Brooklyn !!

Kip's cats were inseparable, like a single animal with one set of thoughts--twin boys, mostly Russian Blue, skittish but loving and lively. They slept together, ate together, smothered us with their furry nuzzles in the bed together. Then we woke up one morning two months ago to find Joel walking funny. Actually, the way he was limping his hind leg made me feel as if something was seriously wrong--my instinct said this can not wait until later, he needs to go to the doctor right now. I wondered if he'd broken his foot in the night, or caught a toe somewhere and had to pull himself free. The vet said that it was bone cancer, and his legs were eaten up with it. We aren't the kind of people to let things drag on and on, and so Joel never came home. Since then, Zane has been a new, refreshed kind of cat--demanding more and more attention in the cutest, most delicious of ways, and wanting nothing more than to be by our sides at every moment. Yesterday, when I moved my two cats from Astoria to our new apartment in Ditmas Park, I wondered how the meeting would go.

When Zane saw Bad Thing (yes, that's his name) for the first time, electricity fired through the air and Zane made the most incredible, completely recognizable--which is to say, human--movements. It was so clear. He thought it was Joel, then upon realizing that it wasn't, he blinked, set down his head, and let out a sad, guttural wail. I'll never forget it. This first, tiny interaction was enough to send me into a spiral of sadness and longing, which I'm sure was nothing like the confused tunnel of memories that Zane was going through. We recognize that cats are "like" us a little bit, but we too often see ourselves as different creatures. What a beautiful, extraordinary, unexpectedly emotional moment.

Since then, they have growled, hissed and postured, in every room of the new house, trying to figure out who belongs where--maybe not understanding that as of yesterday they both belong everywhere. The most coveted area is, of course, the bed, where both of the humans are laying flat for long periods of time, and are most likely to hug and squeeze and love them. We'll see how that works out.

The move has been a lovely one, despite the days of stress and anxiety and uncertainty, and I am sure that when the boxes are all unpacked and the house starts to look like somewhere people could actually live, we'll settle in nicely. People keep asking if the move "went well." It did, despite my movers showing up 2 hours late. Although the hardest part is the part we're doing now--the deciding not only where to put everything, but more importantly, how you want to move through your space. How do you want to sit in your new office? Where should each "category" of kitchen item live? What art do you want to look at when you sit in this chair, or that chair? How do you work the dishwasher, and the new-fangled stove that preheats to 400 degrees in 6 minutes, no really.

Bean, my more adorable and more, um, Rubenesque cat, has spent the last 48 hours under the guest bedroom in the basement. She has come out once to pee--that I know of, and a few times I can coax her out for a few minutes of loving and a little sip of water. The last time I moved--9 years ago, when she was 4 years old--she stayed wrapped up inside an overcoat on a chair for three days. I want my happy little girl back.

I'm thrilled, don't get me wrong. The house is so beautiful, and so full of promise and opportunity, not to mention the most luxurious washer/dryer and central air that a person could desire. Oh yeah, and we have a backyard--it's a wreck right now, but soon (soonish?) we'll have a deck and some plants and a little garden party.

But...promise me that we made the right choice. Promise me that the bumps in the road ahead will be remembered as tiny victories over the things we used to think were problems, but really weren't. Promise me that soon we'll all end up, the five of us, napping and talking and loving in the bed with no growling or hissing (or snoring from the boyfriend). Promise me that everything will be alright.

Being Present

I am thinking these days about presence. About what creates it. About what makes it real, or maybe palpable, since what is real and what is unreal, these days, I find difficult to decipher. (And, of course, the other huge question here is: Does real matter?) More specifically, I am thinking about how much energy it takes to be present. To respect another person's presence by showing up, by becoming present yourself.

I am first thinking of how being present can take everything out of you. As evidence: me standing on South 4th Street and Bedford Avenue, waiting on the blessed B62 (which, by the way, hasn't gotten better since the restructuring.) There was a man standing there as well, mid 50s maybe, something slightly off-kilter about his clothing. (But this is New York, and you never know anything about anyone, really.) I notice that he's looking at me. Not looking at me like one New Yorker looks at another New Yorker. He's trying to make eye contact. I get the feeling that he wants to ask me something. (This is natural at the bus stop. People often have logistical or directional questions at bus stops, and I, apparently, look like the kind of person who has the answers.) So, I take the bait, and look back at him.

"My wife died," he said. "Two weeks ago. She was 62 years old." "I'm sorry," I said. He said thank you, and we stood there a minute, quietly, waiting on the bus, with this fact suddenly between us.

For the rest of the day I carried all that around with me, and before I crawled into bed, I spent an hour playing thrashy folk songs on the guitar, maybe annoying the neighbors, until all that was out of me and I felt like myself again. He needed to say it out loud. He needed to give some of the weight to someone else so that he could go on with the motion of living. This makes sense to me. Sometimes saying something out loud can make it real. Or sometimes we say things out loud that aren't true at all, and it's a way of feeling the realness of them, if only an instant, like trying on a new pair of strange glasses, or like sliding your feet into a pair of your father's shoes. That guy just needed me to be present. Or, by default, my presence contributed his relief. Even if he made it all up, I was there, and we shared that weird, horrible, tragic conversation. And there was nothing to say afterward.

Second, I went to MoMA to see the Marina Abromovic retrospective. In addition to filling the 6th floor with lots of photos and videos, there are several recreations, or "reperformances" as Abromovic is calling them, by actors, dancers and other performance artists, of her previous work. Meanwhile, for the duration of the exhibit--about 700 hours that is--Abromovic herself will be seated at a table in the main atrium. Museum guests are invited to sit across from her for a duration of their choosing and do nothing but meet her gaze and feel whatever you feel, in a piece called "The Artist is Present." This is what it looks like, from the outside:



Sitting in a chair for an hour is difficult. Try it for 700 hours, all the while under the gaze of lights, viewers, the art world, critics, fans, people who hate you, etc. Marina ain't kidding, y'all. I've been thinking so much about presence after seeing this piece because of the way the reperformances failed to create the kind of excitement, mystery, emotion, verve--any of the things you feel when you see "The Artist is Present" in the Atrium.

So then what is creating that feeling? The situation is so simple, and other than blinking and the slight movement from her breathing, she didn't move at all for the half hour I stood watching her. So how can it be that the reperformances don't carry the same weight, if the actions are the same as in the original pieces? And Abromovic herself has been coaching and training the performers for the past several weeks. It begs the question, what is performance? Is it the sum of the actions, or is it the intention behind the actions? (I recall Yeats here and "how can we know the dancer from the dance?") And if the reperformers are supposed to be truly in the moment, and truly present, then why not call them performers? Why divide the past from the present, if what you are looking for--I think--is the magic of the moment?

In the new piece, Abromovic is basically doing everything at once, controlling every aspect, either directly or indirectly, by just being present. One museum-goer opted to sit across from her for about two hours. This made me angry--this person was taking up so much time, other people were waiting, how selfish! But what does that say about my sense of time? What does that say about my own selfishness? What does it say about what I think about the act of being present, and the limits, or extensions of it?

One of the things I like most about "The Artist is Present" is that the catalog copy calls the piece "generous." Such a rarity in art, I think. A kind of slow, meaningful present generosity.

Olympic Fever, Sort Of

I am sitting down to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Games, and to eat my Thai food, which was delivered quickly and efficiently by the new place on Broadway. I had forgotten about all the package pieces that NBC does--including tonight's brief "Canada 101" by Tom Brokaw, in which he explained that Canada was nice enough to "share" their stars of music, film and television, and then flashed shots of Celine Dion, Jim Carrey and Seth Rogan. Wait, share?

I used to get really excited about the Olympics--now my feelings are a bit colored by the incredible amount of money spent on advertising and sponsorships. There is so much branding and marketing moments, one can hardly see the athletes for the logos. It's beginning to look too much like NASCAR. Also, no mention of (openly?) gay Johnny Weir in the package piece about American male figure skaters. And the sad news, before the games even begin, of the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.

But there are some real moments in my own Olympic history:
--I'm thinking of the nights spent at Keith's house, staying up far too late watching the Ladie's Figure Skating Final back in Nagano.
--I'm thinking of Midori Ito, arguably the most incredibly talented figure skater of all time, and the time she landed the first triple axel in competition (1988,) and the time she landed the first triple axel in Olympic competition (1992.)
--I'm thinking of the night back in 1994, when Michelle O'Born's mother announced, much to our teenage dramatic dismay, the medal results that she had seen earlier in the day, just moments before the final group of women took to the ice for their warm-up.

Okay, so maybe all of my big memories have to do with figure skating. How gay is that? Also: How gay is this? Also: Rice noodles are fucking good.

Some Traumas

--On Monday, I went to jury duty, and was selected for questioning by the judge. The experience was not one that I would like to repeat, and not in that ho-hum-jury-duty-is-so-boring-let-me-get-out-of-it kind of way. I'm going to write the entire experience up in the coming week or so. But for now, I'll only say that I've never felt so powerless.

--Then Ed McMahon died. And I felt sad for the whole world of entertainment, even though I don't know anything about Ed McMahon, not really. He hosted the blooper show with Dick Clark that we watched seemingly every Saturday night at my grandparents house, the one with the little cartoon sweeping men.

--Then Farah Fawcett died of cancer. Gail, who sells jam at the Greenmarket, told me about watching Farah's video documentary on television on Thursday night. Gail was shaken by it, and I felt sad for both of them. I felt sad for all the striving, the work, the courage, the hope, and then, turns out, it's not enough.

--Then I had to go to South Williamsburg to deliver some dumb paperwork, and the person I was there to meet got into an argument with someone he worked with, and fired him right on the spot. In front of me. Without apologizing. This was after he said that, "We should hire a temp, pay him nothing, and treat him like dirt because I don't think anyone has the balls these days to sue" and "Mushroom clouds are beautiful, don't you think?"

--Then Michael died. I felt nothing, really, except vague loss. And, of course, the curious tinge of not knowing the whole story, wondering how long it would take for all the details to emerge. But then that's how everything was with Michael--mysterious and unsettling. Even his music, the extraordinary transcendence of those eternal songs, seem to be made out of genius, soul and light.

--Last night, I took to watching great Tony, Emmy, and Oscar acceptance speeches on YouTube until 2:30 in the morning. Then I cried, and felt happy.

Fare Thee Well, Joe

So Long, Syrup Van

On Friday morning, at about 7:35am, I was driving the big blue syrup van down 2nd Avenue, like I have every Friday morning at 7:35am for the past 18 months, when the engine died. I rolled one block to 23rd Street and tried, over and over, to start it again while the lights went through their usual, indifferent cycles, and the whole of New York began honking and waving and pointing at me with their middle fingers. Eventually, five minutes later, the van started and I was able to drive forward about ten feet before it died again, rolled another ten feet, and thus was stranded in the middle of the intersection of 2nd Avenue and 23rd Street.

It is important to note that when your car is broken down in the middle of the intersection in Manhattan, everyone simply drives around you. Police cars speed past and do not offer to help. No one gets our of their cars and offers to help me push--which is what I ended up doing, alone, until the van was securely double-parked on the left side of the street with the hazards on. It is also important to note that at this point--when the major tragedy has passed--EVERY policeman who drives past wants to stop and tell you that you are blocking traffic, that you can't park here, and that you are about to get a ticket. (And, I suppose, it is important to note that once I explained that the van wouldn't go--and trust me, it wouldn't go--they were all very nice and drove on without giving me a ticket.)

The tow truck came about 90 minutes later, we backed the dead thing into the east side of the Greenmarket, and I carted everything over to my usual Friday spot--the north end in front of the North Fork Bank--one hand truck load at a time, and was able to start selling syrup at about 11:15am.

At this point, I had had enough. This was the second break down, and even $1,000 worth of new parts and service didn't seem to do any good, as the second breakdown was the fault of the fuel pump, which wasn't serviced during the first time in sick bay, and so the third time--and there would be a third time, I was sure of it--it would be something else. A minor example of the various plagues with which the van was afflicted: hanging from the base of the steering column were lots of cut wires. Who knows where they belonged? Who knows what they were supposed to do?

So, with a heavy heart and a sober mind, we said Goodbye to the big blue syrup van. I waved as it was towed off to somewhere in Brooklyn, where it would be maybe tuned up, maybe torn apart, maybe left to rot in the pale sun which shines over the Gowanus.

Clark Houck, Sr.

My grandfather, Clark Houck, Sr., passed away last night. Over the weekend he had fallen down, remained confused and generally addled, and once he was admitted to the ICU, became quite belligerent. His heart eventually gave up. My dad said they watched the monitors--he was up to 140 bpm at one point.

My brother and I spent many weekends at his house when we were children, giving my parents a night off, and giving the grandparents a chance to have a house full of kids again--something they loved. Many of my childhood memories take place in his office--the adding machine that spit out miles of white paper. I became obsessed with adding the digits 1 through 100, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4, on and on, over and over: 5,050. I am still that detailed, compulsive kid. And of course, his singular pride, probably 75 meticulously labeled photo albums, in chronological order, the entire record of the Houck Family as told in pictures, records, letters, birthday cards; anything flat would do. I think of those albums as a grand--if somewhat bulky--achievement.

My grandmother Ruth is the only grandparent I have left--other than Lola Buckingham, my surrogate grandparent who was my neighbor for fifteen years growing up in Chattanooga. I wonder about Ruth now, where she will go, what she will do with her days. She lives these days as if her ears are full of cotton. This is true both literally--she is, basically, deaf and you have to yell right at her if you want her to hear--and figuratively, having spent the last 20 years (some would say her entire life) building a kind of cottony space around her, deciding what is true and what isn't, regardless of the facts. I wonder if my perception is correct--if she feels insulated by her invented world, or if it is harsh and bright, like open nerves.

Clark had spent the last years lost, it seems, between this world and the world of his childhood, which he spoke of constantly, cherishingly, and happily. Conversation quickly turned to those stories whenever possible. If I had a wish for him, it would be that he finds himself again there, with muddy dogs galloping all around and sawdust in his eye. This may sound a bit painful--but I think it made him feel alive.

Update: The obituary can be found here.

Ugh

Here's what happened today:

1) On my way to work, the V train got fucked up and went over the E line.
2) I went to visit a dear friend in the loony bin at St. Vincent's hospital. The forreal loony bin. He was not well, but is getting better.
3) On my way home there was a "temporary loss of power" on the entire Queens Blvd. corridor subway lines and I had to walk to the N train.
4) On my way to the N train, there was an ambulance parked on the corner. Into the back, they were loading a gurney on which laid a person completely covered by a sheet.
5) I went to the doctor, who told me I had shingles. Now I'm on three different pills.

**Update: The shingles are getting better. Thank god for pills. Still hurts like fucking hell, but, as the nurse told me, "The pain pills are working, though you may think they are not. That's how bad it hurts if you don't take them."

Grace Paley

Grace Paley died this week. She was 84.

In the summer of 1998 I was working in Vermont at the Bread & Puppet Theater, when I looked over to my left to discover that Grace was operating the giant head puppet with me. I had a certain kind of starstruck--the surprise of her suddenly next to me, involved in the same activity. And yet, why shouldn't she? The puppet was cumbersome, heavy, and required many small movements coordinated by four or five people, all choreographed by sound cues that included, among others, listen for the banjo-playing goats to emerge from the woods--forty yards away. "This is hard," she said.

There is a certain kind of pressure, cosmic perhaps, that you feel when a person like Grace Paley dies, if you see yourself as the kind of person with similar interests in politics, art, and personal responsibility--and if you, like me, see the lines between those three divisions as negligible, blurred possibilities, not actual divisions. She said in an interview once: "Whatever your calling is, whether it's as a plumber or an artist, you have to make sure there's a litte more justice in the world when you leave it than when you found it."

Visits

Lately, I have been thinking of Meg. The armored trucks are the trigger. And it never fails that every other day, or every day, I see one parked outside of some or other business, just waiting there quietly for the attendant to do his job. They are all young men.

In September, it will have been two years since she died. I think of the time that has passed--how it has been empty, and how it has been full. I think of that long, arduous phone call with Laura--which saved me in the moment. Me sitting on the edge of my bed, periodically sobbing and asking question after question after question--none of which had any answer.

The weeks following her death, after clearing out her apartment, after the services in Chattanooga and Massachusetts, people would call or email and tell me of a moth that appeared and wouldn't leave. Or a tiny green grasshopper that sat patiently on their leg and made them feel at ease. There is Jennifer's pigeon movie. They all said what a comfort these small appearances had been, these vague, soothing messages from the natural (spiritual?) world

That first night alone in my apartment, I felt so full of Meg, so surrounded by her that it nearly hurt to take a breath--I had no more room to expand. She was in every molecule, in every painting on the wall. She was in my head, literally. She was behind my eyes, using them to peer out, to point me in various directions. All of this has only become clear to me in the last several weeks--now, 2 years later. Why hadn't I thought of all this before?

I know all this now. If everything I know to be true were to vanish, I would still have the understanding that all that pressure, all that focus and nearly/almost/bordering on physically unbearable--it was her. She was there. It was Meg.

When I Go

My friend Meg had the smarts to tell people what she had done to ensure that after she had died, (Did she know it was coming soon? Had she sensed something?) we would do what she wanted, nothing less, nothing more. She wrote it all down in an envelope, and she told her sister where to find the envelope. We did everything she asked. And it was beautiful. I recently read this article by Joan again, in which she lays out the Terry Schiavo debacle, and wonders just who has the right to decide what makes a life worth living.

So.

I don't want there to be any confusion. Here's what to do when I go. It's quite simple, really.

1) Give away everything that science/medicine/organ people might want. Eyes, spleen, kidney, liver, collectible first editions, etc.

2) Cremate the rest of me. Then share me. Let everyone take a tablespoon.

3) Scatter me around; I want to be in a bunch of different places. Choose the places yourself. Pick a place because I liked to sit there, or you think I would have liked to sit there. Or pick a place that you would like to visit, so that when you want to think of me, you can visit that place. Or when you visit that place, you think of me.

4) Gather everybody in whatever geographical locales are easiest. Have a party. Everyone tell stories. Tell bad jokes. Tell good ones. Make jokes about me being a control freak. About my grumpiness. About my affinity for mail waiting to be sent. Play music.

5) Eat. Eat lavishly. Eat yourself sick and tired. Be ridiculous in your menu planning. Have it catered by the best. Or have everyone cook. Have french fries. Have tiny boursin and avocado sandwiches. Have manchego and quince paste. Have fried baby artichokes with lemon sauce. Have something with flour tortillas. Have gay-sounding ice cream flavors.

That's it.

A New Year

Last Saturday morning, December 30, my longtime neighbor and surrogate grandfather, Bob Buckingham, died at home of congestive heart failure. I think they should change the name. Failure sounds so passive, like your body made an error. It should be called "Pro-Active Soul Liberation."

If we are lucky, that is.

As a gift for my birthday when I was twelve, Bob took me on a train ride through Chattanooga--the Missionary Ridge Local, which runs from Grand Junction to the East Chattanooga Depot and back. We stood against the railing while the engine changed direction on the turntable. Bob was slowly disappearing for the last couple of years, retreating into his memories, into story after story, each carrying an immense gravity. Talking to him, it was impossible not to feel a space opening, a strange distance which must have been even more alarming to him than it was to us. Wasn't it?

My mother's great-aunt Marie, who lives in a nursing home in Atlanta, said the woman who shared her room was walking down the hall one day and just fell over dead. "What a way to go," we all said.

My dad's parents, both in their late eighties, are stuck in time at different moments--quite possibly the time in their lives that were, for them, the happiest. My grandfather when he was a boy, aged eight to thirteen maybe. My grandmother later, in her years as a tourguide. I try not to think much about how these times are decades apart, about how neither much includes the other. Where are they? I sometimes wonder. And I don't blame them.

This year I learned that Meg is still gone, and gone really is forever. That her objects, her furniture, do not really contain her as much as they contain my memories. "Do you want to take a trip?" they say, peeking out at me from the bookcases, from the cabinets and locked boxes. They are wyrm holes you can touch.

Back in November, my friend Ashley wrote to me in a card: "May all your dead be at peace." I'd never heard anything so comforting.

My nephew, on the other hand, is remarkable in his alive-ness, his pure person-ness. The way he has adopted what is, apparently, our family posture--some slack-kneed way of standing that I've seen in photographs of my brother and I. The way he'll just tell you sometimes: "I don't know what that is."

For Jack

I heard about Jack Lunde long before I ever met him, as if his personality was too large to just hand over to someone without properly prepping them--in my case, weeks in advance. (Turns out it was.) He finally appeared on an Easter Sunday, when a bunch of us were gathered at Lisa Eisen & David Hudec's house. Lisa had made a leg of lamb and a tablefull of other perfect dishes--such are her talents.

We had a conversation about D.H. Lawrence in a loud bar once when Jack was reading Sons & Lovers, and I had the realization--I think it's pretty safe to assume a lot of people may have had this realization at some point--that Jack was a lot smarter than I had given him credit for, that I had been fooled by all of it: the bawdy sense of humor, the reputation, the beefcakiness. "What do you like about it?" I asked him--meaning the Lawrence. "Oh, you know, emotional manipulation, family dysfunction. It's a real feel good kinda book," Jack said.

He was loud, and he was a little obnoxious (and sexy as hell,) and I would be lying if I said it didn't sometimes feel as if people tolerated his complexity--we all have those friends. One thing about that Easter Sunday that sticks out in my mind is Jack proclaiming, about the habits of gay men: "I know how it works, you diddle-dee-doo and then he fucks you in the asshole!" I liked him, tremendously.

Jack, so many of us miss you. If the uncertainty of the other side became less frightening than every single day, then I hope that wherever you are, some peace has found you.

Signals

I want to print a retraction. In December, I wrote a post about the passing of my great-grandmother. In it I said: "I know too much about death lately." But that was false; I don't really know about death at all. What I know about is life after someone dies.

I saw three armored trucks today on my way to work. Two of them belonged to the MTA and were servicing different subway stations. The third was parked outside Grey Advertising. The men emptying the back of it were holding guns. There was a sign posted on the swinging doors: "Caution: Wide Right Turns."

Objects can contain people; I have written that before. And I suppose that -- strangely, unfortunately, morbidly -- the armored truck will forever be one thing to me, one thing only.

I have blogged about all the Sade stories, the way the universe (is that you Meg, I always ask?) has given me snippets of one song or another in a cab, on a stranger's iPod. Sometimes I will hear Sade on the dumb generic radio and I know it's not Meg. But sometimes I hear it from somewhere else, and my body gets warm and I feel this unbelieveable pressure all over myself, like she's trying to get me to pay attention. Look over here, it says, and for a moment I feel like a dumbass.

But I never know what she's trying to get me to see. Maybe that's not the point. Maybe she's just trying to tell me: I'm here.

Lois Beatrice Payne

My maternal great-grandmother, Lois B. Payne of Atlanta, GA, age 90, passed away on December 10, 2005. She lived in a nursing home for the last few years, suffering from--or perhaps lost within--Alzheimer's Disease.

As printed in the obituary which appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on December 12, 2005: she is survived by her daughter, Allene Cornelius of Atlanta; 4 grandchildren, 6 great grandchildren; 1 great great grandchild; a brother, Lee Pittman of Dawsonville; a sister, Marie Walston of Atlanta; and several nieces and nephews.

She was buried in Crestlawn Memorial Park, next to her late husband, Garnett, who died in 1976. The Rev. Keith Willard, a distant cousin, officiated, and in addition to suggesting that when he saw her on Sundays she looked as if she had stepped right out of the Sears Roebuck catalog--you should read that as a major compliment, which is how it was intended--he managed to include some sentences that I wrote about her in an essay a few years ago: about her kindness, about how easily she fit inside my arms. My friend Foster and I agreed that what was left out was that she made the best carrot cake in the history of the world. And that she hated her middle name, Beatrice, which, for some reason, everyone pronounced Be-AT-trice.

I know too much about death lately. Everyone will be able to say that at some point; most already can. But this one is okay. She lived an enviable life, in some sense: full of family, food so good it borders on sin, and a peaceful way about her that more people should emulate. (This is not including the time she began shooting squirrels in her living room with her BB gun, but that's beside the point.)

It's true that people never leave you as long as you don't forget them. I wrote about her briefly in my first novel, Yield, having given one of my own memories to my narrator, Simon:

"I sit down on the couch, pick up a ceramic figurine off the side table, a little elephant with the trunk raised. It looks fifties-ish, like those accessories that were at one time fashionable and perhaps indicated some status. I used to see that stuff in my great-grandmother’s house—a delicate feminine hand holding a pinkish, glossy conch shell, turned up, its open end to the ceiling. She kept rosy-colored emery boards in it. Then, in her bedroom on the make-up table, she had a strange box, one green and one red light bulb in the base, directed up to three tiger-striped clam shells. The center shell held a crucifixion, the bleeding Jesus near-naked and tiny. I’m not sure what forces this memory to surface—maybe the stillness of this room. Could be anything, really."

My Address Book

I've spent the past several nights doing my Christmas cards, which have become a sort of annual event -- at least in my own mind. I do look forward to them, and occasionally people will ask about them nearabouts Thanksgiving. After I figure out what the card itself is going to be, I go through my address book and see who's still where they were last year, and who I need to get a new address from.

The writer Alan Gurganus said that his address book was the most important book he'd ever written -- it was filled with his friends who had died of AIDS, hundreds of them, he said. And I just listened to Joan Didion on Fresh Air talk about how it was impossible to cross people out of her address book, and so it, too, was filled with the dead.

There are only two entries like that in my address book. One of them just says Mer, for Meredith Helton. The other one, Meg, had so many addresses that her section is filled with smudges of black marker. I've used four different pens, and drawn arrows pointing my eye to the appropriate house number or zip code.

There are phone numbers of men who I no longer speak to, or who I wish I had the courage to call again, or that I never really spoke to consistently in the first place. Wishful thinking, perhaps, on my part. The playwright, the paralegal, the video editor, the photographer, the dancer from Mexico whose name isn't there because it is too painful to write it.

I've been thinking about how you can trace the months as you move through the alphabet, how many years pass when you turn a page.