Santa Maria gave life to three turtles while sitting next to me. Strange things. I thought them dead, the way she had them in that plastic box - they had no heads, small and hard shells as big as two thumbs put together, rolling around and around the bare plastic bottom. And that smell. It wasn't strong, but if you listened to the air vents it hit you. Or rather, slapped at you. Like a soft and stale banana.

Yet, in true marketing fashion, she gave them life. A poland spring. Half a bottle into the box and their heads were out. Their hands and feet followed. They moved over each other, they were flapping around like puppies, they couldn't contain themselves. Slowly.

I was grinning. I knew I was but felt no need to stop it. Why stop? I kept my eyes on the turtles, I left my smile where it was.

Still, Santa Maria got up. She got up and moved towards the door. A stop came up but she didn't exit. She simply stood there. No one took her place.

I looked around. Strange things. She was the second person to sit down next to me and instantly rise. Was it because I was writing? People do not like to see a person with a notebook open, I have observed. It makes them nervous. A camera with its lens open, OK. A notebook? Ah-ah. A notebook could be anything, a humble atom one minute, but any second, any second, a mere pin could split it wide open and then - who knows?

Strange things. I smiled at Santa Maria's Reeboks. The train stopped. Lights blended in the outside fog and it felt like we were swimming. Everybody listened to a fire truck drag its sirens below the tracks. Over Santa Maria's soft arm, I saw the turtles gather by the back side of their tank. They were on top of each other and were looking. It seemed they were trying to take down as much as they could.

Michelle

“And who’re you?” Michelle said.

How long had I not seen her? Had I seen her ever? She was on my couch in a distant memory, just a few months old then, a newborn. She sat with her legs crossed and pulled and pulled at my hair. I remember I let her. The more she pulled the more she laughed. She kept laughing and laughing.

How old was I then? Eleven? Just a boy. And how old was I now? How old did that make her? She stood at the piano and looked at me and around the room, she had a pointed, narrow glance. No more the clumsy baby, she stood without swaying in her small heels, her face lipsticked and eye-shadowed - she seemed at the same time older and seemingly a toddler still, merely dressed for a play.

Somehow it all made me nervous.

“You don’t remember me?” I said playfully, knowing of course, that it was a scientific impossibility. I suddenly felt stale, like a big-breasted aunt who knows everything about you yet whom you have never seen.
I too was becoming older.
It didn’t feel good at all.

Michelle shook her head. “You’re silly,” she said.

An answer of some sort began to form in my mind, I half-way smiled, scratched the side of my stomach, a crowd of perfume circled us and before I could say a word, we were back at the table.

Ah, the table. Again. Two months ago a new year, in two months another, then a birthday, a holiday then a birthday again. Then the year anew - shoulders in, ass out - sit.

I sat.

Michelle was across from me between her parents. Her father stretched over the table continuously, a plate, a joke, cognac, more cognac, you are not nearly drinking enough… he was young, hair black and thick, an engineer from Moldova he lapsed between taxi’s driven in Brighton, windows installed in Boropark, airport terminals planned and instructed, the women kept their eyes on him, husbands forked grape tomatoes around their plates absentmindedly.

“I also make windows,” Michelle said, nodding. No one seemed to hear her, she smiled strangely and said something else, seemingly to herself.

“What kind of windows do you make?” I asked her quietly across the table.

“All kind of windows!” her father said suddenly. “You wouldn’t believe.”

I laughed into my plate and looked across. Michelle said something to herself again and smiled. She had one of the strangest smiles I had ever seen.

“We were at this Hassid’s house one time,” her father went on, “I give him the breakdown: fifty for the windows, twenty for the bars and screens, and we give you the frames for free. So do you know what he says?” His eyes took a lap around the table. “He says – well, can I just get the frames?”

The chorus of women giggled.

I felt it again in me then, the holidays scooping me out, that special brand of knifing that comes when sitting shoulder to shoulder under a warm light in front of a warm pile of food. I reached for the bottle of Canadian whiskey near my plate, let my fingers linger on the small ridges within its neck, and refilled my glass.

What was she thinking? The whole dinner I couldn’t help but watch her. She had a small gameboy by her side but somehow I knew that was not where her attention lay. I couldn’t help but sense as if she felt just as estranged at this table as I did. Who were these people, anyway? I looked around. A few relatives from the Volga. They didn’t look different at all. Same jeans, same shirts. Their Russian was harder, it hacked away at the air in front of their mouths, it came out with a ring from somewhere behind their throats, but that was about it. They passed photos around of a new addition to the dacha, of tombstones, small pieces of rock with sparsely filled glass jars of flowers next to them - forecasts of a merry and shoulder-to-shouldered fate.

What was the point?

I excused myself, pushed my chair back against the wall, climbed over it, balanced myself over a handbag, and made my way to the bathroom.

Of all the ways to escape from myself, (and what are the holidays if not a serving of your assigned self back to you?), the bathroom has long been a favorite.

Click, snap – and you’re invincible.
At least for a moment.

I slid my pants down eagerly and settled on the soft and pink seat. This was my grandmothers’ house. One of the local newspapers was lying by the toilet and I picked it up. For some time I leafed through it. A community college was closing its doors but its community would live on. I flipped again. Pasternak’s love life looked up at me in two columns. Flip. What Kasparov really believes in. Flip. A supermodel’s journey to the Western Wall. Flip. The Odessa holocaust revealed – a column and a photo of two men in striped pants by a skeleton half way in an oven. Their eyes had the half-glazed look of commuters. Flip. I closed the newspaper and tossed it back where it was. I let myself urinate. I let myself sit like that for a while.

Urinating clears my mind and once done, I began to think. Isn’t enough enough? How many more evenings was I to spend hiding in bathrooms and kitchens? Wasn’t it time to grow up? Be a man? Have an argument about a Dovlatov translation or deliver a keen and risqué opinion about Hillary? Wasn’t it about time?

I exhaled. I rubbed my palms against my forehead, shook off the urine, pulled up my pants and got up. I bent over the sink. I washed my hands and soaked my face in the water. I picked up a towel and stuck my nose deep into it. I exhaled again.

Yes. Time indeed.

Yet opening the door only revealed an intermission. Feet moved swiftly between the table and the stove, plates and trays trotted their ways, a dry and warm smell of cigarette smoke yawned from the balcony, the thumb was up - the gladiator lives!

I smiled. Years of introspective escapes had made my timing perfect. I congratulated myself. I made my way to the kitchen where Michelle’s mother suddenly grabbed my arm.

“Can you talk to her?” she said. She was a well-framed woman who worked in a lens shop. Her glasses were nicely picked as always.

“About what?” I said.

“Devil knows,” her mother said. “She saw one of the tombstones and now won’t come out of the bedroom.”

I looked down the corridor. I felt a shove from the side. “Go,” she said.

I went.

From the corridor, I looked into my grandmothers’ room. I saw her there, Michelle, lying on my grandmothers’ bed. They had just won a new bedroom set, a true Cadillac of the faux-Italian line and the bed sat like an obese whore under the bookshelves. It all seemed somehow unfair.

I looked again at Michelle. She was tiny. The bed was enormous to begin with but around her it stretched like a field. She was looking away, her head pointed somewhere into the window. A part of me began to feel like an intruder, but I came up to the bed nonetheless.

“Hey,” I said and sat down.

The small gameboy was in front of her but it was off. She looked up at me. Her eyes were strained.

“Hello,” she said with a bit of a smile.

“What’re you thinking?” I said with an attempted lightness. It was a question I had only recently learned and it seemed like the time to ask it.

She looked down, she moved the gameboy around the mattress slightly with her left hand.

“I don’t know,” she said shyly, leaning her head away.

“Well, you surely must know,” I said in a voice that wasn’t mine and instantly hated myself for it.

She looked up at me with a fixed smile, her lips locked, she shook her head.

I laughed. If only she knew how many spoonfuls I had dodged by that same method. She clearly did not know what she was up against. Then suddenly, her eyes settled on me.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“Who’s who?” I said.

She nodded behind me. I turned my head. My grandmother had re-arranged her bedroom, I looked and was caught off guard.

“The old photo?” I asked.

Michelle nodded.

“That’s my great-grandmother,” I said.

“What’s her name?” she asked.

I paused. “Well, she had many. She always changed them.”

“Why?” Michelle asked. I looked at her. This girl really seemed to be big on the questions. I thought about it.

“Well,” I said, simplifying my tone again, “it was a different time back then.”

“So?” Michelle said. She was lying on her elbows, and played with her earrings slightly.

“So?” I said, “so, people had to change their names a lot, sometimes just to live.”

Michelle’s face didn’t move.

“I understand,” she said. “Kind of like trees, right?”

“Like trees?” I said. I thought about the park close to my house, my endless laps around the same small cluster of a forest.

“Like trees,” she said. “Papa took me to the park and he said that trees change the leaves because it helps them live.”

I thought about this for a moment. It sounded like nonsense to me.

“Yes,” I said, “perhaps a bit like trees.”

“Where does she live now?” Michelle asked.

“My great-grandmother?” I said.

Michelle nodded.

“She died,” I said after a hesitation.

“I see,” she said. “That’s OK,” she added after a moment. “Grandpa died last month.”

I nodded. The conversation was gaining the air of post-exam chatter. I thought of ways to switch the subject.

“I liked it,” she said before I could come up with anything. My eyes turned to her.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well, I wasn’t in school,” she said, “and Papa wasn’t at work.”

“Right,” I paused. “I understand,” I said and understood nothing.

“We even went to the park,” she said.

“The park?”

She nodded.

“That’s when I got sad over the leaves,” she said.

“Why did you get sad?” I asked rhetorically. With each question I felt myself getting closer and closer to the great-aunt status. I couldn’t help it. What else was there to say?

Michelle stayed quiet. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. I couldn’t tell if it was the makeup or if something was turning within her.

“I think,” she said after a while and her eyes moved down to the floor, seemingly following an extension chord there, “if trees die or not?”

I looked at her. It sounded instantly like a question I myself would ask. But at such an age?

“Not at all,” I said. In truth, I had nothing to say. I tried to follow her fathers’ argument.

“Think about it now – the leaves are all falling, right?” I said.

She nodded.

“But then in a few months – bang, they come back out new,” I said. “That is just how trees breathe,” I added and felt very accomplished.

She didn’t buy it. Her eyes began to narrow on something.

“But have you ever seen a tree die?” she asked and looked up at me. Her eyes suddenly gripped mine, they pulled them by the collar – her eyes had an incredible and surprising strength.

“How does a tree die?” she asked. Her eyes did not let me go. A paramount fear flushed through me: her eyes had the same urgency as my great-grandmothers’ during her last days. I froze. I couldn’t say anything.

“How does a tree die?” she repeated.

I looked back at her and said nothing. Her lips tightened with disappointment. She slid past me, slid off the bed, and quickly went out.

I sat up. I tried to get up and follow her but couldn’t. I sat upright and tried to listen. She was moving through the kitchen now, asking everyone there over and over – how does a tree die? Yet no one seemed to hear her. Still, I listened and listened. It was something I wanted to know as well.

There is something about the way sounds sink during autumn. The air huddles around the branches, under the streetlights it clings to them like a determined halo. The world slows down. A half-closed eyelid it drags on, horizontally. Often it seems as if the whole planet, this spherical mass of yellow-leafed asphalt that we step over, as if it is simply talking to itself. Whispering under its’ own breath. As if each building, each turned-off headlight, each curtain lit from within, is simply trying to understand itself, whispering.. whispering…

There is a way sounds sink during autumn. In the park, someone’s dog broke loose, it took off suddenly chasing an unknown and an unseen through the fields, the owner does not see it, the owner launches a scream and then another. But we’re underwater now. The sounds fly one-fourth of the distance and head vertically into silence.

In the park is where silence begins to exercise. This is its training season, after all. It begins without fanfare, modestly. It begins stretching in the daytime shadows, it pulls itself up between the leaves, in the evenings slides between the plates, curls up in the space between the bulb and the lamp, between the mouth and the throat, it rests, it braids its hair, it unbraids it. There is never any rush.

Along the avenue, people fight back. It is an interesting hobby to observe. Suppliers of warmth extend their hours. Couches are set up in circles. Laptops are opened, earphones plugged. Tea lounges become airport terminals. Below them, the basement cellars become filled with the sound of a bass, the jingle of a guitar, the unmistakable scent of pilsner and dishwashing detergent.

Within the city, the worker ants group squadron-like by the subway entrances. Umbrellas are checked, unwound, readied. Hoods are unflapped. Nothing is left to chance.

They charge. Objectives are the new key. Noise is God. Silence is a class enemy. Their sounds razor through the morning lull.

Above them, modestly, Seurat draws his portrait next to an infinite staircase. He was always a master of silence. Wyeth as well. How genius, I think suddenly, it is to paint silence. How rare.

Above me a second-story window is unexpectedly jerked open, a head is produced. It gives the air a quick haaah and an oooooph, watches it turn grey and disappears.

Everything stays pretty quiet after that.

How rare it is to see something new! We are surrounded, flanked on all sides by its abundance. Yet we look it straight in the face, hold our drinks, throw our eyes down, throw our eyes up, and define it as rare.

Such insults.

For most with this problem, let me advise – a simple creak of your head around its tired axis will do. Allow me to illustrate:

Walking to my door along the street routined with my own footsteps, I must simply (and genuinely) bend my head to the left. I will see there an old woman sitting by her porch. She will remind me instantly of my great-grandmother (naturally). I will note that this is because of her legs. I will note that they are swollen, quite horribly swollen, two beehives softened by the rain, tucking themselves into her shoes. It will be hard for me to move my eyes then. Moving my eyes and walking – you can forget about it. I will then secretly decide to make her my great-grandmother. At least until I reach my doorstep. Just a driveway or two. It will feel right. I will walk slow.

And now a few steps back.

Where we are now: Midtown. Fifth Ave. Hotels spray their yellow-lit tops into the sky. The Palace, the Ritz, the Peninsula. Too much, too much.

On the street: Fresh-faced midwesterners look, chew. Paroled bankers smile the unshaved smile of money. Laughter is thrown like car keys to whomever is willing to park. I hear it even through my earphones. I'm too close. I skedaddle.

Fifth Avenue. More and more. Taxi cyclists launch their eyes and words into the crowd, see if anything catches. Limo drivers stand in traffic with their windows down. Respectfully dressed older gentlemen speak of unrespectable things. I have music in my ears and I keep looking. Seeing is easier, sometimes, without sound.

In the subway everything is warm. Up there, the air slaps you around - too many currents, too many faces, too many directions. Here it stands. It hugs your neck. The train pulls in. Doors open.

I’m in. I look around. Who is Brooklyn bound already? Czech and Greek grandmothers finding fluency in confusion. Black-jeaned toddlers of the Queens Institute for the Arts in a soon-to-be-regretted sleep. Oh home. I sit.

Here comes Rockerfeller Center. Top of the Rock. Who lingers at the top of the rock in this weather? Surely, analysts, accountants. Now, these are not dirty words. They are people too. Let us observe:

Enter Birgit. A burly woman of efficient Austrian blood, she inspects the car thoroughly. The doors close. A ziplock bag is produced from her pocket and she bites down on something crunchy. Her cheeks inflate and deflate. Her eyes keep moving. Birgit loves mistakes. Loves them. The harder to find, the better. If you can't find a good mistake, why show up? Her eyes chase everything. But the distribution is perfect. Everything is precise. Dissatisfied, she takes out a folder. Her eyes pounce into it.

On our left is John. John doesn’t wear a tie, John wears whatever he wants. John breaks the filters off his Marlboro reds’, he keeps his sideburns from the seventies when the East Village used to be his. But I am being unfair. I know these people. I see them every day.

Thirty-fourth Street. Backups. Reserves. The car fills up. They blackberry in figures, possibilities, probabilities. Twenty-third Street is empty. Several Russian programmers look on poetically at the car situation. A few dive in. West 4th brings turmoil. Accountants flee, poets charge. Black pushes back blue. Notebooks are unfolded. The poets write standing up. They jot down figures, faces, possibilities. The train keeps going.

I look around more. Who else is there? The hassidic diamond-sellers and the brothers cancel each other out. Russians are left standing. I turn to a grandfather-turned-programmer. I ask him about his story. The OJ Simpson by the door keeps cracking his music too loud, he tells me. That's his story. I laugh. He's not laughing. He returns to his Le Carre translation.

Balls. I keep looking around more. My body is tired. It’s tired of me and my dirty habits. It wants to sleep, to rest to relax to detune detox, to let go, to gargle some beer, to sleep to sleep but..

Who else is there?

On the next stop the train empties and my eyes land on a K.D. Lang in a pinstripe suit and sneakers. She sits upright, she sternly examines a folded newspaper, she grips it with apparent strength, she holds it close to her face, the fingers of her other hand make small and slow laps around her inner thigh. She becomes bored, folds everything and watches the ceiling.

I keep looking. Soon the train will bust out of the tunnel and everybody will look up. They always do. This is the moment that I wait for.

Across from me K.D. Lang has gotten her blackberry out. It’s an old model. She leans forward in her seat, her eyes fix and focus like a tennis player. I try to float her a smile, I’m a sucker for short hair. She thumbs at the small wheel. On the next stop she gets out.

Balls again. I keep looking. The train is bound to fly out at any minute. I can tell by how the blank scenery behind the window changes. We’re getting closer.

Any moment now, I can feel it, the evening will splash through the car and the heads will lift. Even when it’s dark outside they meet it as a sunrise. In the morning when the train dives in, the heads turn down, they look away but here - here, they move up (slowly), eyes open (slowly), mouths spread, slowly, everything, for an instant, floats. There’s nothing like it. If you haven’t, you must really see it for yourself. At least once. Turn your head. Something's going on over there.

The Brooklyn Bluegrass Kid. Face not ready enough to shave. Eyes small, larger like fish in his glasses. Jumping out. Violin under the chin bow under the nose everything is moving everything is moving. Yee haw.

I have come in search of the Sunday night jazz. I have found something else.


There is an honesty that hits the faces of those performing. Of those truly performing, creating. I had never noticed it before. Their skin becomes loose, their eyes fire wildly, freely bending the light, the people, they smile, they are there, they are there. I look around the bar, the tables, faces making conversation, chewing truths. These faces are hard, static. They do not open, they watch. If we are lucky, they will stretch spandex-like by the end of the evening. Great show man, great show.

In the corner of the bar where the piano is parked, there is none of that. There are more like him. The other three: a minuscule woman, black jeans and a banjo. The banjo covers most of her torso. She has no make up. Her hair is grey. She floats her eyebrows as the melody picks up.. moving, moving.. another woman, a full southern body in a Texan hat. A maternal version of Janice. She sings. The microphone, there is none. She sings. There is a bassist. He has grey hair too. It is long, he waves it around, he sticks out his lips, he sings wolf-like from the gut. Somehow, he reminds me of our president. I laugh. Simplicity.

I watch their faces move. They are naive and clear. GET A MIKE someone yells from the back but nobody notices. My eyes come back to the kid. He's making the show, making the evening. He takes off on a solo and his lips curl, the two of them jump to the corner of his mouth, his eyes sway without effort, he is not trying but he is doing. so. much.

I tell myself to stay just for a song. The drink is already here, bluegrass is not my thing. I stay for the set. They take a break and I stay for the second one. I can't get enough.

In the second set the waitress puts up a microphone. Their voices are clearer now. They wash everything down. I watch their faces, I cannot take my eyes off them. Child-like, they smile, they create. They create, they move air, they vibrate it, they hug it they twirl it. I watch them and find myself smiling. Smiling and wondering: when the music stops, will these faces fade, will the world re-apply its make-up over them? Will they walk out of here returning to their cell phones, appointments, slapping smiles and post-its, shaking hands they do not want to shake? I do not know. I shudder at the thought. I step out for a cigarette.


Outside, I draw my shoulders together to light. The air turned cold lately out of nowhere. In this crazy climate it could snap to snow in a minute. I stand with my back to the glass. I still feel the music here.

Outside, the music and the wine in me, I look at the university buildings, the skyscrapers. They are everywhere. Proportional, rational and rectangular canisters of waiting. Everybody is waiting. For the year to end, for the vacation, the job, the promotion the degree the blowjob the movie to come out, the snow to come, the rain to end. I see this. I know this. I was there. Suddenly I smile. I say it again. I was there. I was there. It feels good to say it. To do a little more and wait a little less. I was there. I muse about the infinity of past tense. A tense within a tense within a tense. I juggle the cold from shoulder to shoulder. After one and a half cigarettes I go back in.

When I return the base-wolf is unwiring his equipment. The show is over. I stand for a moment and then make my way back to my chair. I slide in.  

By the bar, the Bluegrass Kid is making the tables. Shaking a hand, smiling coyly. He still has his violin and plucks away at it. I think of BB King, on a stage, telling that either he speaks or Lucille speaks, they never speak together. The kid utters a word and plucks. Utters a word and plucks. And when he reaches my table, in a self-noted surprise of the century, I speak to him. And I ask him. About his story.

And to my surprise - he tells me.

Trust. Without it words harden, turn into pebbles, suffocate. Trust between the writer and the reader. When the reader feels that the writer is not-trying. Not-trying-to-prove-anything. When the writer feels. When the writer feels that no one is looking. That his words are home, safe, understood.

It is a hard thing to do. Perhaps the hardest.
But I hear it is beautiful.

There is a way people run their eyes from you on the train. Their head tilts back, slightly to the side, their eyes travel up (not too fast now), there is something suddenly very interesting there, how could they have not seen it before, they must look at it now, yes now, where is it where is it, oh there, yes, right there.

There is a way people sit down. You can tell much more about somebody by how they sit down than by how they look away. Some start sitting already when they are standing up. They know where they're headed. They bend their ass out, stick their arms to the sides, and then, after a beautiful stillness, slide in. This is done even if the car is empty. Like hunger artists they perform for no one, they perform without performing. They sit down, push their back against the plastic and begin shaking their leg, anticipating, anticipating.

(Then of course there are the ploppers, the shovers (make-upped women with linebacker wingspans), the leggers, the leaners... these are all very special food groups and merit their own place and their own aside).

On the train there is a way people fall asleep. This is my favorite. Most do not know that sleep is leaning over them, looking over their shoulder, already in what they read and what they write. A simple nod of the head gets most amateurs. They get closer into their lap, their eyes slide, their eyes slide, a pair of ice skaters pushing away, away, away... and they're off.

The conductor jumps into the loudspeaker, the train is going express, express, EXPRESS! but nobody hears him. Earphoned heads lullaby softly their blackberried eyes.

Tudud-tudud. Tudud-tudud.

Literary cirticism No. 243

Some say Bukowski was an alcoholic with a typewriter.

I prefer to think of him as a blogger with a drinking habit.