parked on the non-street-sweeper side of 107th Street. Perhaps influenced by the Times story and current events, I mused to myself about law. We pay attention to  -- or ignore -- laws as they suit us, do we not? There is obviously a social compact here. I am fairly certain double-parking in New York City is illegal. Imagine if your car was curbside and had to get out but was blocked by a double-parked car. But I did not see such cars ticketed. (Maybe they are, all the time. I don't know. I suspect these folks -- some perhaps paid to do so -- jockeying the cars are ready to move them.) And does the city want hundreds or even thousands of cars driving around during the street-cleaning times? What purpose would that serve? I dutifully moved my car to the opposite side, near but not blocking a driveway. I rolled my windows down. I ate my corn muffin, crumbs falling all over me. Who made this corn muffin? Where? When? How many were made? I drank my morning tea, as is my wont at home. Sitting here, you hardly hear the traffic in back, on Broadway, or anywhere else. Hardly any cars come down 107th. I perform my Times fetish ritual of reading all the articles on the front page, if nothing else. I browse through some of the Sports section. A disembodied hose is watering the plants at the base of a tree to my left. I do not want to get sprayed and close my window. The watering over, I reopen my window. I put the paper down and close my eyes. Starlings. Sparrows. No sirens. The road in front, which is the Riverside Drive before Riverside Drive, is quiet. Am I in the country? Where did all the sound go to? A hint of a breeze. Be mindful of breathing. And breathing out. As suggested by Thich Nhat Hanh. Offer myself and the world the hint of a smile. Try to smile. Try to hear your breathing. Feel it. Be it. Open your eyes. Turn the car on. Close the windows. Put on the AC. Turn right and follow Riverside Drive all the up to the Cross-Bronx. A brand-new vista offering the GWB and the Palisades. A brand-new road. Just for me.

Bloomsday, the day after

Hope you all yesterday yeast of year had your blossoming sedge of selves a precious opposite of precocious Bloomsday. It also marks the day, aptly enough, I started this blog, in 2006.

Poldy carrying Molly's panties in his pocket, and all that.

As you were.

Carry on.

Eh?

baby, love

She crossed South Salina Street, against  traffic, looking over her shoulder, walking fast. Slung on her hip a curly-haired boy, maybe three years old, mixed race. He'd look beautiful in a cereal commercial, or on a box of Wheaties. She was young, white, skinny, harried, nervous. She darted diagonally, pausing for traffic on the double yellow line in the center only because she had to. She kept looking back. Reaching the bus kiosk on the other side, she averted dashing the kid's head into a metal column of the bus-passenger waiting area. If she did, you imagined, she'd just keep going. You silently compared her handling of the boy to lugging a sack of potatoes, carrying a package, a handbag. The child seemed an after-thought in every respect. A physical burden, for starters, but she was not about to let him slow her down. He did not complain, though he was awake. Her reckless rush began to irk you. This boy is going to get hurt. And this is just what the public sees. What are his chances? You began to generalize and fantasize in the extreme: what is it with everyone, nobody works, she's running to find cocaine, what a shithole. What a dampening of a sunny day in Syracuse, though too hot for your comfort. But something slowed you down. Grace or whatever you care to name it (or not name it) freeze-framed your observation as she moved out of sight. The conversation in your head shifted. Christ, she's scared. It's fear. Don't be mad at her. Maybe she's running for her life, both figuratively and literally. What would anger at her accomplish, anyway? Is someone chasing her? She's panicked. Off to your right and in her urban wake, maybe someone is flashing a gun or yelling threats at her on the other side of the window in front of where you safely and coolly sit, sipping iced black tea with wild berry. Refugees in America.

a gift in dying

On this day in 2005 my friend Doug Sullivan died. He was 58. From his bed at Upstate Medical University Hospital, he asked a favor of me in his last week.

"Would you do a reading for me at a memorial service?"

"Sure. Of course. Thank you."

His dear, dear friend Debora had called me days before.

"Doug's back in the hospital. I thought you'd want to know. He's not going to be coming home."

It was a Sunday. I recall just coming back from a trip, probably to Connecticut.

I visited him a lot that last week. That Sunday, on the elevator I met two Steves. One has since died; the other is someone whose life is now intertwined with mine, or I should say vice versa.

He was in good spirits. He was in great spirits.

People paraded in.

A brother came in from Maine, I believe, in the last 48 hours. I think they had been estranged for several years. Doug had gotten a transfusion that enabled him to hang on long enough for his brother to arrive.

On the last day, a Friday, I visited Doug during my lunch hour from work. (I worked for others in those days.) I came to say good bye. Everyone knew these were good byes.

"Good bye, Doug. I love you."

I started to cry.

He looked at me, and kindly laughed.

"What are you crying for? I'm all right. I'll be all right. It's okay."

I looked at Doug. He was not kidding. He really was all right. He was fine. He was not afraid. He was even happy. I looked for a crack in the wall. I could not find any.

He tousled my hair, as if I were his beloved dog or his child.

"Good bye."

And days later the reading I delivered was no more than a collage of words from him, from me, from others in the room, from poetry, from Scriptures. I didn't know if I could do it. Beforehand, I was surprised to see Sara Maypole at the church. She had been a fellow parishioner at St. David's, my parish. She is a retired priest. It turns out her husband Tom, who has since died, was a mutual friend of Doug and me. I had not been aware of the connection. In the pew there she said a prayer for me and with me so I could do this hard thing.

I did it.

Doug gave me -- gave all of us -- a gift in his dying. For me, his asking me to do that reading was a gesture of love. It was apostolic. Other folks knew him better, I figured. Played golf with him often, talked to him more, hung out with him more. My guess is he treasured our mutual honesty. We held no secrets from each other. Oh, we were baseball fans together, too. We would attend Chiefs games. Since his Red Sox had won the Series in 2004 he joked he could now die. There was a literal truth in that. But I don't need to have any special reason to explain why he chose me for the honor. It does not matter.

His doing so was a great gift to me. His dying proved somehow rewarding.

And when my own brother (because, let's face it, Doug was a brother too) passed away in November of the same year I was more prepared, if you will.

Thanks, Doug.

We miss you.

But we know you're all right.

As are we all.

That's My Style

The New York Times of May 10, 2013, relates an episode involving former Apple exec John Sculley and David Steinberg, head of digital marketing firm XL Marketing. The article has an apt title: "He's No Longer The Loudest Guy In the Room."

Years ago Sculley and Steinberg were on a West Coast swing. They had 10 or 15 client meetings. After the first meeting Sculley said to Steinberg:

"David, there's a West Coast style and there's an East Coast style. We need to work on your West Coast style."

Steinberg went on to explain so-called West Coast style: "Soften it up. Take it down a number of notches, and just listen instead of always talking." Of Sculley, he added: "He taught me how, from a leadership perspective, to step back and take in the landscape. . . . He will sit in a room for an hour before he says one thing, but when he says that thing, he is so right."

That explains a lot.

I need to work on my West Coast style.

Excuse me. We need to work on my West Coast style.

I intuitively have known this for many years. Rather, others have either pointed this out directly to me or have implicitly offered it as an unsolicited suggestion toward my "continuous improvement."

It's not too late, is it?

(This may be a subconscious reason I've been a San Francisco Giants fan ever since and before they moved to San Francisco.)

666 upside down

Warning: This is post number 999 at this blog.