Saturday, April 29, 2006

April 29, 2006--Saturday Story Concluded: "The West End"

The West End

When I arrived at Columbia College as a wretchedly skinny, overgrown, stopped-over freshman, decades ago but just a few years after Jack went on the Road and Allen started to Howl, I skipped orientation and the chance to learn the words to the school anthem, Roar Lion, Roar, and raced right over to Broadway where at a shop that specialized in “collegiate wear” I bought a tweed jacket with leather patches already installed on the sleeves, a pipe, and a beret.

I was all set to join the Beats and knew that, newly outfitted, I would need to find a regular place for myself at the West End Bar, which was just down the street from the Stag Shop. This seemed appropriate to me since I saw the gathering of these cultural accouterments to be essential to the life of the poet. I had hopes that the bartender there might tell me where Allen and Jack had perched; and while puffing on my pipe (you could still smoke in bars) and pitching my beret to just the right angle and blowing the foam off my pint (you could drink at 18), I would be inspired.

I did settle in there, becoming a version of a “regular,” often cutting Comparative Anatomy lab and my Dogfish dissection (as a backup plan to having my poems published by City Lights in San Francisco, I was a pre-med), drank my beers, sometimes seasoned with tears, and waited in vain for words to come to me.

Though I felt sufficiently hysterical and naked, few did.

* * *

So in pursuit of my alternate plan I devoted myself just enough to my Dogfish’s cranial nerves in an attempt to earn at least what at the time was called “a gentleman’s C.” In fact, I was good enough at dissection that my fish was stolen from the tank in which it was stored between lab sessions. Pre-meds were a competitive lot, seeing themselves in competition with each other for coveted spots in top-ten medical schools; and anything they could do to elevate themselves on the grading curve, particularly by lowering yours, was something to which they devoted themselves.

It was a good thing, therefore, that I discovered that the lab’s side door led to the amphitheater classroom where the great Lionel Trilling held forth on the immortals of Modern Literature—Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Kafka, and of course his beloved Freud. If I couldn’t find inspiration at the West End perhaps I could with Trilling.

I would poke away at the dog fish for awhile; and when the lab technician went out for a smoke I would slither through that door and, wrapped in my rubber apron, sit on the steps, taking it all in—less his critical insights than his performance and he strode and gestured in his elegant tweeds (I was clearly right about the clothes), the very embodiment of the Liberal Imagination. If I was not to be Ginsberg, I at least wanted Trilling’s posture.

He was aware of me—not because of anything I might have offered but because of my outfit, hungry look, and the piercing smell of formaldehyde that surrounded me. I noticed him taking note of me, nodding, “It’s OK,” as if he knew what was behind that door and how, if fate had turned out differently for him, this Jewish god of literature might have been found bent over his own Dogfish a few decades earlier, in that very same lab, and someone else would be astride that platform.

Though I found myself drawn more and more toward the study of literature rather than its creation, I did not fail to maintain my status at the West End. Especially since I was at last finding inspiration there—not poetic, alas, but, yes, carnal. For slinking on a stool at the other side of the horseshoe-shaped end of the mahogany bar was a girl all in black—leotard, tights (cut off at the ankle), jewelry, nails, eye shadow, hair, and, most alluringly, beret. All black. If not a muse for poetry for sure one for lust.

She was Lydia Riffelstein from East Paterson, New Jersey and was enrolled at Barnard. She emphasized “enrolled” because she was proud to insist and proclaim that she rarely “attended.” She was training to be a dancer, a modern dancer, and was “taking” (dancer-talk for studying) with Martha Graham. This left her no time for ordinary lectures and recitations. Her life was devoted to learning Graham’s intricate chorography, sequences of movements composed mainly of violent pelvic contractions, which sounded to me, pre-med that I sadly was, very much like endless hours of childbirth. Or perhaps something else, excitingly different, that was still not part of my physical vocabulary.

I managed to summon enough courage to engage this vision in shadows, in my still clumsy way, when I learned who she was taking with. In my feeble attempt to be witty (a highly valued trait of Mr. Trilling’s that I was desperate to acquire), I said, “I thought she was dead.”

“You should be so dead,” Lydia snorted and turned back to her Dance Magazine and Campari and Soda.

From some inner source of resolve, of which I had hitherto been unaware, I pressed on, yet with a stammer, “I know that was stupid. I’ve never known a modern dancer before and couldn’t think of anything witty to say.”

“You have a lot to learn. About both dance and wit. That I can see.”

“I would like to know more about dance. Are you performing as well as taking classes?”

“I take ten classes a week, all either intermediate or advanced. Martha even has me demonstrate and so I’m hoping that she might let me join one of her companies. Not the one that performs in New York. I’m far from that. But I’m good.” She leaned toward me provacatively, “Very good.”

I had never known anyone who so unabashedly would claim to be good, much less very good. And who would call someone like Martha Graham Martha. I came from a world of doubt and equivocation, and so I was transfixed.

“Do you think, maybe . . . . “

“Yes, I would like that. In fact, this Saturday night there is a Merce Cunningham concert. I love Merce and for you it would be a good beginning.” And with that she ran off. Actually, danced off. Though with no contractions visible.

Martha and Merce and beginnings. I drew hard on my pipe and adjusted my beret. Allen and Jack and even Lionel could wait!

Of course it came to nothing. Actually, it turned out to be a disaster.

* * *

We had agreed to meet in front of the City Center at 7:00, buy tickets, see the concert, and then have dinner. She had been quite precise about the plans, including that she would pay for the tickets and I would pick a place to eat and pay for that.

I arrived ten minutes early and had time to gape at the gathering crowd. All dancers who seemed to know each other, with everyone sheathed in the required black. Then in a swirl, Lydia arrived, kissing her way toward me. She was wrapped in layers of coats and scarves and fur tails, and as she moved toward me I felt that nothing I was about to see inside would equal this performance—it was as if she had choreographed and costumed her entrance so that she and her layers became a single organism. But no one but me seemed to notice.

We sat in the third balcony but even from that great height it was evident that Merce was majestic. I was thrilled to be there, especially at Lydia’s side and as a part of her world, but I did not understand anything that he did on stage. Lydia had told me that he believed in chance, to be more precise in “uncertainty.” That his work was influenced by that of Werner Heisenberg, the physicist who had discovered the Uncertainty Principle. Merce incorporated those ideas in his choreography, which meant that he provided what she called frameworks within which his dancers were to move but, following chance, they were expected to improvise, allowing uncertainty to inspire and guide them.

To help chance along, Merce worked with the artist Robert Rauschenberg who designed the scenery, which pretty much consisted of a battered bicycle suspended from a rope above the stage (Lydia told me how much she loved Bob’s work) and with composer John Cage, who, at this performance provided “music” (Lydia called him “Cage” and it “sound”) from a series of radios and tape recorders from which, by turning their dials randomly, he produced the cacophonous sound of uncertainty itself.

Merce and his dancers under the spell of the swinging bicycle and, to me, this noise lurched into a series of movements that looked more like twitches than the seamless grace of the ballet dancers I had seen on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was so discordant, so shrill, so disjointed, and painful, even to the point of boredom (it went on uninterrupted for ninety minutes), that I was certain that I was in the presence of genius.

Above the sounds that boomed from the amplification system and ricocheted off the fretted arches that supported that doom of a room, I could hear Lydia moaning. I was convinced then, by that, that I was privileged to be witnessing Great Art.

She hung on my arm as we departed, heading for a place a worldly roommate of mine had recommended, La Cave Henri IV, just around the corner. “Very French,” he promised, adding with a wink and elbow dig, “And tres romantique.” I was taking Intermediate French for the second time and thought, as Lydia had been my guide to modern dance I could be hers in gastronomie.

Lydia leaned into me as we fought the wind, her fur tails whipping my face. It was cold and we were pleased to find, I should not have been surprised--it was a cave--that the restaurant was snuggly below street level. We descended the steps and entered the dim room. So darkly romantique that it took a moment for our eyes to adjust and for us to find our way to the table that had been reserved for us. It was perfect, under a barrel-shaped brick arch that supported the sidewalk above. We squeezed into the banquette, nestling side-by-side. I could feel Lydia shivering against me while the voice of Edith Piaf filled the room. We were no longer in the world of uncertainty. I was back on the more familiar ground of cause and effect.

The table was lit by a candle that was stuffed into the neck of a wine bottle, so encrusted with dripped wax that I was certain it had held candles since the time of Henri IV.

The waiter, le garcon, glided over toward us, sheathed in a floor-length white butcher’s apron, sleeves held in place by what looked to me like small garters, a folded towel over one crooked arm, and two menus and a wine list in the other, “Monsieur. Mademoiselle,” he said with a slight bow as he handed them to us. “Would you like a drink, an aperitif before ordering?”

I answered for both of us, “No thank you.” Rolling my r’s as best I could, “Merci, we’ll be having wine with dinner.” I had brought enough money with me for food and wine but not for anything else.

“Let me tell you that to begin we have fresh escargots this evening. The chef recommends them. This is very unusual for this time of year. Le hiver.” With that, like an Apache dancer, snapping his starched apron, he spun on his heel and departed, leaving us to peruse the menus. Piaf wafted over me. This was a taste of life as I had only imagined it.

Lydia roused me from my revere, suggesting, “Why don’t you order for the both of us, though I love escargots and prefer red wine.”

“I do as well,” I lied, I wasn’t in truth sure just what escargots were, “How about two of them and maybe some trout?” Truite I knew.

“But I really prefer red wine,” I wasn’t sure what she was signaling, “Maybe some chicken or veal? That would work.”

I was squinting at the menu. It was so dark in spite of the sputtering candle but I needed to see if they had any chicken and how much it cost. Thankfully they did and it was affordable. “Sure—two escargots and two cog au vins.”

Before I could call for him our garcon was back at the table, “We’ll have two of the cogs and two of the specials. Deux.”

“You mean, bien sur, les cogs au vins as entres, non?”

“Of course.”

“And pour boire?”

“Do you have red wine?”

I sensed the beginning of exasperation; and with a nod and perhaps a wink toward Lydia, he said, “Sans doute. Beaucoup. Many.” And with that he unceremoniously reached across the table and me, picking up the Carte du Vins and plopped it open to the Vin Rouge plastic covered page. As he was doing that, Lydia asked if I would get up so she could slide out of the booth. She wanted to “freshen up.”

The waiter hovered over me impatiently, tapping his fingers on the menus he clutched against his chest as I scanned down the list, looking for something that sounded sophisticated yet wasn’t too expensive. “How is the Beaujoulet Village?” I asked in a half voice, not looking up, to avoid eye contact and any hint of chastisement since I wasn’t at all sure of my “j” pronunciation.

Without responding, he turned on his heel and disappeared into the shadows.

Lydia returned, looking even more radiant. Whatever she had done to freshen up had worked. “Did you order the wine? On a night like this I could surely use some.” And as if on cue our waiter was back and in an intricate twisting of hands and wrists popped the cork which he passed along to me. Nervously I began to roll it back and forth on the table cloth. He stood there immobile and waited, looking from me to Lydia and then back to me. Now clearly exasperated, he wrapped the bottle in a napkin and poured about a half inch in my glass, cradling the bottle in his arm as if wanting me to see and read the label. It was too dark for that.

I was also beginning to feel exasperated myself, thinking how improper of him to serve me first and then to pour so little and to stand there all puffed up in Gallic pride as if he was a potentate. . . . I was getting ready to say something, but thought I would begin by just glaring at him. Which I did. We locked eyes. It was a test of good manners and male egos.

He took a step back and I began to again feel in command of the situation. After all we had just been with Merce and Bob and Cage while he had been prancing around in his apron in a basement of a French restaurant.

I turned toward Lydia, who I assumed would be feeling almost as much pride as I. She leaned toward me, under lit by the light of the throbbing candle and thus made more alluring, she whispered, “He’s waiting for you to taste it.”

I was confused, “To what?”

“You know, to taste it to see if it’s turned.”

“Turned into what?” I sensed doom lurking.

“To see if it tastes all right.” Was I sensing even more exasperation? “If you want to send it back.”

As I was about to say, “But I would never do that,” the garcon poured a splash into Lydia’s glass, sneering in my direction, “Peut-etre, voulez-vous, Madmoiselle le saveur?

And in perfect French, with all “r’s” rolling and every “j” aspirating, Lydia raised the wine toward her blackened lips and said, “Avec plaisier.” She seemed at first to inhale it, dipping her nose well into the bulging goblet, and then, after swishing the wine from cheek to cheek, she said, “C’est bien. Merci. A bit innocent but still fine.” She nodded to him and he filled her glass and, with a further look of rebuke, mine.

Silence descended between us and I barely noticed when the escargots arrived, set in their specially indented dishes with what seemed like surgical instruments on the side. Needless to say I had no idea what to do with either the creatures in the shells or the tools of their extraction. Without a word, Lydia simply reached across and showed me what to do.

It would take much more than that to show me what to do. I clearly did not know what to do about many things. Though I vowed that come Monday, if I lived through the rest of dinner and the subway back to Columbia, I would stop being a Chemistry major and would switch to English. I could still be a pre-med, but I needed to learn many, many things from Lionel Trilling. That much I knew.

* * *

I was formally and officially enrolled next semester in Trilling’s course in Modern Lit, along with 150 other Jews and occasional Gentiles, the Jews seeking to rise from the cultural shtetls in which they were hatched. None more eager than I, still raw from the humiliations in Le Cave.

I sat now in an actual chair, no longer huddling on the lab steps. And in place of that rubber apron I broke out my Stag Shop tweeds, leaving the beret and pipe behind in the dorm, thinking they would draw too much attention to me—I needed to be inconspicuous as I made my way by stealth into this new and hermetic world.

I knew immediately that I was where I needed to be because during the very first class, Trilling prowled the lecture platform, tossing his leonine head, stopping by the window with his great brow aslant so as to catch the flat rays of late afternoon light that illuminated him like an icon, his very first words were something like—

“A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.”

Do you see what I mean? The “tyranny of my culture”! Whatever my parents were paying in tuition, I was at last getting their money’s worth.

Further, now on the other side of the room, my side, turning to us, to me, lowering his head and white mane—

“All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is self.”

Do you hear that Lydia? Merce? Cage? All of us anguished souls--Vin rouge for everyone. My treat!

Through that enchanted semester, paying close attention to the texts, Trilling raised questions about how we live our lives (thank you D.H.), about the character of good and evil (much appreciated, Friedrich), about the roles played by culture and biology (Sigmund, thank you), and the ambivalences when making moral choices (T.S. my new best friend). We came to look for something in Trilling that went beyond the insights of ordinary literary criticism. We expected something closer to wisdom.

He was so exalted, so radiant, existing so much in his own world of thought that as mere mortal undergraduates we took that wisdom scrap by scrap. Never was any of it directed toward any one of us or the result of anything we might have croaked back to him when he posed a question to the room. That wisdom was palpably present in the room, like the air itself, a rich oxygen of thought.

But there was at least the opportunity to write something for him, actually to him—the term paper about which he gave no guidance whatsoever, particularly how many pages it needed to be. Just, write a paper about any of the authors we have been reading. We knew by this that he was taking us seriously.

I decided to take a chance—to write about Kafka, about whom he confessed, after reading The Trial again (he actually reread the texts under consideration??), when he confessed that he did not have anything fresh to say about it, though his lectures certainly sounded fresh and imaginative to his disciples.

My paper was on “Farcical Elements in The Trial.” Whatever was possessing me? I dropped all other reading, attending all my other classes, and my favorite pastime, sleep, so I could hone and rehone the paper. After a week of frantic effort, I stumbled to his office, having redrafted and retyped it for the fourth time. Only his deadline stopped me from working on it until I reached middle age.

I dropped it secure in its plastic binder into a cardboard carton on a chair outside his office door. And waited. It was my first fully fleshed out paper as a pre-med-English-major, and I knew that what he might have to say about it would affect the course of the rest of my life. He had told us that they would be read by the end of the week and we could come by at that time to pick them up from that same carton. Rumor had it that he would not actually read them, that they would be read by one of his graduate assistants. But even what they had to say about them would be life-altering—they were his GAs, weren’t they?

With my classmates I lined for hours waiting in the corridor of Hamilton Hall for the papers to be dumped in the box. It was obvious that very little showering had occurred among us that week—it was a hot day and things were feeling very ripe so it was with various forms of relief that word spread down the hall that they were there and we could rummage through the pile to retrieve our offerings.

Though I had been among the first to line up, I allowed everyone to pass me and was thus the last to look for in my paper. There it was, seemingly untouched and unread alone in the bottom of the box. I gathered it to me, and as I walked back toward my dorm, barely breathing, I thumbed through it. I was distraught to notice that the twenty-seven pages were seemingly untouched—there was not one correction or anything underlined in red, much less any comment, however brief, scrawled in any of the margins. My first thought was that it was such a pathetic effort that the grad assistant hadn’t even read all the way through.

I was devastated. All I could think about was how I would need to get back into my Organic chemistry studies so I could rescue at least a C grade or there would also be no medical school for me. I saw my future looming with me in a windowless cubicle at a desk in an insurance company.

I slinked back to my room and collapsed on my bed, wondering if it was too late to get to the lab and work on my titrations.

As I lay there staring at the ceiling, maybe even contemplating if the light fixture would support my weight on a rope, one of my floor mates, Gene Adam pounded on the door. He was a real English major, on a fast track to graduate school, who had taken three courses with Trilling, and was eager to find out how I had done. The answer was immediately apparent when he found me sprawled out in despair on my cot.

“What happened? Did you flunk?”

“No,” I mumbled, “Worse than that. He didn’t even look at it. It came back blank--not a comment, not a grade. He just tossed it back in the box.”

Gene found the paper on my desk and flipped through it. I could see him shrugging his shoulders and muttering in confusion as he turned each of the unmarked pages. But just as he was about to toss it back, he slapped his hand on the desktop and screamed at me, “I can’t believe you. You’re a total moron. Look at this.” He held the paper up to me with the folder open to the blank page at the back that I had inserted to dress up the look of the paper. “Look at what he wrote. I mean Trilling himself. I recognize his handwriting.”

I pulled myself up off the bed and snatched the paper from him. There in Trilling’s own delicate hand, in pencil, faint but still vivid, in truth throbbing, was— “Well written.” And circled, my grade, an A minus.

* * *

And so when two weeks later, there was a flyer tacked to all the bulletin boards on campus, announcing that Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky and, and Allen Ginsberg would be on campus for a reading in McMillin Theater, and that Lionel Trilling would introduce them, I grabbed my blanket, pillow, and two boxes of cereal and raced over--it was scheduled for two days hence and I would need to sleep and eat outside the theater entrance so I could be at the front of the line and thus be able to get a seat in the first row. But since so many others with folding chairs and sleeping bags had the same idea, when I arrived, the line was already around the corner by much better equipped campers. I knew I would have to settle for the balcony again, as at the City Center, which was OK because these were my people and my world.

And so I squatted in line. But before my cereal ran out, and the rains came, the staff at McMillin took pity on those sprawled outside their door and let us buy tickets. Or maybe they were just tired of having to step over our ragtag army of Trilling and Ginsberg acolytes. This, though, took away some of the delicious opportunity to suffer for one’s art. It felt good, however, to have spent at least one night on the pavement in its service, and I needed to shave.

So, trice-armed with my ticket, my A minus, and my “Well written,” I took a break for the rest of the week from my sulfanilamide experiment and renewed my acquaintance with the West End, thinking there was no better place to prepare for what was upcoming.

I had not been there for some time, not wanting to revisit the memories of my time with Lydia; and thankfully did not find her there. Just the welcoming greeting of Johnny the bartender, who without missing a beat, as if I had been there just yesterday, asked, “The usual?” already pulling on the Watney’s Ale siphon--my “usual.”

And on the napkin on which Johnny rested my beer, I found myself beginning to write a poem.

Though I had immersed myself in my literature classes, during the past six months I had suspended all thoughts and even dreams of writing. I not only had made the pre-med-backup-plan compromise, but as I thought about what to do with my literary interests, under the same kind of pressure to be responsible, I had not as yet even begun to shrug off that tyrannical aspect of my culture that kept me tethered to practicalness: I could still hear the echo of my father’s bellowing when I told him about switching majors from Chemistry to English—“For what reason? You tell me you want to be happy. What does happiness have to do with anything?” And since I didn’t have a ready answer for him much less myself, I continued to straddle my many worlds.

So from where was this poem spawning?

these wooden streets
wet nimbused now
like starfish
crushed . . . .

And so on. Just this small napkin’s worth of words.

* * *

For the reading I remembered to bring along my pipe and beret, which I hoped would distinguish me, make me noticeable up in the shadows of the balcony, now that I was wanting to emerge from inconspicuousness.

The house was packed. The entire literature faculty was there, as were the graduate assistants and every English major, graduate and undergraduate, including from Barnard—though I, with relief, again did not see Lydia.

There were four chairs on the stage and a podium. Nothing more. Then suddenly, as if in a vision, they all appeared at once, in a surge—following the ever elegant Trilling from the wings were Corso, in tattered fatigues; Orlovsky, all blonde and tweeds; and Ginsberg, shuffling, slumping, awkward, covered in denim. I remember the clothes better than the poems, taking more note of how to look the part than the part itself—Would I be Trilling? Certainly not Orlovsky, reportedly Ginsberg’s lover. I could be Corso, clearly the minor player, perhaps more suited as a model for my A minus talent. Ginsberg of Howl and Kaddish was beyond imagining, though I already had the denims.

First up was Orlovsky, happily brief because his writing did not compare with the beauty of his lips or face or hair—“My body turned into sugar, poured into tea. I found the meaning.” And then there was Corso, twisted in a corkscrew at the podium, who read in a sputtering staccato more appropriate for Greenwich Village coffee houses than that baroque room—“I stand in the dark light of the dark street. And look up at my window, I was born there.” Beat though he fully was, he did have the courtesy to move along quickly, knowing he was in truth the opening act.

Then it was Ginsberg’s turn. This was his first appearance at the back university which years earlier had expelled him. Trilling rose to introduce him, smoothing his jacket which had remained buttoned while he sat. In his impeccable half-British diction he said something about how after going through Howl twice, “I find I don't know how to respond. The poem does not reach me. Its clue doesn't appear."

At this, Ginsberg, twisting in his seat, tossed one leg up over the left arm so he would be turned aggressively toward his old professor. Peering at him, with a wry smile on his already lined face. When he heard Trilling say his name in public for the first time in literary history, amplified in that great room, Ginsberg uncoiled his serpentine self and moved toward to the podium that had been transformed form the shuffle of his arrival to pure panther. Trilling returned to his seat, sat quickly, crossing his legs with considerable care so as not to disturb the tight crease in his trousers.

Ginsberg began by reading from "The Lion for Real." He told us that he dedicated the poem to his former teacher Lionel Trilling and that it described a series of spiritual visions he had had while at Columbia (now I got the lion reference), visions that had set him upon the mystical quest that had become his preoccupation, and etched those premature lines in his cheeks. The poem, he said, turning pointedly to face Trilling, also recounted the difficulty he had had in translating his visions to his friends, family, and teachers. I think at that reference, he took a half-step in Trilling’s direction, indicating that the poem reflected his own despair and sense of spiritual isolation at Columbia.

I do now remember one or two lines, which he then read, without referring to the tortured pile of his papers on the podium, speaking them in one long breath, off mike, leaning directly toward his adversary. We all needed to lean forward to hear them, knowing the Professor Kandisky of the poem was Professor Trilling!

sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten face

stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had nightmares

Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by

Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion's flophouse circus

Kandisky/Trilling in a flophouse? Though there were 1,400 of us packed into that theater, I sensed that everyone had stopped breathing. Even the great scions of literature gasped, including the ancient Moses Hadas, Columbia’s lion of Greek Tragedy, which for him could have been fatal; and Mark Van Doren, of the Van Doren literary dynasty that included his disgraced quiz-show son Charles.

Ginsberg turned his back to his professor on the stage, and very much into the microphone this time, looking up especially to those of us breathless in the balcony, “Remember,” he said, imitating Trilling’s clipped style, “All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men. It springs from the anguish of great souls.”

And without turning back to him, but still to us, Ginsberg asked, “Isn’t that so Mr. Trilling?” If the Great Hadas had been thinking in a Sophoclean mode, he must have sensed patricide.

* * *

For the first time in my life I needed a drink and there was of course only one place to seek it.

Though it was well past 11:00 p.m., Johnny was still on duty and moved to the Watney’s tap as he saw me at the door. I had raced away from the commotion that ensued at McMillin and when I got to the West End it was empty—every one of the regulars had been at the event.

I was pulsating.

I had had my own vision. Though it would not lead to a lifetime-long spiritual quest or probably even many publishable poems, I at least right then knew I would never again set foot in a chemistry lab and there would be no medical school. I didn’t know where I was headed, but it was surely not there. Even if to oblivion.

I collapsed onto my stool and in one swallow sucked in half the draft. I played and replayed the tape in my head of what had transpired—especially Ginsburg’s call to us in the balcony about the “anguish of souls”—actually quoting back to him and to us Trilling’s own words, but as transmuted up to us, through the medium of Ginsberg, they felt as if they had reshaped the very neurons in my cerebellum.

Thus stimulated, on a second cocktail napkin, in almost automatic writing, as if the words were coming to me from a source outside myself, I wrote, to conclude the poem I had begun a few days ago--

on these I trod
wet now as the wood
after passing the baby clams
but never having asked
if you cried
when your father died

And with that the front door swung open and in a rush of Beats in Army-Navy clothes, at the head of the pack, was Ginsberg, with Orlovsky at his side. “Johnny,” he cried, with arms outstretched as he made his way to the bar.

And Johnny said, “The usual?” reaching for a bottle of Ballantine.

But Ginsberg paused, as if disoriented, at the horseshoe end of the bar near where I was frozen to my stool. Looking around for Johnny who had disappeared below the bar to get Ginsberg’s beer from the cooler down there where he kept the bottles. As Johnny’s head reemerged, while still half bent over, he waved to me with the back of his hand. To get up. To move.

I was on Ginsberg’s stool! Which now felt like a griddle. I leapt off it as if afraid it would roast and flay my body.

“That’s all right,” he said to me, touching my shoulder with the sting of his hand, “Stay where you are. I can sit anywhere. After all that, I need a beer, maybe two, and then we’re off.” With a wink toward Orlovsky, he to me added, “You look as if you belong here.” He nodded to Johnny, indicating everything was fine, but Johnny’s look back to me made it clear that I had still better move, and fast. Not that I needed any reminding.

Seeking inconspicuousness again, I ducked into a dark booth on the other side of the bar, not pausing to take my Watney’s with me. Ginsberg lowered himself onto his stool and was immediately engulfed by the crowd that continued to surge in from McMillin.

Though I was physically present, the surreality of that entire evening, now with Ginsberg unbelievably looming fewer than ten feet away, turned the West End into a mix of dreams and cinematic images, with me more a distant, wishful observer than a physical presence.

Almost immediately, I felt myself slipping out of consciousness. It was more than the Watney’s taking hold of me. And as I was about to literally slide off the leather banquette, just as I was about to collapse under the influence, and the bench, I saw as if he was a hallucination, the hair-haloed head of Ginsberg, towering before me.

“Is this yours?” he asked, holding something out toward me.

“My what?” I somehow managed to mumble, desperately trying to hold on to the table.

“This, this napkin,” his hand was still extended. “I found it where you were sitting. At the bar,” he smiled, “At your seat.”

“Yes, my napkin. Thank you. I left it there. Sorry. I meant to take it with me. And my beer.”

“You should have it because I saw your were writing on it.”

“I was just doodling. I’m not really a writer or anything.” I was by then hoping I would pass out entirely and disappear forever in that booth.

“Actually, I thought it wasn’t bad. I liked the reference to the ‘baby clams.’”

He turned to his coterie who were watching and listening from the bar, and said to them more than to me, “Its clue appeared to me.”

Then he was gone, back out into the blare of Broadway, in pursuit of his vision, he and they rolling and embracing in fits of ribald laughter.

* * *

I did in fact return to the Lab and did in fact managed to eek out a C plus in Organic, enough to guarantee at least a fighting chance of being accepted by a second-tier medical school somewhere in the middle of the country.

I had taken that beer-soaked napkin back to my room and aligned it to the first one, feeling that the two parts formed something resembling an actual poem, the clue of which remaining sufficiently allusive to me to pump me full of enough courage to submit it for publication to a few small presses. And, to my surprise and delight, before even submitting any applications to Med schools, I heard from the mimeographed poetry magazine, Black Sun, that my crushed starfish poem would be published--if they could get enough money together to by ink for the printing machine.

Nothing much came of that. And to this day I wonder what would have happened if Trilling had given me a straight A on my Kafka paper.

Would that have been the difference?

Friday, April 28, 2006

April 28, 2006--Fanaticisms XXXII--Cain and Abel Teitelbaum

Can’t the Satmar Hasidim of Williamsburg, Brooklyn just get along?

Last week, Moses (Moshe) Teitelbaum, their Grand Rabbi died at 91. What should have been a mournful and peaceful time erupted into bitter battles in the streets (two dozen arrested for violence) and the secular and rabbinical courts. What is at issue is who will succeed him. This is often a simple matter among Hassids—if the Grand Rebbe has at least one son, the oldest inherits the position. If there are no sons, a favored nephew is acceptable—in fact that is how Rabbi Moshe got his job. Just like the royalty they are.

The trouble here is that Rabbi Moses named his third son, Zalmen to take over, bypassing his first born, Aaron. So Aaron went to court, claiming he is the legitimate heir (see NY Times story linked below).

For those of you not familiar with Hassidism, allow me to fill in some background. In spite of the way they appear, with their ancient garb and customs, they are a relatively next Jewish sect, having come into existence in only the 18th century. They are a millennialist people, waiting for the Jewish Messiah to appear and all the good things that will result—the rebuilding of the Temple, the resumption of animal sacrifices, and ultimately Armageddon. Though many Hassids live in Israel, they oppose both religious and secular Zionism, claiming that it is up to God to return Jews to Israel, not the State of Israel. Though they are not reluctant to in fact participate in Israeli politics and even serve in the Knesset (but not the army). Go figure.

Back to Brooklyn—so what might really be at stake? A number of things, perhaps, most significant, control of the Satmar’s considerable worldly assets—their global network of private schools and social service agencies, their vast real estate holdings worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and even a Matzo factory.

But there is more—the split among the Satmars, some favoring Aaron and others Zalmen, has put all matchmaking on hold. The Grand Rebbe controls this action as well, and thus those families backing Aaron do not want their sons or daughters to marry someone from the other faction. Things could get complicated for these marriages made in heaven after the courts sort things out.

Rabbi Moshe always compared himself to the biblical Jacob—he who considered himself the custodian of the work begun by the founders of Judaism, Isaac and Abraham. The Grand Rabbi often quoted Jacob who is supposed to have said, “I’m not digging any new wells; I’m just watching the wells that the father and grandfather dug.”

It looks, though, that while he was watching those wells and thinking about himself as Jacob, Zalmen and Aaron were thinking Cain and Abel.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006--Why Johnny Can't Call

At a time when New York has the third lowest high school graduation rate in the country, just above Arkansas and Mississippi, what are school leaders in New York City focusing on? Cell phones.

According to the NY Times (see article linked below), the Department of Education has instituted random searches to cut down on the number of weapons kids bring to school; and while making them pass through metal detectors, they are also uncovering cell phones—which students are not supposed to take to class. The City has had a sort of don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy in regard to cell phones; but now that they are being detected, since they are not permitted, security staff is confiscating them.

This has students and their parents in an uproar. In post-9/11 New York, in case of a terrorist attack, everyone wants to be totally connected all the time. Other parents are worried about child predators. Without a cell phone, what happens if . . . ?

The school Chancellor is hanging tough, claiming that the reason cell phones are banned is because so many of them include cameras and thus kids are using them to take pictures in locker and bath rooms and then posting them on the Internet. Others, he claims, use the phones to cheat on exams and, through text messaging, round up friends to start riots.

The kids respond, saying that if you have a long commute, without the music available via these phones, it makes the trip “really, really boring.” For others, cell phones are a form of attire, what with them clipped alluringly to the hip. One student said, “Electronics are part of the fashion statement.”

All the while, Johnny and Jamie can’t read or do math, and many fewer than even who enter the 9th grade graduate on time. In addition to all this fuss about phones in the schools, with students bored and languishing, teachers and administrators continue to wage war over how to teach reading—should we use Phonics-based approaches that help students sound out words; or should we teach via the Whole Language method, where while reading “real literature,” it is claimed children learn whole words in context.

When I call this a “war,” I am not exaggerating—Phonics and Whole-Language educators literally hate each other and have been know to get into physical fights at reading conferences. Again, while the kids fail. Few look at the evidence of what works for the children—which methods produce the best measurable results. It’s all about belief and even ideology—“liberals” believe in the Whole Language approach; "conservatives" in Phonics.

I for certain am more of the liberal persuasion, but in this battle I stand with the conservatives—there are more data that show Phonics works much better.

But rather than confront the real problems and solve them, which we can, let’s be sure to confiscate those phones—that will get the job done.

Footnote—In New York City, as you might image, they use Whole Language methods.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

April 26, 2006--Crab Gas

In the spirit of full discloser, I should state up front that I do not have a lawn. In fact, I live in an apartment in a building that also does not have a lawn. So it is easy for me to take a shot at those surrounded by green expanses and all the issues they face when attempting to keep them well groomed.

I used to have a small patch of grass that I cut with a hand mower. Among other things, it was good exercise. But I was certainly aware of neighbors who had gas powered ones—it was impossible to ignore them. And I did have friends and relatives who lived in the suburbs who had an acre or so of lawn who, along the way, moved on from hand-guided movers to something called “riding mowers.” I never got that. Much less how over time these vehicles, for that’s what they are, became accessorized, like cars, with cup holders, CD players, and the like.

That’s as much as I thought about grass and mowers until very recently. With gas costing up to $4.00 a gallon and heightened concern about air pollution and global warming, the NY Times, among others, has turned its attention to power mowers (see article linked below).

I’ve been learning that 2006 mower engines emit 93 times more hydrocarbon emissions than 2006 car engines. (“93 times” is not a typo.) If we are finally getting slightly serious about controlling auto exhaust, it would seem a simple thing to do something about mowers.

Well think again. Briggs & Stratton, the leading manufacturer or lawn mower engines, is resisting all attempts to require catalytic converters, claiming that they cost $20 to $25 dollars per machine, and what’s more they would make mowers prone to catching on fire.

Fine, that’s B & S’s position, but what about Congress—shouldn't they be concerned? After all, in California alone, power mowers each day add 22 tons of smog-forming chemicals to the air—the equivalent of 800,000 cars (again, no typos).

It so happens that in Congress there is a Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, chair of the committee that controls the EPA budget, and he has thus far not seemed interested in the issue. Could it be because Briggs & Stratton has two factories in Missouri that employ 1,750?? His position—we need to commission a series of studies to make sure “people don’t get their houses burned down.” I assume this danger is because some folks use their B & S’s to mow the Astroturf in their finished basements.

There have in fact been some studies that he authorized—one by the EPA and another by the National Research Council. Both concluded that mowers with converters are safe. So what did the good senator do—he commissioned more studies. And so on.

Maybe President Bush will make a speech saying we are addicted to our riding mowers. That should work because so far he’s doing a pretty good job getting us weaned off our gasoline addiction.

April 25, 2006--Wedgies

Have you heard about Karl Rove’s insurance policy? Not the one on his life but a strategy he devised to insure that the Republican base turns out to vote.

Here’s how it works—after losing the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election and thus needing to win the election in the Supreme Court, Rove vowed this would not happen again. His analysis of what occurred indicated that many Christian Fundamentalists stayed home in 2000 rather than vote for a candidate (George Bush) who had been arrested for DUI.

How then to mobilize this key constituency? By getting them so riled up about “values” issues such as abortion, school prayer, and the big one in 2004—gay marriage—that they would pull themselves up off their couches and drag themselves to the polls. To assure this, he came up with a tactical strategy to have local initiatives up for vote on these hot-button subjects. By having referenda on gay marriage in key states such as Ohio and Florida he would be certain that the base would turn out to vote against same-sex unions and while there they would stay long enough to vote for Republican candidates. We all know how well that worked.

Enter the Democrats. They feel they have come up with a wedge issue of their own for this year to insure turn out in states that are key for them—Maryland, Missouri, Colorado, Illinois, etc. Their wedge issue is stem cell research. A referendum to make it legal in Missouri will be on the ballot there in November if enough signatures can be secured (see NY Times article below). If the Democrat candidates for the House and Senate in Missouri are perceived to be behind this initiative, Democrat strategists are hoping that swing voters will not only turn out in support of it but will also vote for their candidates.

Not to be beaten at their own game of wedge politics, Republicans around the country still feel there is mileage left in amendments to ban gay marriage. (See second linked article from the Times.) They are very worried about close races in Pennsylvania (Rick Santorum is in trouble) and Ohio (where Mike DeWine is in a very tight contest—though in Ohio, opposition to gay marriage is down from 63 percent in February 2004 to just 51 percent now).

Thus, an ecumenical assortment of Evangelical and Catholic clergymen has come together in support of a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of a man and a women. I don’t quite where that leaves Mormons, but they will probably vote Republican anyway. What is striking about this effort is the totally out-of-the-closet (forgive me for that) direct involvement of high-ranking Catholic officials.

Maybe playing the wedge game will work for Democrats. If not, I'm afraid it will take us one step closer to an American Theocracy (everyone needs to read Kevin Phillips’ new book on the subject) where the very separation of Church and State is threatened.

Monday, April 24, 2006

April 24, 2006--Neuro Persuaders

Some years ago Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders, a book that among other things sounded the alarm about how advertisers were flashing pictures of Coke and popcorn on movie screens at such nano-speed that the images would bypass consciousness but register on the brain so effectively that moviegoers would get up from their seats as if they were zombies, be drawn toward the candy counter, and the next thing they knew they would be headed back to their seats with trays loaded with10,000 calories of goodies.

That was then. Now we have the brave new world of neuro-economics, a quasi-science in which experimenters measure brain activity while subjects make investment decisions and buy things. (See NY Times article linked below.)

Brain researchers are finding that neurons behave in certain ways when people are in “a positive arousal state,” and when in that state they are more prone to take risks, including when investing or gambling; and when other regions of the brain are stimulated folks are more anxious and thus cautious about things such as the cost of a car or house.

Though this field of neurology was initially dominated by pure researchers, as the implications for applied economics became apparent, others moved in who were interested in the potential use of this new knowledge to influence investing and spending practices. With the insight that people are, to quote the Times, “not consistent or fully rational decision makers,” there is the potential to train investors to wait until brain scans reveal that they are objective rather than emotional before making purchasing decisions.

Since scanning brains is an elaborate and expensive thing to do, it is hard to imagine carrying it out on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. So it is hopeful that there is evidence indicating that minds can be read by employing simpler and less costly techniques—for example, by monitoring eye movements in order to detect anxiety and fear, clearly not the best time to induce people to spend money.

There is of course speculation that these discoveries also have the potential to be used for political purposes. How might we be influenced to vote by various forms of neural activity? What stimulates the desire for change? And when that part of the brain that produces fear is firing, how are we likely to vote? Is any of this starting to sound familiar to you?

Saturday, April 22, 2006

April 22, 2006--Saturday Story: The West End

The West End

When I arrived at Columbia College as a wretchedly skinny, overgrown, stopped-over freshman, decades ago but just a few years after Jack went on the Road and Allen started to Howl, I skipped orientation and the chance to learn the words to the school anthem, Roar Lion, Roar, and raced right over to Broadway where at a shop that specialized in “collegiate wear” I bought a tweed jacket with leather patches already installed on the sleeves, a pipe, and a beret.

I was all set to join the Beats and knew that, newly outfitted, I would need to find a regular place for myself at the West End Bar, which was just down the street from the Stag Shop. This seemed appropriate to me since I saw the gathering of these cultural accouterments to be essential to the life of the poet. I had hopes that the bartender there might tell me where Allen and Jack had perched; and while puffing on my pipe (you could still smoke in bars) and pitching my beret to just the right angle and blowing the foam off my pint (you could drink at 18), I would be inspired.

I did settle in there, becoming a version of a “regular,” often cutting Comparative Anatomy Lab and my Dogfish dissection (as a backup plan to having my poems published by City Lights in San Francisco, I was a pre-med), drank my beers, sometimes seasoned with tears, and waited in vain for words to come to me.

Though I felt sufficiently hysterical and naked, few did.

* * *

So in pursuit of my alternate plan I devoted myself just enough to my Dogfish’s cranial nerves in an attempt to earn at least what at the time was called “a gentleman’s C.” In fact, I was good enough at dissection that my fish was stolen from the tank in which it was stored between lab sessions. Pre-meds were a competitive lot, seeing themselves in competition with each other for coveted spots in Top-Ten medical schools; and anything they could do to elevate themselves on the grading curve, particularly by lowering yours, was something to which they devoted themselves.

It was a good thing, therefore, that I discovered that the lab’s side door led to the amphitheater classroom where the great Lionel Trilling held forth on the immortals of Modern Literature—Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Kafka, and of course his beloved Freud. If I couldn’t find inspiration at the West End perhaps I could with Trilling.

I would poke away at the dog fish for awhile; and when the lab technician went out for a smoke I would slither through that door and, wrapped in my rubber apron, sit on the steps, taking it all in—less his critical insights than his performance and he strode and gestured in his elegant tweeds (I was clearly right about the clothes), the very embodiment of the Liberal Imagination. If I was not to be Ginsberg, I at least wanted Trilling’s posture.

He was aware of me—not because of anything I might have offered but because of my outfit, hungry look, and the piercing smell of formaldehyde that surrounded me. I noticed him taking note of me, nodding, “It’s OK,” as if he knew what was behind that door and how, if fate had turned out differently for him, this Jewish god of literature might have been found bent over his own Dogfish a few decades earlier, in that very same lab, and someone else would be astride that platform.

Though I found myself drawn more and more toward the study of literature rather than its creation, I did not fail to maintain my status at the West End. Especially since I was at last finding inspiration there—not poetic, alas, but, yes, carnal. For slinking on a stool at the other side of the horseshoe-shaped end of the mahogany bar was a girl all in black—leotard, tights (cut off at the ankle), jewelry, nails, eye shadow, hair, and, most alluringly, beret. All black. If not a muse for poetry for sure one for lust.

She was Lydia Rifflestein from East Paterson, New Jersey and was enrolled at Barnard. She emphasized “enrolled” because she was proud to insist and proclaim that she rarely “attended.” She was training to be a dancer, a modern dancer, and was “taking” (dancer-talk for studying) with Martha Graham. This left her no time for ordinary lectures and recitations. Her life was devoted to learning Graham’s intricate chorography, sequences of movements composed mainly of violent pelvic contractions, which sounded to me, pre-med that I sadly was, very much like endless hours of childbirth. Or perhaps something else, excitingly different, that was still not part of my physical vocabulary.

I managed to summon enough courage to engage this vision in shadows, in my still clumsy way, when I learned who she was taking with. In my feeble attempt to be witty (a highly valued trait of Mr. Trilling’s that I was desperate to acquire), I said, “I thought she was dead.”

“You should be so dead,” Lydia snorted and turned back to her Dance Magazine and Campari and Soda.

From some inner source of resolve, of which I had hitherto been unaware, I pressed on, yet with a stammer, “I know that was stupid. I’ve never known a modern dancer before and couldn’t think of anything witty to say.”

“You have a lot to learn. About both dance and wit. That I can see.”

“I would like to know more about dance. Are you performing as well as taking classes?”

“I take ten classes a week, all either intermediate or advanced. Martha even has me demonstrate and so I’m hoping that she might let me join one of her companies. Not the one that performs in New York. I’m far from that. But I’m good.” She leaned toward me, “Very good.”

I had never known anyone who so unabashedly would claim to be good, much less very good. And who would call someone like Martha Graham Martha. I came from a world of doubt and equivocation, and so I was transfixed.

“Do you think, maybe . . . . “

“Yes, I would like that. In fact, this Saturday night there is a Merce Cunningham concert. I love Merce and for you it would be a good beginning.” And with that she ran off. Actually, danced off. Though with no contractions visible.

Martha and Merce and beginnings. I drew hard on my pipe and adjusted my beret. Allen and Jack and even Lionel could wait!

Of course it came to nothing. Actually, it turned out to be a disaster.

To be continued--

Friday, April 21, 2006

April 21, 2006--Fanaticisms XXXI--Disneyland Babylon

During his reign, Saddam Hussein built one of his palaces on the ruins of King Nebuchadnezzar’s in Babylon. Saddam imported Sudanese laborers since his own were not available--they were busy fighting a war with Iran.
Babylon of course is one of the world’s most ancient cites and was home to the wondrous Hanging Gardens and the infamous Tower of Babel. Babylon is also a major spot on the map for End of Time prophesies. It is the site the Antichrist will occupy when he appears and where one of the conclusive battles will be fought that will lead to the Second Coming of Christ, Armageddon, the Rapture, and all those other good things.

So it must be of some concern to pre-millennialists that as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq there are plans afoot to develop Babylon as a site for an archeological theme park that will attract so many tourists that, in the words of a UNESCO official, one of the sponsors, “Cultural tourism could become Iraq’s second biggest industry, after oil” (see NY Times story linked below).

The mayor of Babylon has a vision—he sees a million visitors a year, “I want restaurants, gift shops, long parking loots, and maybe even a Holiday Inn.”

He had better get started in a hurry because when US troops arrived and captured the city their heavy equipment pulverized many ancient artifacts. In fact, quite a few, including bones, wound up in sandbags filled by soldiers.

If you would like a flavor of what the pre-millennialists have to say about the importance of Babylon in their End Time scenario, here is a quote from Endtime Prophecy Net:

We emphasize watching for the fulfillment of such Endtime events as the appearance of the Antichrist; the Battle of Armageddon; the 666, (Mark of the Beast); the Great Tribulation; the Rapture; the destruction of Babylon the Great; the rise of the Beast and the False Prophet; the Second Coming of Christ; the Rapture of the Saints; the 7-year Holy Covenant; the construction of the Jewish temple; the renewal of the Daily Sacrifice; the Abomination of Desolation; the rise of the two Sackcloth Witnesses; the coming Millennium and other events described in the Book of Revelation, or Apocalypse, and other books of the Bible.

Do not doubt! Prophecy is being fulfilled, and we are living in the Endtime! The Antichrist may be alive today!

I have a slightly different view of The End—for me the First Signs were when Disneylands were constructed in California, Florida, France, and Japan.

Now with the development of a Babylon Disneyland, I feel certain that we’re cooked.

FootnoteIn the Left Behind series of novels that have sold 60 million copies, the Antichrist is the Secretary General of the UN and he relocates the UN to Babylon. So the fact that UNESCO is funding the transformation of Babylon into an archeo-tourist site is making me nervous.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

April 20, 2006--"Aromas of River Rocks"??

To quote a former colleague, "Life is too short not to drink good wine." Ever since he said that to me six years ago I have been attempting to follow his advice. It's cost a bit, but I also discovered that you can get good deals by purchasing wine via the Internet. A fine source I have found is Winesearcher.com. In fact, right after posting this blog I'll be looking for a good price on some 2004 Premier Cru Chablis, Verget Vaillons.

You might have the impression that I know my wines. I'm learning, but in truth I know more about where to find out about wines than the wines themselves. Among other places, I’m learning from the NY Times of course! Every Wednesday Eric Asimov has his column, "Wines of the Times." (See yesterday's on Chablis linked below.) I turn to it religiously. Well, eagerly.

Though I am learning the difference between Premier Cru and just Cru, I am still having difficulty talking about wine. By this I don't mean that I can't tell you what I like and don't like, or if one wine is as dry or round as I might prefer. I'm referring to the meta-language used when true wine mavens describe the aroma and flavor of individual wines.

I got used to the concept of “big”—a way of describing a strong, perhaps alcoholic wine that is likely to improve with age. And “dry”—when wine isn’t too sweet. Also “flabby”—to describe a bland tasting wine that isn’t going to get any better. I learned to appreciate a “balanced” wine—one in which there is a satisfying relationship between tannin, acid, and alcohol. And when someone says that “This wine has a fine nose,” I understand he is talking about the totality of the wine’s smell or bouquet.

I began to get into trouble, however, when in “Wines of the Times” and other places I started to see individual wines spoken about by making reference to fruits and herbs and spices. For example, in the Chablis column, Asimov writes that one wine tasted has “rich citrus fruit” while another is “taut and clenched, with underlying flavors of flowers.”

I’m sort of all right with the "citrus" but get lost with the “taut” and the “clenched,” and even more lost when it comes to the “flavors of flowers,” wondering just which flowers he means since I’ve only thus far sampled roses, daisies, and an occasional hibiscus. I need more help here.

But what really is interfering with my becoming a true oneophile is my perplexity when he refers to some of the wines as having “the aromas of river rocks” and even more confusing that some have the bouquet of “crushed stones.” I suppose I could get some river rocks to smell, settling for maybe just one aroma rather than his plural aromas, but do I really need to crush some stones and sniff them to truly get it?

So you can see the mess I've gotten myself into. Things are feeling so overwhelming right now that I had better post this and get my hands soon on a glass of “big” wine. You know, the one with all the alcohol.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

April 19, 2006--Organizing to Relax

I’m old enough to remember that a typical weekend included bike riding; a pick-up game or two of basketball in the schoolyard; some TV; and a visit with aunts, uncles, and cousins. It wasn’t until the 7th grade that I was on an actual team, had a coach, or anything resembling a uniform. I had no organized preschool activities, play dates, or sleepovers. And thus, my parents didn’t need to do any chauffeuring, didn’t need to coordinate schedules with other parents, and didn’t need to spend endless weekend hours watching me run up and down the soccer field or fumbling ground balls at short stop.

How things have changed!

So much so that there are now national organizations set up to help parents recapture their overscheduled weekends. The author of a piece in the NY Times about this latest movement, Putting Family First (linked below), reports that her husband’s goal this year, which has thus far been unattainable, “is to take a nap on the couch during daylight hours.” He is too busy racing from basketball games to school plays.

PFF and other groups such as Balance 4 Success and Ready, Set, Relax (check their Websites) help families plan evenings where all activities pause—no homework lessons, no video games, no sports, no meetings—families just stay home and even manage to eat a meal together!

It is one thing to blame all of this frenzy on hyper-parenting where mothers and fathers are in a race to keep up with the neighbors and build resumes for their children that will hopefully put them at a competitive advantage when applying to college. But the parents themselves are in a race of their own—new technologies are enabling them to work from anywhere and at any time, including from home evenings and weekends. What with BlackBerrys and Blue Tooth computers and phones they can put in even more hours of work than their bosses require as one way to stay ahead in the office game, talking competitive pride when sending out an e-mail at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday right before waking the kids and schlepping them off to gymnastics practice.

If you are an occasional reader of this blog you know me well enough by now to be thinking that I would be suspecting that these Family First organizations are really quasi-religious groups that are emphasizing quality family time as a strategy to get junior to cut back on guitar lessons so they can, as a family, spend more time praying together.

I may have missed that hidden agenda when scrutinizing their Websites, but it seems to me that they just want kids to have a more spontaneous, less pressured childhood. And for parents to be able to get in a little nap time. I’m for that.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

April 18, 2006--Chads and Chopped Liver

My family gathered in Florida last week for a Seder. Twelve of us. At my 98 year-old mother’s. We had not done this in many years and thus it was full of sweet memories tinged with a hint of melancholy. After dinner all of us convened in her living room and as in the past discussed the meaning of Passover--then and now. About the “then” we were all pretty much in agreement; about the “now” things were decidedly more complicated. Especially on the topic of immigration, a subject about which all Jews should have opinions derived from near-in experience.

Then as now we Jews are not of one mind on this or any subject. Opinions ranged from “If-they-are-here-illegally-they should-be-sent-back-to-where-they-came-from-or-put-in-jail,-and-their-employers-should-be-fined,” to “Americans-benefit-from-a-flexible-immigration-policy-because-immigrants-contribute-to-our-country-culturally-and-economically.-They-are-picking-lettuce-and-washing-dishes,-jobs-“real”-Americans-won’t-do.”

I admit to being of that latter persuasion, but my argument was substantially weakened when a cousin cited a NY Times article (an op-ed piece by Nick Kristof) in which Kristof, a “liberal” changed his position when he read studies that indicated that illegal immigrants are undercutting the wages of low-income citizens, especially African Americans.

If we were reconvening this week for the eighth night of Passover and if we were to return to this hot subject I would have been able to refer to a second Times article, from Sunday (linked below), in which Eduardo Porter cites more carefully constructed studies that reveal that the claims from the earlier data are at best overstated.

However, I couldn’t help but marvel at the brilliance of how effective conservative Republicans have been at pressing the emotional issue of immigration just months before what promises to be a close mid-term election. How by floating wedge issues they are effectively distracting us from more pressing and dangerous issues such as our broken public education system, inadequate health care for the working poor, environmental degradation, global warming, and of course our preemptive foreign policy.

I perceived brilliance within their brilliance. Have you noticed how every two years in key swing states such as Ohio and Florida Republicans manage to place statewide initiatives on the ballot that are certain to mobilize their base to come out and vote? Last year there were at least a dozen referenda on gay marriage; this year there are more on that divisive subject as well as on that other grabber--Intelligent Design.

Perversely I admire their craft. As evidence of how well it was working In Lauderhill, Florida last week, my family spent just 30 minutes on Iraq and education (including how immigrants are getting a free ride and refuse to learn English) but at least an hour and a half on immigration, immigration, immigration.

In the past Democrats could count on Jews to vote the straight party ticket; more recently, a growing number in Florida are punching their chads for Republicans because fifty gay couples in Dade County want to get married.

Monday, April 17, 2006

April 17, 2006--"The Usual?"

All institutions have to die. I know that. But the West End Bar at Columbia University? The very place where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and other Beat Generation writers hung out, hysterical and naked? This I can’t accept. But according to the NY Times (see article linked below) it has been sold and it will soon be turned into a Cuban restaurant! A Cuban restaurant no less, with Mojitos? This is just too much.

You may be wondering why I am so upset—what’s the big deal? Well, when I arrived at Columbia as a wretchedly skinny and overgrown freshman, decades ago but just a few years after Jack went on the road and Allen started to howl, I skipped orientation and the chance to learn the words to Roar Lion, Roar, and raced right over to Broadway where I bought a tweed jacket with leather patches already installed on the sleeves, a pipe, and a beret.

I was all set to join the Beats and knew that, newly outfitted, I would need to find a regular stool for myself at the bar in the West End. Maybe the barkeep there would tell me where Allen and Jack perched; and while puffing on my pipe (you could still smoke in bars) and pitching my beret to just the right angle and blowing the foam off my pint, I would be inspired.

I did settle in there, becoming a version of a “regular,” often cutting Comparative Anatomy lab and my Dogfish dissection (as a backup plan to having my poems published by City Lights in San Francisco, I was a pre-med), drank my beers, sometimes seasoned with tears, and waited in vain for words to come to me.

Few did.

When I finally graduated and decided that I didn’t want to be just another Jewish Doctor, I held onto the jacket, the pipe, and the beret and went off to become just another college professor. My first few jobs, quite coveted even then, involved teaching Freshman Composition as an adjunct at Queens College. Endless sections with hundreds of papers to read and comment upon each week. But I persisted, staying in touch with Ginsberg and Kerouac, now as a faculty member and “scholar,” through their publications, disappointingly not as a fellow Beat.

I managed to work my way up the university food chain toward tenure. I did not, however, remain connected to Columbia or the West End—the memories of what I hadn’t achieved were too painful.

About twenty years after graduating from the University, a friend who lived on upper Broadway invited me to meet him there for a drink before a concert. With some trepidation I agreed to, wondering how it would feel to be back in the West End after so many years and so many half-fulfilled dreams.

Jeff wasn’t there when I arrived, actually the place was nearly empty. So deserted it was that my old place, my stool (Allen’s?) was not taken. So I slinked over to it and resumed the position I had abandoned decades before.

Before I was even well settled, without apparently looking up, Johnny the bartender from that earlier era, who was still there wrapped in the same stained apron, asked me, from the same side of his mouth as in the past, in that familiar voice, “The usual?"

And I wasn’t even wearing my tattered beret.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

April 15, 2006--Saturday Story Concluded: "The Bloombergers"

The Bloombergers

There were the Mooneys, an immigrant family who left Poland in the second decade of the Twentieth Century to escape the relentless pogroms and to seek the opportunities that America represented. Then there were the Zwerlings, a proud, self-made Austrian-American family who emigrated to America during the 1880s, also to seek a better life, but trailing no residual feelings of persecution and thus in all ways feeling superior to and resentful of those later comers whose shtetl-minded Jewishness elicited a taint of nativist American anti-Semitism that covered all from that faith, including the Zwerlings, even though they had rejected it, along with their Austro-German language, as soon as they stepped off Ellis Island, scuttling to neighborhoods of their own, as far away as possible from the Lower Eastside where the shtetl had been reproduced and the Mooney settled.

Being the product of both of these families, an incongruous mix (my father the Zwerling; my mother the Mooney), when I finally began to strike a responsive note with a girl, I was usually as interested in the parents as in the daughter, particularly if they were alluringly different than either of my own. I was so good at finding these surrogate families that I often was embraced considerably more warmly by them than by the daughters, where anything resembling physical embracing was not in the picture.

What I looked for in girls, beyond the fantasies that attracted me to those who were totally unattainable, even the possibility of a date to see a movie at the Rugby Theater, these truly desirable girls would not want to be on the same side of the street with me much less walking together along Church Avenue to the Rugby, what I looked for in a girl was almost anyone willing to go out with me. Especially if they came from a family which allowed me to imagine, by association, that I was also entering into a world different from the ones I had grown up in—between the poles of the Mooneys and Zwerlings.

Thus the Bloombergers.

I have previously mentioned daughter Dorothy, of my feeble walks home from the movies with her where all that might be considered thrilling was the opportunity to sense beneath her blooming blouse, where it tucked into her well-below-the knees skirt, further armored with crinolines, where that blouse hem suggested the adult delights that lay within.

Contrary to the ways of meeting at the time, Dorothy took the first step. We found ourselves in the country, up in a Catskill Mountain village called Tannersville, named for the leather tanneries situated there during the 19th century that passed into oblivion before the 20th began, only to be supplanted by rundown hotels that catered to Eastern European immigrants and World War Two refugees who there sought respite from the heat and humidity of New York City and the threat of polio, which was said to strike with particular virulence during the summer months. So any family that could scrape together the few dollars needed to check into hotels with hopeful names such as The Rose Garden, where there were never any flowers much less roses, more typically just an invasion of thistle and burrs, for those families there was at least a chance to feel expansive and safe. Though these displaced Jews were never fully capable of feeling safe, especially in a place so dark and full of threat since most light at night came from the stars. Our native habitat had become by then places with noise and congestion.

The Bloombergers, with Dorothy and older sister Eve, came to Tannersville regularly since they owned a home there, a rambling place with broad porches that previously had been inhabited by the only member of the town gentry, it was that small and impoverished a place, who when the Jews began to arrive packed up and left, selling at a below market price, as if there was a market for such a white elephant, heading for a sanctuary further north in the mountains that had the good sense still to be restricted—with lawn signs proclaiming, “No Jews. No dogs.”

Owning this house, rather than needing to pack four or five family members into two beds stuffed into an airless room at the Rose Garden set them so far apart from the rest of us that they, if they had so chosen, could have considered themselves gentiles. This of course would have required a change in surname and considerable plastic surgery, the latter at the time was still a rarity.

They were so assimilated that Dorothy played tennis. The rest of us, stoop and punch ball. So when the grocer’s wife, Mrs. Greenblatt, who know about Dorothy’s tennis and that there were no other Jews who knew the game much less had a backhand, thought that since I was tall for my age, was rumored to be “a natural athlete.” and from the look of me was fully genetically Jewish, for all of these good reasons Mrs. Greenblatt encouraged Dorothy to ask me if I played.

Which she did one day when we were both in the store shopping for our mothers. Dorothy had a basket full of Birdseye frozen foods, so new to the market that they sold for a premium and thereby demarked her status more than the fact that she was going to college, a private college, in September; while in mine there was a loaf of Bond white bread and a half-pound box of Philadelphia Cream Cheese. All of which Dorothy was generous enough not to notice when she came up to me in the canned vegetable aisle, “Mrs. Greenblatt tells me you play tennis. I do too. At the high school. How would you like to meet me there one morning?”

I had never held a racket in my hand and had not even ever witnessed a match, but I was so smitten by her and her offer and so desperate to meet any girl, much less one as round and apparently pert as Dorothy, that I said, in the first of what would turn out to be a series of ruinous deceptions, I was that desperate, “Sure, I play, but I left my racket in the City” (deception number two since I of course didn’t own one).

That will be no problem I was told since her sister Eve was taking summer courses at her college and I could therefore use hers. This caused an immediate surge of panic because, in my total tennis ignorance, I assumed I would be stigmatized by playing with a girl’s racket, if anyone was there to witness, just as I would be if I had shown up on a girl’s bicycle. But before I could back out of the date, Dorothy skipped off with her bag of now defrosting frozen peas, saying over her shoulder, “See you there tomorrow at 10:30.”

I was thinking, How would I learn to play tennis before tomorrow morning?

* * *

Needless to say I did not wake up Jack Kramer or Rod Laver. But once on the Tannersville High School tennis court with Dorothy, sufficiently secluded that I did not face public humiliation because of my clunky black Ked basketball sneakers or dungaree pants that dragged in the clay, I learned that I was enough of that natural athlete to be able to get the ball back over the net if I hit everything with something she called a “forehand.” Dorothy quickly sensed both this capacity of mine and my total inability to even nick the ball with Eve’s racket (it wasn’t pink or anything else that distinguished is as a “girls’”) if it came to my “backhand” side. I also learned that Dorothy’s roundedness and pertness masked her competitiveness since she was not at all reluctant to take advantage of my one-sidedness. She worked my backhand so successfully that I was soon playing from a position well off the court, and from that remote position was susceptible to anything she hit to even the center of the court. Thus, I spent most of the morning retrieving the dozens of balls that landed in the center of the court but scooted by me. My inability to give her a good game did not seem to disturb her; in fact, Dorothy seemed to be taking great pleasure in dominating me and having me serve as her ball-boy. I did not know it at the time but this reversal of traditional gender roles would soon characterize the rest of our relationship.

On the walk back to her house Dorothy mentioned that the movie Lili was playing in town at the Orpheum and asked if I would go with her Thursday evening. She said she had wanted to be a ballet dancer and that Leslie Caron, who was starring in it was a wonderful ballerina. I asked if this meant that we would be going out on a date—I had never be on one before—thinking if it was I would have to pay for the tickets which meant that I would have to ask my mother for the money. With a smile that I can only characterize as sly, Dorothy said, “If you would like it to be.”

“I would. I really would,” I stammered, in truth not really knowing what either she or I meant. I only knew that whatever that was I wanted to partake of it.

We reached her house, and she hopped up onto the porch, still smiling, saying over her shoulder as she was disappearing through the front door, “Meet me there at 7:00. After the movie you can walk me home and meet my parents. I already told them about you.” The screen door swung shut behind her and I stood there for a moment surveying the full expanse of that Victorian mansion, because that’s what it looked like to me, a mansion with its broad porches, shutters, and gables. Thinking that somehow Dorothy was inviting me into her world. One that was unfamiliar to me, but which I craved to enter.

While returning to the Rose Garden, which I traversed in record time since I skipped most of the way, as I thought back over the meaning of what was happening, with some emerging anxiety I wondered what it was that she might have told her parents about me—that I didn’t have a tennis racket and bought white bread and cream cheese? Why would they be interested in meeting anyone based on that? In fact, considering their obvious station in life, I wondered why they would have any interest at all in someone like me.

Thus I thought that before the movie I had better become more interesting or the Bloombergers would probably tell their daughter to find someone more suitable with whom to go out on dates.

And I did. During the half hour we needed to wait for Lili to begin (my mother had given me enough money to pay for both of us), since Dorothy had mentioned that she was going to Douglass College in New Jersey in September I told her I would be starting Columbia in New York City. She was so excited by this that she reached across to me and squeezed my hand, letting hers linger there for an intoxicating moment. “We’ll be just across the river from each other. I plan to join a sorority and maybe you will be able to come to New Brunswick when we have mixers.” I had no idea what they were. Something to do with cocktails? “Will you be pledging a fraternity? I know they have some frats at Columbia for Jews.”

“I haven’t decided that.”

“Oh you must and you should also go out for the basketball team. Columbia plays against Rutgers, Douglass you know is Rutgers’ sister school, and it would be so much fun to go to the games and watch you play.”

“I haven’t decided that either. I’m tall but I’m not really that good.”

“But you’re such a natural athlete. I could see that when we were playing tennis.” Though this talk about college was making me nervous, to hear her say that, and to have her squeeze my hand again, excited me. “What do you plan to study at Columbia? Have you decided what you’ll be majoring in?”

At this I began to experience more than just nervousness because I need now to confess that I was lying about college—I was not going to Columbia in the fall.

In fact, I would be returning to my high school where I would still be just a junior. I was at least two years younger than Dorothy, my true age masked by my unnatural height and premature wisps of a mustache.

I had no idea why I so easily slipped into these lies. Was it her nearness? My desperate attraction to someone who clearly came from such a fine family, whose parents and grandparents had all been born in America? To thus become “interesting”?

Clearly out of control, I said, “I’m not sure yet but I think I’ll be studying Chemistry.”

“That’s amazing,” she gushed, “My father’s a chemist. When you meet him later you’ll have lots to talk about!”

* * *

As you might imagine it was then impossible to concentrate on the movie. All I could think about was meeting Dr. Bloomberger and having to talk with him about chemistry, which incidentally I was scheduled to take for the first time in September. So I was lying about that too. All I knew about chemistry was what I had learned in French class. Yes French class because my high school, which emphasized science studies, taught French by using a chemistry text in French—even though none of us in the class had as yet taken chemistry in English. I didn’t know anything about chemistry from that and thus was quaking in my seat, not from Dorothy’s excitedly holding onto my sweaty hand all through the movie. It was from fear of my soon-to-be unmaking and certain humiliation and exclusion from anything having to do with the family Bloomberger.

I did though remember one thing from the movie, Leslie Caron’s tragic rendition of the title song, Lili Hi Lo:

The song of love is a sad song
Hi Lili Hi Lili Hi Lo
The song of love is a sound of woe
Don't ask me why I know

For me that seemed a foreshadowing—just how sad and woeful love was about to be.

* * *

After the movie was over, as a strategy to avoid the inevitable, I suggested that maybe we should go to Warms for some homemade pie and ice cream. I had just enough money for that and that would make it late enough so I could avoid having to meet Dorothy’s parents. I needed to escape from the web of lies I had woven and in which I had ensnared myself. I would simply drop her off as I had after tennis, maybe be allowed to kiss her goodnight in reward for all the money I had spent on our date, and then run away from Tannersville and home, and the Bloomberger fantasy, hitchhiking back to Brooklyn where I would join the army and get sent to Korea. I was tall enough to perhaps pass for eighteen.

But that was not to be. Dorothy insisted that I take her right home, “I love Warms’ pies, they’re my favorites, but my father is so eager to meet you. To talk with you about your plans.”

“Well to tell you the truth I want to do that but it’s getting late and I promised my mother I’d be home before 10:00.” I was so desperate to just disappear that I was even willing to make myself look like someone who had a curfew.

“It’s just 9:15 now and if we walk fast we can get to my house in ten minutes, you can meet him, have half an hour to get to know each other, and then have enough time to get back to the Rose Garden by 10:00.”

I was thus trapped in her logic; and since I had begun to accept the idea that I would have to pay for my transgressions, that I deserved to be exposed as an imposter in front of Dorothy and her American family, I slumped even more than usual and turned to catch up with her as she had raced ahead in her eagerness to bring home her prize date who was about to attend Columbia. She now was the one who was skipping.

It took even fewer than ten minutes to wind our way up the hill from which their house dominated that forlorn village that had seen so many better days. This felt like the appropriate setting for my comeuppance.

“Daddy, we’re here,” Dorothy sang as we together stood at the door. She was waiting to be admitted as if she too were a nervous visitor.

Their maid, Ella, all in crisp whites, stood back as she opened the polished door. “Welcome back Miss Dorothy, I hope you enjoyed the movie.” And with a radiant smile directed at me, “And he is just as tall as you said he is.” While Ella was glowing I was hoping to be slip into inconspicuousness since I couldn’t make myself invisible no matter how tight a corkscrew I twisted myself into. It’s that hard to disappear at six-four.

“It was wonderful. Leslie Caron ran off with a carnival and then joined a show where she sang the saddest songs and danced with all the puppets. I couldn’t stop crying. I wish I could do that, but I have to go to college in September.”

Turning to me, teary again from recalling the scenes with the puppeteer, Dorothy took my hand and pulled me into the grand parlor room where Dr. Bloomberger stood, still dressing in a gray pinstriped double breasted suit. He even had a handkerchief in his jacket pocket. With one arm behind his back he approached me with his other extended in welcome, “It is so good to meet you. Dorothy has told me so much about you. What a good athlete you are and what a fine family you come from.”

Averting my eyes and shuffling my feet I took his hand and shook it limply, “She told me a lot about you too.”

“Are you off to college too?” I stopped breathing and sensed my heart had stopped as well.

“I plan to.” I managed to be sufficiently ambiguous so as not to compound my lies, feeling I had committed enough sins for one evening.

Dorothy chirped, “He’s going to Columbia in the fall, and can you believe it he’s going to major in chemistry.” She clapped her hands joyously while I felt doom closing in on me.

I stammered, “It’s been very nice to meet you, Dr. Bloomberger. It’s getting late and I should probably be leaving,” thinking that unless I got out of there right away there wouldn’t be any cars on the road that would pick me up and drive me back to Brooklyn.

I began to inch backwards toward the door where Ella still stood guard. “But it’s only 9:30 now. You can stay a little longer I’m sure,” Dorothy again. If I could only manage to get away I would even forego the possibility of that kiss. It no longer mattered how much I had spent on her.

Dr. Bloomberger intercepted my retreat, “I’m into dyes myself. Aniline dyes. Among the first to be synthesized from coal tar. Have you gotten to them yet?”

“Uh, not really. Not yet,” I was contemplating an untimely death. Maybe I would be lucky enough to die right there in that magnificent place and wouldn’t have to worry about hitchhiking--my mother had told me many times how dangerous it was to ride with strangers.

“Well, when you do I think you’ll find them very interesting—they’re some of the best dyes around. But enough about that.” Enough? I thought in terror that we were just getting started talking about chemistry, that he would be asking me about benzene rings or titration and other stuff I had translated from French. “Dorothy also tells me that you are a gifted athlete.”

I was shifting on my feet thinking maybe, just maybe I would get out of there alive, “Not really, I’m just tall for my age,” what was wrong with me—why was I drawing attention to my age? Was I being suicidal? “So I can play basketball pretty well. But that’s about it.”

“But what about tennis? I heard you have a pretty good forehand.” As he said this he swept his right arm across his body in the perfect motion of a devastating forehand—that much I had learned the other day from observing Dorothy’s version. “And baseball; you’re from Brooklyn I understand and you must see the Dodgers play all the time.”

I resumed breathing. “Sometimes. Ebbets Field is not too far from where I live. I always sit in the bleachers.” I had lifted my head to half mast and could see him warming to the subject.

“I’ll bet you enjoy seeing Jackie Robinson play?”

I too was rising to a cherished subject, but above all was sensing my escape, “And Duke Snider and Gil Hodges too. Hodges actually is my favorite. No one pays that much attention to him but he gets the job done in the field and at bat every day.” I was beginning to sound to myself like the Dodgers’ radio announcer, Red Barber.

“I agree. That an excellent observation. I suspect you’ll do very well both in sports and in college.” I began to again fold in upon myself as the subject turned back toward school. “But I must be boring you. You youngsters should go out and sit on the porch before you go home. It’s such a beautiful night.” He peered at me with his chemist’s eyes as if I were a long-sought precipitate, “It was a great pleasure to meet you.” He extended his hand for a second handshake, “I hope to see you again before Labor Day. All the best to you. Mrs. Bloomberger is not feeling that well but I’m sure she too would be pleased to know you.” And with that he turned to go up the sweeping mahogany staircase, up which he bounded with athletic grace.

* * *

Dorothy ran over to me. It was obvious how pleased she was by how I had been received and comported myself. I was simply happy to be able to resume regular breathing. She took hold of both my hands and brought them to her chest, actually close to her chest, not in anyway touching even the billowing fabric of her blouse--remember the era. “My daddy is right, it’s beautiful out. The moon is almost full. Do you have the time to sit on the porch before you need to leave?’

Of course I did. I was euphoric that I survived and wouldn’t have to go to Korea but even more because of where my hands had almost been.

So we sat side-by-side on the glider, just touching. Dorothy held my hand again. I felt her fingers stroking mine. We watched the clouds stream across the face of the moon. Gliding back and forth, not inhibited by its rusty squeaking and what that might signal to the Bloombergers in their room right above the porch. I knew it was past 10:00, but after what I had just survived, getting back to the hotel late and what would thus await me, my mother’s hand wringing, hardly concerned me. I had descended that low.

“Do you want to kiss me goodnight?” Dorothy whispered, leaning toward me. I could feel her breasts pressing into my shoulder. I attempted for the second time in less in an hour to keep my heart beating, but it stopped again. I was becoming as adept at defying death as some of the carnival high wire artists in Lili. And I was hoping to receive that kiss before passing out.

Before I could say “Yes” I felt her lips on mine. And saw the clouds clear the moon’s surface as an owl began its plaintive mating call.

“I think it may now be time for you to leave. Your mother will be so worried.” Dorothy was so thoughtful. So good, while I, such a thoughtless son, was thinking only about a second kiss. Which I attempted to initiate but managed to plant on the top of her head since she had turned away in the darkness.

“Can we play tennis again on Tuesday? After that it will be Labor Day weekend and the whole family will be here—Eve with her fiancé Ted—and my aunts and uncles and cousins. I don’t think there will be time to see you again until we return to New Jersey and you to Brooklyn.”

It was ending. There would be no mixers, no frat parties—just Dorothy in college and me stuck, in spite of my new moustache, in high school.

There was just enough light now to see Dorothy turn to me again. She had my hands in hers just like earlier when I told her about Columbia. “It’s OK for you to come to our dances. One of my girlfriends, Brenda, is also going to be a freshman and she too has a boyfriend who still goes to high school. She already invited him to Homecoming.”

For the third and final time I could not sense a heartbeat. I managed though to find Dorothy’s lips. For the last time that night. And forever. We never saw each other again after tennis on Tuesday.

Without another word I slipped out of the glider and walked home through that deserted town, not thinking about the time or what the future would bring. Just remembering something Leslie Caron had said as Lili Daurier in Lili, “We don’t learn. We get older, and we know.”

It took me at least another twenty years to know.

Friday, April 14, 2006

April 14, 2006--Fanaticisms XXX--Synaplex Shabbat

It is the second day of Passover and it good to know that my observant coreligionists are out on the hustings signing up new members. Actually, not attempting to convert the gentiles but rather to lure lapsed Jews such as me back into the practice of Judaism. It won’t surprise you that in secular New York City, with all its other intoxicants, this effort is taking some very hip new forms (see NY Times article linked below).

For example, a couple of Lubavitch Hassids have moved from Crown Heights in Brooklyn, the center of Hassidic life, to the coolest part of Manhattan, TriBeCa, and right next Bobby DeNiro’s loft have established a synagogue which is stylishly decorated and includes sectional leather sofas and a lacy curtain that serves as the mechitza, the screen that in traditional shuls seperates the men from the women. If you think the folks who live Downtown are too gender sensitive to attend services in a place that relegates women to such second-class status, think again because 250 attended on the first night.

Jewish leaders are so concerned about shrinking numbers and the blight of intermarriage that they are even taking lessons from Christian evangelists who have used modern marketing techniques to build their congregations to mega-proportions. And I mean “taking lessons” literally: Synagogue leaders gathered in Los Angeles recently to get congregation-building pointers from the Reverend Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life. He is the evangelist pastor of the Saddleback Church in Orange, California that draws 20,000 congregants on Sundays.

Then there is the Synaplex Shabbat movement, a national effort to build synagogue attendance by adding all sorts of entertaining extras to Shabbos services—tai chi and yoga classes, nature walks, and even stand-up comedy routines.

I may be old fashioned but comedy in shul? What’s funny about being enslaved in Egypt or wandering in the desert for forty years? I thought being Jewish was about persecution and suffering. And of course Chinese food.

I checked out of Jewish practice myself when my family debased our Passover Seder by adding Egg Matzoth to the traditional, to quote my father, “hem-stitched cardboard” version. Somehow I couldn’t get comfortable with the idea that they had something that good in the Sinai.

What’s next—no more bitter herbs?