Blog
September 10, 2007
NOTE TO READERS OF THE DAY:
I've just agreed to do a live reading of stuff from my blog in NYC and was wondering if you guys had any suggestions of things I might include. I know most of you don't write comments very often, but if you'd be kind enough to mention some of the things that you remember enjoying in the blog and that I might want to include in the reading, I'd really appreciate it. My e-mail is TCohn725@aol.com. And for those of you in or near the NYC area, the reading is scheduled for 7-8 p.m. at 447 Hudson St. (near Morton) on the evening of Monday, Sept. 17.
DIPTYCH IDEA OF THE DAY:
First photo: People looking up at the Twin Towers in awe on Aug 7, 1974 as Phillipe Petit crosses the abyss between the towers on a one inch wide cable. Second photo: People looking up at the Twin Towers in horror on that terrible day 27 years one month and 4 days later. An indirect, street-level diptych of the greatest day in the history of the WTC and, of course, the worst. The only inscriptions would be the location and the two dates. I like this idea so much I might actually execute it for a change rather than just thinking about executing it--as is my wont.
And speaking of Phillipe Petit: Has there ever been a New Yorker cover more elegantly powerful than the image of the tightrope walker between the vanished towers in the issue which came out on the fifth anniversary of 9/11?
Oh...and speaking of actually executing an idea I've discussed in the blog. Please see the photo at the start of this posting.
9/11 OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
I was at Shea Stadium the other night for a Mets game. Atop the scoreboard there is a neon skyline of NYC. I noticed that the left most (which is to say, downtown most) portion of it was blacked out. At first I just thought it was just a mistake. A bulb had blown or something. But then I realized that that was where the Twin Towers had once stood. I wondered whether the decision to black them out was intentional and if so (for I have to assume that it was), did they decide to leave the scar visible by blacking out the section containing the Twin Towers or were they just too cheap to replace it with a revised neon skyscape? Was it a deeply considered act of tribute or a frugal-minded concession to necessity? Or--as I suspect is the case-- some hybrid between the two?
FEELING OF THE DAY:
Original light pouring through the loss-punctured wound.
CONSUMER OBSERVATION OF THE DAY/CARTOON WITHOUT ILLUSTRATION OF THE DAY:
The mega-sized Home Depot on 3rd and 58th St and the new mega Bed, Bath and Beyond on Broadway and 64th are dug so deep into the bowels of the earth that after about 3 interminable escalator rides down, you begin to smell magma. They are dug so deep I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see some Chinese person shopping in Bed Bath Beyond Beijing going up the escalator as I'm going down.
CURIOUS REVERSE DISCRIMINATION ANECDOTE OF THE DAY:
You no doubt know the stories about black people having trouble getting a cab to stop for them in NYC. Well, I was waiting alone for a public bus at a bus stop the other night for a pretty long time. Finally, a bus approached and I waved to the bus driver to indicate my desire to get on. And? Well, he looked right at me and just drove straight on by. After I was done cursing, I imagined he was probably saying to himself, "I'm sure he was waving for a cab. White people don't take the bus this late at night."
AWKWARD SITUATION OF THE DAY:
Ok, here's the situation. I am washing my hands in a public restroom and the water sprays out of the basin and onto my crotch--creating the unfortunate appearance of my having wet myself by other means. So, in an attempt to avoid this embarrassing misperception, I turn on the hot air dryer and position myself in order to try to dry the wet spot. Only now I realize I look like I'm some pervert trying to heat his genitalia. The solution in effect feels as mortifyingly misleading as the problem I am trying to solve. I begin a complex risk/reward analysis but abandon it half midway through the drying episode--ending up with a still visible spot and some witnesses to my crotch warming activities--in effect, the worst of both worlds.
RANDOM OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
Sinatra is an anagram for Artisan.
UNEXPECTEDLY POWERFUL ADVERTISING COPY OF THE DAY:
So sad these days about loss of my father. So emotionally exposed that everything has unintended resonances. When, for example, at the end of a Mazda Labor Day Sale commercial I see on TV, they say, but hurry, cause "when it's over, it's over." --I am overwhelmed with the profundity of the words.
IRONY OF THE DAY:
I have to give it up to the "Charlie" spewing bearer of the moustache of understanding (aka Thomas Friedman) for pointing out the irony that while the Bush administration PR department has been incredibly deft at swift boating genuine war heroes, they have managed to lose a PR battle against Osama Bin Laden, a genuine mass murderer.
Unlike the ever accomodating, ever gracious, ever understanding (ever wimpy) Friedman, I actually think these are two manifestations of the same underlying problem. In other words, a profound disregard for the truth. While this has served Bush and his cronies well in sabotaging political opponents, it has not served them well in the global battle for hearts and minds--as it has undermined the moral authority necessary to win that battle. Another way of saying it is: The world isn't as easily manipulated as the American electorate.
Sadly, it seems that Osama has been doing a better job from his undisclosed location than Cheney has been doing from his.
EXAMPLE OF PERFECTLY MYSTIFYING FAUX-PROFUNDITY OF THE DAY:
There are three people in the mirror and only two of them are me.
CONCEPT OF THE DAY:
Terminal customization. The omega point of our consumer culture. More on this some other time.
LFAQs of the DAY::
Who or what has the best chance of being found: The McCann girl in Portugal by the police, The Fosset aviator guy by the search crew, WMDs in Iraq by the military or Nicole's murderer by OJ?
What color will Osama's beard be in the next video?
(Inspired by a question from my friend Stevie J.) Why is there "walking pneumonia" but not, say, "walking diabetes" or "walking gangrene" or "walking gout" or walking "pancreatitis"? Couldn't you have walking anything if you're tough enough? What would be the funniest walking thing to have? Maybe walking diarrhea? The walking runs? Isn't it really true that the only diseases or conditions to which walking couldn't be affixed as a descriptor would be paraplegia and quadraplegia? Yeah, you really couldn't have walking paraplegia could you? Oh and wait: Could a paraplegic be said to suffer from "walking pneumonia" or would that have to be changed to "rolling pneumonia."?
OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
There is nothing worse than being just behind the times. A day old newspaper is of no interest. It's pathetic. But a 20 year old newspaper is classic. It has been enobled by history. To aim for contemporaneity and to come up short: That is a kind of sad failure. But to be indifferent to the times and to locate oneself outside of fashions or trends: This is a path that generates its own inalienable dignity. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.
CURIOUS ARTICLE OF THE DAY:
Mark Edmunsdon's essay in the NYT Magazine argued that since Freud and other prominent atheists have seen the value in religion, we =would be foolish to discard religion entirely. Not that I disagree. But it was striking in an age when faith and religiousity are nearly universal and being an atheist is virtually inadmissable, to have someone offering a spirited defense of religion--as if it's religion rather than atheism that is the endangered species.
POETIC FRAGMENT OF THE DAY:
There's a line from a Stephen Zweig poem that's been circulating in my head all day. "The end circulates in the wide space of summer." The end has been circulating all summer for me--ever since my father died in the first days of this season of abundance. But even though the summer has been terribly painful for me, I am still sad as always to see it end. Sad to see it give way to the bracing imperatives of autumn. The stress of life beginning its long uphill climb.
SUMMARY OF THE DAY:
In summary, my summer wasn't very summery.
RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY::
One would be inclined to describe him as a big baby, but he just isn’t that big.
JOURNAL OF MOURNING EXCERPT OF THE DAY:
Memories of my last time together with my father.
I just want to have this recorded, as best I can remember it. In full knowledge that last words and last encounters are overrated. That it is the full body and texture of a relationship and its history that endures. And not the final words or image. But still...the mind privileges the penultimate moments...what turn out to happen to have been the final time together...
I knew I would be away for father's day for a wedding out of town to which I --not realizing it was on father's day-- had already accepted an invitation. When I arrived, he was there waiting for me as he'd been a thousand time before in his white convertible with his beloved dog and constant companion Daisy at his side riding shotgun. Daisy, as always, was almost incoherently excited to see me. Leaping and panting and whelping. I decided not to break her heart by relegating her delicious rotundity to the back seat and instead--bracing myself and being careful to lift from my legs-heaved her onto my lap in the front seat--occasioning minor trauma to first my back and then my testes.
My father suggested we go over to Gold's delicatessen for a bite as we often did. But I told him I'd had a bagel and really wasn't that hungry. He then suggested we go to his beloved Dunkin Donuts. When we got there, I helped him out of the driver's seat and got him is walker from the back seat. We parked the car right in the front so he could keep an eye on Daisy--who didn't like being left alone in the car. I held the door open for him as a thousand times before as he shuffled into the store on his walker with the little yellow tennis balls on the bottom. He ordered a bagel with cream cheese and an iced coffee and said again in his warm providing way "You sure you don't want anything?" I assured him I was fine. We took a table in the back close to the car and kept an eye on Daisy as he munched slowly on his two or three remaining back teeth. I can't remember what we talked about. (The implant he was ready to have fitted into his mouth to help with his chewing? The weather? My sister's latest appearance on TV?) It never seemed to matter. There was just a simple comfort and warmth in being together. The sun was very bright that day ( June 9) and I told him that --given the way my seat was oriented--and given that I didn't have sunglasses, it was very hard to see. He suggested we move one seat closer to the cash register where there was some shade for my side of the table. I moved his coffee and bagel for him and helped him take the walker over to the next table.
We were concerned that Daisy was getting too hot in the car, so we didn't linger. Dependent on a walker and slower of reflex than he would like to believe, he was defiantly driving at age 79 against the advice of all who knew him. So for safety reasons I suggested that I drive back. But then, concerned that he would forget to adjust the seat and mirrors back once I left and hence incur an even greater risk of accident, I thought the better of it. He drove me back to the house. I remember seeing lots of cars parked on the street and he explained that the neighbors were sitting shiva because of a death in the family. I asked if he was close to them and he said he wasn't. I watched him get out of the car and, using the railing, struggle up the 5 steps from the garage to the interior door of the house. After catching his breath at the top of the steps, he took the remaining few steps to his favorite perch on the couch.
We talked for a little bit. Again, about small, comfortable things. Baseball. His upcoming leg angioplasty (which was, he assured me, "a nothing procedure."). His having had a nice e-mail exchange with my brother. I think I went into the kitchen to get an iced tea. Then at some point I noticed that he had fallen off into one of his characteristic naps. I checked some things on the iBook I had convinced him to get (I think I bought it for him, or contributed to the purchase, I can't remember). And then seeing he was still napping, I took the adorable four legged fattie for a little walk. When I returned, he was still asleep. So I went out and took the dog for a longer walk. Even a little run. Frankly, I did most of the running as she stared at this strange form of movement uncomprehendingly. I looked for a tennis ball to try to play fetch with her, but I couldn't find one. Anyhow, when i returned to the house, he was still napping. I remember thinking--with a sense I am now tempted to view as premonitory-- "My god...is it possible he has quietly passed away?" and I crept up, heart in my throat to check to see that he was breathing. To my great relief, his stomach moved up and down in a calm rhythm.
I went back out onto the porch for a bit and when I returned he had awakened. He said he was sorry for drifting off for so long. I told him I didn't want to disturb him as he seemed so peaceful. He told me he tended not to sleep much at night but caught little naps throughout the day. I told him I definitely had received his napping gene. He got a call from his wife who was heading back from the city and he said to me that maybe the two of us (or if Carla came back in time, the three of us) could go get some Chinese food from the place he and I loved. I told him that unfortunately, I had to get back into the city for a dinner date. He said he understood. "I can't even buy my own son dinner any more." he lamented sweetly.
A little while later it was time to go. We began the slow preparations for getting him into the car. I really can't remember if we took Daisy. I can't imagine that we didn't. And interestingly, I really can't remember much of what we talked about. It was usually just sort of phatic language anyhow when I visited him. The underlying meaning of whatever was being said was " It's nice to spend time together." When he dropped me off at the station, I am pretty sure he said to me -because he usually said it to me when he dropped me off at the station-- "Hey, thanks for coming out to visit me. It made my day." I think I said, because I usually said, "It's my pleasure. I had a great time. Love you. Drive safely." I may have said all of those things. I may have said none of them exactly. But that was the general purport. I have no doubt I told him "Love you" at some point in the course of that visit or one of our preceding few phone calls. I am fortunate, in that I know he knew how much I loved him and I knew how much he loved and appreciated me as a son. While it hurts terribly to lose him, I am fortunate not to have regrets about things left unsaid.
And while I can't remember many of the specifics of that last ride to the train station, I do remember one very specific (and in retrospect curious) thing. After my parents separated when I was 12, my brother and I would spend every other weekend with my father. He would pick us up in Hartsdale in his Karmen Ghia or white convertible Mustang or used blue Porsche 911T with the beige corduroy seats and bring us back to the city to spend the weekend with him. And then, on Sunday late afternoon or evening he would drive back up to Hartsdale and drop us off. When he would leave to drive back to the city, I would remain out front and watch his car disappear over the hill until it left my field of vision. I had this strange superstition about it. This feeling like, this might be the last time I will ever see him and so I want to make sure I see him for every last moment that I can. Or maybe I had a superstition that by watching him to this last possible moment, I would prevent anything bad from happening to him until I saw him again. Anyhow, I somehow, inexplicably, continued to do this as an adult. When he would drop me off at the train station in Westport, I would make sure to see his car vanish off into the distance on his ride back to his house before going up to the platform to buy my return ticket. Anyhow, that Saturday, when he dropped me off and I did or didn't say I love you and I did or didn't say I'll talk to you soon, I vividly remember thinking about watching his car go off into the distance and then, for some reason, saying "No, that's silly." and walking up to the platform to buy my ticket.
--
Thinking before going to bed of my father. Vivid. Vital. Present. Wait. He's no longer alive. What...does...that...mean???? Incomprehensible.
--
Just passed the 2 week mark since I got the awful call. Still can't really believe it. The crazy sudden-ness of it. Still seems so so unreal to me. I'd never in my life had a nice normal chat with someone and then 2 hours later found out that they'd suddenly died. And to have the first and only time be my own father. Just too strange. Just too terribly, terribly strange.
--
The condolence cards keep coming in. I am somewhat numb to them now. The loss they address somehow doesn't feel like it's really mine. The letters feel vaguely like they're written to someone else with whom I happen to share an address, a mailbox and a name. It just seems like the event they reference hasn't really happened. Or doesn't really pertain to me. And then, in a moment, it hits me like a freight train. And I become once again the grief-stricken person to whom the cards are addressed.
--
The long belated death notice appeared in the NYT today. A strange finality has been conferred upon the strange finality. It is now official. Irrevocable. A matter of the public record. My father is gone.
--
Back to work today. Much more brutally hard than I thought. The set of concerns just so gratuitous. And not providing any helpful distraction by so being--but instead an aching dry pain and sense of aloneness. I return to my lair. Curl up in a fetal position, try and fail to nap. And then get up, sip some beer and jot some notes. Attempting to savor these few hours of dignified pain before tomorrow's 8 hours of undignified pain.
--
Can't seem to sleep anymore. The cocoon of safety has been punctured. Even the sports scores have lost thier blessed opiating powers. An absence has attached itself to everything. Nowhere can I turn to make it go away. My father is gone. The terrible, haunting feeling, that it's just never going to change. When I think about him, his absence will always, always be there.
--
I make my return to the Wednesday night basketball game. I play surprisingly (if solemnly) well but afterwards I suddenly want to sob. After my intense, animal exertions, I am feeling an elevated altitude of aliveness and the will to share it and feeling the absence of the person who has been most on my mind and with whom I most want to share it.
--
Today I make the long dreaded trip up to Westport to go through my father's effects. Strange to go up there...to be alone in the house with his wife and dog and material traces of his 79 years on the planet.
A strange, intimate almost sacred ordeal--this encounter with the belongings of a dear departed presence in the environment where he used and kept them. A strange transfer of ownership. An inheritance of the freight of love and mortality.
--
The heartbreaking way his dog Daisy leapt with excitement to see me--but in an attenuated grief-stricken way. What had fueled the thrill of my previous visits was that my arrival was a Lucky Strike extra--an exciting addition to the given enduring presence of her master, my father. It was clearly not the same for her now. My presence--historically paired inextricably with his--somehow evoked his absence anew. it was obvious that in her acute unmediated animal way, she sensed even in her excitement about seeing me that something was missing.
I, of course, felt very much the same.
--
I return to New York with my friend who has been kind enough to accompany me for the grim but necessary journey. I drive along old intimately familiar roads--my private Swann's Way and Guermantes Way--and feel a bit like a ghost. I keep thinking that I am riding along the roads of my erasure. They are still roads. But they no longer lead anywhere.
--
We drop most of the stuff off at a Manhatttan Mini storage cell. I just keep thinking...all that remains of my father is in this 4 x 4 x 4 cell. It is so strange and sad to see these intimate appurtenances without him. The keepsakes without the person they've always belonged to. These hats should be on his head. These gloves on his hands. These belongings acutely evoke both the presence and the absence of the one to whom they belonged. They are belongings that really no longer belong to anyone.
--
I take a few of the bags (including the ones with the hats and watches) back to my apartment with me.
So strangely sad and moving to think that it was his wish and will that I have these things. i keep thinking of the fact that he provided for me in his Will. Whether it was anything of great monetary value or not is irrelevant. It is the humbling fact that he loved me and provided for me. He wanted to give me something of his. He wanted to take care of me. To help me. And wanted nothing in return. And it just breaks my heart.
The wound is opened anew. I want to thank him for having provided for me. For having taken care of me. For having loved me. And he is no longer here to thank.
---
Last night, I am at a Chinese restaurant. As I pull out my credit card to pay, I am suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of sadness about my father. I am thinking of all the meals to which he treated me (and for which I would, even as a teenager, always thank him...and to which he would respond with some agitation, "Please don't thank me. I'm your father.") or all the meals we had in recent years at that Chinese restaurant in Westport. I am sad--and will forever be sad--that i did not allow him to buy me dinner there during my last visit. I can hear him saying sweetly, sadly--marvelling at the passage of time and his own ever increasing irrelevance-- "I can't even buy my son dinner anymore."
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Posted on 9/10/2007
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