Speaking for Sarah

Still technically Thursday, but it will be Friday by the time anyone reads this. Here is an old favorite, by Paul Blackburn, from The Cities, 1967. This is especially for any Brooklynites out there.

Oh, and the line breaks are correct but some of the lines are supposed to be indented to various places, but I can't seem to get that effect.

Clickety-Clack

for Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I took
a coney island of the mind
to the coney
island of the flesh
the brighton local
riding
past church avenue, beverly, cortelyou, past
avenues h & j
king’s highway, neck road, sheepshead bay,
brighton, all the way to stillwell
avenue
that hotbed of assignation
clickety-clack

I had started reading when I got on
and somewhere down past newkirk reached
number 29 and read aloud
The crowd
in the train
looked startled at first but settled down
to enjoy the bit even if they did think I
was insane or something
and when I reached the line : “the cock
of flesh at last cries out and has his glory
moment God”
some girl sitting opposite me with gold hair
fresh from the bottle began to stare dis-
approvingly and wiggle as tho she had ants
somewhere where it counted
And sorry to say
5 lines later the poem finished and I
started to laugh like hell Aware
of the dirty look I was getting I
stared back at her thighs imagining
what she had inside those toreador pants besides
her bathing suit and, well
we both got off at stillwell


Watching her high backside sway and swish down that
street of tattoo artists, franks 12 inches long, past
the wax museum and a soft
drink stand with its white inside,
I stepped beside her and said: “Let’s
fling that old garment of repentance baby!”
smitten, I
hadn’t noticed her 2 brothers were behind me


clickety-clack
Horseman, pass by

I was thinking the other night about one of jo(e)'s New Year's resolutions--about smashing the CDs that we don't like that play over and over in our heads. It's one of those things that sounds like it should be easy but is not. When the CDs are playing, I think they are true.

Here are some good things:

1) I just read a good book, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Very funny and wise, about the power of reading.

2) This week I went to three different types of dance/movement classes: the combination cardio/yoga on Tuesday night, yoga at the gym on Wednesday night, and today a ballet/modern class at the dance studio where I go for the class on Tuesday nights. The class today was taught by a lovely dancer in her early 20s; the four of us who took the class (including my friend F., who runs the studio) are all in our late 40s. The teacher asked us to tell a little bit about our history with dance and we all had stories of how dance has woven in and out of our lives since childhood. For me less than the others but I have my story too. It was an odd feeling, reviewing even briefly that earlier life, and thinking, okay, now here we all are. I didn't know these women when I was younger, when I was in high school first taking dance (although I've known F. since shortly after college), but somehow it seems like we were supposed to find each other, arrive at today in each other's company. The class was mostly barre work, introductory stuff that we all kind of remembered. We giggled a lot as we were doing it. One of the women said, "I have this idea of how I look when I'm doing this, and then I look in the mirror and think, whoa, who is that." We all laughed ruefully, knowingly.

3) I like writing in this space and reading what other people are writing in their blogs.

jo(e) has suggested that Fridays should be poetry days, and I heartily agree. Here is one of my favorites, a Frank O'Hara poem. I am going to try to post it as three JPGs, because I scanned it that way from my book to show it to a friend whose daughter needed a poem to read at a wedding. Hope this works and is legible.

Okay, now I have uploaded and it doesn't seem all that legible but maybe you can find some way of enlarging the image on your end. Poetry and technology, what a combination.

I have not wanted this blog to be too mopey, too much about sad feelings that I have sometimes. But, I often do go to those sad feelings. I often feel that I am spinning around trying to figure out why I am sad (I have various theories) and especially trying to fix it, trying to figure out some course of action that will make my life happier, that will set me off in a better direction.

It's better, of course, not to try to figure it out. There is not always an answer, nor is it possible to exclude the sad feelings from my life. Sometimes there is nothing to do except take a small action--go to a dance class, get some sleep, read a book. I am good at doling out this kind of advice to other people but not so good at taking it myself.

Tonight I went to a dance class and I will try to get some sleep.

My brother, it turned out, did have something specific in mind that he wanted me to bring him when I visited: his laptop. My niece was able to get that information from him when she saw him the day after he called me. I am the one who had the laptop, and so it made sense that he called me.

I brought the computer when I saw him Sunday. I wasn't sure what he would want to do with it, but we logged on to the internet and I showed him that I had set up an e-mail address for him. He wanted to write to our cousin who had sent him a Christmas card (he indicated this by showing me the card) and I composed a message and wrote it for him, with his assent. (He cannot pick out the letters well enough to type, and when he tries to write words they don't come out correctly, but he can read, especially if the print or type is big. I could tell he understood what I was writing when he saw it on the screen. He laughed when I showed him how I was using the online shorthand like "r" for "are" and "u" for "you." It is mysterious how some parts of his brain still work very well but others don't.)

After we did e-mail we looked at some of his photographs that were still on the computer. Then we went outside to do the usual errands--picking up videos (we go up and down the aisles at Blockbuster, he points to movies that look interesting and I read him the descriptions on the back of the box, as dramatically as possible) and whatever he wants from the drugstore: cigarettes, water, chocolate. We went to a different Blockbuster than usual because the usual one seems to have closed down (itself a rather dramatic event) and after we got the movies my brother indicated he wanted to keep walking--well, riding in the chair for him, walking and pushing for me--so we went all the way to the waterfront and sat in a little park by the bay and looked at swans and fishing boats. Then we had a meal at a Turkish restaurant right on the water. My brother was happy just looking around at everyone in the restaurant. I talked a little bit, told him what was going on with me. The food was very good and we both had a glass of wine. It was dark when we left so we took the bus the three-quarters of a mile or so back to the nursing home.

So it was a good day--tiring, but good. I feel sad still about what has happened to him but happy that I can do things for him and that we can still enjoy each other's company.

Today my brother called me at work. Well, he had the aide at the nursing home where he lives dial my number. My brother used to be a wisecracking smartass photographer and news producer. Now he lives in a nursing home because of the stroke he had a year and a half ago. He is paralyzed on his right side and wheelchairbound; he cannot walk or talk. He makes a few sounds, mostly variations of "yeah" or "oh," but does not have any other words. In person, he communicates by gestures or pointing. The gestures are not always easy to understand; they don't always seem to correspond to what he wants to say or ask about. Sometimes, for example, he will place his hand over his eyes to communicate that he needs toothpaste, or wants a cigarette. (Yes, he is still smoking.) The mismatch between the gestures and what he wants to communicate is because he has both receptive and expressive aphasia.

Last week I was at a small New Year's Eve party at the home of a family I know. In an effort to while away the time until midnight (the adults were yawning, the kids were hyperactive), we started playing charades. When one of the kids starting acting out the name of a movie, and we all shouted out various syllables and words, I was startled to realize how much this reminded me of trying to communicate with my brother.

On the phone today, I could not of course see my brother's gestures. I asked a lot of questions: "Are you feeling okay? Do you just want to talk? Do you want someone to come visit you? Are you wondering where Daddy is?" (My eighty-three-year-old father treks over to the nursing home three or four times a week from his home a few blocks away.) I told my brother that I was at work, that there had been something wrong with my computer but that the tech guy had just fixed it, that I was going out on a date Saturday night, that I would come see him on Sunday, that I was still grading my students' papers. He took all of this in and responded with variously inflected ohs and yeahs. Then he started trying to say something to me, to ask me about something, but of course he couldn't. I told him, "It's hard for me to understand when I can't see you." He said, "yeah." I could tell from his voice that he understood what I was saying.

I asked him to put the aide back on the phone. When she got on, I asked if she could figure out what he wanted. She asked him if it had to do with me specifically and he said yes. It seemed to be something about a picture, or something else he wants me to bring. I don't really know what it could be. Finally, I said, "Tell him he can tell me when I come on Sunday." She did, and we got off the phone.

There are times (today is one) when the sadness of my brother's situation--or, even more, of ours, trying to take care of him and missing the person he was--seems like too much to bear. I know there are other ways to look at the situation, that maybe I don't have to be sad about it, maybe he is not so sad, maybe he is just living his life the way it is now. My coworker, who overheard my end of the conversation, thought it was impressive or touching that he called me.

But, for tonight, I am sad.

Sometimes things get, well, mislaid in my not so orderly apartment. I seem to find them when I am looking for something else. Tonight while I was looking for the nighttime splint for my injured pinky (yes, I know, I haven't kept the pinky chronicles up to date), I just happened to see something silver glinting at the edge of a bookshelf just above eye level. Could it be the silver earrings I had given up as lost? Why would I ever have put them there? But yes, there they were, good as new, back from their little jaunt into nowhere.

Finding them settled me down enough to stop my fruitless searching for the splint (small white plastic cone, easy to miss). Then, when I sat down at the computer, I just happened to peek under a pile of papers. Very casual. Voila, the splint. Now I can go to bed.

Papers? Graded, but I still have to figure out the students' final grades for the class and submit them. Tomorrow, I hope.

More later.

I have been to a major academic conference in another city and back, celebrated Hannukah, Christmas, and New Year's, and, nope, I am still not finished grading my students' research papers from the fall semester. Is there any hope for me?

More when I am done.