sunday submersible

liberty avenue sunday slow, cars grant each other entry geese ushering goslings across a park path, it is all i can do to keep vigil for hazards.

sliding like syrup down penn avenue back pressing to regulate speed i recall the pain that followed the last long ride, insurrection of knees and thighs.

the strip also is easy but not vacant; in the empty left lane i pass a car double-parked and at 16th street slither onto the bridge's sidewalk and slide lazily across reading the first few sentences of the landmark plaque as i pass looking down on industrial ruins and the river smiling toward you.

the war streets equally tranquil, unpurposing pedestrians amble dogs pacing yards' perimeters; in west allegheny the streets belong to young black men who eye my yellow shell my helmet my tights -- faces small inside flopping coronas of hair combed out radially -- as i stop to look up at your building fish my phone from my bag call to leave a message eagerness and ramble before pedaling on, turning right once and again onto beech past gertrude stein's former brownstone (which you showed me) and then down to join the park's eastern boundary around to entombment beneath the hideous architecture of equitable plaza (if that's what it is), a jumble of knocking steam radiators, then fjording the allegheny to downtown where the theatre district bustles with matinee idylls unattended children in unzipped down coats unabashed with round bellies protruding arms wide like spread wings and the well-dressed weaving among them grinning anticipation.

point park is empty: apocalyptic silence between the rivers sunday afternoon strange; about its perimeter on brick and fragmented pavement and again brick i shudder, the fountain still mudded with memories of recent floods, miniature floodplains in sidewalk depressions rent like children's drawings of broken windows, jagged like lightning, the stadium colorfully sunning and your home in its shadow.

reasoning a slack figure-eight to emerge at the street a lingering memory of one lonely man slouched on a bench along the mon, wool hat garish and mismatched to his coat and its fur-lined hood ruddy necked -- happy sad lonely free ?

the boulevard and signs of life, of death: police cluster roadside body language resigned in twos around a dead man supine in the street beneath the open door of his truck which veered off the road and struck at high speed a lightpole now leaning distressed into the front end's toothy embrace; flowing with traffic into the left lane i am relieved the voyeur's burden, my path littered with tire-shredding broken glass plastic a side-view mirror mimicking its owner's posture sightless eye peering skyward i wend slowly catching movement in the corner of my eye as i pass: not dead but a grave man still, the officers slump surrender to death's prerogative.

on the jail trail i pass pedestrians skaters dogs; focusing on cadence i accelerate until the wind convects thundrous about my ears, eyes water but how can i weep for an old man whose sunday drive turned mean . . . .

the trail dives helically to an unfamiliar access road in panther hollow in the long shadow of

the cathedral

dreading the implacable ascent to fifth avenue aching lungs wrists shaken numb with 15 miles' reverberations thighs jellied by endless pedaling i climb under the bridge into schenley past a black tunnel suggesting morlocks -- eliciting a lygophobic chill

and

the final hill

is only moderately difficult

as i stand

into the pedals

pulling the bike

to and fro

as i lean across it

cresting the hill

the light turns green

i ease through

catch my wind

arisen like orpheus from the depths of panther hollow, eurydice lingering stone-faced in the gulley near the tunnel's maw unless she chose to remain: would that i weren't the only one to rally today from a submersion.

PAT Still Life #2 (501)

-- wide brown eyes like touch transubstantiated,
a finger tangential across a sandy chin
sliding credulously down an overcoat lapel;
brown hair color of fall,
an autumn cataract over a plastic ledge
blue like electricity --
where is the neck? the ears?
they hide but lurk predatory like memory --

-- youth's frivolity on stage
trading ringtones and gossip in voices umodulated,
an ostentatious display of indifference
to the high school refugees
whose memories falter, failing
to recall childhood's cadence,
its contrapuntal march from the old(er),
a colloquy of studied slouches and sighs --

-- unfolding herself from her seat
a jacknife opening to its task
eyes returning home up lapel over chin
and away forward leaving a wake
of glowing warmth in a rippling V --
all in tan like Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
(Stevens' verse circling in rehearsal
for the lap it will turn all evening having now begun)
hair swinging like an earthquake
and a parting glance like a prod of inscrutable origin
or intent --

-- the teens giggle and mock and maunder gum popping
while minutiae aggregate and gather
to spill out on this page --

[revised, 1/27/05, 12:25PM]

Apprehension

Today, at the luncheonette where I was poised at the counter to order one of my three favorite workday lunches, I observed a man whose skin had a tawny Middle-Eastern hue darkened by a brilliant white shirt. He sat alone at a two-man booth, a newspaper folded back to an interior page spread on the table where a guest might have joined him, and under his left arm hung an uncomfortably large-looking gun blue-shining and snapped into its holster, which was the burnished tan of expensive leather.

As are we all, I am around people carrying guns often -- many of which I notice, some of which I do not, and others of which I am not supposed to notice, hence "concealed." Something about this firearm, however, prompted a shiver. What was it? I puzzled over it, my eyes as glued to the holster as the gun's owner's were to the small television broadcasting CNN with the sound muted, hands folded in front of his lips. His hair was trimmed three days' short of the scalp; his scalp's sheen complemented the muzzle.

Finally it came to me. Weapons unseen cast aside for the moment, since out of sight is, sometimes, out of mind, those weapons typically visible on the street are holstered at the hip, where no matter what the carrier's posture, they reliably point toward the ground, innocuously. This man's holster, however, snug under his arm, pointed horizontally across a restaurant aisle and toward a beverage cooler. No matter how minimal the risk, a half-dozen people obliviously took their lives in their hands while I awaited my order.

I never eat with a jacket on, unless a luncheon is so formal that professional etiquette so requires, but I think we need a new ordinance: in conjunction with a license to carry a concealed weapon should come a caveat: the weapon must either be concealed, or carried in a holster designed to keep its muzzle down, at all times.

[revised 1/25/05, 7:58 PM]

Pennywise

This morning I caught a later bus than I prefer to, and it was crowded enough that I was tapped standee number 2. A dubious distinction, I shuffled toward the well by the rear door, where standee number 1 had already assumed the most desirable standing position, leaning up against the divider one step into the well. It was one of those buses that teaches an object lesson about poor use of space, the kind with one-person seating down the right side of the front half of the bus, not in a bench but in individual, forward-facing seats. This leaves, of course, a very wide aisle, but one that has outthought itself; even a man of average height, standing in the middle of this space, will barely be able to reach either rail. It's a silly layout, is the point. Unless of course you have the good fortune to score one of the single seats -- then it seems like a pretty cool idea.

I took up my social-convention-dictated position just in front of the well, deep enough down the aisle to permit a dozen or so standees to fill in between me and the front of the bus, which experience told me would be sufficient for our ride downtown. To ward off the terrible cold, I wore a heavy thriftstore find I adore: heavy herringbone, shiny satin lining, sumptuous polyester fur collar. So weighty is it, in fact, that I found it a strain to keep my arm over my head in order to hold the rail (another inconvenience one avoids if he manages to secure a position in the rear doorway).

Resigning myself to the inconvenience, to the loss of reading time, I began looking around for something to pass the time, an entertainment, a phenomenon. What I sought, I soon discovered, was literally right under my nose, where an androgynous, rumpled figure with knobby knuckles rummaged in a leather satchel. The satchel revealed itself to be a purse, the figure a broken-down and elderly woman, and my perspective was perfect: from my natural stance, I could see everything she was doing but could not see her face, which meant she couldn't see mine.

She first caught my attention when I noticed her fiddling clumsily with a business reply envelope reinforced with tape, and adorned by several illegible and misaligned ballpoint pen scribbles in blue with visible stutters in the longer lines where the ball malfunctioned or the pen simply lifted up, perhaps where an irregular surface created on the surface of the envelope a relief that made it difficult to write evenly. The envelope was folded over neatly and secured by a paperclip so large it nearly reached from the envelope's top to its bottom. Awkwardly, the skin of her fingers bunching like moleskin along its labyrinthine fissures in which one might imagine something were etched were it not such a cliche, she pulled at the paperclip once, twice, and a third time in vain. Pausing, redoubling her effort, she succeeded on the fourth attempt, and I could feel her elementary satisfaction, or was it relief, at finally unsealing the vessel.

The paperclip removed and tucked under a finger in a practiced and economical gesture that belied the difficulty the other manual task had entailed, she held the envelope in her left hand while her right worked to spread the top wide. Again, several attempts were required before finally she opened the envelope as wide as it allowed, her anticipation palpable like an eddy of warmth in the drafty bus. Inside were several slips of paper, one of which she removed and examined, some sort of coupon.

Her coat was a turquoise ski coat of the inexpensive sort that will stand up to neither cold nor water. On its left breast, a rectangular button asserted her loyalty to the Black and Gold. Under her purse, her legs hid within oversized black denim, the knees faded to share their pale, sickly grey with the violated snow clotted against the berm of Liberty Avenue. I couldn't see her face, her choice of headwear, not without risking her self-consciousness. I was more interested in the purse than her face in any case.

Satisfied with whatever she had accomplished in her first examination (or, more probalby, the first of her examinations to which I'd played witness), she flipped back the brown flap of her purse. The flap itself appeared to be stuffed with a stack of papers the same dimension as 5X8 index cards. Inside, however, was where the real mystery lay. There, in orderly rows like patient files, like multiple contest entries awaiting a lick and a prayer, were dozens, scores of envelopes much the same as the one she had just opened, disgorged, and restored to its contents and what appeared to be a carefully selected space in the stack of similar envelopes: although no envelope revealed anything like a taxonomic denotation, she nevertheless seemed, almost instinctually, to understand where each one belonged.

Envelope sealed and restored, she began rifling through the others, her fingers furtively standing briefly on the edge of each before mincing along in a precarious ballet, one way and then the other, until finally she found what she was looking for. Withdrawing it, and again fumbling with the paperclip, she opened the envelope to reveal a clutter of the paper coupons Giant Eagle's registers spit at you in a for-profit effort to goad you into buying Linda McCartney's veggie burgers next time. She appeared to look at one, briefly, as though to determine whether its expiration had passed. Evidently the coupons would live another day. This time, when she attempted to reclose the envelope with the paperclip, she struggled mightily. This envelope, moreso than the other, had the dull flimsiness of paper that has been crumpled and smoothed, crumpled and smoothed, breathed upon and handled entirely too many times. After a pause, an examination, and some careful tactile exploration of the offendingly weak areas at the envelope's mouth, she managed to replace the paper clip and return the envelope to its designated place among the others.

The last envelope I saw her withdraw as we neared downtown was the most cryptic. Unlike the others, this one had a legible phrase slurred in drunken loops next to the business reply address: "New Coupons." Inside, only one Giant Eagle coupon was contained. She quickly replaced it, her suddenly anxious movements suggesting that her head might be swiveling around, her wattle swinging beneath her chin, in an effort to determine whether she was being watched. But she couldn't see my face, nor I hers.

"They've gotta cut some good ones, I guess . . . "

. . . quoth the rather large, more or less tone deaf would-be American Idol with the scratches and bruises on her arms from a wrestling match with inanimate objects in a darkened fitting room.

This is why I'll never be a great writer: I simply can never look away long enough to make a note of anything. I stand there, transfixed (yes, that's the third time I've used that word here in a week; it's officially embargoed until further notice) by the trainwreck compulsion. I swore tonight was to be a writing night (I'm working on what I hope will be a much larger project -- not only offline, but in long hand (the ladies in the audience shriek)), and right up to the point I was to sit and write I did everything exactly as planned. Unfortunately, my plate of pasta lasted five minutes too long: Seinfeld, the last ten minutes of which I'd tuned in to pass the meal, ended and there I was still with more food on my plate. AI started, and I was lost.

I assume there are about a billion people blogging about AI, and that sort of thing is most certainly not on the agenda here. I will note, however, that it dawned on me while I watched that the show really embodies two competitions. We are all familiar with the principal competition to be dubbed American Idol. But tens of thousands of people audition, and at least some fraction of them simply must realize that they are competing for something else entirely: to be bad enough in an interesting enough way that their auditions will make the first episode. Which makes each one's indignation at being mocked all the more absurd. But I suppose that's part of the act, too: be a credulous mess in the audition room, then be righteously indignant to the camera on your way out the door, and perhaps in so doing increase the value of your stock enough to stay off the cutting room floor.

Warhol wept.

Cradle to Grave

The first person I befriended exclusively on the internet, Julie, was the friend to whom I was referred by a former colleague of mine because Julie happened to attend a law school in the southwest to which I was applying. My friend connected Julie and me, and she and I enjoyed a long conversation and flirtation via email without once hearing each other's voices, something that began as a sort of accident but became a ritual. In those months we invented an alternate reality, a world with its own religions and myths and superstitions, and we honored them with the same unwavering devotion as primitive farmers do the god of the harvest. Eventually, we met, and I spent a week (sleeping on the couch, alas) in her cramped studio apartment feeling increasingly uncomfortable with my own imposition. Eventually, we drifted apart; she graduated and took a position on the west coast, while I demurred on choosing a law school, and ultimately stayed in Pittsburgh. We probably have not talked in two years. That long story, however, is nothing I need to rehash or you need to hear.

I was reminded of her this evening when I finally worked my way through yesterday's Sunday Times. When we first corresponded, Julie described for me her passion for the Times, the Sunday edition of which she jokingly called her "woobie," and which she carried with her each sunday to her favorite cafe, where she sat and read at a chrome-rimmed formica table over a latte and in spite of the occasional brazen advances of alt-rock undergrads in mop tops and distressed denim with wallet chains hanging from hip to knee. We mused at the symmetry of our respective Sunday rituals, although in my case rather than fending off the importunings of others I espied from behind the Week in Review week after week the same line-up of attractive cafe denizens and crafted scripts in silence for how I would approach, imagining everything from the first clever, knowing, and self-effacing shot I would fire across her bow to our move, years hence, to Seattle, our children in private school, and our proud early retirement, children safely ensconced in the Ivy League and us in our retirement aerie overlooking Puget Sound. Then I would pause to wonder whether Puget Sound was really all that lovely, whether I'd like it, whether I'd find the raw, moist chill an inconvenience as the first licks of arthritis dried my joints. Then, more often than not, my future bride would finish her coffee, look at her watch, politely bus her dishes near the front of the cafe, and leave for the Shadyside street, leaving meaching in my bereavement, the examined life unlived.

But except in this regard, our rituals ran parallel. Julie told me she most enjoyed the obituaries, which struck me as odd. But I have always been nervous that the secret discoveries and preoccupations of others constitute things I'm missing, important things at that, and so I began paying more attention to the Obituary section. And indeed, like some sort of marooned would-be novelist cliche, I found in the enterprising writings of the death notices glimmers of poetry, hints of the aspirations of the authors, as well as fascinating hindsight glimpses into the lives of the memorable but largely unremembered.

Consider yesterday's headlines: Victorio de los Angeles, Soprano, Dies at 81; or how about Elizabeth Janeway, 91, Critic, Novelist and an Early Feminist; or perhaps Danny Sugerman, 50, Fan and Manager of Doors; and finally, Gerald Roberts, 85, Longtime Rodeo Star. Aside from the initial conclusion these obituaries suggest -- that rock and roll is a more hazardous trade to ply than bull riding -- what unites these four obituaries, at least for me, is that I've heard of none of them. Nevertheless, here they are, the four people the Newspaper of Record identified as the most relevant, the most notable, people to die in the prior few days. But get this: Sugerman, aside from being affiliated with the Doors from the age of 14, when he was hired by Morrison to put together a band scrapbook, was married at his death to Fawn Hall, perhaps the most infamous admin ever. And what of Roberts? He stunt doubled for Jack Lemmon, among others. Janeway kept counsel, and indeed kept company, with Betty Friedan. Gloria Steinem, and Kate Millett (though I must confess, if I were reading Millett's obit today instead of Janeway, it would suit my purposes equally well, since I've never heard of her either). Furthermore, Janeway defended Nabokov's Lolita, one of my 'desert island books,' against the censorship it once faced in this country. About de los Angeles, this delightful passage:

To some tastes, Ms. de los Angeles lacked temperament. By her own admission she was not an intellectually probing artist. But at her best she was an exquisite, unmannered, and deeply communicative singer. On stage, with her black hair, gleaming eyes and broad smile, she projected an openness and naivete that, coupled with her creamy voice, audiences adored.

I am woefully ignorant of opera, and so much of this terminology sounds like the rarefied argot of a wine connoiseur. Indeed, I wonder whether the obituary author ever heard de los Angeles sing, or simply worked from notes and the impressions of others.

Regardless, the pleasure in obituaries that Julie revealed to me, their unique lyricism, is not really what grasped me to day. Rather, it was this contrast: I have come to prefer the Sunday Styles wedding notices to the obituaries. The obits provide a usually favorable, never jaundiced view of the subject's life without the inconvenience of any prospect that the subject will deviate from the script; the target is a sitting duck. Marriages, new and old, are moving targets, and yet in the wedding notices one finds the same narrative conceit: a relationship and a nuptial frozen in time, described by reference to two converging trajectories, and informed by the assumption that one trajectory will thereafter suffice to account for both, the wedding vow at its most aspirational.

I'm also fascinated by the choice of feature wedding, the one of a dozen or two profiles that is blown up and described at greater length. I wonder why Judith Slovin and Roger Lowenstein didn't furnish a picture, what the stunning Elizabeth Victory (who eyes the camera with her chin down and her eyebrow almost imperceptibly arched in a lurid invitation) sees in the ordinary looking Scott Anderson (who smiles mechanically, entirely unaware of his new bride's devious leer), and whether Harley Abrevaya, the new Mrs. Andrew Heller, speaks with an accent. Of course, there is the token same-sex couple (rarely more than one), which the Times began featuring religiously a few years back -- today, the middle-aged Dee Mosbacher and Nanette Gartrell, one of whom has odd taste in eyewear, and both of whom could use new stylists.

This week's featured couple is Karen Bonin and Daniel Helmer, who are unusually young for top billing. The main photo attending their write-up, as opposed to the far more cliche second photo of them leaving their celebration under a traditional arch of raised sabers (Helmer being as he is an active-duty graduate of West Point) , is simply breathtaking. The groom's back in dress uniform is mostly toward us, his thick neck embraced in a collar perfectly trimmed, over which his scalp is shadowed by his military regulation hair only marginally more than his cheek is by stubble. His head dips slightly to meet Bonin's, brow to brow, and her left hand, newly be-ringed, is soft-focus as it drapes languidly over Helmer's shoulder. Karen herself is radiant even in black and white, her earring a diamond suspended like a tear from a perfect chain, complimented by what is almost certainly an heirloom necklace. Her mouth is gently open in a smile as easy and guileless as it is untainted by all the dread and fear that surely haunts her while her husband's fate in this time of war remains undetermined. Her clavicle alone is worthy of a poet more talented than I.

So why this preoccupation? Is it because I've never been married or despite that fact? It feels more like the fascination of discovery than any variation on envy. Because the write-ups are biased to the New York area, some of my interest derives from the fact that occasionally someone I know shows up: the daughter of the college professor who taught me how to love Nabokov (I already knew I did, but he provided unerring guidance and thus enhanced immeasurably my pleasure in V.V.N.'s novels); the semi-famous older sister of a grade-school friend who is now an actress and performance artists of sorts (evidently she was in Superstar, who knew?).

Sometimes, especially with the featured couple, the stories of how they came to marry are interesting, fraught with coincidence and redolent of destiny, often tacit aggrandizements of the love-at-first-sight paradigm so cherished by most Americans. About Dan and Daniel, the Times writes:

It was at a party during his senior year of hich school, his acceptance to West Point in hand, that a confidence Mr. Helmer sidled up to Karen Marie Bonin, a student from another New Jersey high school. Winin 45 minutes, he had fallen hard for Ms. Bonin's "perfect figure and passion for everything she does," he said. She recalled: "I was sort of awestruck. I'd never talked to anyone that comfortably."
They had their first date in May 1999. Though the evening ended without even a kiss, "the next day Dan dumped his date for th senior prom and asked me to go," Ms. Bonin said. That was pretty much it."

But let's pause to dissect this passage for a moment, shall we? When he says that a mere 45 minutes led him to fall hard for her "perfect figure" and "passion" for what she does, should we read this to be the Times writer's generous attempt to smooth the rough edges of a jock's crass allusions to his wife's surface beauty? Could they really have covered everything she did in 45 minutes at a high school dance? I mean, maybe; high school kids don't have the most interesting lives, but still. And then there's the whole prom thing: he dumped his prom date in May? How shitty is that? And was she his girlfriend, this date? What was he doing going on a date in the first place if she was? And about the date, am I the only who detects something like incredulity that high school kids would end a successful date without a kiss. I mean, jeez, what prudes!

The article continues with lots of cuteness that is wholly beyond reproach, and I wish the Helmers well: may they prosper, may Mr. Helmer not be yet another unnecessary casualty of our mismanaged war in Iraq, and so on. The same to all newlyweds. But can it ever really be that pat? Maybe that's the relevant distinction for me: that the pat answers of obituaries are somehow inconsequential; for better or worse, that narrative has ended. As a writer, I'm all too familiar with the ache of seeing something in print with my name on it that I would change in a dozen ways were the work out of my reach. And so it is with our lives after we're gone; the ink has dried, for better or worse. The lives of the departed are out of reach, beyond emendation. The lives of newlyweds, on the other hand, are clean slates, and so the same pithy reductive exercise rings dissonantl to me, albeit in delightful and unforeseen ways that never fail to amuse.

Craig Street and Rain

On Craig Street, I waited for the bus in the rain. The edge of my umbrella, my briefcase behind my thighs, and the shoulders above it leaned back into the parsimonious shelter of a boutique's plateglass window and the portico leanly lcantilevered above it. Only the darkness was bracing on this occasion of improbable warming; the evening air and even the rain warmed and comforted. Inside my oversized raincoat, I swam silently in imperceptible loops, a fish in an unlit acquarium brushing fins gently to glass like fingers gracing a lover's cheek in silence and satiety.

Into my acquarium vista, Out There, ambled an old Beatnick Van Winkle, a dissonant figure hiding under a beret pulled down tight and level, in a black jacket of wool or felt, salty beard neatly groomed close to his cheeks, his trousers hiked high enough to reveal more of his wasted, flat posterior than anyone needed to see. Indifferent to the rain, he paused not three feet in front of me, eyes cast far down Craig toward the Carnegie, as though hypnotized by the dance of red and white light, the sizzle of each car's approach and the sibilant diminuendo of its retreat. He wore anachoristic glasses of the sort favored by Henry Kissinger, and his neck telescoped forward myopically.

He raised his hands to his face in a gesture as timless as it was intimate, and pulled from a steaming chaos of wax paper with fingers like talons a thick round of something pinkly moist, perhaps ham. His fingers held the slice up before his eyes as though for inspection, though he remained transfixed by the stretch of road that lay before him. I felt a twinge of shame, inadvertant, if not wholly innocent, voyeur chastened by moral hesitation rather than discovery. The ham sagged in caternary folds around his thick fingers, surrending its shape to gravity and its warmth to the night, until he approved its assumed shape and, leaning his head back like a supplicant, accordianed the steaming meat into his mouth, along with its parcels of night and rain and winter archly resplendant in its day of remission. Even God rested.