Two Muslims (Part One)

Well, New York continues to surprise.

Or maybe not. Coming to the city as a new (or perhaps altered) person, I’m not sure what was here before that I couldn’t see, versus what was never here at all.

“She’s a pretty amazing person,” said Jeanne about her colleague, who conducts evaluations for people requesting asylum in the US.

Then she told me the story of a fifteen-year old girl from—where? Let’s call it Pakistan, though it could be any one of countries where fundamentalist Islam is raging.

The girl wrote the name of a schoolmate in her notebook. The family discovered it.

So?

The schoolmate was a boy.

Well, you and I would probably say “so,” and maybe even wonder whether the family had any business looking inside the girl’s notebook. Not being a parent, I don’t know if that’s standard operating procedure….

You can probably guess.

Family wasn’t pleased. So they gave the girl two options:

1.     marry a fifty-some guy whom the family would chose

2.     ritual killing by a family member

The girl chose:

       3.   get the hell outta town

Well, she did. Don’t know the story of how, but she landed in the United States. And is now in hiding because she fears her family may be sending / arranging a hit man to kill her.

That’s where Jeanne’s colleague comes in. Working for a group called Physicians for Human Rights, she does evaluations for people seeking asylum in the United States.

Which has, by the way, the largest number of petitioners for asylum of any industrialized country. About 40,000 people, if yesterday’s-read-today’s-not-findable number is correct in my memory.

And she trains young physicians and med students to do the evaluations as well.

The evaluations themselves are interesting. They’re not supposed to be therapeutic—though paradoxically, they can be. Instead, they’re meant to make the person requesting asylum relive and retell the worst of the (usually) torture that they have endured—to do it fast and dirty, as it were.

Why?

Because the person requesting asylum is gonna face a judge who is going to rule on the question—has this person truly suffered persecution or terror? Is he or she in danger, should the US deport? How convincing is the evidence? Yes, you call appeal the decision. Better, though, if you don’t have to.

The person doing the evaluation, then, becomes a psychic surgeon—applying the saws and drills to the mind and memory, extracting the most painful abuse and torture to display to the judge.

Curiously, some people find the process helpful.

Right, so Jeanne’s colleague had a problem. A fifteen-year old in hiding somewhere, without cash or food or clothes. And Super Storm Sandy bearing into the city. What to do?

Rent a car and deliver the goods, make sure the kid was safe.

Well, I did my share of snorting and some of Franny’s share as well. It seemed to call for it. Look, I don’t give a shit about culture and respecting religions and pluralism and anything else. This family? Rather, these guys—since they have completely subjugated the women?

They’re unspeakable. “Heinous,” perhaps, is the adjective that springs to mind. “Abominable,” certainly, is another alternative.

I can make a case—sort of—for why Islam developed the rules and traditions it did when it was a desert religion. A religion formed where water was precious, hospitality was a necessity not a nicety, when a harsh environment forged a harsh societal code.

Right, but now?

I’d say something that I think any woman would say. There is nothing more important than the family—the husband she has loved, the children she has born and has raised. And for a guy who is willing to kill his daughter for the “crime” of writing a boy’s name in a notebook? A guy who has sent her fleeing in terror halfway around the world, and who is hiding who-knows-where as a massive hurricane / Nor’easter / snowstorm bears down on the region? A guy who does that for his family’s “honor?”

Off with his balls!

(Stay tuned for part 2.)

Multiple Worlds

It’s one thing to be motherless, another to be familyless—and that’s how it was beginning to feel. And though the Fernández family does very well—excellently—in some areas, even exceeding my own, they can’t compete in others. Who else but Johnny has been observing my muddled attempts to open containers, waiting for my imploring eyes to lift to his. He’ll take the container, slide his fingernail under a slot hidden somewhere, and open it in seconds. Pass it back to me.

He once taught me how to fold a shirt—a shirt we were giving to a little Puerto Rican kid living up in Spanish Harlem. I’ve forgotten the process now, of course, but not the thought—is a little kid gonna care? Is he gonna see all John’s careful, neat, ordered work? Nah—it’s Christmas morning, he’s ripping into his presents, wrapping paper flying everywhere, the tape stuck to his fingers or nose!

It’s a thing with John—he can’t abide something less than tidily done.

Well, they lead crazy lives, these two. And there are more of them than me / us. So it was time to come up to a city still recovering from a disaster.

Which announced itself at the airport. Waiting for the luggage, I watched a news reporter follow a social worker around the darkened halls of one of the projects. Knocking on doors, checking on people. 60,000 people are still without power.

The gypsy cab driver, checking his GPS for directions to West End Avenue and 93.

Hunh?

A New York City cabbie can’t get to an easy mark on a grid? I begin to explain.

“Listen, just go up to whatever-that-bridge-is-that-comes-into-125^th, you know, up there in Harlem…”

“Listen, Buddy, you think I don’t know my city?”

We have a breezy confrontational exchange—quite pleasant after Caribbean gusto and cordiality, which variably turns into action.

Some of the bridges are still closed.

Oh, and the subway is jam-packed, and quite slow.

But the world of Upper West Side Manhattan is unaffected. Yes, trees are down in Central Park, and the North Woods is closed. Widow-makers, I think, and then remember that Jack told me that curiously, the branches that are resting in forks of trees—until they fall on the victim walking under them—tend to come down on perfectly still days. One of those things he had to say in lieu of “I love you….”

The supermarket, as usual, never ceases to astound. The logistics—how do they get all this stuff into the city? And what stuff it is. Pomegranates? Syrian figs? Thirty-five kinds of olives? Who buys this stuff?

And curiously, little bits of Puerto Rico are incorporated here. I’m in line at the deli, wanting my lox and bagel. The lady in front of me is ordering pinchos and then it’s my turn. Another guy takes my order.

“¿Son de cerdo o de carne de res?” asks the pincho lady.

Pork or beef?

Pure Puerto Rican Spanish, as is the pincho.

So I switch to Spanish, as does the clerk, and we’re all 2600 miles south. 

Or maybe farther. Since I enter John and Jeanne’s apartment and discover disorder, for the first time in my life. Then I see—I’m backstage, behind the scenes, and the stagehand is Ángela, the cleaning lady from Queens, via El Salvador.

Well, I’m curious about life, or rather lives, and we chat. She’s not a lady who much likes, or practices, taciturnity (what! No red squiggle? Did I get away with it, or has the computer given up on me?).

Mostly in English, some in Spanish. In fact, she’s set this stage for almost a decade now, and met and knew Franny. We talk about life—how it takes her two hours, now, to get home to Queens by subway. So she’s spending the night with her mother, up in a project in Harlem. How lucky they were that the hurricane hit Jersey, not the city. How fast the power had been restored, all things considered. How good it was to have work.

Well, last week it was the hurricane. John stood and watched through the window as the transformers blew across the river in New Jersey. “Looked like the 4^th of July,” he reports. (Note to John—tempting as they are, windows tend not to be the best places to stand afront {no, computer, I did mean that “afront”} in hurricanes.)

And yesterday it was the Nor’easter. Well, there’s snow in the Park, and this morning I was much more in Wisconsin that Manhattan. Snow on the ground, the trees losing their leaves, a dark, cold sky. Squirrels leaping branches above the urbanite dogs below.

Leave the park, and it’s city, all right, with chrysanthemums still blooming over patches of snow.

And oh, another thing different.

Marc.

Always before, this city had overwhelmed me, mocked me, doubted that anything would come of or from me. It had scorned me, or rather sniffed at me.

Wrong.

It hadn’t. I had come limping with self-doubt / self-defeat leading to the point of despair and suicide. The city had welcomed me. I had slunk back from its embrace.

My Spanish is better than Ángela’s English, and we’re saying farewell. I escort her to the door of the home that’s not mine but is; a home that is, in a way, more Ángela’ s than John or Jeanne’s.

“Mucho gusto” I say to my new friend, whom I may not see again….

Or do I say it—finally—to a city welcoming me?

Colonies—Coming and Going

Readers of this blog may have noted the absence of a new post yesterday.

Sorry—I, and most of the rest of the island, was feeling a bit the worse for wear.

No, no fight. Just the second most-ardent passion on the island.

Politics?

Yup—politics. We do ‘em with a flare, I’m happy to say. Starting with the caravanas, that snake around the island towns, blaring jingles loud enough to tumble the coconuts (seriously, that’s the name—tumbacocos,—really the speaker that dwarfs an Austin Mini….). Like so many things, it’s very colorful, unless, of course, you have anything you need to do.

Like call your boss, announce “this is where I am” and hold your phone up.

Boss will get it, of course, and hold his phone up.

You’ll commiserate, and agree to meet for lunch.

Well, this election was special, since it offered yet another chance to weigh in on the ever-pressing question of the political status of Puerto Rico.

I’ve written about the status issue before. In my first decade on the island, it was fiercely discussed. Now?

Gone underground.

Nor can I tell you why. It may be that Puerto Rico is so beset with other problems—one thinks of the 1000 murders a year (twice that of New York City) or the unemployment rate of 15%—that no one can bear to deal with another one. And, it’s true, nothing sets off the fire eater (that comefuego down here) than a brisk trot through the status issue.

Or even a stroll, which is how one of the most colorful characters did it. Long, dirty hair, baggy pants, a sign with myriad messages, and most importantly…

…a megaphone!

Look guys, I’m no one to talk—having a voice that can blow a semi from the highway—but a Puerto Rican with a megaphone is serious system overdesign…

So there he’d be, loping down the sidewalk, with his megaphone and…

…a message!

¡La colonia se va! The colony is going!

This confident pronouncement made two thirds of the political spectrum beam—if spectra can beam…

Unfortunately, it was the diametrically opposing spectra.

Both the people favoring independence and the people rooting for statehood (order by alphabet, please note!) agree on one—and only one—thing.

What we got now is a colony.

No, no—cries the middle, those defending the Free Associated State!

It’s a little like the trinity—one of those absurdities where a great deal of verbiage and intellectual energy has been spent uselessly and pointlessly.

But there are those who will fight anyone challenging the contention that Truman and Muñoz Marín sat down representing sovereign entities and negotiated a deal. One that can be…

…improved!

Rather, enhanced!

This notion is perhaps better expressed in lyrical Spanish instead of cold English.

“You mean, you don’t want to pay taxes, but want the vote, but don’t want to fight in the army, and want full parity in ALL federal programs without any of the responsibilities?”

Or words to that effect. Clearly, a gringo singularly lacking in imagination.

Well, the senator, or representative, or whoever he was, finally said, yeah! Great idea! And he was gonna go back home to Nebraska and get everybody on board with it!

For Nebraska, not Puerto Rico.

Well, it was therefore refreshing to hear—at last—a Free Associated Statehooder freely admitting it! And no less than through his very own megaphone!

Yup, so molested (molesto) was he that he bought a megaphone, and was booming out the counter-news.

¡La colonia se queda!

Was I hearing that right?

“Yup,” said Mr. Fernández, nodding his head in wonder.

The colony is staying!

Thus, for several weeks, we had megaphoned ideological discourse. Neighborhood response?

Less than pleased!

Which may be why Germán, that day, finally settled it for good. And he’s a guy of some weight.

Which may be why the colonia se va guy did nothing as Germán snatched the megaphone from his hands, slammed it on the sidewalk, and stomped it to death.

Never did find out what happened to the colonia se queda’s megaphone….

Mitt Romney, Go Right To Your Room! (Reposted)

A NOTE FROM THE WEBMASTER:

Marc is on vacation, so here's a previous post (originally published on August 17th.)

À propos of Tuesday's US presidential election, I think it apt!
-------------------------------

It was a day when unwittingly I channeled Franny.

It was a story she told me once, after she had said she was being especially nice to Molly, her dog.

Why?

Well, she had scolded Molly unknowingly the day before.

Explanation?

“Well, I got up as I always do and set about the morning chores. Fed the cats, put wood in the stove, made the bed. Put Molly out to eat and do her business. Turned on the radio, and started to make breakfast. Well, the news was just dreadful that day. And that damn Bush was trying to justify his invasion of Iraq! When I think of the sympathy and good will of the entire world after September 11 and then he has to go and squander it all and invade a foreign country under the flimsiest of excuses! And the more he spoke, the madder I got. And then he got stuck in one his sentences and couldn’t get out of it! Damn it! Well, I was pretty steamed up, and went stomping around the house….”

“So what’s that got to do with the dog?”

“Well, I went to let the dog in, and she wasn’t in sight. Then I saw her, crouching under the porch. So I stormed over there and demanded ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!’ And she just whimpered. So I looked around. No trash anywhere, so she hadn’t gotten into that. No smell, so she hadn’t rolled in anything. Just stood there with her tail between her legs, looking at me with those brown eyes….”

“Right…and?”

“Well, I realized then.  I…um…had been talking to George Bush….”

Those who knew her will understand. She could get up a head of steam.

And so can I. Rather, so did I.

Why?

Mitt Romney said yesterday that he had never paid less than 13% in taxes.

WHAT!

Here’s what I said:

YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE AND YOU HAVE JUST LOST THE ELECTION AND I AM DAMNED MAD AND DAMNED GLAD. I MADE 35, 000$ DOLLARS LAST YEAR AND I PAID 14 PERCENT ON IT! AND YOU HAVE THE FUCKING GALL TO TELL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT YOU PAY THAT MISERLY 13 PERCENT ON YOUR FUCKING QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS! 

And then…

YOU KNOW, MY FATHER WAS A REPUBLICAN, BUT HE WASN’T ANYTHING LIKE THE KIND OF SLEAZEBAG YOU ARE! HE BELIEVED IN SMALL GOVERNMENT AND FISCAL PRUDENCE AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND PAY-AS-YOU-GO AND DON’T SPEND MONEY YOU DON’T HAVE. RIGHT! SO DO I! 

Cat looks up, interested…

AND THAT’S THE WAY I RAN MY LIFE WHEN I HAD A LIFE AND HAD A JOB AND GOT UP EVERY FUCKING MORNING AT 5 AM AND WENT TO WORK. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, MITT! MY FATHER WOULD BE ASHAMED OF A PARTY OF RICH JERKS WHO ARE FILLED WITH HATE FOR ANYBODY LIKE THE HUNDREDS OF IMMIGRANT KIDS WHO ARE FILLING CHURCHES IN LOWER MANHATTAN TO APPLY FOR LEGAL STATUS AND MAKE A BETTER LIFE FOR THEMSELVES. WHO DEREGULATED THE BANKING INDUSTRY SO THEY COULD MAKE MONEY FOR THEMSELVES AND THEN THREW US INTO A DEPRESSION, WHICH PARTLY COST ME MY JOB! WHO CAN’T STAND A BLACK GUY IN THE WHITE HOUSE! SHAME ON YOU!

Storm into the kitchen, cat follows!

I could go on but…look, you get my drift.

I’m better today. I took my rain walk, and sure enough, sought refuge under one of the balconies when the predicted downpour arrived. I listened to Haydn. And then I channeled Jack.

Where’s the press? 

With about three keystrokes, I figured out the federal tax rate in 2011 for a guy making 35,000 bucks a year.

15%.

What part of this don’t people get? Don’t people know how much they pay in taxes?

“I’m not paying anything this year,” my students would say in relief on April 15.

Wrong—you’ve been paying through the nose all year. You just aren’t gonna get slugged extra.

So what am I gonna do? 

Or what are we gonna do?

Here’s my plan. Dig out your tax forms for the year 2011. Redact them—you don’t want those jerks playing around with you social security number. And when Mitt comes to town? Go to the rally wearing a big placard, with your annual salary and your tax rate written on it. 

And wave your tax returns at him. Let him take a look at what real people are paying.

Oh, and Mitt?

Go to your room. Don’t come out until you’re ready to say you’re sorry!

The wrong grass

In about twenty-four hours, I will be standing—and likely sweating—in a cardboard box, marking my ballot. I’ll fold the ballot, and drop it in a cardboard box. My finger will have been checked to assure that it hasn’t been dipped in ink. The polls will close, and members of all political parties will count by hand the ballots. They will all sign off on the vote.

Here’s the good news—we have elections as clean as mountain spring water.

Here’s the bad news. My cousin in Norway voted for president by absentee ballot.

I cannot.

Nor can some one million American citizens who reside in Puerto Rico.

Nothing to do with being Puerto Rican—Raf could vote in Florida and Wisconsin when he lived there. But—so goes the rationale—since Puerto Rico doesn’t pay federal taxes, we don’t get to vote in federal elections.

Goes a little beyond that. It seems that we are not protected by the entire constitution.

Seems a bit Orwellian, doesn’t it? Some of us are more equal than others….

What we can do, however, is shed blood for our country. And we have consistently, since the First World War. It was startling to me, when I first realized the nature of the scheme.

Our political and ruling classes trade the blood of poor Puerto Ricans for American greenbacks, many of which go into their pockets.

This is a level of cynicism I didn’t expect.

Nor is it a trivial question.

Remember W.?

You wouldn’t, if we had voted in 2000.

And now we got a guy running for president who doesn’t believe in global warming, despite the fact that it’s not just been studied but is now being lived. Try getting to the bottom of Manhattan by subway.

Oh, and it’s been a week since the storm.

We got a guy and a party that would turn back time about half a century on women’s rights and gay rights. We got a guy whose grandfather was a polygamist and who pretty much thinks the same way gramps did.

Nancy votes, Marc doesn’t.

Well, well—no one reads a blog to hear a rant. So here’s the good news.

Bamboo!

It turns out that bamboo creates the same degree of fanaticism as the UFO guys and the JFK conspiracy freaks. 

Friends, we’ve been growing the wrong kind of grass!

Our lawns are ecological disasters. We turn the lakes green due to the fertilizers we have to put on the lawns. They require enormous amounts of water. You can’t eat it.

Bamboo, on the other hand, consumes pollution. It can grow anywhere except in deserts. You can eat it. It can grow, in optimal conditions, three feet a day! And it can be used in construction, as a food for chickens (the leaves) and most importantly, for fuel.

Africa is losing a lot of forest—people are cutting trees for fuel. Bamboo, on the other hand, makes a decent charcoal, and grows back quickly. Trees, once cut, are gone.

I think it’s a tremendous idea.

Now—why can’t I vote?

A staircase to…?

Let me write a sentence that will stir no excitement in you.

I woke up this morning and walked to the beach.

Let me write a sentence that would cause elation for a score of women two blocks away, were they able to write the sentence.

I woke up this morning and went to the beach.

Sometime in the 1990’s a coworker and I were walking past a Chinese Restaurant where—now that I think about it—I’ve never seen anybody eat.

Clue number one?

“It a whorehouse upstairs,” said my coworker. “Oriental girls. Service the guys who work the cruise ships.”

Two.

I tucked the fact away, mildly repulsed. In those days, I had maybe 500 bucks to my name, a few cellos, some rugs and art. Nothing else—I was busy getting by.

(Hmm—defensive, Marc?)

I took a cruise, and did notice that the guys in the engine room were all Oriental, and wearing grey jumpsuits. And I see them from time to time in the grocery store, buying 40 or 50 packages of—what else?—Ramen noodle soup.

Then I started to work at Wal-Mart, which meant that I passed the building every morning at 5AM. And yes, the doors to the staircase leading to the upper floors were open. Music, on occasion, would be blaring out.

Clue number three?

Odd time for a legitimate business to be open, I’d think, and then remember.

Then Franny broke a hip. I went to hang with her in the nursing home. And met, on one of those occasions, a woman whose son had written a book.

An excellent book, in fact, on an abominable crime.

Slavery.

“Scholars estimate the total number of modern-day slaves is greater than at any point in history.”

That’s what E. Benjamin Skinner wrote.

Well, you read a fact like that and you’re pretty much compelled to find out more. So I bought two copies of the book. Read them several times. Went to look for a copy just now, and realized that I had likely thrown them out. No, not on literary or factual grounds, but because they had been consumed by others, smaller though more numerous.

Termites.

But as I remember, there are many faces and forms that slavery takes. Yes, sexual slavery is one of them. And gets most of the spotlight. But actually, wage slavery is more common. 

Remember the company store? You worked at the factory, lived in tenements the factory put up, paid rent to the factory, and had to buy in the company store. A variant of the scheme still goes on.

Circle back. A rumored whorehouse, curtains drifting from the windows of the upper floor windows, and a wide, inviting 5AM staircase, leading to…?

Oh, and by the way, I’ve never seen any Oriental women in Viejo San Juan. Tourists, yes. The jumpsuit guys, yes. Where are the ladies, the “sex workers,” if they exist, getting their Ramen noodle soup?

The Internet?

So it was more than likely, I thought, piecing this picture together, that, in fact, there is a whorehouse, there are sex workers / slaves, and guys in jumpsuits are using or abusing them.

Well, I say this with no pride. Did I do what Skinner did—here’s another part of his story:

He had first flown in under enemy radar with an Evangelical group purporting to buy slaves en masse to secure their freedom. Afterwards, on his own, he hitched a ride on a U.N. Cessna to the frontlines of the north-south Sudanese civil war. There he met Muong Nyong. Like Skinner, Nyong was 27 at the time, and pondering what to do with the rest of his life. Unlike Skinner, he had spent the first part of that life in bondage.

In this, he was following family tradition—his great-great-grandfather was a Quaker as well as a fiery abolitionist.

Well, Skinner is a better guy than I am.

For those interested in excuses, I was busy, the last few years, helping my mother die, waiting for Wal-Mart to “realign” me, losing my mind, and writing a book.

Not sure that’s good enough.

Moral proximity. If there’s a slave in your neighborhood, you gotta do something. And in my neighborhood?

Another thought. Virtually every woman student of mine would tell me they planned to visit Chinatown, should they be visiting or traveling to New York.

No, not for the food.

For the handbags.

And where were those bags produced? And by whom? And under what conditions?

Ladies, you may be just a guilty as the Ramen soup guys.

Or as guilty as I. Though doesn’t it seem curious that a gay guy, an English teacher, would know something like where the Oriental guys get “serviced?”

So maybe some others are a little more guilty than I? Like the boys in blue (actually, black) with the guns in their holsters and the handcuffs and bullet-proof vests?

Aren’t open doorways and blaring music and 5AM all facts to stir curiosity in police minds? 

Here’s my last thought.

A flash mob.

Everybody has an intelligent phone, everyone is on Facebook and Twitter. I won’t do it alone, but I’ll sure join a couple hundred women in the plaza and march down the sidewalk, course up the stairs, and fling doors open.

…even bring the chain cutter.

Ben—whaddya think? 

Bached

Well, if the hurricane is over, somebody should run down and tell the ocean the news.

The surf is as strong as ever. This morning, on the trot, I saw four rows of cresting waves, each wave perhaps 15 feet tall. It was a bit like being in an animated Japanese woodblock print.

If there’s music that only the young could write (see yesterday’s post) there’s also music only the old could create. And in the end, I always go back to Bach.

Started out with the Magnificat (WHAT!! the computer has just red-squiggled Magnificat and suggests instead magnificent!! Dear Reader, we live in degenerate and dangerous days!)—a tremendous piece of music.

And it’s music written with a sure hand by a man in full command of his talents.

Right, so I sat and watched the waves this morning, and heard Bach, and thought that perhaps there is no other composer who manages to capture a particular and wonderful emotion.

Exaltation.

When those trumpets start blaring away, in the first movement of the Magnificat, I’d better be in private, not public. My hands are incapable of remaining at my side, but are instead flung up in triumph to the heavens. I am a Roman emperor, striding in victory into the city. It’s aural orgasm.

Well, the Magnificat lasts only 20 minutes or so, and I wanted a bit more. I’d been living down in the “H’s” on my iPod (damn thing is jittery, so it was easier just to stick to Haydn and parts, and not try to move around too much) but I’d made the effort to move to the “B’s.” (Which is, of course, a pretty crowded neighborhood, in the city of classical music ….) So, time for the Mass in B minor.

To which I came late, as did Bach. (Sorry, combining me and Bach in the same sentence feels just a bit pretentious…)  In fact, I had heard it years ago, and stuck it in the “later” folder in my brain.

Warning to hypoglycemics—eat a FULL meal before you enter the concert hall. Even so, you may want to sneak in some jellybeans to munch on—it’s gonna be an hour and a half easily.

My main impression from that performance? A sense of failure as a listener. It was common in those days—I’d go to a concert with some heavy-duty music and I’d be in seat 33 in row F. Also, I’d be at the beach, mentally—at any rate far away. Not paying attention. Not giving the great music its due.

So the Bach went on and on—hey look at the trumpet player turn completely red wow is he gonna stroke out?—and I’d sit there—'bet the third chair cellist studied with Karl Fruh'—trying to listen—'he’s gotta be hung' days—and well, you get the picture.

I left feeling like I’d been Bached.

I wish someone had pointed out that there’s evidence that Bach never intended it all to be performed on a single occasion. And it might have helped if I had known that Bach completed it in his last year, though parts of the work were written years before.

So I sat, this morning, and thought about the hurricane that has left and is still going on. The people sitting alone in dark, cold apartments. The people who, as one commentator said, are not the homeless but now are.

Also thought about a cellist who morphed into a writer and didn’t go away, though why, I’ll never know. Mostly, he’s stubborn, I guess.

And there’s a lady who went away, and is now back. She’s stirring around, and will stir further, I’m sure. We go to the beach, most days, on the trot that has now incorporated the plunge. “Moe” I say to her, and she says, right—I’m on that.

Moe writes his thing.

“Brian,” I tell her.

Ditto.

“Let’s get into that water,” she says, and I throw her / me in, diving head first into a crashing wave, which spins us around and soaks us in its power, and we race laughing and exalted to the shore.

We’ve been Bached.

Reflections of a reflection

It’s a curious thing about Facebook. People post stuff that drives me nuts. “Eating mofongo at La Fondita de Mofongo!!!!!!” Usually accompanied by a photo.

(Any of you up there who have never eaten mofongo should go immediately online to get your ticket to Puerto Rico. Mmmmmm….)

Which is to say that, no, the world doesn’t need to know that somebody you friended in a weak moment is eating mofongo.

It may be, of course, that food comments are like golf and psychotherapy. Interesting only to the players….

On the other hand, comments about what people are listening to are interesting—to me, at least. And Cousin Brian did pique my interest with his comment about Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number One. Well, although I have it on the iPod (made by Apple!), it’s something I never hear. But if Brian—no slouch whatsoever in the classical music world—likes it, it’s gotta be good. I decide to check it out.

Not before dealing with a very snarky Mr. Fernández, who is busy peering at the cutting board in the kitchen. He holds up a little white part of a hand mixer.

“There used to be a little plastic bag with tiny little screws around here, and I DON’T SEE IT NOW!”

“Good morning, dear,” I say. I’ve been told about emotional hijacking.

“WELL, WHERE IS IT!”

“Slept well, I trust?”

“Well, it better turn up,” he says, and stomps off to the bathroom.

And this is before coffee.

So the opening of the piano concerto pretty well matched my internal emotional landscape. Think New Jersey on Monday….

And Brian also had said that Chopin had written the concerto at age eighteen.

Well, there is some music that only the young can write, I thought today, on the trot. It’s sort of like love—you may experience it many times in your life, but not like the first time.

And this is definitely a young man’s work. And—trademark Chopin—it has a theme that just squeezes your heart.

I was listening to it today since I had decided that the piece was sort of like all of people you really like, whom you kiss (when appropriate / possible), and say “hey, we really gotta get together” and then never do.

Until the next time.

There’s music like that, too. You hear a piece, think ‘wow, that’s great’ and make a promise to yourself. You’re gonna listen to it often.

The next time being when NPR decides to play it.

All right, so what’s the story of the piece? Well, Chopin wrote it in 1830, and performed it in one of his “farewell” concerts.

Where was he going?

Off to Paris. In fact, he never returned to Poland, but became part of the “Great Emigration.”

Hunh?

Ah, the joys of the hyperlink! One click and I know, or rather remember. Poland got sliced up between Austria, Russia and Prussia in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Most of the elite packed up and left, so that Polish political and intellectual activity was really mostly French.

Well, something to know! Now then, what’s the skinny on Chopin?

Well, here I commend you to Wikipedia, which has an excellent article on him. But to make it short, it doesn’t seem to have been a very happy life. And it’s definitely not a healthful (in the sense of full of health) life. Sickful, in fact.

His death certificate says tuberculosis, though I prefer the term “consumption” of the 19^th century.

And what of his love life? Also not much fun. Yeah, the affair with George Sand that we all know about, but she became more of a nurse than lover, at the end. And they quarreled and separated at the end—she didn’t even attend his funeral.

Any money? Well, he dies poor, though at least not alone.

And there must have been some comforts. A raging intellect, for example, and good friends. One of them the painter Eugène Delacroix, who plays in this little episode, sent by Sand through Wikipedia:

Chopin is at the piano, quite oblivious of the fact that anyone is listening. He embarks on a sort of casual improvisation, then stops. 'Go on, go on,' exclaims Delacroix, 'That's not the end!' 'It's not even a beginning. Nothing will come ... nothing but reflections, shadows, shapes that won't stay fixed. I'm trying to find the right colour, but I can't even get the form ...' 'You won't find the one without the other,' says Delacroix, 'and both will come together.' 'What if I find nothing but moonlight?' 'Then you will have found the reflection of a reflection.' The idea seems to please the divine artist. He begins again, without seeming to, so uncertain is the shape. Gradually quiet colours begin to show, corresponding to the suave modulations sounding in our ears. Suddenly the note of blue sings out, and the night is all around us, azure and transparent. Light clouds take on fantastic shapes and fill the sky. They gather about the moon which casts upon them great opalescent discs, and wakes the sleeping colours. We dream of a summer night, and sit there waiting for the song of the nightingale ..

Hey, that girl can write!

OK—that’s a consolation, having company like that, and an interesting woman, as Sand certainly was. But was it enough?

Here’s a photo of him in the year of his death:

I'm voting no.