Five hours behind Paris, I was in the twin bed of my uncle's funky house in Maine when word came that she had died. This was before he had moved the bed into the corner, and it was still parallel to the narrow room. With its ribbed foam mattress pad, layers of blankets and duvets innumerable as baklava, the control bulb of the electric blanket tapping against the footboard, it was a lumpy canoe of insomnia due northwest, toward Bangor.
I had left the news bulletins, each one reluctantly graver than the last, downstairs. The reading lamp was already turned off when I heard my uncle on the chirping floorboards, coming closer through the unlighted maze of cut-up hallways and rooms. He was 64, and his steps landed always in the same spots. The old house was filled with his papers and souvenirs, sets of coronation china, postcards and photographs from former students—many of them fortyish now—and his acrylic paintings from 35 years ago. Landscapes of his beloved Maine, rocky coastlines, snow-heavy spruces, and a blood orange lake sunset with giant cattails in the foreground, they were fastidious, literal, composed but unimaginative. Yet they formed an affectionate opus, the backs of the boards amply filled in with the painter's name and location, the date, and often a handwritten paragraph of dedication. Painted for Grace L. Dodge in thanks for many kindnesses and in remembrance of many good and pleasant trips.
August 31, 2012
August 24, 2012
Waiting for September
Fall is coming, and the dogwood berries are tucked into bunches of leaves like clip-on earrings.
I spent the whole summer standing in the door frame of the back porch, smoking. Outside, the sun baked the steel landing and steps, and the trip down to the garden, wilting yet overgrown, seemed pointless.
The coneflower refused to stand, but the deep yellow rockets stared heavenward the whole time, like a children's choir. The saturated color against the grey-green and cobwebbed background drew my attention, hypnotically.
I spent the whole summer standing in the door frame of the back porch, smoking. Outside, the sun baked the steel landing and steps, and the trip down to the garden, wilting yet overgrown, seemed pointless.
The coneflower refused to stand, but the deep yellow rockets stared heavenward the whole time, like a children's choir. The saturated color against the grey-green and cobwebbed background drew my attention, hypnotically.
July 13, 2012
Friday the 13th
My monitor is 1920 x 1200 and the photo of the pond, under a lid of flowering water lilies, shines back into my face like a mural. It's unintentionally Monet-ish, and the blues do seem blended, as I blended Cobalt Blue with Titanium White on my double-thick glass palette so many years ago.
All week the picture has held my hand, the tops of its thick green trees becoming violet as they softly leak into the blue sky. The entire composition is a jigsaw puzzle of remembered tranquility—a highly pigmented, dreamily soft blanket that I have held up to the side of my face throughout five days of uncertainty and fear.
All week the picture has held my hand, the tops of its thick green trees becoming violet as they softly leak into the blue sky. The entire composition is a jigsaw puzzle of remembered tranquility—a highly pigmented, dreamily soft blanket that I have held up to the side of my face throughout five days of uncertainty and fear.
June 21, 2012
June 21, 2002
Ten years ago today, I picked up the phone in my office and a stranger told me that my mother had died that morning, hours before.
All the troubles of my life—more than a few of them caused by my mother—had not left a permanent stain, and my ennui and melancholy had to borrow their gusto from blundered love affairs or vague memories of my grandmother's bejewelled left hand diving for bass octaves on the piano. Coming up with something to cry about was a job.
Ten years later, I am no longer 42. I still have the Lubiam sportscoats, and even a pair of Ferragamo slip-ons, I bought during that time. Pictures show my face so narrow and young, my hair (as always) a spiky bedroom crown the color of Hires root beer extract. I was still that person my mother would position in front of her coworkers at Hertz and say, barking like an emcee, "Guess how old he is!"
Right up to the last minute, I was her baby, the last of four boys—never her favorite, but a proof of her own youth, in Raybans and jeans. I always had the sheepish grin and smooth skin of someone who was only incidentally adult.
Although my mother acknowledged in me only an echo of the traits of her first and beloved gay son, she had my watercolor sheets expensively framed, and she encouraged me—knowing she had mishandled that previous relationship. I was still a member of her team, even if I wasn't tall.
Now I have a face full of feelings. No need to stretch for purple sunsets.
You can't guess how old I am.
All the troubles of my life—more than a few of them caused by my mother—had not left a permanent stain, and my ennui and melancholy had to borrow their gusto from blundered love affairs or vague memories of my grandmother's bejewelled left hand diving for bass octaves on the piano. Coming up with something to cry about was a job.
Ten years later, I am no longer 42. I still have the Lubiam sportscoats, and even a pair of Ferragamo slip-ons, I bought during that time. Pictures show my face so narrow and young, my hair (as always) a spiky bedroom crown the color of Hires root beer extract. I was still that person my mother would position in front of her coworkers at Hertz and say, barking like an emcee, "Guess how old he is!"
Right up to the last minute, I was her baby, the last of four boys—never her favorite, but a proof of her own youth, in Raybans and jeans. I always had the sheepish grin and smooth skin of someone who was only incidentally adult.
Although my mother acknowledged in me only an echo of the traits of her first and beloved gay son, she had my watercolor sheets expensively framed, and she encouraged me—knowing she had mishandled that previous relationship. I was still a member of her team, even if I wasn't tall.
Now I have a face full of feelings. No need to stretch for purple sunsets.
You can't guess how old I am.
May 27, 2012
Memorial Day Weekend
It will always be three days of rain at the Golden Dolphin Motel in Brigantine, New Jersey. I think they played cards, or perhaps a board game. Perhaps Scrabble, although I would have remembered that because of my love of words.
My mother's pack of Viceroys, perhaps by then cozily tucked in its Robin's egg blue vinyl holder with the tiny kangaroo pouch on one side for her lighter, purred at her elbow with her cocktail, sweating on a lazy square of paper towel. The ashtrays were marbeled plastic cups the color of dog's droppings—never the wonderful tartan sand bags of an earlier period, which my mother conscripted into duty when the ball bearings in her car ashtray shot out at her one day, as if the dashboard were spitting them. Her lucklessness with spray cans and folding chairs and cars was the greatest source of her story-telling, and she collected and curated each episode, embellishing it in the retelling with genuine good humor and a kind of grace that made her—even as the butt of the joke—seem more attractive.
My mother's pack of Viceroys, perhaps by then cozily tucked in its Robin's egg blue vinyl holder with the tiny kangaroo pouch on one side for her lighter, purred at her elbow with her cocktail, sweating on a lazy square of paper towel. The ashtrays were marbeled plastic cups the color of dog's droppings—never the wonderful tartan sand bags of an earlier period, which my mother conscripted into duty when the ball bearings in her car ashtray shot out at her one day, as if the dashboard were spitting them. Her lucklessness with spray cans and folding chairs and cars was the greatest source of her story-telling, and she collected and curated each episode, embellishing it in the retelling with genuine good humor and a kind of grace that made her—even as the butt of the joke—seem more attractive.
April 16, 2012
First Hot Day
The dogs cling to the kitchen floor, their forearms and chins flattened down, like a spinning carnival ride. Indoors, nature fails the animals, and their useless instincts send them under chairs and low tables, airless and dusty. Only the paunchy bees are happy, loitering in the air around the wooden gate, friendly as drunks. The ceaseless fan, the windows opened all the way, make the dining room feel like public space: a classroom, a Sunday School picnic pavilion, a limestone cave with a plate rail.
Summer is too early. The rainy, gothic days of April never came, yet May is weeks away. We who are older remember weather that never happened. The world never did go right—my mother in 1967 opening the trailer door as she cooked Christmas dinner. The Easter snow storms and chilly July swimming of my childhood—the selfishness and perversity of dead people who were, at one time, 40. The atmosphere will always be wild, and young. But we will remember a more seasonal time, as our instincts mislead us.
Summer is too early. The rainy, gothic days of April never came, yet May is weeks away. We who are older remember weather that never happened. The world never did go right—my mother in 1967 opening the trailer door as she cooked Christmas dinner. The Easter snow storms and chilly July swimming of my childhood—the selfishness and perversity of dead people who were, at one time, 40. The atmosphere will always be wild, and young. But we will remember a more seasonal time, as our instincts mislead us.
March 27, 2012
Liquor Store Walk
Liquor store walk! A big letter "C": two blocks over, eight blocks up, and two over again.
Today I reached across a chain-link fence and pulled a newly-opened wisteria to my face. No smell. Later, balanced on a slender branch that seemed to have no source, a single fist of lilac punched through the underbrush of a neglected yard. The encounter was like a sudden meeting between old friends, as I stooped to inhale the distillation, cupping the blossom in both my hands as my mother did my face.
Advancing up the street, past the little front lawns like vernal bath mats, the boxy side porches with their out of season chairs huddled together for warmth, everything in its right place but more sharp-edged in the cooler, fresher air of this last March week, my body unfolded in the walk like a swimmer's legs and arms open to caress the sea.
Warming up, my muscles slowly reclaimed my wounded mind, subsumed it—lovingly, as a mother puts a bowl of soup down in front of a young son—restored order among the sensations, a hierarchy of personal survival. A temporary end to pain.
A cheerful walk.
Today I reached across a chain-link fence and pulled a newly-opened wisteria to my face. No smell. Later, balanced on a slender branch that seemed to have no source, a single fist of lilac punched through the underbrush of a neglected yard. The encounter was like a sudden meeting between old friends, as I stooped to inhale the distillation, cupping the blossom in both my hands as my mother did my face.
Advancing up the street, past the little front lawns like vernal bath mats, the boxy side porches with their out of season chairs huddled together for warmth, everything in its right place but more sharp-edged in the cooler, fresher air of this last March week, my body unfolded in the walk like a swimmer's legs and arms open to caress the sea.
Warming up, my muscles slowly reclaimed my wounded mind, subsumed it—lovingly, as a mother puts a bowl of soup down in front of a young son—restored order among the sensations, a hierarchy of personal survival. A temporary end to pain.
A cheerful walk.
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