Film of the Final

I can’t say what the catalyst has been.  During the winter I was biking on the trail with the gears on this mountain bike set between six and ten out of fifteen.  There a slight incline on the way out and a slight decline on the return.  I’d coast along and enjoy the view and consider the hour of biking to have been some proper exercise. 

A few months back I decided to keep the bike in the range of gear eleven to gear fifteen and whenever possible, just kept there in fifteen itself.  This is harder going but it isn’t that bad, and I think it wasn’t more than a few weeks later that I told myself, to go “all out” for one hundred thrusts of the pedal or so.  Count them off in your mind and exert yourself a bit.  Next ride, make it two-hundred.  A few sections of two hundred there and back.

Today I basically counted off sections of five hundred for the whole ride north.  This essentially gets you four, five-hundred blocks and maybe an extra one hundred or so final pedals before you reach the turn-around.  Coming back. I did the same.  I don’t know why it is so important to count such things. Next time, I think to myself, I will just pedal hard the whole way and not count. 

I also think of the hapless son of my colleague who had a biking accident yesterday.  My friend and his son, indeed his whole family are avid sportsmen and they are also keen on using Go-pro’s cameras with near ubiquity.  So, he sent me the film of the final seconds as he ran right into an oncoming bike and suddenly stopped.  He needed to be hospitalized.  She, whoever she was, also was hospitalized for a concussion.   

When I’m back home I’m drenched in sweat, which is grand.  I am glad I’ve graduated to maximum exertion on my rides up and back.  It only took a year’s to naturally evolve to this state.

Thursday, 6/25/20

Dutch Word for Sea

My older one was very sweet.  She took it to paint a small, still of a blue jay, for my stepdad, her “ye ye” who’s down in the Westchester Medical Center with a stint in his jugular vein that is pouring new blood in whilst bad blood transfers out.  An ornithologist I am hopeful that this familiar bird will bring a smile.  He misses the outdoors. 

I drove down to my old terra firma Westchester County, New York.  I took the New York State Throughway until it was time to cut across the Tappan Zee, which isn’t called that any more and isn’t really there anymore.  It’s now the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge which is OK.  I have reasonably fond memories of Mario, Hamlet on the Hudson.  But if I was Andrew, who doesn’t need much to become upset, I’d be upset that the bridge, which bears my father’s name and which is otherwise, certainly attractive, doesn’t afford proper views from inside a car, when you cross it.  This is a bridge no-no.  You look south, you need to look through a mesh fence that obscures the views.  You look north you need to look through not just one but two more mesh fences on the other bridge, which ruin any view of the miraculous Hudson, in that direction. 

“Tappan Zee” is a cool sounding thing, to my ears.  It doesn’t really sound like anything that belongs to one or another language.  This, as it is apparently two words from two different languages, bolted together.  “Tappan” was apparently the sub-tribe of Lenni Lanape Indians who lived here and “Zee” is the Dutch word for “sea” as this is a particularly wide section of the mighty Hudson fjord. 

Crossing over it isn’t long before I’m passing through Tarrytown, which I’ve passed through surely a thousand times but never before realized that the name undoubtedly had something to do with the verb 'to tarry.' People must have stayed here on their way to Albany and some witty soul thought to memorialize the town’s utility and perhaps to promote the hamlet as well. 

Valhalla is the home of Thor and the other Nordic pantheon.  In Westchester it is appropriately the home of one of the largest grave sights in the state, which one of the parkways that cuts through as well as the Harlem Line train tracks pass within a view of.  Less suitably, it is also the home of the hospital I am heading towards.  All the parkways, the Saw Mill and the Sprain Brook and the Taconic, all of which have cool old names rather than the Floyd Jones Parkway, all cross here and soon I’ve pulled up to entrance, which I can not enter during Covid.

Wednesday, 6/24/20

Whatever Dignity Was Possible

Very early morning.  My stepdad cannot get up.  He’s old.  He’s dehydrated.  We don’t really know what’s going on but it isn’t good.  The EMT team consisted of a very professional young lady who was effortlessly in charge and a gent who accompanied her who didn’t inspire nearly as much confidence.  There were things they could say and things they couldn’t say. 

Soon he was in an ambulance heading to the hospital.  Against their counsel that they would only become lost, I brought him out his hearing aids.  She was yelling at him and he couldn’t hear and it seems as though I should help to afford him whatever dignity was possible. Only a few days ago he was fit as a fiddle.

When they called, we were informed that he had a very high amount of Babbelisa parasite in his blood.  Akin to Lyme’s disease it was also transmitted by a tick but acted more like malaria.  Untreated it could be fatal.  We’d need different antibiotics and maybe something more.  Maybe a blood transfusion which sounded like something only Keith Richards could afford.

All afternoon there was a strong summer rain that flooded the culverts and pounded the earth.  There would be no need to water anything today.  The plane tree I planted hasn’t been happy.  Neither have the trembling aspens nor the “hair” bamboo.  I don’t want the rain to end soon.  Let it hit the ground hard and find its way down into the soil, moistening the dirt to resist the sun and remain for the needs of all the thirsty plants in this yard.

Tuesday, 6/23/20

When the Water Table

My stepdad is not feeling well, and I went over to mow the lawn today.  I haven’t mowed this lawn in thirty-seven years.  The front yard is above the septic system.  Apparently, my grandfather, who was a plumber by trade, built the leaching field above an old riverbed and there are countless stones, large and small beneath the old lawn that never does well in the summer when the water table falls. 

It isn’t like sitting in the dark, concentrating on breathing, and exhalations of “Om” but plodding around in ever smaller concentric trapezoids is it's own invitation to meditation.  The mind doesn’t have much else to do besides roll back over some plantain stems, with the strange space port knobs, which you’d missed that last run and shave off a corner that takes me out of my way.

The mower could potentially cut the hose.  So, move the hose.  It isn’t your hose.  If you cut it by mistake people will rightly be upset.  When I was a sophomore in high school, just like my little girl is today, I was probably thinking about some girl at school who looked awfully nice but didn’t know I was alive.  Or else it was that kid who was a senior who also seemed to be a punk.  He was even British.  But he wanted nothing to do with me and I imagined battling him as my teenage self pushed the mower along.   

In the back yard my stepdad has let certain patches of the lawn go wild, so there is much less to do than in the days when I was the pusher-man.  The walnut tree and the black locust are the same trees that used to be back here.  Her old listeria tree that used to be covered in Japanese beetles is no longer in the yard.  And that old cheery tree that there are photos of my dad holding me beneath is also long gone.  But most of these trees are ones that stood fifty years ago when I first began to cognate this yard.

Monday 6/22/20

Bags And Rode Off

There was a young man sitting on the stoop.  This is the old Italian section of Poughkeepsie, now reduced, as with Little Italy on Mulberry St. to an ornamental remembrance.  Young kid on the stoop.  Place looked closed.  I was there to pick up a friend chicken dinner. “Who?”  I repeated my mom’s name.  "Here to pick up an order. " He went in to check.  On the wall are pictures of the chef.  He must be my age.

In a moment he’s at the door saying that order was ready at 3:00PM.  “I’m just picking up the order for my mother.   I don’t know about the time.”  And he left.  He didn’t say, “Just a minute.  He didn’t say, that’s a hassle, but I’ll deal with it or that’s a hassle and in as much as it is presently 6:000PM that is now no longer possible, as an order.   He just went inside. I began to wait. 

I stood there like a fool for about fifteen minutes when he came out and repeated that this was to have been picked up at 3:00PM.  I had to open up my whole kitchen again.”   I repeated that this had nothing to do with me.”  And I wanted to know, but he cut me off.  “Just don’t ask me when it will be ready.”   “Yeah, but give some idea.”  “It will be out when it's ready.” And he returned, feeling presumably like he’d taught be a lesson about the value of his time.

I checked with my mom.  She suggested this was all silly as she’d wanted it for this evening and had told him as much.  A miscommunication.  She’d already paid for it, she informed me.  And suddenly I’d wished I’d had that piece of information as in-the-moment, or if there is another moment, I will simply say, “I don’t need any lessons from you.  Keep the money and I’ll get my food somewhere else.  I don’t need ill will food.” 

But in a moment, his two sons, were carrying out two large bags with my food. I noted a certain polish of politeness that seemed to try to compensate for the man I presumed to be their dad and his rudeness. He looked at me and said thank you.  I also said thank you and took the bags and rode off.  And I wondered if this all would have played out differently if there wasn’t the suggestion of race, which hung over the whole scene.

Sunday 6/21/20

An Acoustic Set of His

An old teacher of mine whom I’d recently reconnected with had mentioned reference to a song by Lightnin’ Hopkins about the penitentiary that was, the saddest song he knew.  We’d spent most of our talk discussing hardbop and it caught me off guard.  I haven’t heard Lightnin’ Hopkins in years.  I’d had an LP of his I’d bought the same year this man had last taught me which, which is an acoustic set of his with the phenomenal harp player Sonny Terry which was titled “You Better Move Your Baby.” 

Well, it’s taken two or three weeks from that call that I finally threw on the album, which I located within Spotify under a different but distinct tune-title from the session “Rocky Mountain."  Parred down, finely balanced, his call and response with the harp calls out life as clearly as a Greek sculpture of the Trojan king Laomedon.  The next time I'm driving when I share music with my little one, perhaps tomorrow, I will let her play her BTS on the ride over to Poughkeepsie, but on the way back I’m gonna put this album on as loud as they’ll allow me.  Yes, sir. 

I read the first four pages of the Charles Chestnut novel “The Marrow of Tradition” this morning with yesterdays’ contacts still up in my eyes.   Stumbling along with Aunt Jane’s patois, I realized I must have missed some rather important detail, as the birth scene otherwise made no sense.   I removed the contacts and started over.  We’ll be in this world for the next good while, so it’s best to set off with a map turned up properly.  I flopped around the little bed in this room, considering the smell of magnolia and this tightly strung southern town of Wellington at the turn of the century. 

It is achingly beautiful outside and I know I ought to get some exercise In.  I’m gonna plant that sassafras tree today, as well.  But I am “monstrously disposed” towards sitting down right here and returning to Wellington to find out precisely how all this tension that is building will finally be released. I’ve got a few folks I need to share this book with the moment I finish it.



Saturday, 06/20/20

Sheriff and His Son’s Soul

I believe it was Pablo Picasso who said something to the effect of if we want to see the caliber of an artist, first ask him to paint a horse, which I’ve remembered to signify:  Before you head off and attempt Cubism, let’s see if you’ve got the basics down.  Reading Charles Chestnut today I was reminded of this:  Before attempting a shifting narrative of traveling along a coastal road and introducing asides on German munitions and Hong Xiuquan, like W. G. Sebald, you should shore up the fundamentals of storytelling.  Learn the form before you attempt to deconstruct it.

Chestnut’s short stories shine for a number of reasons; the remarkable vernacular, the effortless shifts between poor southern white, to first generation Irish, to the southern aristocracy, the public voice of African Americans that shifts suddenly when there are no whites around.  I’m also enjoying the fact that he is a good-old-fashioned storyteller.  Often there’s a tension between the authoritative voice of the white or high-caste black, who adheres to reason and decency, contrasted with black magic of the old ‘conjure’ woman.  The reader is left to wonder, just what force it was that swayed the events.  Always, there is an injustice that illustrates the cruelty and hypocrisy of racism, though Chestnut doesn't feel pedantic.  He’s is generally a step back from judgement.  Rather the facts unfold, and the reader is left to draw conclusions which, though foretold are revealed subtly. 

And while I felt sting of injustice and considered anew the indignity of things I’d only otherwise read about in historical texts or slave narratives, and played with the accents he profiled in my mind, I noticed I was having fun watching him set the trap and spring it.  In “The Wife of His Youth” we know noble Liza will find her man, and it works somehow and not too early to spoil things, when we realize just who Mr. Ryder was.  Precisely who “The Sheriff’s Children” are is coincidentally revealed in the final scenes but it doesn’t feel forced as we are shown the real nature of the Sheriff and his son’s soul.

Setting up a trap to spring can feel forced and at odds with the linear flow of life.  As would building a mouse trap from scratch.  Masterful dramatic treatments are frictionless.  We effortlessly and forever believe in McBeth’s ambition, in Pierre Bezukhov’s illumination.  Chestnut’s short stories spring like clockwork at the end.  The tale is always resolved and there is a lesson to savor each time.  And as I look back over the dozen or so I read today I noted how satisfying and memorable each resolution was the way a masterful bluesman like Albert King can interlock two phrases in a manner that is both predicable and satisfying each time they are uniquely undone.

Friday, 06/19/20