Grief Knees

A story inspired by a Facebook Memory. Whatever next?

This morning's digital time-machine ticket was from November 2016. Which means I was in one or all of the stages of grief about the recent Presidential election. Here's what I wrote: "Ha! I seem to have developed Grief Knees! My body is an old pro at manifesting emotion as physical pain - but this is a new one. I'm actually finding it kind of funny - you sneaky little unconscious mind, you. Gives me something to smile about while hobbling through the morass..."

I'd forgotten about having been made physically as well as emotionally rickety after that election, but I'm not surprised. Those were dark days, even though the most atrocious things The Narcissist actually did and said were yet to come. Like COVID-19 was yet to come. And AI coming for our jobs; coming for the truth. Rapidly worsening climate catastrophes! Ceaseless mass shootings. Unspeakable war crimes. 

Today I have Grief Wrists. A Fear Elbow. A Suppressed Emotion Hip. In fact, my left wrist is visibly swollen, the inflammation pressing at my skin, stretching it young-looking again. Of course, the news headlines alone could have brought these Grief Joints on today, I think. Even if my father weren't having surgery tomorrow. 

Here's what I mean by all this woo-woo shit. (I suspect it doesn't need to be explained that I generally don't go in much for woo-woo shit, but this is the exception.)

My mother suffered horribly from Rheumatoid Arthritis starting in her 30s. I'm talking joint destroying, excruciating pain whether she tried to move or to be still. Whether she tried to stand or to sit. Don't even get me started on doorknobs. The tsunami of medications and their consequences, and the surgeries that only temporarily straightened her shock me still when I let myself think about them.

This was, obviously, awful. And of course, she handled it heroically, because that's what she does. It's not my story to tell. But I will say that after he oversaw the ravages my mother suffered, when he had to diagnose her 16-year-old daughter with RA too, her lovely, loyal rheumatologist wept. 

I got lucky, though. At that time, I had fallen out of love with ballet, or with myself in ballet, but I somehow thought everyone would die if I stopped, or some juvenile nonsense like that. I'd been quite a good ballerina-fish in our very small pond. I'd had the leads in a bunch of recitals and everything, even once puberty hit, and I began to transform from willow-the-wisp to Viking. But as I seemed to be doubling physically, I minimized myself in every other way. Including, you know, actually telling anyone I was unhappy, and that I wanted to stop. So, I lugged my expanding body through the motions in a fog of unexpressed rage and despair. I danced my final "Parents Observation Class" with tears and a look of murder on my face. Which must have been fun for absolutely everyone! 

But as luck would have it, the arthritis affected me most in my shoulders and in my feet. Neither of which can be avoided as a ballerina-fish. I couldn't raise my arms in a port de bras. I couldn't elevate myself onto my toes. So I got to quit. And no one could call me a quitter, because no one could reasonably be expected to endure such unjust pain. (Smash cut to my mother, hunched over the steering wheel, grading English tests via dome light in the ballet school's parking lot during my five-times-a-week lessons, gripping a pencil at her own cost.)

Two years later, I took that penchant for the dramatic to New York City, where I was once again in love. I loved everything in that city. Everything. I was in love with NYU, and with my acting program, and freestylers in Washington Square Park, and a dizzying array of passers-by, and nighttime, the subway, the noise. And delis! And Broadway. Broadway, which I wanted to reach via a direct twinkling line and never, ever leave.

One of my stops on the Starlight Express was a private singing teacher whose name is lost to me, but who was an imperious and rather severe man with a shock of Beethoven hair who had the power to save me, I was sure. At one lesson, presumably discussing my goals for musical theater, I told him the story of having had to stop dancing due to RA. His eyebrows and his dander flew right up to the ceiling, and he proclaimed "Arthritis!? You don't have TIME for arthritis."

And, dear reader, it was so. 

More or less from that moment on, my symptoms went away. I could raise my arms again! I took a tap class and the teacher said he reckoned I could become a Rockette if I really worked at it! (Which made me laugh. Even then, I knew how inapt that advice was - second only to the high school guidance counselor who'd said NYC was no place for a girl like me, that I should go to a tranquil, leafy, liberal arts school instead. Which made my head explode.)

I had some x-rays taken of my hands and feet*, which showed almost no permanent joint disfiguration. And although to this day, the indicators for RA are still present in my annual blood work, I do not have joint pain except in periods of acute stress. Either physical (like when training for the half-marathons I used to do) or... emotional.

So, there you go. My brain flipped through its rolodex of potential ways to save me. Got me out of ballet without my having to admit defeat, and then set me free to run full-tilt for the footlights. See? Woo-woo.

I know, I know. It could be something I ate. Or my posture. Or something I should see a physical therapist about for hours of mind-numbing mini-exercises. There's probably a more scientific explanation. But this is the one area of my life that feels a little... mystical. Some delicate glimmering thread connecting me back through the darkness to the witches. Lord knows I could use a tiny bit of wonder.

So that's why I believe I came to be hobbling home from Canal Club in Venice, CA on election night, 2016, USA. And that's why, when I seem to have unexplained joint pain - with not even a millionth of a marathon run any time recently - I try to find a quiet moment and ask myself what my witchy body is trying to say. Like today.

It's only shoulder surgery. And my father had the other shoulder done years ago, and it was a success. But this time, we're all a lot older. We've all now lived through the despot, the plague, the shocking wars. And general anesthesia is just never completely risk-free. Especially if you are already dealing with cognitive issues. As my father is. My star-discovering, cello-playing, sharp-shooting, Finnish and German-learning, daughter-embarrassing-with-ballet-moves-in-the-parking-lot, Loki punster of a father.

My witchy wisdom is trying to say: I'm sad, I'm scared, I adore my dad, and I hate that this is happening. And Mom deserved better bones! Better luck of the draw! And she deserves to have Dad continuing to baffle and delight us all with what has always been the sharpest mind in the room. But. Still. We have each other. We're lucky little fish. I'm lucky. Even with Grief Knees. Even with a sadness so big it has to push its way out through my skin.

 

***

*This was before Digital Everything, so the x-rays came back on oversized films in a gorgeous manilla envelope with one of those red sting twirl-closure things. I was shown the prints on a light box in the rheumatologist's office, and the elation they created flew me; catapulted me through the city, though I paused every few blocks to look at my bones against the sky, the river, the streets. Never more alive than when shown what I'm made of. 

Battery Park City (a short story)

Angie suspected she should flee the scene of the crime. Although she looked out across the wind-whipped Hudson River, her mind’s eye imagined security cameras. Everywhere, probably. Her amateur attempts at anonymity were surely no match for post-9/11 security in lower Manhattan. 

When, she wondered, did I become someone who says 9/11? For years, she had stubbornly insisted on saying “the terrorist attacks on September 11th,” striving in vain to seem less narcissistically American. She hoped the change reflected an improvement in her character. A fading of intense self-centeredness. A small step toward kindness. Angie Eckhardt: Less Pedantic Than Before. And now she’d become a scofflaw, as well! She would have laughed at herself, but a wash of grief reminded her why she’d gone rogue. I’d do it again, she knew. I’m likely to do it again. Shit. That’s love for you.

This was not Angie’s first experience scattering ashes. A rogue gust off a cliff in Portugal had swooped away a handful of a dear friend. At a celebration of life for another friend, she’d helped seal his ashes into a lovely little Wedgwood urn. And she’d shared a residence with a small shrink-wrapped carton of her Aunt Birdie’s beloved cat Lola’s ashes for years. But this was quite a bit different. 

This time, her mother and she had, somewhat lightheaded and wide-eyed at their weird, woeful task, mixed the cat’s ashes into Birdie’s own. With a spoon. Oh, God. But the Long Island cemetery allowed no cat’s ashes, and Birdie would hardly rest easy without them, so they’d taken matters into their own hands. They’d solemnly portioned out a small amount of the mixture for Angie to take to her conference in the city, then carefully re-sealed the teak box. The law-abiding cemetery director would never know that the ghost of an opinionated feline had secretly slipped in to join the slumberers.

Again, Angie told herself to go. But, despite the unseasonable squall that she was badly underdressed for, and despite the prickling sense of being surveilled, she wanted to stay. She missed New York. Ached for the dreams she had left behind here. Not all the time, of course. She was deeply grateful for her life in California. For her husband. For real adult friends. For the miles and the years between her and her panicked youth. But sometimes she had to fight hard against wondering How could I have exiled myself from this place? Why did I give up? Why did I flee? So, her moments here were precious. Especially right here, where years ago, Birdie’s apartment had become first a refuge from a series of coming-of-age heartbreaks, and eventually, a home. 

Maybe everyone’s late twenties glowed particularly brightly in memory. For Angie, Battery Park City seemed to be the backdrop for a whole slideshow of vivid moments. She looked toward North Cove, remembering the frigid January night she had gone out to photograph and marvel at Captain Sully's floating US Airways plane. Remembering handing over via Water Taxi her darling black kittens to an ex-boyfriend who had claimed them in the breakup. Remembering a still young Lola in a cat-carrier slung over Angie’s shoulder as she and Birdie had staggered blindly south under the mattress of poisonous dust and smoke from the fall of the first Twin Tower. Remembering youth. Remembering loss.

Despite the neighborhood’s siren call, it had taken her years to force herself to visit the World Trade Center Memorial, and she’d found herself unprepared. Dragging her heels into the surprisingly tree-shaded grounds from the corner of Greenwich and Liberty, she’d tried to let thoughts of how touristy it all was protect her. But the sheer size of it! The mind-boggling amount of prime real-estate devoted solely to our fragile little hearts - to how much we mean to one another - had stripped her of her armor. This wasn’t “Ground Zero” to be checked off someone’s bucket list. This was a mass grave. And the yawning sinkholes easily enlisted a few of Angie’s tears to join their depths. You had to cry about this sometime, you know. Even if it took you twenty years.

But how could she be here without Birdie? Or rather, how could she be here with Birdie’s ashes in a Ziplock in her backpack? She and Birdie had gone through that awful day, those awful months, together. Close to the point of claustrophobia sometimes, but imprinted like fledglings onto each other nonetheless. Birdie would undoubtedly have said something now that irritated Angie with her special brand of being both right and wrong at the same time. Angie ached for that loss as well. 

Feeling slightly haunted, she’d been only too glad to continue on. She’d crossed West Street, so different now since the re-build, then passed under the footbridge across Liberty. She was there to fulfill her aunt’s wish to have the long-departed Lola's ashes scattered in the garden of their Battery Park City building complex. Of course, Birdie would have preferred not to be getting scattered right alongside the cat. Life is full of indignities, it seems... You’re coming home, Birdie. I’m so sorry. I hope you’d be happy to be here. 

Scattering wasn’t exactly the right term for what she’d done, but it had a much more noble ring than whatever you'd call her actual maneuver. She’d walked numbly toward the building complex, past the nail salon that was now a coffee shop, past the car rental place that was still extorting business travelers, past where the pay-phones used to be. Payphones. It had been a long, long time. She passed the mature tree in the garden, from which had once hung a singed and filthy pair of fireman’s overalls. She tried to shake the memories off. She hadn’t wanted to dwell on the past, but it snaked its way into her every breath.

Once ensconced in the complex's garden, trying to look like she had any legitimate reason whatsoever to be there, she’d counted 21 stories up and found her old window. The one through which she'd had a view of Lady Liberty. The one through which she’d taken that photo of the first burning tower. The one out of which she’d momentarily wanted to jump in a toddler-like rage after a fight with Birdie. Memories. You can run from them, she thought, but they will find you.

Forcing herself back to the task at hand, she’d cased the joint. For a moment, she’d thought it was going to be impossible. Surely, there had been more trees and bushes when she’d lived here with Birdie. Now, the garden felt too exposed. In clear view of the doormen, hundreds of windows, and presumably, facial recognition software, she’d almost lost her nerve. Already thinking I’m taking too long. I look ridiculously suspicious, she’d decided to throw the doorman off the scent. She’d entered her old lobby for the first time in nearly two decades.

The doorman was new. That is to say, he wasn’t Angel or Jaimie. He couldn’t have recognized her. “Excuse me,” she’d chirped, trying to sound some combination of confident and late, “Can I get down to the water from here?” A ridiculous question she’d already known the answer to, and which would work directly against her need to stay in the garden until the deed was done. But she’d hoped she still possessed enough charm at her age to buy some time with a smile.

Having been directed to the completely obvious path toward the Hudson, she’d started to head that way, then tried to telegraph through subtly exaggerated body language a brilliant re-thinking of her plans, a decision to await her imaginary friend right there in the garden after all. I’m making a mess of this, she’d chastised herself. Eyes nervously roving about the grounds, she meandered toward the gazebo, looking for the right spot. Under the bench? At the base of that shrub? No. There. There was a little footbridge over… well, nothing really, just an ornamental footbridge over store-bought symmetrical stones, but she could deposit the ashes just at the far side of it, and they would be invisible from Friendly Doorman’s angle. Not from any other angle, but she’d had to work with what she had. 

Hands shaking from more than the cold, she’d fished out of her backpack both the baggie, and, after imagining the ashes flying straight out to the Atlantic, a bottle of water. Worrying she was moments away from hearing “Stop in the name of the Law!” she’d knelt as if to tie her shoe, then sifted a small gray heap of a huge hunk of her heart onto the dry non-stream-bed, and then immediately doused it with water, so that the ashes sank straight into the earth and could never ever be completely dug out or blown away. A pause. A breath. Ok. There you go. Lola, at long last a permanent part of the view from that window. Birdie, heartbreakingly, too.

With no sirens blaring as of yet, there had been nothing left to do but stand and walk back out. She should have gone through to the water, to keep up her ruse, but her feet walked the regular way out, as they’d done so many thousands of times before. At the first trash can, she’d ignored recycling rules and hurriedly stuffed in both the empty plastic bag and the empty aluminum bottle, and then sped - NYC-fast, but hopefully not on-the-lam fast - away.

Her feet had kept walking her, at last, to the river, and she stood there for a long time. Mission completed, she wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Her chest felt a bit tight, and her knees were a little wobbly, but she’d done it, and she thought she should take a moment to let it settle. Hands shoved as deep in her coat pockets as she could get them, and hair whipping into her eyes, she replayed what she’d just done to the choppy soundtrack of waves smacking the seawall. 

She wondered briefly what she would actually do if she was set upon by the cops. Imagined seeing a pair them, heavy-booted and incredulous, charge up to her, yelling “Ma’am! What do you think you’re doing?” Would they ask for ID? Ask to see written permission from the property owners to scatter remains? What would she say? As much as she liked to hope she’d be defiant and confident, she’d known herself too long not to suspect that she’d burst into tears. Stop catastrophizing! Nobody cares! She tried to talk herself out of wondering what it would be like to be handcuffed and stuffed into a squad car. But just in case, she reluctantly - and feeling like she was somehow doing this all wrong - hightailed it out of there.

Goodbye, Birdie, she whispered as she went. I hope you knew how much I loved you.

Tonight, she had a ticket to the new Stoppard play and then drinks at Joe Allen with Jane, a fellow Stoppard junkie she’d met at yesterday’s conference. And tomorrow, her husband would fly in from California to join her, and they’d explore all the things the city had become since their last visit. There was a new restaurant they wanted to try where the old Lucky Strike had been. They wanted to see the addition to The High Line. She walked North. She took a deep breath. She was thinking of the future.

 

A Surprise Extra Room

Every New Yorker has dreams of discovering a secret extra room in their apartment. Well, I did. It might have been my one happy recurring dream, now that I think about it. (Nightmares got much more air time.)

You’d go to open a closet door and discover another door you’d simply never noticed, but that had been there all along. And when you opened it…. wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, an entire empty room, a box of light and space and possibilities. All for you.

There’s actually an entire empty 5-bedroom apartment “all the way uptown” that I’ve Tessered to many times in dreams. The building’s kinda grim, but the space! It’s hard to choose which rooms I want for myself, there are so many. And I thrift shabby-chic wooden furniture and cushions in vivid colors, and buy an overflow of plants to make it a bohemian sanctuary. 

If you take the dream train past the north-western-most limits of Manhattan, there’s another building that’s mine. Kind of a semi-detached town house. I’ve never been inside, but I keep remembering that it’s there if I need it, and that the train back into the city takes me right past that theatre where I have tickets to see that play…

Now that I live in a wildly sprawling one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles with nary an air-shaft in sight, I have the dream much less frequently. But last week I was reminded of it during a sudden-onset cleaning frenzy on the upstairs balcony. Yes, we have two balconies. I feel a reluctance to say that, because it seems so grand, and because I could evidently do with going back into therapy, but. Ahem. The upstairs one was… not grand.

We’d inherited a tall, paint splattered easel when we moved in, which we kept up there because it looked artsy as hell. Then, during a lull, Steven suddenly became this amazing painter and craftsman, building a custom easel, making the wooden frames, stretching his own oversized canvases, crafting decorative walnut frames for display. The upstairs balcony seemed like Picasso’s Paris apartment, but sun-drenched, and with a handsome Scot in his dedicated painting clothes. Abstracts sprung from walls, extra canvases filled the loft.

When eventually the lull ended, the table saw went into a weather-tight storage box, which was nearly visible under the pile of wood scraps and other vestiges of a brief and glorious painting residency. That was years ago. And sticky, salty dust piles up fast when it’s blown in from the beach all day, every day - and it never rains.

My less preferred succulents got migrated upstairs to join the wood pile. Some planter boxes that had held herbs that died almost immediately in the constant abrading sea-breeze sat quietly falling apart, excelling at slowly releasing their soil and gravel onto the balcony floor. The balcony door rusted almost all the way shut for a few years, but even when it was repaired, why bother? The downstairs balcony has a table and chairs, and a gas grill, and my favorite succulents. So that is where we went. When we went. You’d be surprised how chilly it is in Venice.

Then inexplicably, on Memorial Day, I looked at it all and thought - Now. I'm going to do it now. And after much less time and effort (although just as much dirt) as I’d anticipated, everything but the teak planks we’d also inherited, the artsy easels, and the actually attractive plants were gone. I swept up dustpan upon dustpan of sand and other things I didn’t examine too closely. I thought - I bet a potted olive tree could survive out here, and wouldn’t it look lovely through the window from downstairs. I got a beach chair out of storage and sat out there listening to the audiobook of A Wrinkle in Time. 

The transformation isn't completely done. It needs another good sweep, and I need to get my hands on the weatherproof paint for the floor. (Picasso left a bit of a Pollock behind.) Plus, there’s a mostly dead cockroach that I discovered between two of the pieces of teak, and I don’t know how long it will take me to gather the courage to deal with it. But still. I have a brand new room. A surprise extra space. It had been there all along, waiting until I needed it.

p.s. It took 13 days to face the cockroach. Mercifully, by then, it had died. A species first, I believe.

Blackbird

Sometimes they have matchsticks for fingers, my poor hands.
Blood-red at the tips from nervous biting.
Lately they have become crepe-skinned, though I’m not that old.
Should they look this old?

Over the course of existing in a world
Where I have found the women's half of the sky
A heavy thing to hoist
I have used my hands to reject and to embrace their duties.

Right now I am entranced with
Berry-bright, glossy lozenges on my fingertips.
Other times I look at painted nails with disdain, pity.
Who would want to be so far from the Earth?
Who would be so vain?
Why are you so unlike the people you came from?
Your scientist father. Your warrior mother. 
But today, they delight me. Their shine.

I had been suspicious of my hands for a long time.
Unlike those I love, no matter which way I wear them.
Well, unlike my mother's.

It took a long time to realize
The Big Bad Thing hadn’t come for me.
The big bad thing that ate through my mother's still-young joints
That would have grounded her if we hadn’t lived when we did.

It swooped down briefly to consider me.
Lowered my arms, and lowered me from my toes
But then the big bad thing flew on.
Leaving only a little scar.

It did not happen to me.
Even though I am my mother’s daughter.
And it happened to her.

By now, if it comes, it’s due.

I can start taking the pins
Out of to-dos.
I can plan things
That involve my knees
My shoulders
My feet.

The skies have long been free of terrors.
And my hands have always been strong.

#12 - Green Stripes is Playing

My dad had a friend, George. He was an eccentric character. Long scraggly beard, bandana wrapped around his forehead, always, causing and obscuring a wicked forehead tan-line. Baggy cargo shorts and not-new white tees. Camels. Coffee cans full of bottle tops whose rebus puzzles my brother Jason and I would delight in trying to decipher. He was unlike us.

He was unlike my father in most ways, too, but the two shared a love of folk dancing, and a life-long bond due to time as campers and later counselors at a boy's camp on an island in Lake Winnipesaukee. My world-class punster dad, if I have this right, resigned his time as counselor by offering the Camp Director a single bristle from a broom, declaring it "the last straw." I don't know what George was like as a teenager, if he was different before Vietnam, but as a dad-aged character, examined closely by this sheltered New England girl, he was the kind of guy who said he had to "water a tree" before peeing up against its roots, and gleefully pointed out chipmunks on the woodpile, doing what they do in the spring.

We LOVED visiting.

The camp had been closed for long enough for everything to be musty, but not long enough that you couldn't still find shell casings at the firing range, or sleep in a long-silent campers cabin, on dubious cots, in your very own L.L. Bean sleeping bag!

There was a big central activities hall by the main dock, which boasted a cabinet full of dusty board games, and a piano you could pretend to play, especially if you didn't know the meaning of being "in tune."

That main dock received the mail boat, and had an actual, full-sized diving board, which you could use if you were willing to penetrate the top few feet of sun-warmed water and descend into the freezing New Hampshire lake temperatures. We were. We did. That dock witnessed life and death moments, and the hall made me dream of rowdy nights of fun with imagined friends, laced with the heady freedom of summertime away from your regular life.

Best of all, if you knew the way, there was a tiny beach on the back side of the island, called Big Sandy. And if you knew even more than that, you could use two beach boulders as reference points, and swim out into the lake to form an isosceles triangle with them, and your thrilled toes would eventually find the huge submerged rock, where you could rest, in triumph, and then launch off again on the rest of your swim toward the floating wooden dock, which everyone knew about. Not like you kids, who also knew about the rock.

On one trip, there were enough "summer-only" residents - George was the island's full-time caretaker by that point, and had strong opinions about the recurring fair-weather denizens - that a friendly soccer game was arranged one day. Tween Devon did not find such a prospect "friendly" at all. Despite my dad and Jason's excellence and enjoyment of the sport, it was still... a sport. Which excluded it categorically from Things I Could Do Without Dying. I guess I was talked into going to the field. I know I was wearing a prized green and white striped polo shirt. I was in despair. 

But then, something truly awful must have happened. Like, the enthusiastic dad who was organizing the game officially assigned me a position, or some such horror. I claimed I was suddenly "so tired" and ran away to a nearby cabin to lie right on the guano-covered floor. I might have even convinced myself I was tired, or pretended to sleep. But of course, my parents saw right through my charade, and came to... rescue me, you might hope? Promise I would never again have to endure such an indignity? Nope. They had met me, after all. And with what I now enjoy imagining as Magical Parenting Patience, they talked me down (I am certain there was an ocean of tears, but that was par for the course - Look! A sports metaphor!) until I agreed to emerge from the shadowy four-bunker into the terrifying light of day, where every single person had just witnessed me run away.

I don't remember actually playing. It's possible, if unlikely, that I even avoided "whiffing" if I ever had to kick the ball. I don't remember, but I might possibly have had some fun. I don't remember anything but wobbling my way out of that cabin onto the field, chin up, if quivering, and the Enthusiastic Dad not missing a single beat. He just brightened, and said, "Green Stripes is playing?" And, albeit with a watery voice, I said, "Green Stripes is playing."

I will never, ever forget his kindness.

I have been striving to give people that much respect and acceptance ever since.

So here we are, kids. The last of my self-promised "writing projects" for the year. I've had the most ease (and if I'm honest, enjoyment) writing these memoir-type things, but I still really want to try my hand at fiction. I'm a bit mortified by writing about myself, and then asking people to read it. But the fact that a year ago, I hadn't really created anything all on my own, and now... I have, brings me a quiet, embarrassed pride. So, in 2023, I am going to take a writing course, and I am going to try writing fiction. And even worse, I'll need people to read it. Paid people, though - not you! Don't worry! Oh, man. Putting myself out there is hard.

Honestly, as I forge my way through this world, my chin is still often wobbling, even if it looks like it's held high, even to this day. But, my friends...

Green Stripes is playing.

#12.5 - Operation: Maybe It Won't Be Terrible

At the end of the second year of COVID, I gave myself the challenge of writing twelve things in the next twelve months.

Just because, and just for me. 

(Although my mother is more or less required to read them all.)  

But also because I needed to know 2023 would hold something that was challenging in only a personal way, not in a Sky Is Falling way.

I told this idea to a few people, and I mention it casually from time to time when people ask me what I'm up to, but I really solidified my commitment by saying it out loud to my friend Scott, who is basically a tall drink of empathy. 

Lingering outside the parking garage after coffee, which is what you do in LA instead of lingering by the stairs to a subway station, he told me about his new pursuit, and I told him about mine. Basking in the glow of his enthusiastic listening, I said "All twelve pieces could be under an umbrella title of... Maybe it Won't Be Terrible." We laughed.

(His venture involves him becoming even more adept at helping people. That path will be the opposite of terrible. His patients will be lucky.)

Well, Dear Reader, I've done it. I've written twelve things in a year. Some of them are better than others, but hey, that's how you learn, right? I'm quite pleased!

Maybe I'll continue these, or maybe I'll do a deeper dive into fiction, like, taking an actual writing class. Maybe both.

Thank you, ANYONE, who has read one of these. Scott Ferrara, Beth Lopes, Steve Wilson, and Mom, extra thanks.

#10 The New York Plaid

There is a Far Side cartoon showing terrified city dwellers in panicked flight, trying to escape a nuclear armageddon, while a dog stares at... nothing… on the ground in front of him. It's captioned "And then Jake saw something that grabbed his attention."

I think about this cartoon at moments in my life, such as my first trip to San Francisco, when I spent half an hour trying to capture macro images of tiny succulents planted on the side of a hill, and only when my back required straightening did I turn around and behold... The breathtaking San Francisco Bay. Bright blue skies and wind-whipped water, occasional sleek clouds racing across the sky like a varsity rowing team, the Golden Gate Bridge, luminous in the afternoon light. Alcatraz! Or moments like today, when, a full year after my friend Hillary gave me a moth trap due to an unfortunate situation with a wool rug in our building, during which time I'd checked on it frequently and been smugly pleased that I had not a single moth, I discovered the trap had a protective film you had to peel off in order to expose the sticky entrapping surface. Or the time Steven told me the bright green sports car in front of us with the eye-like headlights was called the Lamborghini Kermit, and I absolutely, 100% believed him - I mean, It looks like a frog. A fast frog! All this to say, there are lots of things I don't notice. But the things I do? I notice 'em hard.

When I first moved to New York City, I felt like I was nothing but eyes, noticing everything. And one of the things I gave my full attention was The New York Plaid. (You probably thought I was going to talk about the World's largest collection of cast iron building facades in SoHo, or that the price of a slice of pizza and the price of a subway ride have historically stayed in tandem, or that the idea that skyscrapers can only be built where the bedrock is nearest the surface might be a myth! Nah. Who had time for such things?) This plaid, though, this plaid! It was often in scarf form, but spotted also on hats, coats and umbrellas, and it was for sale on every street vendor's cart, many a store window, and wrapped around a truly surprising number of necks. And because it was so ugly, I assumed it was some insider "you have to be a New Yorker to understand" thing. This beige plaid scarf. Maybe it was a NY sports team's colors. In which case I'd never find out, and just live with the delightful mystery! What a glorious city.

Eventually, some number of years later, I pointed out the NYP to someone, who said, incredulously, "...You mean, the Burberry Classic Check?"

I have formed other opinions about Burberry since. But I still hate beige.

Sigh. Burberry calls it "tan." It's still hideous.

One of my favorite Ani DiFranco songs from these early years in New York has the line "...when I look down, I just miss all the good stuff. When I look up, I just trip over things."

I'm trying to strike a balance these days. Macro photography AND the awareness that the sky is falling. Passion for my beliefs, but space for the chance I could be wrong. Hope that there's a public square where we might actually learn big ideas from each other, where there's also a delightful little Tom Otterness creature. I try to keep my eyes and ears open. I still treasure the tiny and the ridiculous. I hope to look New York Chic photographing those tiny succulents, with the help of my vintage Burberry bowler bag. Which is red.

Oh, by the way, regarding the images I pull for these posts, I do put some effort into finding ones that are not copyrighted, although, to paraphrase what my friend Kelly Wolf wrote in her blog, Powered by Dragons, since I'm not making any money off this, who would really care? However, I bet Burberry has a legal team, so... voila. Proof that I did NOT miss a calling as a visual artist.