Elinor Nauen

When Sandy Berrigan suddenly turned up, Liza was "viciously jealous." It's rained every Thursday this month. Sandy thinks David needs a girlfriend who will stay home and cook & clean for him. She thinks women stay married because they're afraid to live on their own. Those pesky drain flies are still flying into my eyes, despite having been sprayed & fogged. Willie McTell just asked the ticket agent to tell him the train she's on. The garden on 9th & C is circled by daisies made of soda cans. I have to run to the library & return a book: Island by Alistair MacLeod, the island being Nova Scotia. Just got my bike fixed & now it has a flat tire. It's cold! It's raining!  Read More 

While South Carolina is in the running for the last state to approve marriage equality, much has improved over the years. You can be out & not get killed. Steve's friend who preached on Sunday said he used to be racist, homophobic, antisemitic and a Republican. He's proud to have put that behind him.

Not everyone has, of course. I saw an awful lot of gun & ammo shops, & some Bible-thumping. And a Confederate bar, just a couple of miles from where my friends live.

But people in SC — & everywhere — have seen the world even if from afar on the internet or television. Nowhere is as isolated as it once was, whether it's South Carolina, South Dakota, or even the East Village. (We have Republicans now.)

Even tho I'm back (as of this morning), I have more to say about Spartanburg.

Yesterday we went kayaking on the Pacolet River, just a couple of miles from the house. Is it too late for me to become a nature girl? I jumped & screamed every time anything moved. I saw turtles, Canada geese, a squirming wasp larva, a guy fishing.

We ate at Wade's, where a 4-item vegetable plate costs $6.94; you can choose from turnip greens, macaroni & cheese, sweet potato soufflé, creamed corn, and

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Still not sure you can tell how tiny these bluebird eggs are. (I didn't touch them, by the way—that's the angle of the photo.)

Nature here not so much red in tooth & claw as indolent in lunch & dinner. I need a nap, & it's not even 90°. There's not a minute when I'm not amazed to be here, not a tree or vista that isn't satisfying, not a breath I draw that doesn't quiet me. Steve's art is to sponsor unobtrusive beauty. (Not that he laid the bluebird eggs.)

He found a dirt dauber's  Read More 

Steve's friend and neighbor was invited to preach at this church in Spartanburg & I was delighted to go. The warmest welcome you could hope for, exuberant clapping & singing, a sermon emphasizing justice not hellfire, and lunch after for the guest and his guests: mac'n'cheese (a vegetable in the deep South), green beans, apple pie, sweet tea (also chicken & ham, which I skipped). Except for mentions of Jesus, there was very little that wouldn't have been familiar in my synagogue: the emphasis on God's power over our lives, our obligation to gratitude, community, banter, blessings.  Read More 

Steve & Wayne's indoor garden has worms and frogs, as well as several dozen plants. I've been coming to this spot for more than 4 decades. I just watched a frog eat a worm. Slurp, slurp, burp. I have loved this place since the first day I was ever here, which I suppose was my first day in the deep South. I floated on the lake and was so happy I wouldn't have mind dying right then & there. I had never been happier or calmer. Steve is eating a bowl of cereal. We're going up to the mountains of western North Carolina in a little while. Wayne is eating a bowl of cereal. Mason, a 60-pound basset hound, thinks he's a lapdog. Last night I went to a program at the library, and one of the speakers turned out to be Judy Goldman, a poet I published in both of my anthologies. Spartanburg reminds me of Sioux Falls, a small untouristed city. If we weren't taking off soon, I would try to make this add up to something. I ate a bowl of cereal.

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Steve picked me up at the airport & almost the first thing we did was go to the Lincoln cemetery, which is just a couple of miles from where he lives. It's big enough that if you didn't stumble on a grave by luck, you wouldn't find it. So we called the office. "First name WHAT?" she said. "Are you sure?"

She came back to the phone a couple of minutes later: Pink Anderson, Lot B, Section 10. And there he was, complete with a guitar pick someone else had left.

No way to take this picture except close in, so I put my foot in the frame.  Read More 

Last night when I was leaving someone I know's loft on 17th St, where I'd had an errand, her neighbor had his door open, half a dozen people sitting around his kitchen table. We said howdy & he asked if I wanted a beer. Sure, why not. He was making dinner for a bunch of people  Read More 

Look! the mutant giant pigeons of San Francisco! I'm going to do a little more bird-watching. I'm trying to do one thing every day this week that is out of my routine. Yesterday I checked out the pop-up food court in the island on Broadway across from Madison Square Park: mostly pork or alcohol, or I would have eaten something.

I might be the only person who played in a punk  Read More 

"You are kept apart that you may separately be fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetrates a monetary system that beggars  Read More 

The pocket gardens full of tulips, bleeding hearts, petunias & a frog. The sun getting right in our faces. The first day it's felt like summer. The ice is gone. The man I love said he would still want me when I'm 90.

Mope No More.

In his storage space, Johnny found this amazing never-sent letter Ted Berrigan wrote to Joe Brainard back in 1982, so beautiful & heartening about poetry, art, & love, & it made me miss not just Ted but that whole era so much. Feels suddenly like so much is ending & that there's almost no one left from the really  Read More 

Our hotel was across the street from Chinatown's dragon gates & just a few blocks from City Lights. The wallpaper has the text of On the Road and there was a copy of that book and of Howl in our room. The Beats are here the way the East Village sells its punk past.

The staff is local and hip. One had "Dan Savage" under his name. I asked why. He said they're encouraged to add the name of someone or something that's a big influence on them, then started to explain who Dan Savage is. We cut him off: We live in New York, we know who Dan Savage is. Everyone in the United States knows who Dan Savage is. OK, I didn't say that last, but anyone who would  Read More 

San Francisco! Enough like New York that we feel comfortable, different enough that we felt like we'd gotten away. So many highlights: Georgia O'Keeffe at the DeYoung in Golden Gate Park, a boat ride on the bay, cable cars, the views, the shockingly steep hills.

I feel obliged to write out the name of the city every time I use it, as I hail from a town with the initials SF, yet people don't think "Sioux Falls" or for that matter "Santa Fe" when they say SF. All New Yorkers are not from Manhattan, and all SFs are not San Francisco.

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I have checked almost everything off the to-do list, have to run & buy 2 bananas & 2 sandwiches for the flight, & get cat litter. Getting (overly) organized is my way of overcoming the going-to-the airport nervous what-ifs. Once I'm on the plane, I'm fine, no anxiety about the actual flying. Beautiful weather here & there. A real vacation! Our third in 30 years!  Read More 

We're going to San Francisco tomorrow for a few days. There'll be a bar mitzvah & a studio visit to an artist friend I haven't seen since high school, possibly an A's game, & lots of relaxing. To prepare, I watched Bullitt and got directions from everywhere to everywhere. What else? Just checked in with the airline, so I know they're expecting us. If the exterminator ever shows up (drain flies! something much, much worse!), I can go to the library & drop off my bike for its spring cleaning. What am I forgetting?  Read More 

I’m not a film expert by any means, but it bothers me how many people haven’t seen or even say they “don’t like” old movies. Here’s a lightly annotated list, in chronological order, of a few I can’t imagine not enjoying. They’re movies I love and have seen several times (or more). All are a great pleasure to watch, and if they have redeeming social value, well, that’s extra.

* Sullivan’s Travels (1941). Joel McCrea plays a Hollywood director who’s successful with comedies but is dying to make a serious movie called O Brother Where Art Thou. As with all Sturges movies, there are switchbacks and guffaws galore.  Read More 

In the last 4 weeks I've broken or lost 5 pairs of sunglasses. The latest was a pair I bought on Thursday that fell off on Sunday. They were $7 on St Marks so not tragic, but I also lost my all-time favorite white-framed 60s Elizabeth Taylor ones.

I also lost a photo from maybe the 1980s where I was wearing 3 pairs of sunglasses, up & down my face.

Decluttering whether I want to or not.  Read More 

I think this was Key West.
I think it was 1982.
I think I was on my way to go snorkeling.
It was a trip with Janet.
I got so sunburned I threw up that night.
My hair didn't stand up like that on its own.
My dad was still alive.

We found so many things while clearing out Johnny's storage space.

We threw out a lot too.

Not this!

It's full-length, down to the ballet slippers he is wearing, & signed: Ted Berrigan, 1981

I hope you appreciate how much blood & sweat not to mention magical eliadic mind-power over matter bulk it took to compress 425 lbs of beautifully-aged crispy-sweet jelly-pork major-poet self-taught American mortal-coil flesh (meat!) into this dingbat-suit Oscar De La Renta whipped up personally for me to wish you HAPPY BIRTHDAY in, Stanton!
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I know my dad's family was Reform, & I know they were moderately well-to-do, so I think it's a pretty good guess that this was his synagogue.

I wonder why his family left Breslau? Was it like leaving Boston for New York? It's about the same distance & with much more opportunity in the bigger city. His parents had little Hans & Charlotte (I can't remember if she was older or younger). Was it in-law trouble? Or maybe the relatives were in Berlin & Breslau was just a waystop?

My father's been gone almost 30 years, my oldest sister more than 10—who would know the answers to any of this? Frustrating but thrilling to have new questions. And why didn't I ever wonder about this before?

Update: My mother says Dad's father had gone to Breslau to work in a department store; they weren't from there. Also, his sister was older.  Read More 

I'm reading a noir mystery called Death in Breslau, by a Polish novelist named Marek Krajewski, which I bought because it's where my father was born.

The 1900 census listed 5,363 people (just over 1% of the population) as Polish speakers, and another 3,103 (0.7% of the population) as speaking both German and Polish. The population was 58% Protestant, 37% Catholic (including at least 2% Polish) and 5% Jewish (totaling 20,536 in the 1905 census). The Jewish community of Breslau was among the most important in Germany, producing several distinguished artists and scientists.

My father was born in 1906, halfway between the founding of the German Empire in 1871 and the early Weimar Republic. In those days, I've read, relations between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were more open than they became after WWI. Jews were a part of a broad urban community where they were largely equal but also able to remain Jewish.

His family moved to Berlin, 200 miles to the west, when he was 3, & as far as I know, he never went back before being forced to leave the country in 1939.

Breslau, renamed Wroclaw, has been part of Poland since WW II.

On this date, 43 years ago, my life changed. I hitchhiked to D.C. with my friend Beth to go to a large demonstration (500,000 of us!) against the Vietnam War. We slept overnight on the Mall & she woke up next to a guy who became her boyfriend for the next 3 years. I was stuck with his friends for the day, but they soon became of lifelong importance. We all lived in a hovel in Maryland known as The House. I learned to have fun & deep conversations, I discovered I had allies in this long strange trip, I still love Steve, Forrister, Phil, Teresa, Sam, Max, Paul E, Frenchy, Billy, Bill, George, the Man of Good Humor, Mike, Jason, Elmo, JD, Wayne, even Duane.

Breathing is also hard to put into words.

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If I had been around when old blues guys like Henry Thomas were in their heyday, I suppose I wouldn’t have gone to hear them play. Surely that world would have been—was—closed to a not-wealthy white lady such as myself. And I most likely wouldn’t have made the effort. I don’t go, never did, to a lot of live music. Never seen Chuck Berry or Little Richard or B. B. King, who soon will be gone, and that opportunity lost.

Henry Thomas (1874-1930) was born in Texas into a family of freed slaves and recorded (some say originated) “Texas blues guitar” in the 1920s, playing reels, gospel, ragtime, and blues. He was a hobo who earned a living singing to railway employees and in towns he passed through. His two dozen songs were recorded in the 1920s.

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that attracts me so much about him when a lot of similar singers don’t. His songs have catchy melodies and brilliant lyrics that often rework common motifs: “She bring me coffee, she bring me tea, she bring me everything but the jailhouse key,” a line that turns up in two nearly identical songs of his. I like the contrast between his rough voice and the sweet pipes he plays, which I have learned are called quills and made from cane reeds, similar to the zampona or panpipes of Peru and Bolivia. The quills, it seems, are an old African instrument, pretty much unknown today.

Several of his songs have been recorded by others: “Fishing Blues” by Taj Mahal and the Loving Spoonful; “Honey Won’t You Allow Me One More Chance” by Bob Dylan (as “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance”); and “Bull-Doze Blues” by Canned Heat as their Woodstock hit “Going Up the Country” with different lyrics but the same music, down to the sound of the quills (but played on a flute).

I read a lot of mysteries, & I suppose like everyone who does, I am happy when I find a series I can live with for a nice long run. I like books set in places I've spent time, nothing too dark (no Mafia, please, except in Donna Leon), & good writing. And then there's something  Read More 

So beautiful & so vicious.

Achoo.

Achoo.

ACHOO.

Gradually being won over to the charms of photography. So quick & descriptive. Do I want to write a poem about this woman & her window boxes, and how long she was in taking them in & bringing them back, and wondering who that bust represents, & how much rent does she pay, & assuming she's in an unrenovated apartment where she raised at least a couple of kids, & how tight-quartered it was then & how roomy it is now, & she even has a cellphone & facebook account, & sometimes it seems so much easier & sometimes it was so much better then, & how soon I'll be her except with a cat not plants.  Read More 

The three of them were walking in front of me on 6th Street this morning, and I couldn't help but notice they had the exact same bodies. That's how I was sure it was a mother and daughters, not a nanny and charges. I was trying to take this photo surreptitiously as well as in the bright sun and with them walking away, so maybe it's not as striking here as it was to me.

Also, same coats. Read More 

to the love of my life (Johnny, although I'm pretty fond of the cat)

I had forgotten that I could go outside & sit on a bench—ah, Spring!

This is in Madison Square Park, & I could hear people delivering lectures but I didn't feel like finding out the point of these low-lying water towers. I guess I don't want to learn that yet another piece of New York has become history.

Happy Passover! (Back on Thursday.)  Read More