That Was Fort Lee

 

I was born in New Jersey.  Apparently, after coming home from the hospital I lived there for all of six months, in Fort Lee, just to the west of the Hudson.  The next seventeen and half years I lived on the east side of the Hudson in New York State.  My father’s family for at least three generations back were all from New York.  My mom’s side from even further back were all from Dutchess County, New York.  Any conscious memories are all of Harrison, New York in Westchester County, till we moved, when I was ten to Pleasantville New York, just a bit further north from the metropolis and then at fifteen to Poughkeepsie, New York, where my maternal grandmother had always resided.  Regular trips were made between Westchester and Dutchess Counties, or down into Gotham around which all the world spun. 

 

Still, when worms come gnawing and they pen down my bookends, they may say he drew his final breath in Gazookastan, but they will certainly say he was born in New Jersey.  You’d have to be a real fan to bother reading along to the qualifying footnote that reminds inquiring minds that I only lived there for six months.  The first six months, where you don’t really know precisely where you are. 

 

Me and Patti Smith.  Me and Buzz Aldrin.  Me and Walt Wittman.  I’m not complaining.   But I just never really knew ya, Jersey.  You were always over there.   If we do away with the artificial boundaries of statehood, I am writing you today from “over there.”  I’m on the west side of the Hudson, in Ulster County New York.  Other-lite, I’ve come to love being on the “other” side of the Hudson, but in some primal, illogical manner it means a great deal that this is New York State and that when I state where I’m residing its clear to all that I have this tribal affinity. 

 

Today we all drove down the New York State Throughway for a meeting I had in midtown.  I say that like it’s all very protean but in fact this is the first business meeting I’ve physically gone to anywhere in six months.  The AI-goddess inside Waze has told me to head towards the Palisades Parkway this afternoon.  She has a view into the entire metropolitan traffic organism, where I have mere human experience.  We do as she says.  And I can see on the map that the mighty Hudson is off to my left, quite near, obscured by summer trees.  This is a “parkway” like the Taconic, probably one of the earliest such responses to the automobile that any urban area ever undertook, but there are no shoulders, there are lots of turns and the speed limit is set at fifty-five. 

 

The exit is coming up and we turn and bang, there it is.  I wasn’t expecting to come upon the ferocious, western tower of the GWB so suddenly.  This must be an excruciatingly slow exit during rush hour, when there isn’t a pandemic, but now, at 2:00PM on a Thursday, it’s unencumbered and are proceed quickly to the upper deck and gazing north and south at the incomparable view of the city.  “That was Fort Lee.”  I told them.  “That’s where I was born.”

 

 

 

Thursday, 08/07/20

 

To Me, Pignut Hickory

 

My wife and I took out a rake and a broom and went up the driveway to all the branches on the drive way.  Immediately we had different ideas.  I ranked the twigs and the leaves into the yard.  She wanted it all carted into a wheel barrow.  Ah, I suggested the twigs would all be ground up the next time the lawn was mowed and this wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

 

An oak up the way had dropped a few branches and I got lost it trying to identify it.  I am hoping to find an oak species somewhere on the property that I haven’t seen around yet.  Out on the trail I’d found a “scarlet oak” with an evocative name that had me thinking of what the leaves must look like in the fall to generate such a name. 

 

I saw one golden leaf, long removed and then some green leaves from the same tree.  They looked like large aspen leaves and looked up into the tree tops trying to find the tree they fell from.  It was much harder than I anticipated.  Many of the trees were bound with poison ivy vines and their deciduous like toxic three-leaved pattern.  Eventually I saw the tall tree with the spade-like leaves and after a lot of angling managed to make the app tell me that this was an Eastern Cottonwood.  I wondered if someone thought to plant this tree or if the giant, which I haven’t seen anywhere else in the neighborhood, despite some methodical searching had just sprouted there, au natural. 

 

At the top of he driveway I found another twig of dead leaves.  This time I labored in vain to find the tree it fell from.  Nothing quite matched.  I wanted to know as it had a marvelous name, new to me, “Pignut Hickory.”  Walking back down I spied another tree that I didn’t recognize which turned out to be a “Small-leaved Lime.  The pictures of it on line make it look grand. 

 

In the afternoon, my stepdad and my mom visited.  The prior and I were out walking around looking at trees.  I showed him that we have five different oaks, all right there in the front yard.  No scarlet oak though, until, miraculously, a tree that has grown up near the shed and which we would certainly have otherwise torn down, turned out to be one of these Scarlet Oaks. I’m curious to see what it looks like in the fall and from whence the name comes.  

 

 

 

Wednesday 08/05/20

 

Into Caribbean Cadence Of

 

The weather report suggested rain all day.  All I really did was regard the hourly icons. It was supposed to stop in the afternoon.  I hadn’t realized thought that what was driving through our hamlet was tropical storm Isaias.  The rain grew in intensity and by mid-morning, I could watch it fall in sheets of water that resembled waterfalls I’ve seen up close.  And the same yard that had me worried it was drying out yellow two days ago was now completely drenched. 

 

In the middle of it all my dad asked for my help on a move that he was helping someone with.  Could I bring the hand-truck in my garage over and we’d move this bed that was being delivered to a neighbor.  I’d all but given up finding the device which, in my mind, was red until I realized the blue hand truck  was right in the middle of the room, hidden behind the Christmas wreath that was hanging on it.  My wife thought I was crazy heading out in this weather but I loaded it up and made my way on. 

 

Large branches were down all along Route 208 and by the time I got to Main St. I’d seen my fourth fire truck with flashing lights, turning into a red light in an intersection, forcing everyone to accommodate them.  Rang my dad.  Is he really waiting outside in this rain like we suggested?  Exiting town on Thirty-two, to the north, a fair sized northern red oak had fallen in a parking lot.  A right on Henry Dubois Drive from Thirty-two and there were large branches down in every yard.  I tried another number and then he called me back and said they’d already solved it.  "We're all done.  Hope you didn’t come out.”

 

And all day, during tropical storm Isaias, I was reading the remarkable work by Eric Walrond: “Tropical Death.”  Walrond’s language is achingly bright and hot and marinated in Caribbean smells and West Indian diction.  And every time I slowed down to sound out what the text suggested I was rewarded with a masterful insight into Caribbean cadence of the 1930s.  On more than a few occasions I saw references to things I’d only ever heard in Jamaican popular song lyrics: “Donkey want water but you hol' him Joe.”  No.  Tenor Saw didn’t first sing that in 1985 on “Ring the Alarm,” and it isn’t Harry Belafonte’s 1957 reference either that is seminal, not if Walrond is quoting it in 1926.  Sharp, colorful like claret blood, and terrifyingly cruel and quick.   Walrond seems to release himself into this authenticity in a way that Claude McKay only dabbled with his mother-rhythms in trying to make sense of Harlem or Marsaille. (And now I’m listening to Tenor Saw and some Super Cat as well, which sound like a gate in an airport of time to other periods of my life.

 

 

 

Tuesday 08/04/20

Fat Brown Fuzzy Cigar

I went on and on the other day getting my bike tire fixed.  And all weekend I tried to give my sore knee a rest before heading out for another pedal session.  Yesterday I went north up towards the bridge at the Walkill and the blue bike, the proper male bike, felt great.  I stopped and did my plant check at Garvin’s there where the trail cuts through Huguenot street.  Only two new species but I’ll take em’.  “Hollow Joe-Pye Weed” has a lovely, distinct seed crest and the Broad-leafed Cattail with that fat, brown fuzzy cigar on its main stalk, was also a new one, for me.

 

The last dash home, the final half a mile or so has an ever-so-slight incline and here I began press hard and to feel it.  Nothing acute, just a throbbing that suggested the muscles had not exactly been overlooked on this ride.  And last night, man, that knee area and the whole leg was aching.  It kept me from sleeping.  Today it rained all day, so I had an excuse, but I really hope this doesn’t knock bicycling into the ash-bin of history for me the way jogging is no longer really possible.

 

Shopping at Adams the other day I’d notice the funny looking pattypan squash.  No.  There is no way I would have every recognized that name and I had no idea how to cook them, but I threw a few into a bag, photo’d the sign so I could remember what they were and reckoned I’d figure it all out.  Today I cut up some triangles, baked them and tossed them with a bit of olive oil, parsley and red pepper.  Can’t say they were popular with the ladies here, but I enjoyed them.  I’ll try pattypan’s again some time.  If only so I can toss out that name, like I know.

 

Ned Rorem is an interesting composer.  I noticed he had a collection entitled: “Chamber Music with Flute” which was as nice as it sounds.  Flutes have a unique, elfin appeal, don’t they?  The first time I’d enjoyed a flute like that as adult must have been when old Bloomdido Bad de Grass, the one Didier Malherbe blew alongside Steve Hillage on “Flute Salad, midway there through the trilogy on “Angles Egg.”  It was seventeen or so and I decided that flutes, not just distorted guitars, would be allowed into my mind-scape.  Yeah.  Flutes are lovely. 

 

 

 

Monday, 08/03/20

You From Obligation's Abrasions

Sunday is never quite as luxurious as Saturday, is it?   Sunday serves as a fine buffer for any Saturday you’re in the middle of.  Sunday offers nothing but itself to protect you from obligation’s abrasions.  So you enjoy yourself with a bit more caution.  This can only go on for so long.  I didn’t intend to read “There is Confusion” straight through this morning.  But Jessie Redmond Faussett’s 1924 novel was engaging and as my “read the first hundred pages” goal became the “read it halfway through” goal I made myself comfortable and got to know the Marshall kids and Peter Bye and Maggie Ellersley, as well.

Four times while I was sitting there it started to drizzle.  One or another page got a little wet.  It was just about time to pack it in when it passed.  By the time the drizzle returned the third or fourth time, I fully expected that it would recede.  My wife walked out to say ‘good morning’ on page 279 with one page to go and I explained that I was just about to finish.  Peter Bye was just about to tell the man who turns out to be his Quaker Bye ancestor, that he didn’t need the inheritance.  Peter sheds his “shiftlessness” and Joanna has never been more in love.  With that, it started to rain properly with a downpour.

She is an interesting character, Joanna.  My brain sought a real personage to populate as Joanna.  And my mind was brought back to a first year at Wesleyan where I was in an English class and raised my hand to answer what I thought the poem meant and the young woman professor gave a nod and asked if there were other opinions.  A poised, articulate young lady of African descent proceeded to insightfully unpack the poem, suggesting, convincingly, a trenchant critique, completely at odds with my own.  The teacher beamed and I absorbed the indignity.  Lodged and not forgotten, that’s where my brain rummaged and found a stand in for Joanna Marshal.

I never bought beans that weren’t in a can in China.  Here they come in little bags which I’d always remembered using.  I’d make a bag of black beans yesterday. A bag's enough to feed a dozen people with and there were leftovers which I was sensitive to trying to use up today and not be wasteful.  I asked the girls once I heard them in the kitchen and they confirmed that burritos would be welcomed.  I used up the rest of the black beans rolling them with avocado slices into cheesy tortillas. And then I said I was going to go write.

Sunday, 08/02/20

About Her From Afar

Imbued in weekend.  I wake up at four in the morning whether I want to or not and go into my study and read until I drift off to sleep again.  And when I stir open again and the day has broke, I relish the one thing I can do well without my contact lenses in; read clearly what’s right in front of me.  Out on the porch as the morning clouds shift off to the west, I can sit in a swivel chair and just read.  Read for hours, uninterrupted. 

Last night I’d made it through the introduction and a few pages of Nella Larsen’s “Passing,”  before oblivion pulled me off.  This morning I read the first chapter there in the predawn dark and repeated the dreamy segue.  With dawn I was on the porch with my microwaved coffee from yesterday and my grapefruit juice cut with soda water and I surrendered myself for the foreseeable to Ms. Larsen’s remarkably textured, writing.

Clare Kendry is sensual and sympathetic and has our favor until it becomes clear she is, as the world she lives in demands, is helplessly opportunistic, self admittedly so.  Irene Redfield, the Ms. Larsen (and Helga Crane) stand-in is pulled into actions that she can’t control and we understand and believe as she is excited to see Clare in the flesh and welcomes her into things she wouldn’t have thought to include Clare into had she simply been thinking about her from afar.  When I read the literature of this period and confront the uncategorically racist loathing of the white characters, I am pulled back to the commentary of certain great aunts and uncles and various older personages I'd known who hated otherness with ferocious certitude.  The ignorant certitude learned as truisms from the generation before them, the generation of Jack Bellew, Clare’s foolish husband. 

It was fine read.  The morning got humid.  I could take off my sweater fast enough.  I admired Ms. Larsen for how much I cared about Irene.  The moment she realizes there is an intimate problem with Clare, has such a light touch and the effect is thunderous.  And though I didn’t necessarily know I’d read it straight through I quickly decided to.  This is what I’ve been working all week for.

Saturday, 08/01/20

Like It Could Pop

Got my flat tire fixed today.  The mountain bike, one of two I’ve borrowed from my mom made it through most of the year despite daily rides out on the trail, till one morning a month ago, when I noticed the rear tire looking saggy.   In Beijing this would mean we’d throw it in the back or the Odyssey and ask the man who had a three-wheeled vehicle with the cone shaped cover and a road side bike repair shop he inhabited till it got too cold.  Practical, the Chinese approach would be to search for the hole in the inner tube in a tub of water, (where’s it bubbling?), file the tube near the hole and apply patch which you’d glue on and pound down for a buck fifty.  Americans, litigious, told me they wouldn’t do tube checks because if anything went wrong and they were sued “there’s no telling what would happen.”

And though I bike every day I wasn’t in a rush to get the blue bike fixed.  The red bike beside it would do.  My mom’s bike is cut differently.  I adjusted the seat upward.  Otherwise the gears, the brakes and much of the rest of things were the same as my stepdad’s blue bike.  I did have to keep adjusting that bike seat, as it seemed to slip. 

At the end of my bike ride today, I had to admit, something was wrong.  My left knee was sore.  The outer hinge of my knee had great pressure and felt like it could pop.  And it occurred to me that I was aggravating this every time I rode the bike. I looked online.  It seems my patella is under a lot of stress.  This happens to cyclists, especially those who’s seats are too low or too high.   It occurred to me that this has grown in severity over the last month and wasn’t properly an issue before that.  It only took me a month to realize that riding that red bike is hurting my knee. 

I threw the blue bike into the back of the car and drove by the bike shop to confirm it was open.  The same guy who’d looked the bike over eleven months ago came out to meet me and told me he’d get it done in the next twenty minutes.  When I came back, he told me he had found a piece of glass that was the culprit.  I asked him about my knee, and he confirmed and mentioned that many things like the pedal being off balance can put undue off-balance pressure where it oughtn’t to be.  It was about twenty bucks for parts and labor.  It struck me as not expensive though it was more than ten times what it would have cost in Beijing to have a patch put on, at the roadside stand.  I hope this means better days ahead for my knee. 

Friday 7/31/20