I watch, speedwalking 20 feet behind her, as her leopard print ballet slippers plod one after the other, slightly awkward with the angle at which they turn in. And though I have known this for quiet sometime, it does not stop me from feeling mildly surprising each time I see her. It plays against my idea of the moneyed Upper Eastide women, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing.
I’m not quite sure if its the way the sun is warming up the air, the extra half hour of sleep I stole in bed, some mild form of Stockholm syndrome, or my own forced cheerfulness taking hold of me, but I feel particularly fond of her today. The way she aggressively asks confused strangers whether or not they’re lost, then gives them very clear and slow directions, pointing out landmarks that they may pass along the way. She makes small talk better than anyone my own age and has a knack for making friends on the street.
I’ve caught up to her and we make small talk. As we near the building, she drops a bit of personal information, the subject matter of which is so startling that I regret for the first time, that we are going our separate ways. In order to satiate my own tabloidistic curiousity, I consider detouring just beyond the revolving doors to listen for another minute longer. That it took four months to get to just this one casual mention of gossip, reminds me that people didn’t always update their statuses on facebook, people had a sense of privacy and of things that went unspoken.
It always strikes me, standing over the sink, how the kitchen windows look across a courtyard into other kitchens. One above the other, all the shades open. A modern one with sleek dark colored woods and long silver fixtures lining the bottoms, above a white one that looks like something out of a country house, all carved wood and pinkness. You can see into the maids quarters as well, which I’ve learned are always near the kitchens. The decorations impersonal, they remind me of a cheap hostels. Painted Salmon or Lavender. Dollar store art work. There isn’t so much as a jacket carelessly hung over a chair back. The comforters remind me of the ones my grandmother used to by, quilted diamond patterns on top, some ungodly scratchy material on the bottom. The reason I’ve always loved top sheets. I watch, as the party lulls, a brown face going from one room to the next. I’ve gotten used to that face, wonder if I’d recognize her on a subway train or at a grocery store.
It’s a different world.
Some of the women, the ones I see most often, are nice. They learn your name, and greet you warmly when they arrive. They’ll grab your arm and lean close to whisper some aside. They have kind eyes and ask what you want to be when you grow up. They’re all older. Grandmotherly and soft around the edges. They assume that you are worth more than whatever it is you happen to be doing.
It’s the ones with pinched faces that give attitude and everyone in the kitchen makes faces behind their backs. It is not an overstatement to say that if a plate of food dropped, it might be gathered back up and served to those women, with their tight smiles.
To the young ones, the ones just barely older than us, mostly we are invisible. Nonexistent. They look through you but rarely, unless something is needed, at you. I wonder if they’ll grow up to be soft and grandmotherly, to smile more naturally and less self aware. They mostly wear wedding rings but all have long hair.
Usually, the first thing I notice as I walk into her office, is her hair. All brown gray wiryness pulled back away from her face with a clip at the top and secured again at the nape of her neck with a hair band. The end of her pony tail hangs puffily down her back at an unremarkable length, untrimmed and slightly wild. At 65, she is balding slightly. The pale white of her scalp is visible across the crown of her head and it makes me uncomfortable to have her decay so clearly visible. A reminder of the inevitability of aging.
Her eyes are wide and a little manic. Her grin big, welcoming. Large teeth. A face both youthful in its exuberance but weathered. Its often easy despite the wrinkles and the sagging skin to forget her age when she addresses you. I imagine its the abundance of money that causes this, not that she is the type of person who would ever cosmetically alter her appearance, but that its tough to really grow up when you’ve rarely paid a bill alone or cleaned a toilet or raised your children without constant help. She speaks loudly, so that even when she whispers it seems like a dramatic aside more than a lowering of tone. Everything said with either excitement or hurriedness, since there is never a time when she is not busy. She is constantly juggling two or three phone calls. Putting you on hold so she can tell this friend or that friend about a party she is holding.
When I call her, as planned she says, loudly, “I am at a dinner with 30 people. What do you want?” Because she always answers the phone. And because she can never say, “I’m busy now can you call a little later.” All of the details of her life have to be shared, and I can’t help but think that its a shame that she is too old and too disconnected from technology to be able to enjoy something like twitter. Her updates would read, “Private museum tour and then dinner with 30 of my closest friends!!!!!!! XX.” (Which is how she signs out of her emails, ten X’s. Exclamation points.)
Her hands move a lot. Usually fingers splayed. Waving. The way the skin puckers around each knuckle, the occasional show of exaggerated daintiness, reminds me of my grandmother’s. Each finger is punctuated with chipped tomato red nail polish. I don’t recall ever seeing them not painted, but rarely fully. The tips always worn down just a bit, like a teenager.
Whenever she writes anything, which is often, she always looks in full concentration. Mouth open, her thick pink tongue moves slowly back and forth across the top of her bottom lip. Or else she is saying the words, just under her breath. “Deeeeaaaaar…. Gail…. pleaaaaasssseeeee…. seeee….the…attaaaaaached… in-viiiii-taaaaaa-tion.”
It is strange to watch someone so closely. To sit and wait in anticipation for the next task, watching them when it feels like you should be looking elsewhere. Noticing the white of their scalp, the way they cross one foot on top of the other when they stand or with their legs wide open, feet turned outward when they sit. Its an odd sort of intimacy.
Some december night, when everything was frozen, my friend, in a way that only she could, convinced me to wander out to the Bell House. Slipping in my inappropriate shoes, through the nowhere that is Gowanus, we arrived to find a surprisingly warm bar that would become our winter hideaway.
I’d never heard of Chris Garneau, though that’s who I’d agreed to go see as part of a Christmas Indie/Folk/Rock Spectacular (that may or may not have been the events title). The show as a whole was mediocre at best, an uneven mash of acts that had no correlation between them. But Chris Garneau, rocking forward on his piano stool, hammering out his slightly uneven notes, his voice soft and small yet still somehow carrying over the crowd, he shined and we quieted down. He had one of those voices that defies logic. Crackly and imperfect. Too loud and too quiet at times, it was hard to distinguish some of the lyrics. But everyone swayed none-the-less. He had that intangable thing, like Joanna Newsom, something spritely, like he’d wandered into the bar from a nearby forest, magic still clinging to his flannel shirt.
It took me only five months to look up his music, slowed down by the lack of home internet connection and my faltering memory. But today while looking for some new sound to revel in, his voice popped in my head and it seemed like the only good way to let Monday night fade into a Tuesday morning.
Its time for a few new things. Changes. Embarking on new projects. Maybe a little personal growth. There are these long moments where I stand in one place for too long, where my rut doesn’t even have the benefit of being a path its just a little cavern that I like to sink in from time to time.
I’ve been taking a few deep breaths and trying to focus on the future instead of the endless now. A reverse zen.
…or auditory supplication for better weather. a new teeny mix.
“….In Fact!….” -Jel
I Think I’ll Call It Morning -Gil Scott-Heron
Sweet Twilight -Kira Neris
Dawn Chorus -Boards Of Canada
Eastern Glow -The Album Leaf
Into The Sun (with Diplo) -Martina Topley Bird
Daydream In Blue (With The Gunter Kallmann Choir) -I Monster
Beyond The Sun (Featuring Earl Zinger) -Koop
Montego Sunset -Menahan Street Band
Today -Zero 7
La Long De La Riviere Tendre -Sébastien Tellier
Heather’s Golden Shoulder -Absentee
I am as everyone knows, a big writer and reader of long letters. Generally I’m fascinated by the language of things but by none more so than the way that two people communicate ideas to one another slowly over time. Skillfully written letters (even by email) unfurl, beautifully, whether building thematically or chasing their own tails or even flitting from one point to another, as so often do mine. They reveal, like miniature biographies, hand tailored to each reader.
(But, Enough of my waxing poetics about… well the same things I usually wax poetics about and lets talk about something… I usually talk about. )
I was reading back and came across this tidbit from my brilliant friend, Daniel, and was amazed as though I had never read it before at his perception of the art making proces in general and specifically about my constant anxiety about creating. I read it again today and thought it was much too insightful not to share:
Do trees have an easy time making leaves? I always imagined that they have as much trouble, angst, anxiety, and doubt about that each spring as we have about love, art, and breathing.
Anyway, who is qualified to judge whether you’ve struggled with your overworked words like an unpolished amateur or spilt onto the page the finest prose like a painter thoughtlessly putting brushstrokes onto canvas, as amazed as any observer that a beautiful form emerges?
Those without stories are preordained to repeat them,
I saw once in the stars. . . . . . . . . . . Unclear who underwrote that,
But since then I’ve seen it everywhere
I’ve looked, staggering
Noon light and night’s meridian wandering wide and the single sky.
And here it is in the meadow grass, a brutish script.
We tend to repeat what we don’t know
Instead of the other way around - . . . . . . . . . . thus mojo, thus misericordia,
Old cross-work and signature, the catechism in the wind.
We tend to repeat what hurts us, things, and ghosts of things,
The actual green of summer, and summer’s half-truth.
We tend to repeat ourselves.
“A second chance- that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
