The plants are growing. Playing cards flutter from city park chess tables to my walk routes home. Seven of clubs. Nine of hearts. Queen of spades. Classes start soon. Autumn arrived about ten days into August and even if another heat-week struck, it wouldn’t change the state of things. You see, the light has changed, and that’s the true indicator of the equinox.
After dinner [spinach, chicken, brown rice, potato curry dumplings, Dominican beer, and a pot of garlic & lime tea] Chanelle and I strolled to the bodega for toilet paper. It was late. Upon entering, we faced a circle of men at the counter, fighting. We retreated and waited outside. The yelling quickened, grew louder, and we could see the shapes of their bodies through products in the windows, moving towards each other in battle. All at once, the sound died and truces were exchanged. We made our way back in. The men were dispersing and shaking hands. We set the toilet paper on the counter, and one of the owners leaned toward us and said, “That guy tried to steal something. We had to deal with it. It happens; you know how this neighborhood is–” and if he meant that I know how people in this neighborhood spar and then get over things, like the way it storms here, then yes, I know. But if he was trying to soothe me, a white girl he doesn’t know, and “you know” was more of a “you know the stigma of this place,” then, no, I don’t know. I really don’t know.
Sweeney and I have been waking up early and eating breakfast specials at our local diners. There are puddle near the sinks in our apartment, and we kiss and slip and do our work. We’re finding that it can feel alienating sometimes, to live around each other so wholly, and experience the parts of our lives that don’t overlap. We’re reading Moby Dick together. No one ever tells you when talking about that book, that the first part is all about men hooking their legs around each other in bed and getting married.
Robi arrived home from his soujourn across the country last Wednesday at dawn. He’d been gone for two months, and knocked loudly on the door. We smelled him and hugged and he looked around at us, me, Sweeney, Chris, Chanel, and said, “Wow; this is house is in high spirits.” He looked around and saw how we’d been living. He said, “Adrian, I wish you would stay.” The sun, just barely risen, filled the cellar apartment. Chris suggested breakfast, since we were up.
Later that night we drove to Allentown, Pennsylvania, and sailed around for a couple of days, spending a night in Philadelphia where Robi’s parents live.
Don’t forget about the newly-pressed Correspondence No. 1 ($8), available from this place, and also from this one: thecorrespondingsociety.blogspot.com.
And just a reminder; we are accepting submissions until October 1st. Send work to thecorrespondingsociety@gmail.com as .rtf or .doc files, and be sure to indicate “Submission” in the subject.
I remember Cindy Maize explaining, in a measured tone, why she would gladly die for her children. I was seven, and spent most weekday afternoons in the back of her baby blue Ford Taurus, running errands and playing Miss-Susy-Had-a-Tugboat with my friend, falling asleep in the sun. I remember her parking in their driveway, and getting out of the car and the three of us being halfway into a conversation about parents taking bullets for their children. And Cindy, walking ahead of us, jingling her keys, said, “I just would. It’s something you don’t think about, really.” I pictured all grown-ups as battle shields. “Would my mom?” I asked. “Of course,” she said.
Who takes bullets for whom? I was thinking about this today. Chanelle and I started a garden in our patio, and things are growing by the hour: squash, spinach, lettuce, peppers, morning glories, strawflowers and onions, spilling out of three clawfoot bathtub planters. These are like babies, but it is not the same.
There’s an Olympic-sized pool, abandoned and sea-green paint peeling, in McCarren Park that people have been using for concerts and outdoor picnic movies all summer long. We saw a new production of Hamlet called Twelve Ophelias, which took place somewhere in Appalachia instead, and used the darkness of the night and four spotlights for all the world’s mood. What with that buttery summer wind and the jug band battling-banjo accompaniment. Ophelia called Hamlet, The Rude Boy. “That rude boy done me wrong.” They mixed Southern drawl with Elizabethan sentence structure.
We’ve had many guests, in and out, big family dinners, long work days; we let the cats outside as they please, these days; Robert and I worked on our play for twelve hours; Sweeney has almost finished teaching himself both Latin and French. We went out on the Hudson, cloaked in thick, green hills. Went to the house where his mother was a raised; an old inn under a red freight bridge. We jumped from the back of his uncle’s boat. If I stayed perfectly still, and looked away for only a second, the current had taken me fifty feet from the plank, almighty: at dawn this morning, after a cautionary tarot spread that gave me an inverted Ten of Staves, Chanelle and I debated whether or not it’s OK to “float away from the boat” sometimes, and of course it is. The lesson lies in learning that you can, and taking heed accordingly.
You can choose, I suppose, to swim back to the boat, but there are a thousand other forces at work. With one choice, a thousand other seeds germinate on the back of your neck, and they grow with or without your watering can.
During Poem Shop, we’ve had people teach us mamba, yoga, how to make Spätzle. We watched a hawk land on an elm in Central Park, and eat a rodent. We stopped a crevice-faced middle-aged musician and pointed to the bird: Edie Bobe. He ended up giving us salsa lessons. Talked about a radio play he did with Debbie Harry once. And we wrote poems for adopted daughters and helpful mothers and trips to Egypt: the trick, is to just go.
My stepfather’s mother recently passed; the trick, is to just go. And seal your departure with five children, reconciled. They were all together for the first time in thirty years; maybe sat on overstuffed chairs covered in dog hair, drank coffee, and remembered how many bullets they took for each other, almighty: who did Ophelia take bullets for?
We went to an opening party at the MoMa for Erich Kirchner; a German art nouveau. Lots of high-kicks and prostitutes and people hiding their faces in the background. Sweeney and I went to Block Island to hunt for ghosts and myths, and all we found were quiet roads and secret beaches on rented bicycles. I felt defensive and squashed the first day. We hugged in the Great Salt Pond and stayed in an old house. Got a beer at the Beachhead Grill, and as per request, Sweeney swatted my forehead as Defenso the Clown began to rise in my throat. Then, Defenso was gone. We dodged jellyfish in the tide and thought, well, let’s go home. Boarded the ferry and steamed through a storm: we stood facing West in the rain on the bow, alone.
I talked to my Aunt, a former island citizen, upon our return. She said, “Next time tell me when you’re going. I would’ve told you to get a cocktail at the Beachhead.” I smiled, told her we had. Told her the island’s first name was Adrian’s Island, and she said, “I know.”
Then she said, “So Sweeney’s your manfriend?”
Oh. Sweeney keeps the magic alive.
We climbed Bear Mountain with Dave and Chanelle a couple of weeks ago, barefoot and up rock faces. Everyone but me stepped in a yellow jacket nest on the way down, and said “ouch” only three times before moving on, riddled in welts. Chanelle even smiled: “I think this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said.
Spätzle:
“All you need is flour, egg, salt, and a little bit of water,” he said in a thick German accent. “Then you take a very sharp knife and very quickly, slice thin strips into a pot of boiling water. It’s very difficult. They have machines for it now, but in the olde says, you would fail ten, twenty times before you made good Spätzle, and once you could, you could be a grandmother; you could buy a house, own a dog; the whole big mess.”
