Of the

Jack Galmitz

Of the Copyright Jack Galmitz, 2014 Impress, New York, New York ISBN 978-1-304-90761-5

Cover art by Ivana Kalezic

Beginning

Earth was empty, dark. In the morning it was light and things could be seen. The land with water produced seed-bearing vegetation, trees. Fish and birds and animals abounded, as did men and women, and they all had reproductive organs to continue onward. Words were chosen by the man for everything that existed in its own right and by naming them he caused each thing to appear as he imagined them in his language. Mutual sexual attraction spread humans and animals throughout the earth. They were neither moral nor immoral, but nevertheless caused pain and suffering. The great master and lord of life, Kaang, originally lived with men and women and all living things under the earth. All was harmonious. No one wanted for anything. And it was light even though there was no sun. When Kaang built a tree that stretched throughout the universe, he brought up out of the ground all living things. The only warning he gave was to be peaceful and not build a fire. When the sun went down, the people grew frightened and lit fires to see and to keep warm. From that time the animals and humans separated, as the animals were afraid of the fire. The forms of all things are only their outward appearance. Each thing has a spirit within it. And spirits can enter different forms. A woman may enter a leopard; a man a lion. Disobedience to Kaang created havoc in the world. Unkulunkulu was the Primal Man. From the reeds he came and from the

reeds he produced everything that is. He taught the Zulus to hunt, to make fire, and to grow food. He was the Great Benefactor. The universe expanded from an intensely dense and hot state and continues to expand. Space as it expands is carrying galaxies with it. The universe might continue to expand until it bursts with everything in it. So, keep your nose clean.

Like counting

finding the best stone is often a matter of happenstance. usually, those half buried in the sand or mud were the best. With one as flat as a sand dollar, he let heave sidearm across the pond. He counted the leaps the way one counts the stars: sure at first that it can be accomplished and then given up.

Once at Jones Beach

there all the lifeguards assembled, tan bodies shaken, unsure, two of their long white boats pulled up onto the sand, a cordon of adults kept the children back, didn't speak of the terrible sea.

The Fall

He was so used to the reflective mesh vest worn by the crossing guard at the local public school that she had become as invisible to him as the trees and the blue mailboxes. Then one day in autumn, when the new school year began, he realized she was gone.

Snagged

On the bank of a stream, a boy felt a tug so heavy that he was frightened that he had hooked the Leviathan. A fisherman came over to help him. "You're hooked to something on the bottom," he said. "Maybe an old bike or rocks." He tried to let out slack, but to no avail. He told the boy he would have to cut the line and suffer the loss of his gear. The boy looked downcast. "What's the matter, son," asked the old man. Did you think you had caught a sea monster or something?" The boy didn't answer, but he wondered if the old man was a mind-reader.

Praxis New York City. Sirens. Lampposts. Streets that slope downward go downtown. Streets that slope upward go uptown. Trains underground that go up and go down town. That go east and go west. Hansom cabs in Central Park for tourists. They dont go anywhere. Just some clop clop of hooves and sometimes huge steaming droppings. Hospitals. Hospitals. Hospitals. Emergencies. Emergencies. Emergencies. Stores. Stores. Lights. Jewelry shining. Womens clothing on mannequins. Bars. People lining up to see a jazz concert. People lining up to see a movie. Chinatown. Old buildings. Crowds of outsiders. Lines for a restaurant that has been given a good rating. Word of mouth. 7 million mouths. Abandoned buildings. Steel doors. Drugs passed under one way, money the other. Lines of people buying H. Word of mouth. Lines of people buying C. Word of mouth. Expressway, overpasses, buttresses, abutments, desolate places, homeless out begging or already sleeping under bridge spans. Stretch limousines from the boroughs filled with intoxicated children of the working classes. Cabs like yellow-jackets. Horns pressed down. Yelling inside. Domestic disputes. Domestic violence. Domestic abuse. Police. Police. Police. Fires. Hook and Ladder companies. Whiskey poured. East River. The Hudson. The quiet Cloisters. The quiet Bronx Zoo. Sex. Sex. In hotels. In residences. On the street. In cars. In movie theaters. Underground in the meat market district. Ice skaters at Rockefeller Center. The Christmas tree lit. The ballet. Break-dancers. Street musicians in the cold. Street performers. Onlookers. Champagne. Night Train. Flneurs. Stray cats. Stray dogs. One huge, old, black dog by my house. Weve talked before. A young man unaware of everything walks up to pass us like an arrow in the night. The dog growls and the man freezes. I talk the dog down, release his crisis. I tell the man to walk around me, quietly, softly, without fear. I thank the dog for its generosity. I tell him I sympathize with his plight, being outdoors and harried and

unwanted and soon hunted. I tell him I would take him in if I didnt have so many cats. Big, black, brutal and old. The city.

No body

I tossed and changed my position in the bed, changed the position of the cover, most of the night. It got later and later and each time I woke up I felt for you and there was no body there. I wondered if this was the way it had become and whether this was the way it would remain. Me alone. You alone. We hadn't fought. Nothing distinguished this night from others. I had noticed you were coming to bed later each night for a long time. I didn't know what to make of it. If you were avoiding being near me or simply up later. I didn't want to ask, afraid of what you might say or not say. I fell asleep this way.

In dreams

mother was driving the car, which might have been a sign of the times, but wasn't. she was too old, in the first place, and secondly, she was intentionally driving at such a slow pace that I was sure to miss the final exam I had to take in my psychology class to qualify for a license to practice. The road was all ruts and hard like dried cement and we bounced and the noise of the car on the bumps kept her from hearing my complaints. Then she suddenly stopped and got out. Her hair was gone and she looked like a newborn chick, except her cane got stuck in the transmission and at that moment I knew I would never finish my degree. I realized with a pressure never reached before that I had to get out of her house no matter at what cost, even if it meant living on the street selling drugs and being a junky. Anything was better than being captive to a mother. I had become a sparkplug without a spark. I had become an aged, bald, overweight middle-aged boy, you know the kind, who substitutes for the father and can be found in every neighborhood walking down the street arguing with an old woman, the more passionate the fight the more sexual its nature. And the mother? Well, she took delight in every moment of it, knowing full well the toll it took on her son. And as she felt her breasts through her bra, she thought to herself, I surely must still have it. The day of reckoning had come. Oh, there's a day of reckoning all right, except it doesn't come at the end of time, or, if it does, it is at the end of your time- you exit time and stand before your life and your mind interprets your flesh and all its postures and impostures, all its movements and stagnations, all its refusals and lies and refuges. A time comes when you throw out all you have put between you and your truth and, if successful, and you are brave enough, you just might have the courage to remove the torturous lies. So, you made a lot of money: give it away. So, you made art: take a knife to it. So, you wrote books: burn them- not as the night of the burning of books- but as the salvation of your true word. SPEAK. SPEAK. TRULY. SIMPLY. I did it to be outstanding, a nose, an erection, to be hers, to be with whom I had no

right to be. Turn to your wife who you have neglected. Turn to her now and forever

The movement the apartment was small. for a man. a mouse or a couple of mice might have found it ample. but a man, well, if he was about his wits he would have seen that it was a studio space that had been cleverly divided into different living sections and rented as a one bedroom apartment. funny thing was he had lived there before. there were a few reminders, like a throw rug or a light shade. he hadn't been there in a long time. it seems the super had removed the dog and cats, which was for the best. they must have annoyed the neighbors and anyway they would have died of starvation in his absence. he saw the back of the head of an old schoolmate and recognized him immediately by the way the ears stuck out. this was in the subway. his hair was parted in back in what had been called a duck's ass style from the 1950s. suited the man. his mother had got him ready- as he was suddenly a boy again- and sent him off to work and told him to enjoy his day. he imagined his schoolmate had never married, being a bit slow. he remembered when the boy's mother had thrown him a surprise birthday party and he was one of the few who hadn't attended. the mother later told him how hurt her son was at his absence. he wondered why she felt it necessary to tell him. was she teaching him something about the importance of others' feelings. seemed a bit late to him. besides, that was in the age of feeling. now they lived in the age of action and you had to watch yourself. no longer hard or hurt feelings. just the clean separation of skin from bones if you offended the offal. He took in without relishing (although secretly he was pleased) his apartment, his privacy. Unfortunately, he could traverse it in a few steps. So, he decided to walk like a Chinese woman from the Qing dynasty who had had her feet deformed from childhood by binding. that way, each moment of space was precious. he would also hang miniatures on the walls to create a sense of greater space. There were no windows at all. He decided he would have to have a lesser sense of enclosure, so he would buy a reproduction of Magritte's The Human Condition for his living room (if it was a living room). It was the weekend. He realized he would need a companion of some kind. not human. but a living thing to talk to. He decided on a turtle, as it would be the likeliest creature to not take notice of the small space. He would

have to go to Chinatown where they were still sold, as they were outlawed years earlier as carriers of salmonella. Then, to experience the box as palatial as possible, he came upon the idea of dating only small women. no larger than five feet tall. and amongst his choices he would include midgets, as they were proportionate.

Walking

he was a flaneur in the truest sense of the word. he lived in new york city for all the variations in populations. in corona, he could just as well be walking through mexico south to central america. in flushing, china. in harlem, on malcolm x blvd., africa. on the upper east side, western europe. in jackson heights, india or pakistan. and in each place he walked he went unnoticed, as if he was invisible, blending in with all the others. it took him quite some time until he realized that indifference was the subtlest form of hatred.

The time it takes

the glass shattered by my feet. I wasn't wearing any shoes and there was water mixed in with the shards and my wife told me to be careful. Just before I turned, I saw her son standing in the opposite corner of the room from where he had thrown the bottle. It was meant for his mother. I could see he was remorseless, shameless, if anything triumphant. As I cleared the most dangerous part of the granite floor, my wife told me to call the police. I had been waiting for this opportunity for over a decade. My wife called me and I had gotten up and moved as quickly as I could to her. They had been arguing, which was habitual, but when I reached her she said he had hit her. And then he hurled the bottle. I called 911. It was difficult hearing the operator, with my wife sobbing hysterically and her son screaming in Chinese from the living room and I leaned as close to the window as possible to be sure I made myself heard. In a matter of minutes, the police arrived in a garrison. I had never seen so many police at one time. They formed a phalanx and I asked them if it was customary for so many to appear. They answered when someone throws a glass bottle at someone else, yes it was common. They asked me what happened and I explained what I knew. He had been crying in that strange, hysterical way of his, his mother was shouting after him, and before long...the glass. I asked them to remove him and they explained they couldn't; if he lived with us for more than 30 days, whether he paid rent or not, he was legally a tenant and we would have to have him removed by court order. Then, they asked if he had a psychiatric history. He had and I told them so. I also told them he didn't take his psychiatric medications, only those for seizures, which had begun after a serious accident two years prior. I explained that he had a pre-existing psychiatric problem; he had thrown his mother threw his wall once and had pinched her arms on another occasion and left black and blue marks. Half the police took him out in the hall and the other half talked to me and my wife. They told me they were going to take him to the city hospital psychiatric ward for evaluation. I was relieved. I explained,

between anxious breath, that he had been abusing his mother emotionally and psychologically for sixteen years and I couldn't take it anymore. There was one woman officer there and she seemed to take a disliking to me. She told me I seemed to have an aggressive personality and perhaps if I tried a softer approach with my wife, we might have had more success with alleviating the problem earlier. I told her she had me wrong. They took him away. Then, as the day wore on his mother began to sob. I didn't respond at first. She always sobbed. If a cat had to be put down she refused and had it die in the house. Her father of 97 years died recently and she couldn't stop crying. I couldn't understand crying like that for a man of 97. I thought she should have expected his death at any time. Besides, I hated my parents and when they died I was happy to be rid of them. Later, I finally softened and went out to talk to her. I asked her why she was so upset. When she didn't answer I supplied an answer; was it because she had had the police take him away. She nodded in assent. I asked her what else could she have done under the circumstances. He couldn't be allowed without outside interference to act violently against her. Did he have to slit her throat before she felt it was all right to call for help. I told her mothers felt the way she did about their sons, but limits had to be set. I told her, there were parents who were murdered by their children because they didn't act soon enough. Towards the end of the day I approached her again. I told her I was sorry too that it had to be the way it was, but I assured her he would be released soon, probably with medications. The hospital staff would want to observe him for a while, see how or if he interacted with people, what his social functioning was like, whether he slept, whether he participated or cooperated with peers. Nothing really could persuade her that she had done the right thing. I could see as evening darkened the room that she had begun to turn her guilt into anger towards me. I was initially ready to shoulder the responsibility. Then, I changed my mind. He was no good and I had been tempted before to contact governmental agencies anonymously to let them know that he had collected unemployment benefits for two years without once looking for work. And that his law suit for the slip and fall he was waiting to become rich on was dubious, at best. He had told me he

was falling asleep in the bathroom stall before he exited and slipped and cracked his skull in half. It might very well have been no one's fault but his own. Besides, he had worked on his own business while collecting unemployment and not declared it on his income taxes. I thought if I tipped off the government maybe he would have been kicked out of the country as an undesirable. Who knows.

St. Josephs Oil

He and his wife were invited to a mass that was being held in his neighbors apartment across the hall. Admittedly, it was an odd place to hold a mass, but the people who lived there were from the Phillipines and very devout and the priest was "special" they had said. Neither he nor his wife were Catholics, but they were interested and open-minded enough to agree to participate. They entered when the apartment was filled with the neighbors' friends and other congregation members. It was dark in the apartment, except for candles lit, and there were religious icons on the walls and religious statues everywhere. The priest had a tonsured head and was in robes and when the woman spoke to him about her neighbors attending, he could see at first damnation in the priest's eyes and then relaxation and approval. Perhaps, he could save them. The woman was a retired doctor and as her husband had Parkinson's disease, she introduced the priest. Before celebrating the mass, he told his personal story of how he had been cured by faith alone of many diseases- hepatitis B, HPV, and herpes. He, like others before him, before conversion was no saint. But, he claimed, when a blood transfusion was necessary to save a patient and he volunteered and gave his history of diseases to the hospital, they tested him and all the diseases he had had were no longer traceable in his blood. Those in the room besides the neighbor across the hall did not know this to be impossible or untrue, but the man remained respectfully silent. After establishing himself as a priest whose conversion had betokened miracles in this day and age, he proceeded to perform the mass. The man, not his wife, who was a Buddhist, knew the liturgy and joined in with the others as best he could. He felt the deep kinship and love that existed between these people and between each and their Savior. He was impressed. After the ceremony was completed, the priest mentioned that he had bottles of a special oil that if rubbed in the parts of the body that ailed the practitioners, they would be healed. He didn't have enough for everyone,

so he told those who needed it the most to come forward. He sold out all his stock of what he called St. Joseph's oil. The woman next to the man pressed one of her bottles into his hands and wouldn't take no for an answer. Then the priest practiced the laying on of hands. The couple from across the hall watched in amazement as each devotee in turn stood on their knees before the priest and when he pressed their foreheads, each went into convulsive movements. The man from across the hall was willing to receive and the priest pressed hard against his forehead, but the man was not predisposed to believe anything and the soft, warm hand had no effect. His wife was superstitious and was too frightened to allow affect the priest to touch her. They left the apartment before the others and thanked their hosts and particularly the priest for allowing them the honor of participating. He nodded, accepting their respect. When they got into their own apartment, the woman was impatient to know what she had missed in the laying on of hands. Her husband told her all that shaking and convulsing of the others was a matter of predisposed belief- if you believe someone has divine healing powers, sometimes you actually experience something other than someone who isn't so predisposed. He told her for him it was just a press on the head. Although he did rub some of the oil on his head, as he had troubled thoughts and had had them for years and, well, there was no reason not to.

The boy is father the boy could not see the man looking at him through the window of his schoolroom. he was dreamily looking at the snowfall, waiting for the day to end, hoping the flakes would become larger, wetter. the man knew the boy's thoughts. his future. but it was of no avail. they would cross paths but never converge. the boy was dark and handsome and so promising it broke the man's heart to see him. he hadn't developed the habit of drawing on his notebook yet, scribbling away while teachers spoke. it was a few years before the boy would, to keep up with his friends, drink so much alcohol that he passed out drunk on a lawn and was left there by his friends to be arrested. it was before the boy began experimenting with drugs in order to keep up with them, too. before he began to take hard drugs and his average grades at school lowered from being excellent enough to take the exam to enter the Bronx High School of Science to not being high enough to enter the local college. before his mother two times was admitted to the psychiatric ward for electroconvulsive therapy. before she walked around like a cicada who had shed her shell. the man wanted to speak to the boy. or, at least give him signs, so that he would know he was there. but, he couldn't. he had to watch the boy be taken away in a correctional facility bus for protesting war at his community college and sent to a local prison for a short remand. it was before he was put in a holding cell for holding illegal substances. it was before the boy grew older and began to drink at bars and stay up most of the night and drive home drunk, barely able to keep to the road. the boy was looking for him, too. he occasionally prayed for help, but there was no one there, or so he felt. eventually, he gave up looking for any help. it was before in a drunken stupor he ran over a pedestrian crossing the street and sent the man skyward, hearing the shriek of a man dying, and not being charged criminally. It was before he started trying to obtain potassium cyanide from anywhere in the world to die without pain. and the man was becoming older. he started to resemble the boy more and more. he no longer read books. he no longer cared about the boy or

anyone else. it was before he swallowed a bottle full of clonodine and potassium cl and grimaced as he waited for the fatal heart attack.

red eyelids climbing down stone stairs that were wet but not slippery due to their crevices, their hewn edges, not made by hands, but by seeping water, winds, sufficient to make them uneven. So the walls, heavy and height beyond seeing an end to them, though light suffused slightly belied the impression. There must have been grates above, but how they came to be there without stairs reaching up there was something he could not fathom. It was all downward there. Some of the levels had no doors of entry, so he kept descending. It went on interminably as though he were not moving at all, as if his steps were illusions. With no one else there, there was no way of correcting this, no way of knowing, no way of determining what was true. Down he went till he reached a landing that opened upon a room and open space. at first it was hard to make out the contents of the room. it looked like there might have been spider webs or layers of dust, but there was too much moisture for these. Everything in the room was antiquated, yet preserved, as if it was still in use. There were alembics and bottles with liquid and powders corked closed. There were measuring devices. and in the center was a black and red salamander. it eyed him, then looked away and froze as if it were not alive. just as quickly as a second eyelid closes, what seemed a salamander moved through the stone wall and was gone. A woman in red dress, black hair, emerged from the adjacent wall. she blinked at him, then froze as if she were not alive. When he spoke to her, she had a man's voice, crackling, as if unused a long time. "Help me with the fire," she said. He had matches and lit the burner under one of the alembics. It had a mercurial liquid in it- shone brilliantly and moved quickly with the advent of the fire. It rose in a vapor and once it evaporated it formed a homunculus. "You must be more majestic than you appear," he/she said. I have been working at producing the homunculus for years without success. Now, you, unfamiliar with the processes of thought that have gone into a life's work, your mere presence, has produced a replica of life, a replica of the sublime one. How did you know the spirit is not constrained in the body, but in fact finds its full resplendence in passing through material form?"

He wasn't sure that he/she or the little man standing on the table before him were real in any sense of the term as he understood it. He passed his hand through both and this further deranged his senses or rather his belief that the senses are solid. Then, of a sudden, the little man and the man/woman entered his body and he went into a trance. he never woke again, but remained in the lower depths of the stone building forever, with this difference: when he entered, he thought the structure was slimy, old, physically dilapidated. Now, he knew it was his original home, round as the skull that protects the brain's membranes, and quicker in thought.

Under the streetlamps My favorite team was the New York Mayflies. Of course, they're all gone now, but what a show they put on on a spring night last year. Under the streetlight, there were thousands teeming with desire, the males with two penises, the females each with two gonopores. Their desperation and delirium to continue the species is in flight - imagine it - and the larvae are deposited in the lakes and rivers so that in June the rookies of the new teams will emerge. On a camp chair, wearing my NYM cap, it is more memorable than any catch or shot or hit I've ever seen, and I've seen my share of the best. It's life's endless quest to forward itself that moves to be the best. Besides, the seats are free and there are never any errors to record or miscalls to speak of. Pull up a camp chair next spring or fall and watch. You won't be disappointed.

A continuum day turned to night. gradually. the clouds rainbow tinted. they sat in lounge chairs with gin and tonics and said, "beautiful." "beautiful." they were in complete accord, which was not usual. each was drinking the same or similar drink- there were differences in ratios of lime to gin- each was thinking their private thoughts. he thought she still was attractive, still had her youthful body, but her face was wrinkled, the skin crinkled by the same sun that could pass through icy crystals in the air and make rainbows. she thought he was not the man she had married. he was shrewder, heavier, paunchy really, and his curly hair no longer gave him the appearance of cupid. he had money and they had security and that enough. Wasnt it. she couldn't expect that their life would be a romance. But, she did. she poured herself a fresh drink from the pitcher between them and put in two wedges of lime. He followed her example, but with one lime. they had no children. had they had children, they would have had something to detract their attention from each other. but, they would have produced offspring like themselves: conventional, indifferent, solitary, seeking solace in whatever the world said offered solace. a home in a low-crime neighborhood where all the residents were western european; jobs in the city where the sole purpose was to maximize profits and to make money; to take vacations on cruisers and be pampered by dark-skinned people who lived off of people like them in caribbean islands. to thwart as best they could the progress of the new immigrants. to pay no increases in taxes of any kind. day was nearly done. the blackness was undaunting, as their porch lights went on automatically. it was a new moon, not an eclipse, but the sliver of a crescent. they both looked. "beautiful." "so fine." they chimed like the bronze bells hanging from their porch awning. "remember rome," he asked. she had a dim memory of a vacation they had taken years ago when they were newly married. "yes," she said, without giving away her loss of reminiscence. "there was a moon just like that when we sat at an outdoor cafe drinking espresso and eating pastries. you pointed it out." she didn't remember, but she knew as long as she went along with him,

he wouldn't notice. "yes," she said wistfully. "it was beautiful then and it's beautiful now. a beginning." "yes. a beginning." "even now," he added. she did not chime in this time. it was getting chilly and they decided it was time to go inside. "i've got the pitcher. we can finish it later or put it in the refrigerator. whatever we want." when he said this his chest expanded just a bit, like a male pigeon's when it's following a female. they both walked a bit like they were on the rolling deck of a ship towards the house. it was a ranch house, something they had agreed would be best as they aged, so they wouldn't have to climb stairs in case one or both developed arthritis sometime in the future. it turned out to be a wise decision. "i think i'll turn in," she said. he turned on the giant hd television and sprawled on the leather couch. "i'll be there soon," he said, although he didn't mean it. he had nothing in mind when he turned on the set, except to have an excuse to not join her in the bed. he preferred his own company now. "good night," she said as she made her way to the back rooms where the master bedroom was located. "good night. sleep well." He slipped out of his clothes to make himself more comfortable. He went through the hundreds of channels available on his tv, but he couldn't find anything to his taste. They didn't make dramas or series the way they used to do. He switched on his private collection of the broadcasts of the old westerns, particularly Wagon Train. He identified now with the churlish but consummate craftsman Ward Bond, who took passengers beyond their accustomed boundaries in the post- civil war years. it's how he imagined his younger underlings looked at him at work. he was the manager of a solid hedge fund and he had earned his place and prestige there. he was the kind of man women and young men looked to for safety and guidance in their search for security in a dangerous, uncertain world. when he passed a whole world would pass away. there would be no one to replace him the way they had replaced Ward Bond. he was no character. he was the real thing. he fell asleep from the alcohol and the hour and slept through the night on the couch. it was big and soft enough to bear his weight comfortably. when his wife woke before he did, she passed him without speaking and

went directly to the kitchen to make coffee for herself. She had her weekly tennis lesson that day and was looking forward to it and to seeing her coach, a young man from the neighborhood who took a special interest in her game. Her husband knew all about the lessons and his wife's illusions surrounding them. he was not in the least jealous. he knew his wife was too concerned about appearances and security to disrupt their routine. besides, she didn't have the depths of feelings that caused crises. as to himself, he would go into the office today and see how his proteges were getting along. he was semi-retired now and only went into the office when he wanted. the choice was left to him.

In photographs

before his mother threw away all the family photograph albums without consulting anyone else in the family- each opened his eyes and mouth widely- because she said it was living in the past and she wanted to live in the present, he carried, with permission, a photograph of his father from World War II. The photograph showed his father naked, except for a triangular shaped american flag tied around his waist and hiding his genitalia, standing in front of a pitched tent. who took the photograph was time out of mind. his father was making muscles and smiling. it never occurred to him that there was something odd about the photograph. All he knew was he loved his father and kept the photograph in his wallet for many years, preserving it from the garbage pile his mother made of all the other family memories. He had one other picture, which he kept in a drawer in his desk. it was of a chinese young man, maybe in his teens, who his father said had loved him and who would not be shaken off no matter what. He was thin and wore white cotton clothes and stood beside a rickshaw. His father had put up, strung the wires, and maintained the telephone lines along the Chinese, Burma, and Indian borders for communications during the war. His son was very proud of him. a time came when his mother, who had always been complaining of illnesses that no doctor could diagnose, became permanently ill, hysterical. every night when his father went to work, she would throw herself on the wooden floor and scream and continue to scream that she was dying, that he couldn't leave her there alone, not for one more night. they lived in a small apartment and he could hear everything. he could hear her punching his father's chest. his father would plead with her, explaining that he had to go to work, that he was the sole support of the family and that there was no one at his depot who could take his place. then next to his bedroom she would dry wretch into the toilet bowl, disgusting him, and forming a forbidden death wish towards his mother. after his father had left the house, she prowled the few rooms and always ended up gagging in the bathroom.

one morning, she woke him up, physically shaking him. "i'll take a knife and stab your baby brother if you don't watch him now," she said. his brother was seven years younger and was watching cartoons on a saturday morning. his father had to work to make enough money to keep the family in this tranquil middle-class neighborhood. He was so shaken by what his mother had said that he called the depot in Harrison, New York and left a message for his father to call when he finished his route. within a hour his father called. he picked up the phone on the first ring, as he had been standing by the phone to intercept the call before it disturbed his mother and she came out of her bedroom. he explained to his father what had happened. his father said to not worry, to remain calm, and he would be home shortly. when he came home, his father spoke to his wife, and then made a telephone call to her psychiatrist. she was carrying a small valise, so he assumed the doctor had suggested committing her to a hospital for a time. He was so happy to see her leave. when the door closed and she was gone, he turned to his brother and said, "she's gone now. maybe, they won't let her return." within a few days, his father asked him to accompany him to the hospital. he said his mother was asking for him for days and desparately wanted to see him. he was against it, but lacked the courage to say so. the doors of the ward were locked and they had to be admitted. when they walked towards the center of the ward, he saw his mother and she shouted out his name. he nearly died of shame. a nurse who was watching her said, "your mother loves you very much. all she does is talk about you." he felt small and wanted to hide. it turned out that she underwent electroconvulsive therapy. when she came home she walked as if in a trance. she didn't recognize anyone in the family. she didn't know where anything was stored or whose property it was. he was frightened to death of her. his father acted as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary. he continued to eat her meals. he continued to work. the nights were quieter, as she no longer made scenes when he left to work. all was as it should be.

String quartet the video camera is focused sometimes. it repeatedly takes the same picture of an unknown person climbing steel stairs in a hallway. the walls are of red brick, which is rare, as bricks are usually reserved for the exterior of a building. the doors are steel painted what once must have been yellow. there are doorbells that are not rung. then there are close ups of the stairs or corners of the stairs, which unfocus the image. all the while a 1979 string quartet plays. it may be morton feldman's judging from the length and the repetitions and the alterations in the repetitions. it is the kind of music that might accompany a movie thriller, the sounds you hear just before a door swings open, or a hand reaches out. but, nothing happens but the continuous video taping of climbing the same stairs and showing the same walls, corners of walls, doors, buzzers. when the music slows to a drip, so do the images. they appear as mere flashes of light. then black. then the camera swings across the steps and there is a redness about them and it seems like you are walking across one step rather than climbing stairs. it all turns white. then the blur of might be stairs or might be boxes of light and shade. you might notice for the first time with the music that there is a symmetry of the lines of the mortar, the stairs, the swinging of the camera, the steel yellowish door, the brown textured welcome mat before the door. there is a plucking of the strings, no longer a drawing of a bow across their tautness. it is all turning in a circle, like a gyre, as is the music. there is a center to it, but it's hard to hold with the constancy of movement. the strings are also symmetrical with the bricks, their mortar, the stairs, the doors, only the light splashes. for a moment there were legs in dungarees and boots. no more. then they were gone. the music moves to a crescendo, but stops. then the steel door is open, but it is only a hallway lit by sunlight. and for the first time overhead lights are shown on the ceiling. then it is black. then white. a black cat comes out of the steel doorway and walks in the vestibule. then the climbing of stairs. the cat is gone. the camera points out the side of the window for a brief instant and there is a window and a streetlamp. then darkness and out of darkness the slow materialization of form, red, streaks of gray, stairs faded to gray steel, slowing down of the music and ascent and circling of the stairway,

then a man standing in the open steel yellow doorway, then blackness, then the emphasis of the wooden sidings of the staircase for the first time with steel bolts holding them in place, then the blur of the door, a closeup of the peep-hole, a turning of the tune and the stairs. the walls are joined to the floor, the stairs are joined to the floor and so to the walls, the steel yellow door is joined to the brick walls, we see this, we see outside, then inside, the music seems stuck but it is only repeating a few notes, then a drawing of bow, then a change of pitch, then the stairs upside down, different but similar, we are getting somewhere, but then it is black again, then patches of red as the focus resumes, we are turning in a vortex, we must be getting somewhere, the music says so in its language, it slows, it slows, it creeps, so does the movement up the same staircase, up the same staircase, it speeds up against the drag of the video, we will never arrive, it all goes white, we want it to go somewhere, it won't, why should it, the brick walls, the steel steps, the light from the windows, camera turning in a circle, that's it, that's all it is, and it's enough. There are cars in the building's driveway. That's something new. The music stops. Just stops.

Jotted a few notes

a repeated image of a gray and white-bellied cat flying out of a purple bag- with letters on it that can't be made out- and then being pulled under and into the reflection of the bag again and then flying out again. it's not the same cat. can't be. might be similar or the same in repetition, but not the same exact cat. so there's music accompanying it that repeats, drawn in and like a broken accordian blown out, and there's a piano that's constant like the cat, but even though it is playing a melody or something like a melody in a few notes the notes are never the same notes but may be like them, the same in return, but not the exact same. There is a distortion of the window's venetian blinds opened a crack and their reflection where the cat first falls out of the bag, flies really, although not at its volition, since it is rising out of the bag on its side. there is a purple floorboard along the wall behind and its reflection. it's hard to tell it's a reflection it looks so alike the original. the piano is only playing three notes and when it reaches the last of the three there is an echo like sound of strings- which are made from horse hair- of a violin or lower a cello or maybe a viola. they sound off key, but they're not off key. it's the key they were composed in. they are like the sirens of myth but they couldn't allure any sailor unless he was drunk from shore leave and had had a taste of a woman and was easily aroused. the gray and white cat is still flying out of the maroon bag and being sucked up into what would be its opening reflected on the floor. the music is sad. it is sad that the cat keeps falling from the bag. it is the notes that sound sad. then suddenly there is a scale of a kind. not a whole scale mind you, but maybe a partial scale. then the squeezing of air out of the stringed instruments that sound like an accordion. imagine bagpipers playing a dirge for the honored dead. this will give you an idea of the sound the music produces or was produced to do. just a few notes repeated over and over the cat falling flying from the lavendar bag of paper then being sucked or maybe like dragged by a moving ground into the opening of the bag again all to start over again. it is rare but occasionally all the instruments sound together,

huffing and puffing, dragged out at a dying pace, not flying out, sombrous, oh sombrous. like Wordsworth's sombrous pine. the strings are like the chorus in a tragedy. they sadly tell us what the piano and the cat cannot know, but what the audience should know. low stringed notes. high piano notes. a contrast as sharp as black and white or maybe gray and white like the cat related. the audience falls asleep. a great music hall filled with people dressed formally all sleeping, their heads nodding in their chins, or else reclining accidentally on the shoulder of the person next to them. silent as a submarine averting discovery. the whine that is, not the huff and puff of an accordion. it is a whine more or less. the composer is not present. he is not afraid. he would be delighted that everyone fell asleep. it is good for them. it slows all the vital processes down and gives them revival later on. the composition has no beginning, middle, and end to speak of. it was not written with this in mind. it is not imitative of classics. although its repetitiousness is real, if only in the playing and what other real could there be for it. the viola squeezes and the piano churns out sorrow in three notes. it is not going anywhere. it is not meant to. the cats flying. sucked up in to fly again. over and over. that is why it is.

Mode 112 a man, five feet eleven inches, three hundred pounds, black hair falls, a cigarette dangling from his lips maybe the only constant there is, takes to buying antique Turkish rugs. the patterns are prepared but always slightly deviated from. it's how it should be because it is how things are: patterned but variegated. the colors are supernal earthly. though they are dyed to splendor, they always differ. He takes the pattern, the symmetry that was meant to be and writes a symphony wherein derivation and deviation mix. the sounds coming from the stringed quartet are strikingly like horned and wood wind instruments. there's a haunting quality to the sounds, as if they were never meant to be played and were never played before or again. yet there is rise and fall, rise and fall, patterns predicated on folklore and scores before. nothing is alone or born alone. it is a river of treasured stores that were passed along. for successive generations succor and song. then there is the sound of working, of drones, of bees, of what sounds like a flute, but how can that be without a flutist or a flute. all strings. then they slow to examine the balance of designs frame within frame but slowly as the dying of a church bell on a sunday. a low pluck surrounded by sour and slow notes. maybe one or two per bar like sections of the rug that are colored but bare to let the devotee spare thought to rest when the rest is corded, tied, for centuries squared adjacent designs. then repetition. work. sewing. stitches. sewing, stitches. loops pulled through thick carpet. again and again the molding around an intricate center that is absent and loudly so that the moon glows before the work will continue the following day. though it is so sweetly told this sweat, so secretively kept, family heirlooms, family forms, kept as long as their lineage. the sounds of a harmonium. simple. the air taken in expelled like a person's breathing. are those leafs. are those candles. candles holders. are those soldiers at the botton with hands raised swords scabbards protecting entry into these sacred spaces. the music is atonal and discordant for a moment. a clash of

dissonant sounds. strings drawn hurt the sounds. their length the day, the cable of the day, the work of the day. the planetary movements of the day in an atmosphere a place of colored shapes. a brief commentary that extinguishes nearly as soon as it is begun. who can speak of what is the unspoken one. then the sputter of a fire of strings. stop. spreading sound like the night closes in. extension and repetition. never the same. partly crying. partly sharing pain. the clarion of strings calling worshippers within. there is your god who sings. pitches alter this altar extended repetitions, ostinato, ostinato, ostinato. and on. stubborn as a looped stitched in a dream carpet that lay on the floor.

Me on Morton for Philip the streets were drenched, water running along the curbs to the sewer gratings, the light reflected on the water sent back to the sky, all as if an artist with a squeegee had pulled all the latent colors out across them. There was sorrow as a flute played in an empty hall to no audience and then reverberations of a celesta. someone had certainly died. someone important. but unrecognized. so the charcoal of the overcast sky. It was a murky yellow, blue water. maybe a remembrance of the yellow star of david worn by the jews to identify them. maybe it was a requiem for the millions under the cobblestone streets of europe in the tones written for one. off-key, of course, it must be, for the world was not on course correctly. and one had changed his name, to hide, to deny, out of shame. perhaps, some say. but the big old man felt sorrow for the shamed and put it into the ears of the hall that had no people in it to hear the highest notes of the flute that challenged the cantor's throaty singing to the most high. no, now it was all gray and yellow. as featureless as an abstract canvas. no humans. left. but all the parts played orchestral extended for it took a long time to make changes to an old world in its last stages. The water of the rain moved liked dripped paint. the whole world moved like dripped paint. control was not in it, though control was its intent. how could one be a social realist. it was not real. or was it. but not the predictable scenes of a painting, the depth of field, the vanishing point of horizon. it was illness, distorted, bodies bulldozed skeletal into unmarked graves in thousands...could a man paint abstractions, could red and black be identified as the horrors. thou shall not be so certain of others. what they do is their manifestation of encumbrance. the outstanding smell was urine. and shit when they hung them. who says the caped figures he painted were his aggressors and that to escape them he became them. who says the caped figures that kept returning were the faceless and he among them. who says god and high art are substitutes for the touch of hands on earth, some food passed through barbed wire, a bit of bread saved and given to one starving.

we know one mourned him. it is not in the dedication but the notes surrender, the clash of flat keys and squeeking breath of flutes played in a great hall with no listeners. the composition like the paintings were attempts to draw something from it, to make an order. it had to be comical. a bodiless head with one eye on a hillock. the hand one what was once a god in cathedral reduced to a feeble old hand drawing a line in the sand. who obeyed orders. who remembered the stone written with his orders. it is gray now. just that. first a flirtation with a lyric. then a pause. then a listening. then a line of lyric. then the flat sound of flats on a piano. so, the man turned to cartoonish art. what of it. it had dimension. the man was sleeping. or was he dead with his eyes open. one for many. for millions. why not bad art. who said it was bad art. and one would never speak to him again for giving up abstractions. perhaps the lightning bolts of the strikes of the panzer in that moment. is that piping in a grand music hall of a flute the blowing of the ram's horn, the shofer. where was the law, the torah. where the minyan. the congregation. cartoons prepare children for the future; violence begets no harm in a world of its own rules and making. it behooves you to know this if you listen to the memorial music to a people in one man's body laid in the ground for five hours. can you sit still, not fidget, respect the dead, the brutally killed, the standup comedian, the painter of beautiful kitsch. if not leave us. wander the world yourself. find your own identity. do not judge his. the big man. the composer. loved him. there is a gong, high-pitched, that rises to the ceiling. there is a melodrama to all this. it might just be the musical score to a t.v. series. it doesn't recognize high art or low art or art or that. it is music, sound ordered, and commandeered. it is no longer water. it is gray but stone. it is in grids. gravestones for each. for rocks to be placed there. it is a cemetary. be respectful. laugh. the cartoon painter, the standup comedian, are manicdepressives, they wipe their noses with their sleeves. but it doesn't

mean they're not crying a world full of tears. there's a sound that's unrecognizable. what is it. it's percussive but so soft softer than any skin. is it the lampshades. who collected them. it is the same chord. again. again. higher up the scale of keys that could be bones of elephants or men. so orderly the extension of the flute, the banged piano, it will never end. should it. in judaism there is no end. people go on learning forever. and did he. was it a sign of resignation, passive acquiescence to having no identity in the world that led him to paint a figure over and over with a hood over his head. the symbol is the dream of a man, not of men. it speaks to him to him and not of them. the theyself stood uniformed striking down the dead, bayonets ready to run through a woman round wombed with living. to break the hands of a man with a vice until the bones could be eaten like long cooked pig's feet. there is red mixed in with the gray. did someone cut their hand cooking. did someone run over a stray cat while. were men lined up against the city walls and shot by a firing squad. did they really destroy germany. did they bring on its shame. were they not germans, too, instead. the thread of the composition seems to go on without end. it is expanding like the cosmos it's said. it will not burst in the end. it's darker than nicht without air in the head. so the argument goes, a man who paints figuratively is not a man. he is in league with those who had burned books and subjected deviant abstraction to a rejection displayed to be spat upon by the friends of the volk the friends. the music reproduces itself. it must. it is music is not. it does not mean and yet it is not mean. it must. it is a narration of sounds...a trailing off, a return that is different from the start. so the painter gave up the beauty of color to color and instead refused the beautiful in favor of the brut, to caricature, to the bad, to address again the social world of evil and of thrust. be grotesque if you must. be childlike. be childlike. as the music must repeat itself to speak it all up. the composer is complete. simple. a smile a retreat. the artist smiled with the grotesque. how else. the hooded figures are

ubiquitous. everywhere distress. body parts like stitches in their hooded heads. all that remained was a head. a witness to the end. helpless. watching the dismemberment of man himself. the composer would not give up on him. would mourn the living and the dead. would be a score that added up to zero. an end without an end. think of it. the big man. the smoker of cigarettes loved the smoker of cigarettes in a bodiless head. neither is dead. though both are dead. buried yes. but not dead. death is repetitious. the same without end. here differences are slight, but there nevertheless. on the dirge of flute and piano and xylophone in a music hall of consumers who are at the mall and do not hear the harmony of the spheres only a human can hear. and make. in medias re there is a harmony of instruments some would say. a sweet sound then flatness do obey. 1970. the friendship of a lifetime ended. the composer was no longer admitted to the painter's studio. two who had first shared their works together. two jews of immigrants from russia trying to make sense of america. the world was violent and destruction was the way of loving of talking. a style of painting had separated two friends of a lifetime. the monumental homage of five hours is a lament to that loss never spoken of. it breaks into harmony after two-and-a-half hours. chimes to the god/godless hours of the loss of a fellow traveler. of a friend. harmony reached. harmony sought after. the flute, the piano, the percussions come together. in the end, it rises so high you can see an eagle reach the perched nest of its chicks on a mountain cliff and drop off shredded meat besides its folded wing spread and then decline.

Far into the night the boy had been ice-skating all day on a frozen pond in the park. his father skated, but had left his racing skates in the trunk of the car. the boy wore hockey skates and had a hockey stick, but he didn't have a real puck. he made do with a rubber ball. he was only seven, so it wasn't that important. it was a rare opportunity to share time with his father. ordinarly his mother was always there. he could have gone on skating forever, as if he were born with skates rather than feet. it was cold and damp and the sky was dark and the old trees surrounding the pond were bare and black. the only other person on the ice was a boy who was alone. He hadn't tried to make any contact with them, but stayed a safe distance away all the while the other boy pretended to score goals by slapping the ball through a net made from two sticks placed on the ice. anything that went through the middle of them was a goal. "you about ready to go?" his father asked. "yeah. I think so." it was unusual for the boy to be tired, but he had been skating for hours. "i just want to see if that boy is okay," his father said. the man went over to the other boy and asked him if he was all right. he noticed that the boy's skates were ice-covered. "where do you live, son?" he asked. the boy told him and the man said i better drive you home. the boy's feet looked like they might be frost-bitten they were so frozen in ice. when they got to the car, the man carefully removed the boy's skates. his feet were freezing to the touch and the man was a bit worried. "i'll have you home in no time son. the boy sat in the back seat with the man's son. the man's son looked at the boy's feet and could see the discoloration of the thin socks where water had dried and stiffened. it pained him to look at the raw red feet. he was wearing heavy duty socks as he always did when he skated. they drove through dark streets near the park, the boy now and again telling the man which direction to take to his home. when they arrived in

front of a private home, the man got out and told his son he would be right back. when he returned, he didn't make anything of what he had done. he didn't tell his son what the boy's parents had said or what had happened in the short time he had been there. his son thought his father might have saved the boy's feet. it was possible.

Was I

was I a story or was the story I appeared in a tradition. I was in time. I was here. I touched my wife. But was there really a chain of events, a sequence to it or was that a way of constructing one. Did I need a book jacket and a publisher. Was I the I who stood on the high diving board at Rye Playland in a white bathing suit and wanted to climb back down the stairs but was blocked by those behind me and my shame of feeling cowardly the same I who was drinking a cup of coffee in Paris, smoking cigarettes, at an outdoor cafe in 2005. Was there a line drawn or had I drawn the line or had someone else done it. Was that I crying in the barber's chair the first time I had my hair cut. Was that the same I or a different I who fought a boy a head taller than me for keeping an insect in a jar without holes punched in it. Is this I a way of recognizing things other than I by differentiation. I climbed a mountain. I hitchhiked. I panhandled. There's no question. But is I a story, a biography unfolding, with classical form. Is I an accumulation of many I-s or does it exist as I from the beginning and face choices along the cause and effects of I. I wonder. I don't wonder. I'm wonderful. I'm not wonderful. Is I the center of events or is it merely present as events transpire. I stand at the ocean's edge and look out at the stretch of water and all the life within it and am I the story or is the ocean life the story or is there a story at all rather than an I and an ocean and a life of and in the ocean. why. I am sitting. I like to sit. I don't like to stand as much because it makes me tired. I like to lie down. I like to sleep. Is there a story here. Are all the sittings and standings and lying downs drawn together by a name and a selection of events to give it a frame when other names and events might just as well have been chosen. Here I am. Here I was. I was in time. I was time. I was needed for time. But that does not make a story and a protagonist.

Forever

i noticed for the first time that my wife was lonely and sad. she was lying on the couch. she had her computer on, which she used mainly to listen to chinese music she recorded. i don't think the television was on although it usually is on a chinese station. she has never acclimated to america. i had see but never noticed her loneliness. i was always writing or painting. i worked as if my life depended on the results. today, i realized i probably had enough money for the two of us to make it to the end of our lives- or close enough to it not to spend my life worrying. i told my wife i thought it would be good for us to take a vacation. we hadn't gone anywhere in nine years. i said "let's go to iceland." "iceland?" she dully replied. that idea didn't go over. soon it was sweden. then denmark. then switzerland. i think we settled on switzerland, but i'm not sure. "what about holland?" we can see the van gogh museum." the place didn't matter as long as the two of us were together enjoying tranquility in a peaceful place, spacious, as unlike New York as possible. a place where we could walk arm in arm down a wide thoroughfare, stop in a small dark restaurant and eat salty fish and cheese and some wine or beer and while away hours. i thought it would be good to be in a city surrounded by the alps instead of steel and glass buildings and a diminished sky. maybe the streets were cobbled. the people decent, respectful. during diner, something affected me. it wasn't the chicken in tomato sauce. it wasn't the vegetables. it must have been when she mentioned linda, a distant relative of hers who has developed early alzheimer's disease and lives alone in manhattan. linda, her american name is nearly eighty years old, very frail, and has a daughter in china who doesn't speak to her. She moves very slowly, yet with a great dignity. She is the daughter of china's most famous art collector, whose masterpieces were seized during the cultural revolution. those pieces that could be hidden

under some floor boards were taken by her brother. she came to america, already advanced in age, and worked as a home health aid. thinking about her presently meant one thing: death. everything about her, her skin as thin as rice paper, her fixed features, her weakness, her age, all betokened death. i suddenly realized for the first time in many years that i didn't want to die. for years now i have been trying to kill myself with cigarettes, with a few aborted attempts to buy illicit poisons online from foreign countries. little i did was meant to stay alive. suddenly, thinking of linda, i wanted to exist. not for myself. but to be with my wife, from whom i had withdrawn for some time. she was sitting in the living room right near me, and i started to quietly weep over the idea of never seeing her again. how could such a thing be. everyday i wrote, painted, thought my sense of worth was based on output and developed skills. in truth what was most important to me was my wife. i couldn't stop the crying, but i didn't make a sound. not out of embarressment, but out of a need to keep it to myself. it took me twenty years to realize how i felt. we hadn't had sex in nearly two years, mainly because of the medications I took. but my wife, eight years older than i, no longer cared about sex. what i experienced over diner was so common. i loved my. i loved her so much it hurt. i couldn't stop crying. the time will come when we will have to say goodbye. it's something all people experience. yet for each it's unique; their own.