Sunk in my dread, I marched on alongside, up North Broadway, till I circled and headed residence. I crossed a unique bridge over the river once I got here to it.
Ch. 9, Half I
I got here to the Spring Avenue Bridge, south of the Broadway overpass I had traversed into Lincoln Heights, and crossed it. I used to be strolling by outdated industrial streets typically utilized in Hollywood shoots, heading again to Chinatown. New York had made me a walker, the Manhattan streets. You’ll be able to’t not be. It’s how you reside within the metropolis. The individuals, the storefronts, the buildings, the curbside sights, site visitors, towering heights of ambition, the striving, succeeding, and failing under, all of the tales swirling within the maelstrom of each intersection.
Mac had been a walker earlier than me. He wasn’t a hiker – possibly he was, in childhood, over the tough terrain of southwestern Ukraine, past the pious lanes of Orinin, stained with Jewish blood. However he beloved to stroll, miles at a time, wherever he was however particularly in New York. He beloved observing the world change round him, to report again later at residence all the new he noticed arising round us.
perpetually: I see myself: harm: once more: harm: my father
more durable harm: time's harm: time hurts:
by his dad and mom: the soil: historical past: horrible: historical past:
wants a push: previous the previous: pull of a brand new
world: New York: all his life, then: beloved: the brand new:
~ from "Infinite Nocturne," in Ready for Phrase
After we buried him, with Julia nonetheless away in Transylvania main her photograph workshop and me alone in the home, I took day by day walks by our Westside neighborhood. Every time, I skilled essentially the most peculiar sensation. Dad had been a sunworshipper in addition to a walker, on solo journeys to the seashore on summer time weekend mornings in addition to on our balcony in the course of the lengthy years he obtained to stay searching over Rockaway Seaside and the Atlantic Ocean he’d 3 times crossed, holding a reflector beneath his chin. It’s why his pores and skin had turned so brown and leathery, like an outdated, creased pockets. He beloved the sensation of the solar’s warmth on his flesh. What did it make him really feel? I don’t know. However once I walked by the neighborhood and much past it these first days with him lifeless, falling into the rhythm of my passage by issues, settling into the feeling of dwelling adrift in time, feeling the solar singe my pores and skin a little bit, I grew to become my father. I felt him inhabit me as if every stride, every swing of my arm, was his. I didn’t actually develop into my father, after all. I didn’t suppose he had really entered into me, his spirit transubstantiated from one being to a different. Mac, to my nice grief, was lifeless. I had seen the husk of his physique, been bowled over by the unnatural, embalmed face, the pores and skin stretched and smoothed past what it was in life. I didn’t consider in any private spirit unbiased from the natural life that had sustained and expired in it.
What I felt activated in my limbs, coursing by my torso, tingling on my pores and skin, was not solely Mac strolling alive to the world but in addition Mac attentive to the state of being alive on the planet – a contented consciousness he had attained within the last third of his lengthy life, gifted to him on escaping loss of life by coronary heart assault. (However had he, possibly, some recall of it – had he maybe felt one thing prefer it swimming playfully together with his grandfather’s horses within the lake at Orinin?) I felt in myself that I used to be extending Mac’s stroll in time among the many results of the world, the “sudden gradual passage by issues” of it, till there was nobody to increase it after me.
A number of years later, subletting for a couple of summers an condo on the Higher West Facet of Manhattan near the place I as soon as lived– one other English professor, who traveled north to his Massachusetts origins for his personal break – I took lengthy walks north by Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights and the Metropolis School I as soon as attended, by Riverside Park, alongside the Hudson, up Riverside Drive. On heights overlooking the river, I may stroll with a really feel of the encircling geography, sense my presence on the land, beside waters, one doesn’t expertise in dense canyons of Manhattan excessive rises and outdated brick. And nonetheless I used to be pondering of Mac, whose immigrant craving had embraced and beloved the town so, but who needed to stay away from it in Los Angeles the final dozen years of his life. It was, then, just a few years since Julia and I had traveled throughout Indian Nation, to the Navajo Reservation, Apache territory, Pamunkey lands on the Atlantic coast, and for the primary time afterwards, metropolis dweller I had all the time been, I believed I understood – I felt it – what it was to be related to land, to a geography.
The place I come from, each feeling calls a reputation, each
title a habitation, a fatherland, and all my locations merge
into me. When the Dutch first spied Manhattan’s breast, and paid
with all of the wealthy corruptions of the center for each technology crossing
Brooklyn ferry, they opened up a harbor, carried human cargo
the town nonetheless unloads. Hudson wandered, too, up Mahicanittuk River
and by no means arrived past it.
~ from "Place (touring,)" in Ready for Phrase
Within the spring and summer time of 2020, although, in downtown Los Angeles, marching alongside abandoned streets, approaching residence, I arrived enveloped by a rising alienation from the geography to which, regardless of my immigrant heritage, or moderately due to it, I had all the time felt related. I wrote the poem I knew I needed to write about Trumpism and the devolutionary transformation of the nation.
For the achievement, such because it was, daring as a chicken
free on the wing, manifest in its energy, distinctive
in its attain, haunted by guiltlessness, mined from membranous
thoughts, out of nothing, an thought
of the free, dignified and rightful citizen...
That was the which means, the conveyance from then to now,
the import of what was imparted, not the factor,
however the making out of it: what was to be recalled
in remembrance, of what we meant to make of ourselves,
what, taken outright, is perhaps earned, is perhaps squandered...
~ from "Impolitic Manifesto; November 8, 2016" in Ready for Phrase
The ultimate poems of Ready for Phrase, some from early in my poetry writing life, others formed from late night time Brooklyn reveries and streams of remembrance and reflection on New York buses and trains, rose up inside me in a concluding rush over that 2020 spring and summer time.
When the homicide of George Floyd additional politically charged the nation in Might, Julia and I had been dwelling on the nook of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, floor zero in what known as the Historic Core of DTLA. When the largely peaceable mass demonstrations, with some rioting, had been staged round L.A., we had, from our fourth-floor home windows surrounding the intersection, entrance row mezzanine seats on some early motion. Julia tried to go away the constructing to shoot from the road, however with no present press go, she was prevented by LAPD that first night from exiting for any non-vital private motive. We spent hours, then, on the home windows observing, I taking the occasional beginner cellphone photograph, Julia ready lengthy durations together with her Leica for simply the fitting parts. The interval of LAPD staging, with motorized and foot items maneuvering amid the rumble and name of approaching protesters supplied its personal drama. When battle did get away at our location, what I noticed from our home windows, completely different from different reviews elsewhere, was extremely disciplined LAPD conduct within the face of a lot youthfully wild and antagonistic provocation.
One of many areas of provocation was round a small journal kiosk on the northwest nook of the intersection. It was run by a 60ish Latino couple, I feel Salvadoran, who sat lengthy hours day by day to obtain what appeared, on this age, meager enterprise. They’d many native mates who stopped to speak and whereas away the time with them. Julia and I handed them usually. I’d typically smile or nod, however Julia greeted them like neighbors she spied sitting on the gazebo in Damaged Bow’s city sq.. This made her a favourite, because it all the time does, in order that even after we had moved elsewhere and infrequently got here by, the person, notably, would react with shock and delight on the sight of her and change greetings. With Covid, although, and by the point of the George Floyd protests, the kiosk, like most different shops downtown, was shuttered. We noticed nobody for a lot of weeks. We may observe at any time from our window. Then, in time, the person returned and reopened for brief durations. However we didn’t see the lady we presumed to be his spouse. Was she alright? I had already made the psychological connection to my mom’s father, lifeless earlier than I used to be born, who labored his immigrant years at a newspaper kiosk in decrease Manhattan.
Map of seeing, cartography of disastrous forgetting, the unsettled unremembered past the pale. Her father, my mom mentioned, labored a kiosk on Second Avenue and 4th Avenue, the Decrease East Facet, inexperienced and shuttered at night time, when the dwelling have fled and the lifeless hang-out the darkish closets of your eyes. Oaxaca and Huehuetenango, Tegucigalpa and San Salvador, boiling waters. Name them historical past title them lives, aromatic with steam of candy or savory dumpling soups: knaidelach, kreplach, chocoyotes. How does anybody get to the place they are going, to be discovered there displaying themselves as they're? Zayde, Bubbe, Abuelo y Abuelita. ~ from "The Residing and the Useless" in Ready for Phrase
Someday later that summer time, I carried out an idle activity I engaged once in a while every time the thought struck me. I searched the web for indicators of Jerry, a part of the threesome with me and Arnie in our teenagers and later, final of the sequence of adventurous older boys to whom I’d unconsciously connected myself in youth to attract me previous my fears and out into the world – who’d scrawled that “letter of introduction” Arnie and I carried with us to California within the psychedelic summer time of 1969. After overcoming his heroin dependancy at Phoenix Home and marrying a nurse, Jerry grew to become a profitable enterprise government and, unsurprisingly, adopted himself, a loving and charismatic father to 3 youngsters. Work moved the household across the nation a couple of occasions, the final time to Florida, the place Jerry grew to become unresponsive and withdrew from our lives. For over twenty-five years, Arnie and I may discover no signal of him, although we noticed indications the household had damaged up. This time, I discovered his spouse, Barbara’s Fb web page. She seemed to be remarried. I scrolled her timeline and dug into feedback and replies. Ultimately I discovered what I looked for, and in opposition to, in Barbara’s reply to a remark – about her “late husband, Jerry.”
I wrote Barabara, after which we spoke on the cellphone. Within the early Nineties, Jerry had returned to taking pictures heroin, even develop into closely concerned in trafficking by way of the Caribbean. He’d been arrested a couple of occasions. Barbara, who all the time bailed him out, had been separated from him for numerous years by the point their youngest son, dwelling with Jerry, returned residence one night to search out Jerry lifeless on the ground from an overdose. The household that had appeared so glad when final I noticed it, the kids all nonetheless youngsters, was wrecked by these occasions.
Arnie and I had our affirmation. We consoled one another in lengthy phone talks. A few months later, that youngest son, twenty years after his father’s loss of life, and together with his personal long-term dependancy issues, went on an extended weekend bender and succumbed to alcohol poisoning. He died within the arms of the nurse mom who had taken him residence from the hospital.
I wrote an elegy for Jerry by which I conjured all of it, opening and shutting with Jerry, again within the day, on the peak of his very important power.
the town, a time, our younger lives on hearth, streets that burned with turning into;
and the low spark of your high-heeled boots, their clatter, in long-loping,
conquering strides, as soon as aflame with the ferocious flesh of your shining,
full flush on the avenue in your jacket and shades.from “Full Flush,” in Ready for Phrase
Among the many last poems I wrote for Ready for Phrase was “The Phrases.” Many of the poem had been preconceived and plotted with care: to attract on a bunch of idioms by which the phrase “the phrase” was a component, to middle language in any understanding of my identification, my being on the planet. I made a decision on the stanza kind and on the transition out of the alternating parts into their closing merger. I had so lengthy resisted public acknowledgment of my advancing age, not in any pretense to be younger however from a conviction of my youthful impulse and openness to journey and exploration: I had a lot nonetheless to attain, I aspired, I yearned . . ..
I now acknowledged that something extra I would talk with which means about being on the planet may come solely from the standpoint of my age. The closing expression of “The Phrases” got here to me in a surge, poured from me. I wept as I wrote.
Or in different phrases, take my phrase,
borne out of the buzzing hive,
deep darkish and honeyed down the fervent middle the place
I used to be born, to bear the phrases
into this naked barkless
leaving and unleaving left to go. Write them, then. Be them.
Of all of the world's phrases, ship
this one, then that:
world the phrase departing, and worlding phrase, phrase the world
in enunciation of our parting.
from "The Phrases," in Ready for Phrase
~ ~ ~
To the reduction of hundreds of thousands of People, and to individuals and nationwide leaders everywhere in the world, Joe Biden received the 2020 election, however not with no response from Trump and his followers that dismayed and frightened, that solid a unbroken shadow over the nation and its future. January sixth, like 9/11, strengthened in me one other recognition, of the ability of direct expertise within the steadiness with reasoned understanding. We are able to be taught, we will know, and we will expertise and perceive within the lifeblood. We could also be realized, and nonetheless we could also be seasoned and made clever.
It was over the subsequent two years that I re-encountered and studied the historical past of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition to circumnavigate the earth — the tragic ambition and journey of it, its expression of human boldness, avarice, and aggression, of civilization’s relentless advance, of the lives of extraordinary individuals swept alongside by it. I conceived the novel’s explicit kind in three elements and selected my three protagonists: Magellan; Juan de Cartagena, the Bishop’s bastard son who repeatedly mutinied in opposition to him; the extraordinary seaman, Diego Carmona. I conceived the closing poem and scenes (I all the time know my endings) and the ultimate dream-vision. I titled it The Dream of Don Juan de Cartagena. I wrote the primary fifty thousand phrases.
Within the fall of 2021, I realized from my outdated highschool good friend Alan that he was leaving Sonoma County after a long time of life there to stay in a Florida condominium owned by the oldest of his youthful sisters. My earliest explicit reminiscence of Alan, amongst so many experiences that may have surrounded it, was of me at sixteen, he fifteen, mendacity on our stomachs in a high flooring bed room of his dad and mom’ residence, engaged on a joint analysis challenge collectively: his youthful father (in comparison with Mac) a peaceful, sort, educated, nurturing determine, stopping in to supply clever steering.
Not lengthy after, that nurturing determine died from a coronary heart assault at forty. The lives of 4 youngsters, the youngest of whom wouldn’t bear in mind him, and his spouse, after all, had been altered. Alan’s looking, exploratory persona misplaced its steadying anchor.
I got here to consider Alan over time, as I underwent a number of modifications, as my final hippie. Joyful, all the time deeply, alternatively non secular, Alan relentlessly pursued human connection however had bother connecting to the traditional world. He was a passionate instructor of kids. He sought my steering each in New York and California in touchdown full-time instructing positions, however to no avail. As soon as, with no place to stay for a time, he crashed with me in my small Higher West Facet studio condo. Likelihood developments in every of our lives introduced us individually to California, he to the north, me south. We noticed one another sporadically, typically usually, someday, for lengthy durations, in no way. All the time, nonetheless, there can be the lengthy rambling phone answering machine messages, usually not more than Alan singing in his beauteously godawful voice some tune he wished to share, to impart some knowledge, recall our bond, and finish with a “peace unto you.” As time handed, Alan relied more and more on promoting marijuana to help himself, rising it in his condo. He was very poor.
Having inherited his father’s weak coronary heart, in 2011 Alan referred to as to say he was set for coronary artery bypass graft surgical procedure. He had gotten on Medicaid in preparation. However a neighborhood good friend who had dedicated to caring for him postop had backed out on the final minute. Might I assist him? I drove up North and spent every week proper after the surgical procedure. At any time when Alan and I had these uncommon alternatives to reconnect, the intimacy we shared, regardless of our completely different lives, bonded us with deep satisfaction anew. Solely Arnie was as outdated a good friend.
Alan moved to Florida in 2021 as a result of his coronary heart was now failing. Timing it at Alan’s request, I flew out in late March 2022 and spent every week caring for him. I shopped with him, escorted him to favourite lunch spots, took him to his physician’s appointments, the place I translated my good friend’s lengthy, ruminative, looking responses to a nurse’s questions right into a sure or a no. As I had for my mom in her final years, I helped Alan out and in of my rental automobile, handing him and retrieving his walker. Rockaway Seaside boys collectively, I drove him to Del Rey Seaside, the place the trouble on his walker was too nice to advance very far within the sand. We stood and stared on the ocean collectively.
Not lengthy earlier than I left, Alan requested me, not for the primary time, for a poem from Ready for Phrase. We had studied poetry in the identical highschool class, recited Tennyson’s “Ulysses” to one another: “and tho’ / We’re not now that energy which in outdated days / Moved earth and heaven, that which we’re, we’re.” I had by no means gotten round to it. I mentioned, “Alan, I’ll offer you a duplicate of the e-book.” He mentioned, no, only a choose a poem. I didn’t get to it earlier than I left. After I left, I hugged his as soon as barrel chest, now a frail, skinny body. “I’m not effectively,” Alan mentioned to me. “I do know,” I mentioned. For the primary and solely time in our lives, I advised him I beloved him.
Every week later, Alan’s sister texted me to inform me their cousin had entered the condo to search out Alan lifeless on his mattress.
Someday later, I participated in a Zoom memorial service for Alan. Buddies from all durations of his life attended, together with the presiding rabbi, whom Alan had helped select, as a board member of his small Sonoma city’s new native synagogue. In fact, all three of his sisters participated. I used to be the oldest good friend current. When it was my flip to talk, I defined about Alan’s request for a poem, and the way he had rejected the supply of the e-book for a range from me I by no means obtained round to picking for him. I mentioned it was solely after he died that I understood that the e-book was for everybody and what Alan wished was a direct communication from me, a poem I selected for him. I mentioned I’d learn it then, the final poem within the assortment, “There Being.”
Thrown from whence, to what, and why,
the gradual sudden passage of issues
that by no means had been yours, nor time nor area.
Marvel at what it was that went, and the place,
nothing and all the things abruptly.
from "There Being," in Ready for Phrase
AJA
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