New York Cheesecake

( 10:32 PM ) Amelia

The Past Is Another State

One of the things I love about New York City is all the authors. There are readings going on every night of the year. When I first moved here I was very assiduous about looking for announcements and going to readings. I went to hear P.D. James at the now defunct Endicott bookstore, and attended the panel discussion in the Time-Life auditorium for the release of the New American Library's Raymond Chandler series. At the old West Side Shakespeare & Co. I bought D. an autographed copy of Patti Smith's book about Robert Mapplethorpe in the afterlife. And most of all I sauntered over to the Barnes & Noble on Broadway to listen to Anna Quindlen and Joyce Carol Oates and any number of wonderful writers who appeared there. Then they opened the bigger, glitzier B & N down by Lincoln Center, and all the "name" authors went down there. I stopped watching so closely for the announcements, so it was a miracle last week that I happened to see the notice for Joan Didion at my own neighborhood book shop.

Since the gubernatorial recall, I have been overwhelmed by the realization that I am no longer a Californian. People would ask me my opinion and I had no idea what the real issues were, just the sickening realization that there was no way to stop Schwarzenegger from being elected. So I found myself enchanted by reviews of Didion's new book, Where I Was From, in which she reexamines her own California mythology through the lens of her mother's death. I can't actually talk about the book, since I have not read it yet, but I went to see her tonight, right there on Broadway, and my heart opened wide as she read.

She read about her mother, her daughter, her own arrival in New York, and the lines in the sand drawn by those who came first to the Promised Land. She included what is surely the most quoted passage from the book, in which she is driving from Monterey to Berkeley with her mother in 1992, and her mother cannot recognize the suburbanized landscape of the Central Coast. "California had become, she said then, 'all San Jose.'"

As she read, it seemed she spun time through her fingers, winding up fat bobbins of Cal in the 1950s and Colorado Air Forces bases during World War II. So many of my ideas about these places come, of course from her books about them. Her words are layered on my own impressions so that whenever I drive through the serpentine interchanges of downtown L.A. I always imagine Maria Wyeth of Play It As It Lays cracking her hard-boiled egg on the steering wheel of her Corvette. When I had my first migraine at the age of 33, I immediately recognized it from her impassively detailed descriptions of the throbbing aura that she got through by reciting Pound's line, "Petals on a wet, black bough" until she had crossed the Carquinez Straits.

Her description tonight of her Charter Day speech of 1992 sent me back in my mind to her Charter Day speech of 1980, when she was named Cal's Alumna of the Year. I remembered climbing up the steps of the Greek Theater with Tom, wearing my madras shirtwaist and squinting down into the afternoon sun at the dais, though it was Didion who wore enormous sunglasses throughout her speech. Tom loved Joan Didion, loved her love of California, and we studied and discussed The White Album and A Book of Common Prayer, and on that day we drank her in, communing in our nativity, all golden Blues under the thin spring sunshine.

She gave the same physical impression tonight, a tiny woman with fine, chin-length hair and oversized horn rims, her bony arm overwhelmed by a strap watch that slid halfway to her elbow. She had on a fluffy black sweater, a yellow flowered skirt, and enormous furry boots against the rainy night. But her voice was strong and clear, perhaps protected by her usual flatness of affect. She spoke of deeply intimate things, of her mother's illness and family photographs and the telegram that announced she had won Vogue magazine's Prix de Paris, yet she remained a bit apart, reading about them, not speaking them directly to us.

But for me, it was dizzying. All those layers of California are now far in the past. Both she and I are living in New York, though she proudly notes she still carries a California driver's license. She's peeling away the layers of the place I thought I knew best, and showing me how little I know it anymore, and how many of the things I think I remember are colored by what others have said and written about them. After she finished speaking, I was too stunned to join the crush of autograph seekers. I wandered to a dark corner behind the greeting card section to simply breathe deeply and absorb all I had heard her say, much as I had to sit quietly for half an hour after the Wayne Thiebaud retrospective at the Whitney.

California is haunting me lately, but maybe, in the words of another displaced not-quite-native daughter, "There is no there there." #

( 11:51 PM ) Amelia

Gurus

The Fly Guy appeared last night. I had made myself put him out of my mind because he was supposed to be going to earth at a Thai monastery for the next six months. I was absurdly happy to see his IM.

The whole going to a monastery thing seemed like a really good idea after all the stuff that had been going on this spring and summer. Following his unspecified activities for "our side" during the "war" this spring, he had been invited to take some contracts for some of the reconstruction folks out there in the Middle East. After a bunch of tense conferences in London, he decided not to "dance with the devil," as he put it. But back in Mombassa, he was not getting a lot of work, so he started poking around for other sources of income. This climaxed, in midsummer, with him and a crew of four crash landing somewhere near the Congo border on what he finally admitted was a hunt for a rumored cache left behind by murdered ivory smugglers. (Wouldn't it be easier to just fly drugs at this point?) After junking the plane, they ended up walking for something over three weeks before they got to a big enough road to hitch-hike back to Mombassa.

I think he finally found something that convinced him this is not a good way to live.

Since the Fly Guy is all about extremes, his response to this was equally extreme. He found a teacher he liked, and around the middle of August he decided to turn the business over to a second-in-command and go to Thailand to be a monk. I actually thought this was a great idea.

I have a really strange connection with the Fly Guy. I have known him online about two years now. He has such an oddly disconnected life that his conversation is very essentialist. It goes from "Hi, how are you?" to complicated koans in about three minutes. Of course a lot of this is the spurious intimacy of disembodied Web communications, but I feel oddly aware of him on a psychic level most of the time. He disappears for weeks and months, but I usually know when he is about to turn up. Throughout the "war," I had a persistant mental image of him in a bubble of white light. It becames one of my principle meditations on the war, since making it personal helped me focus on the people actually doing it, and redirected my thoughts toward them and away from my anger at the people in Washington.

But since he went away, it's like the link has been broken. Partly, I worked at making myself think about other things. If his purpose really is self-transformation, I should have no expectation of being part of his life when he comes back. Heck, if he truly empties his mind the way he is supposed to, he shouldn't even remember my screenname or even his AIM password. But partly I think I relaxed my sense of vigil. I told him this, saying that I trusted somebody else was taking care of him. He said "Yeah, me for a change."

So there he was in some town he did not know how to spell, getting up at 4:30 am to walk up and down the hill, chanting, and to sit for two hours every day, and to unplug from daily life. He said he started out taking notes, but the master tore them up. He said the big message was to stop trying to plan things. That was how he far he got in 34 days, when the telegram reached him. He was proud, he said, that it was six days old when it finally found him. It called him back to England to renogiate a lease and sign papers.

"So," I asked, attempting neutral language, "Do you think you'll go back?"

"I intend to go back," he said.

I liked that nuance.

I keep intending to do more spiritual work, and I keep getting side tracked. I did go see the Dalai Lama last month, and found that very energizing. He did not say much of anything specific, but it was exciting to see him in person, something I will remember for a long time. As much as anything, it was a magical day in the sun with a crowd of peaceful people gathered for a common purpose. That sort of thing gives me hope.

I have also signed up for a retreat with the Cathedral congregation next month at Holy Cross Monastery up on the Hudson. I went last year and loved the crackling cold and the chanted psalms and the way it created inner space for me. The unexpected thing for me was how much I loved the bells. Not just the sound of them, but the hourly ringing that signalled time changes, like school bells. People usually depict bells as being a negative, controlling influences, symbols of regimented life. For me they were strangely freeing. I spend so much of my life keeping track of time, making sure I catch a bus or get to a meeting, that I always know what time it is, always have a little clock ticking in the back of my head. But having the bells made me free of that. Free as a school child who just immerses herself in her activity until the bell tells her it is time to do the next thing.

So these are the things I am intending to build on: hope, inner space, and freedom from time. I am really hoping I can make some progress on this without having to go to Thailand. #

( 6:33 AM ) Amelia

Good Vibrations

After two weeks or so with a nasty cold, I am feeling disgustingly chipper and upbeat. Reveling in positive feelings of good health, I am also enjoying my renewed sense of creativity and effectiveness. Yesterday I was in a phone conference about a bunch of problems with an art program and we were exchanging ideas and proposing solutions and working our way through all the issues. I was happy to see my team members implementing the skils I taught them. Suddenly I felt suffused with a real joy about working and I really, really wanted to hold hands with everybody.

Which, of course, I did not do! Because even if they had all agreed, I could not have explained to anybody else why were were playing ring-around-the rosie with the speaker phone. But I still feel glowy and renewed about my job. #

( 8:57 AM ) Amelia

Half Life

On September 25, 1991, Tom stepped out onto the tenth-floor balcony and looked at the moonlight on the Hollywood Hills. Then he climbed up onto the railing and let himself fall to his death.

It's been twelve years since that night, the night that has become my own dividing line between Before and After. And now he has been dead as long as were friends. Twelve years on either side.

In the twelve years we had together, we experienced so many amazing things, so many places and ideas and personal changes. In the twelve years since, he still seems so immediate to me sometimes. I still think of him everyday, just in the back of my mind sort of way that I carry around permanent parts of my life, like the blue wallpaper of my childhood bedroom or the opening notes of Saint Stephen, loaded in the top drawer of my general memory. Sometimes I think of him specifically, like when I listen to music that he loved, or when I see something I think he would have liked. Other times, he's just there in my head, part of my processing mechanism along with other friends and family who shaped my thoughts.

But now I realize that for a full half of our time together, he has been a ghost. He's still 33 years old. There are so many things now that I have experienced that he knows nothing about. I guess the biggest one is that he will never know what it's like to bury his dearest friend. To look at him in the mortuary, blanket pulled up over his broken body, hair combed wrong by the mortician's assistant. He'll never have to choose an urn, or discuss with his mother what to write on the memorial plaque. He'll never have to go through his meticulous address list and call and write to everyone there, and he won't have to plan a service and invite them all to come. He won't have to sit between his bewildered mother and his grim Aunt Mary while the people who came all the way from Boston sniffle through Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. I knew it was too long, and I knew it was his favorite. It was the first audio CD I ever purchased.

And that is the sort of thing that amazes when I look back. The obvious changes are technological. Tom never owned a CD or a CD player. Never had a cell phone or sent an email message. He died two years before Mosaic came out. He never saw the Internet.

And he would have loved all that stuff.

I guess he could have had a CD player, probably would have bought one before I finally did. They were around in 1991, but he was only a year out of law school, still cautiously creating a home after the years of student frugality.

He used computers at work a bit. I'd been interested in them for a long time, but he never showed much curiosity about how they worked. But he was a 90-wpm touch typist, and he loved the way he could spit out information and then pass it on to someone else to prettify. He liked to claim he was a luddite, but he was always seduced by elegant industrial design. While he would have smiled at the "Kawai" factor of my perky white iBook, I can see him with a wafer-thin Vaio, dark and James Bond-y.

I think the last big "invention" he embraced was his cordless telephone. He used to walk around his underfurnished apartment with it, or take it onto the balcony while he talked, describing the blazing LA sunset and the lights twinkling on as the city darkened. He would have loved the culture of cell phones, of instant connections and messages and last-minute plans. He would have loved another opportunity to own a small, sleek, elegantly shiny toy.

Another device Tom came to like more than I did was TV. As he got ill, he began to watch it a lot. I'd try to phone him in the hospital and he would put me off until after McNeil-Lehrer. I wasn't a TV watcher then, so I don't know what other shows he followed, but I can imagine the ones he missed that he would have loved. I'm sure he would have obsessed over 90210, and probably Dawson's Creek and all the other teenage dramas of the 1990s. Think of it, all those years, from Brenda and Brandon's arrival in BH to David and Donna's wedding, and he missed it all. And Must-See TV. Perhaps he watched Seinfeld when it first began, back when Jerry had a mullet and wore white sneakers. But he never heard of Friends or Frasier.

And he never could have dreamed of Will and Grace. A show about a gay man and a straight woman who mean everything to each other. A show about, well, us. I rather think he wouldn't have liked it -- too broad, too obvious. I often think that about it myself. But when I watched it tonight, I thought about all the changes that have happened in the world since Tom left it. The Internet Bubble, Dubya, September 11th, the second Gulf War.... But the thing that seems the most unlikely is to see people like us as the subject of a prime time network show.

I never knew what to call our relationship. I still don't. But I know it was real, and so important to both of us. Twelve years ago, I would never have envisioned myself in the place I'm at now. I'm afraid to even try to imagine where I will be twelve years in the future. But I've realized one thing. Tom's ghost will be coming along for the ride.
#

( 6:32 AM ) Amelia

Two Years

Waking up to it

Just yesterday, I was commenting on how much less aware I have been of the September 11 anniversary this year. Last year I took the day off and spent most of it at the Cathedral. I wore a white dress, and listened to the reading of the names, sitting in the shadowy choir stall as I watched the sun move across the colored apse windows. Today I'm going to work, though I have planned to go to a church service this evening.

I've been a bit disgusted at the way it's already been absorbed into the culture. My Franklin Planner has it listed as "Patriot's Day." It makes me feel a little ashamed of how we have debased other once-solemn holidays, particularly Memorial Day. I suppose someday this could be enshrined by the Monday-holiday law as the perfect vacation week, incorporating the Labor Day break into a 12-day string.

When I woke up this morning, I had been having survival dreams, of sleeping in a cave and huddling close to the others and our gear to battle the chill and keep out of sight. This is not a typical sort of dream imagery for me at all, and I was puzzled by it until I stumbled out of bed and flipped on the news. Oh yeah. Something in my reptile brain still remembers.

Work day

I was really nervous about being overcome by a wave of bogus jingoism when I went out today. I prepared myself by pinning a "Peace is Patriotic" badge to the lapel of my suit jacket. Our young assistant was the only one to comment on it (positively!), but I feel better for keeping my sentiments visible and public.

I think a lot of people have taken the day off. I left extra time for the subway, but it was less crowded than usual. Freeway traffic out to Big Publishing Company was heavy, though, so we missed the corporate Moment of Silence. They had scheduled it for 8:46, when the first plane hit. Other people seemed to have chosen the fall of the first tower. Funny how even something everyone agrees on can be expressed so differently. Of course, 8:46 is the cynical corporate choice; most people are still milling around with their coffee then, if they have arrived at all. Respect without loss of productivity.

I have a secret memorial at work. It's a copy of the New York Times from September 11, 2001, the last newspaper published before the attacks. I don't usually buy the paper, but I had purchased it that morning, for reasons now forgotten. It lies intact, folded at the bottom of my coat closet. I don't really look at it most days, but it comforts me to know it is there. It's a snapshot of the Before of the After.

The conversations today have been just as secret. Nobody really wants to bring it up. I did not go to the cafeteria today. I think I will just continue to lay low. I keep checking in at ThreeWay Action. The community feeling there is just what I was looking for two years ago, and it is still sustaining me today.

Night time

I went up to the service at the Cathedral. Very solemn, very non-denominational. The focus was on the musicians: organ, piano, cello, flute, medieval harp, and three singers. I enjoyed the moody cello meditations and the duets with the harp and the flute and the Enya-type Celtic warbling, but the singing was the kind I hate the most. There was a medley of Angels Watchin' Over Me and Amazing Grace that were so vibrato-ridden and drawn out I kept losing my place just listening. These are wonderfully rhythmic songs that were stretched and beaten and abused until they were unrecognizable. The good part about that, actually, was that my grumpiness about the music kept me from feeling overwhelmed emotionally.

I saved that part for the prayers. The clergy were all off to one side, taking turns reading prayers for different aspects of society. I can't even remember all of them, but the sounds of the familiar voices and cadences were very soothing. There were readings, too, and some traditional hymns for us to all join in on. The general theme was kind of "City of God" and "New Jerusalem." It seemed very appropriate to focus on the future and rebuiliding at this point. There was plenty of acknowledgment of loss, but grief was not the sole focus.

I had a very good cry.

There were not really many people there who were Cathedral regulars. I had imagined that I would run into someone I knew and probably go out to dinner, but there wasn't really anybody doing that. I decided to walk home down Amsterdam Avenue and enjoy the warm night, and feel the city around me. There were knots of people outside some other churches, as well as gatherings around bars and restaurants.

At the Happy Warrior playground, there was group of men in a pick-up Mariachi band. Their music soared and blended the way I had wished Amazing Grace had. It was so lovely to hear their spontaneous music on the warm night air. This is the best of New York. On the one hand, we have the resources for experimental performances like the ones at the Cathedral tonight. On the other, the amateur musicians gather in a public playground where anybody can hear them practice. So many opportunities for community.

I know the city turned on the Towers of Light tonight, but I could not see them from uptown. Just the same, my walk made me feel reinvigorated about the strength of memory and renewal right here in the city. #

( 3:14 PM ) Amelia

Blackout

6:30 pm

Reporting live from New York City. I just walked three miles to get home -- thank goodness that I did not go to work in NJ today. So far, people are being very cooperative and friendly. There are just about no D batteries left in the city, but I think everything will be mellow until they start running out of bottled water. Cell service was spotty, and everywhere people were staring in disbelief at their useless phones, then queuing for the pay phones on every corner.

No trains are running, either the subway or the suburban commuter lines. I walked past Penn Station, and the huge, block-long steps in front of the main post office looked like bleachers with all the stranded commuters sitting there. From about 42nd to the mid 50s, Eighth Avenue was closed to cars and sweaty people were walking and talking along. I was riding a bus for a while, but then the driver announced that they were told to stop service because of the danger of running when the traffic lights were out. Some police were directing traffic at really big intersections, but I think they are focusing on bigger concerns. In midtown, the Guardian Angels were doing traffic duty, and some other volunteers were trying to wave cars through.

Sounds of sirens and helicopters in midtown. Uptown much quieter, I walked through the park where it was cooler and rather cheerful. Now in my neighborhood, people are starting to settle in for the night. Neighbors are checking on each other and sharing batteries and candles. The hardware store had a long line out front as people waited to buy supplies. I made a street deal to trade C batteries for Ds to run my boom box. I can hear somebody strumming a guitar next door, singing "Wish You Were Here."

The pizza places with their gas ovens are doing a huge business, and the bakery cafe has taken over the sidewalk tables to sell food out on the street. Here on the Upper West Side, it is all about getting settled. Down in midtown, it was more survivalist, with people clamoring for cold water and one small shop doing a huge business selling sneakers for people who realized they must walk home.

So far, this is not looking too bad. I hope it doesn't rain tonight.

11:30 pm

The neighborhood is still pretty quiet, though there are still sirens every so often. I sent out some email reports and talked to mom on the phone. I figure she is the person that people will check in with. I took a few pictures but mostly it is too dark to register anything except when the fire trucks return to the firehouse on my block. The mayor is on the radio saying (sensibly for once) "Treat it like a snow day."

Carol called up and invited me to come down and have some beer with her and another neighbor, Pam. She braved my stair well with a tiny mag light to come fetch me after walking down ten flights of her own. My own block had quite a lot of beer drinking going on already -- people are really partying here. Around the corner on Columbus things were quieter, with fewer people on the stoops but more walking around. The best invention I spotted was the wine glass-as-lantern. With a votive candle in the bowl, the stem remains cool enough to hold comfortably while the candle is shielded from the wind.

There were flares up at the bigger intersections, and some buses seemed to be running, especially the crosstown. Nice that people did not have to walk through the park when it was so very dark.

Pam met us back at Carol's stoop. Her building is bigger and fancier than mine, and the neighbors outside were a good deal quieter. We went across the street to sit on the benches by the museum. It was much cooler under the trees. Carol had a six pack, and Pam had brought crackers, cheese, apples, and a little cutting board and knife. We had a nice midnight snack while we chatted with the dog-walkers passing by. The most amazing thing was seeing all the stars from the middle of New York City. Even though the moon was nearly full, we could pick out constellations from the street. Beautiful.

Carol and Pam walked me back to my building. I usually feel like I am safe once I get into my own lobby, but I think Carol's street smarts won out. Even with my flashlight, it was creepy in the pitch-dark stair well, and I was glad they waited in the lobby until I called down to them that I had made it to my front door. The door to the roof was open, and I could here music and laughter up there, but I just bolted my door, listened to a little more radio news, and got ready to sleep on the couch where it was cooler.

2:00 am

Hard to sleep. The couch is narrow and lumpy and it's very hot with no fan, though there is a bit of a breeze. Mostly, though, I have woken up because I can hear the party upstairs getting really wild. There is a rhythmic chant, complete with clapping, that seems to get faster and louder and then die off in a big cheer. I keep telling myself that it is just people chugging beer. As the chanting gets wilder, I keep visualizing the closing scenes of Last Exit to Brooklyn but I will the image out of my mind. Eventually my brain manages to substitute a more benign picture along the lines of Cher's Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, which is enough to placate me a little. The street below now seems completely empty, so the partying must be up on a nearby roof. I realize that this is exactly the sort of edgy behavior that the police are too busy to worry about. It is probably nothing, but it seems on the verge of spinning out of control. I find myself wondering if this makes me an old fogey. Ten years ago, would I have gone up to find the party?

The main thing I am worried about is the potential for fire. All these people using candles seems like a recipe for danger. I have put my well stocked purse right next to the front door, along with a bag containing a set of clean clothes and some basic toiletries. I'm not sure where I would go if something did happen, but it makes me feel better to have some sort of plan.

6:00 am

The first thing I see upon waking is the green light blinking on the VCR. Power is back. The radio says that subways are still out until afternoon, though, and continues with the snow day analogy. Still deeply groggy, I stumble back to my bedroom and lie back down in front of the fan that is now whizzing merrily beside the bed.

Hurrah for civilization. #

( 6:12 PM ) Amelia

Summer Fun

Last weekend I went to Boston. I saw a lot of good people and I ate a lot of good food. I even took some good pictures, but I haven't put them together yet. Consider this a coming attraction.

Friday I went out to Ringwood to see Amy and Ed. Their twin boys are now 3 1/2, and their little girl is just 1. The triple stroller is quite an impressive site when loaded for bear. They are all a lot of fun, and as usual, Amy served wonderful homemade goodies. She sent me home with a jar of bread and butter pickles that I am holding off on opening, because I'm afraid I'll want to eat them all. Amy and also went out and had dinner with KK. Her garden is even more amazing than I expected, well organized but still very informal. Big focus on fragrant flowers. She made us a delicious dinner of filet mignon and parmesan spinach patties, then made tea from freshly picked lemon verbena. I think I should visit more often out there.

Today was a joint birthday tea at Brit Central in Greenwich Village, aka Tea and Sympathy. The sandwiches were homey and delicious, and the scones were properly small, the better to slather with the clotted cream. I found the cakes a bit too big and bland, which means they are probably very authentic. But next time I will just get the sandwiches and order a slice of the walnut cake I could see on the counter behind me. I had a black tea with rose petals that set off the rich food nicely. The decor is intensely cozy and funky. Pictures here.

I think this place is a find. If nothing else, I will have to return when the weather is cooler to stock up on Flake bars at the gift shop next door. If I had bought them today, they would have turned to mush in the heat, not a flake left in the makeup. A good excuse to go back. #

A slice of life in the big city.