2-6-13:
On a crowded 1 train up to 168th Street after work. I have my iPod on but notice an elderly woman nearby motioning to me and saying something. I take off my earphones. “Excuse me?”
“Would you like my seat?”
I demur, and ask why she offered.
“Because you look so tired.”
How sad is that?
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2-9-13—11:15 P.M.
“I hope I get a good night’s sleep and then have a rush of thoughts, as I did this morning,” says O. “It is very delightful when that happens—all of them rushing to the surface, as if they have been waiting for me to become conscious of them…”
I help him get ready for bed—“de-sock” him, fill his water bottle, bring him his sleeping tablets, make sure he has something to read.
I: “What else can I do for you?”
O: “Exist.”
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2-10-13: Thank You, Snow
Thank you, Snow, says O
Echoing Auden thanking Fog
For keeping us in
The low rumble of a plow on Eighth
A man with a camera fixed on the sky
Trying to capture a blizzard
Streetlamps tripled in the double-pane windows The silent comedy of delivery boys on bikes Even still
We eat sea bass and apples
And take a bath
I first, then he
Sharing the water
104 degrees
While sipping shots of Brennivin
And cool down before a wide-open window beside the bed When was the last time you tasted snow? I say And scoop a handful from the sill
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2-17-13: A meteor has fallen to earth, I hear on the TV news. It’s good to be reminded that we’re not in charge. That we live in a solar system.
I bundle up and go to the roof of our building. It is bloody freezing—the wind chill is below zero.
I count exactly half a moon and a hundred stars.
The Empire State, lit in red, white, and blue, and the Chrysler, in its creamy crinoline, peek out from behind other buildings and seem somehow to say hello.
I can imagine why that meteor pulled away from its orbital belt and crashed to earth. The lights alone here are so inviting.
Beauty on Eighth
DRIVING A SUPERMODEL
Oliver and I went to a small chamber orchestra concert at the Irish-American Historical Society, a jewel box of a building directly across the street from the Metropolitan Museum. He knows the Irish gentleman who organizes these concerts, Kevin. They feature students from Juilliard. Very intimate. Unpretentious. Free of charge. A handful of people in folding chairs—maybe forty. Kevin had saved seats for O and me in the front row. Just as he was making his introductions, a woman rushed in by herself and plopped onto the cushy rose-colored sofa right next to our seats: Lauren Hutton, the model from the seventies: I recognized her instantly by her gap-toothed smile and slightly crossed eyes. Now in her late sixties, still beautiful, her face naturally lined. And, one couldn’t help but notice, she had a big bruiser of a black eye.
The concert began with no further ado, and we all sat back and enjoyed the program—Brahms, Haydn, Ravel—by these enchanting musicians. Even if you were deaf, it occurred to me, you could still “hear” every note, so expressive were they—moving with the music, delicately interacting with one another by glance, their faces expressing the colors and tones they were creating with their instruments—eyes widening or narrowing, smiling, pursing lips, necks craning, as if moving the music forward. I found myself thinking back on how healing music has been for me over the past six years. Beauty is a balm to grief, I once wrote.
With the final note, Lauren Hutton was the first to pop up and give the trio a standing ovation. “Do you have a fan club?” she sort of yelled above the clapping; it was a little startling, like someone yelling in a church. “I’m starting your fan club. You’re fantastic, you’re going places!”
The musicians bowed shyly and departed.
There was a small reception afterwards. Nothing fancy—two bottles of San Pellegrino and a couple bottles of wine—but no bottle opener. O and I were talking with Kevin when Lauren Hutton walked up to us holding the Pellegrino bottle: “Do one of you kind gentlemen have an opener? Even a knife would do—I could pry it open with a penknife.”
“Why don’t you use your teeth?” I said to her.
She laughed and smiled that famous gap-toothed smile. “I could. I could have once, but …” she wandered off. The bottle got opened somehow. Eventually she circled back and poured water for everyone. She overheard Oliver talking to Kevin about his new book, Hallucinations, which was coming out in a couple weeks. Lauren leaned across the table and listened intently.
“Hey doc, you ever done Belladonna?” she asked. “Now there’s a drug!”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I have,” and he proceeded to tell her about his hallucinations on Belladonna. They traded stories. Eventually she began to figure out that this wasn’t his first book.