Why Are Female Poets Nuts?

I came on it in two ways. The first occurred last Sunday, when I was coaching a student on a poem by a poet unknown to me: Jane Kenyon. Paradoxically, the poem is called Happiness:

There’s just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never

knew about, who flies a single-engine plane

onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes

into town, and inquires at every door

until he finds you asleep midafternoon

as you so often are during the unmerciful

hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing

a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,

and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots

in the night.

                  It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea,

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Well, it was that image, that “wineglass, weary of holding wine,” that stuck in my mind. So much so, that it wasn’t the name of the poet but her image of the wineglass that allowed me to track Kenyon down.

And if Kenyon knew about happiness, it was hardly the neighbor who dropped every morning for coffee, gossip, and laughter. For Kenyon, happiness was the ghost she saw slipping into an abandoned house at dusk.

How depressed was she? Well, consider a famous poem: Having it Out with Melancholy. The first stanza clues you in pretty quickly:

When I was born,

you waited behind a pile of linen in the nursery,

and when we were alone, you lay down

on top of me, pressing

the bile of desolation into every pore.

Kenyon, born in Ann Arbor but living in New Hampshire, died early at age 47 from leukemia. But the question troubling my afternoon today is whether she also suffered from the Sylvia Plath effect.

The idea goes back to Aristotle, if not before, but got named in 2001 by James C. Kaufman; Wikipedia has this to say about it:

Kaufman's work further demonstrated that female poets were more likely to suffer from mental illness than any other class of writers. In addition, female poets were more likely to be mentally ill than other eminent women, such as politicians, actresses, and artists.

Well, looking at the 20^th century, it’s not hard to see that there were seriously troubled women out there, often writing extraordinary poetry. Besides Plath, there was Anne Sexton, Sara Teasdale, and not so much a raft as a cruise ship of others.

Writing, in fact, is on the list of the ten most depression-prone professions. But it seems that female poets outstrip all others for being nuts. Why?

Well, unless you have the fortune to be born with…well, a fortune, poetry is a pretty awful profession. And what happens if you don’t particularly want or like to teach?

You’re also digging, digging into some of the messiest terrain around—your own psyche. Worse, there’s the terrible fact that there is all too often an inverse relationship between a poem’s intrinsic worth and its financial worth. Which is to say that bad poetry sells.

Then there’s not much support out there for being a poet. Novels are sexy, everybody venerates a Hemingway or Steinbeck. But a poet, who has produced a slim little book of sixty poems or so—the fruit of two years of sitting alone with her thoughts and feelings? It sort of pales next to a 600-page novel.

Right—so now we get to chicken and egg: does the poetry create the madness, or do crazy people decide to become poets? Well, the age-old question has now been solved, and by a Harvard man no less. Here, from the American Psychological Association, is what the authors have to say:

There isn't a link between mental illness and the actual process of creating, says psychiatrist Albert Rothenberg, MD, of Harvard Medical School, who has studied Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and other highly creative individuals. Rather, he argues that mental illnesses such as anxiety, thought disorder and depression disrupt the cognitive and emotional processes necessary for successful creativity.

I agree—but there’s something that has to be acknowledged: it may be that the depression of creative people is distinct from the depression of the rest of us. Business people, plumbers, doctors have some external yardstick against which they can measure themselves. But creative people—and especially artists and poets—have no such thing. The question, “am I any good?” awaits by the bedside in the morning, perches on the shoulder for the rest of the day, sours your morning coffee, and stalks you, side by side, throughout the day.

It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life—resolve the issue with the cello, that had led to self-inflicted bites on my arms, and three or four spectacular choked auditions. In the space of two or three weeks, I went through madness and came out the other end.

Two or three weeks?

Sorry—a lifetime….

The Anonymous Rich

Well, it was a different age, but was it any better? Because consider, Pondering Readers, that I have spent two days in two rich men’s houses, which were designed to impress, edify, educate the likes of me: the art / culture seeking public.

The first was J. P. Morgan and his library, which fittingly is in midtown—on 36^th street. He was, after all, the older man, and his instruction to the architect Charles McKim was simple and direct—“build me a gem.” Right, so McKim got down to work and did just that, and the result is a truly grand space, housing a magnificent collection. It also is a space that seems truly personal; on his desk was an ornamented box that I was convinced had held cigars, and perhaps still did. It was the only thing I longed to touch, but the steely eyes of the guard seemed always upon me. But I read in Wikipedia today that in fact he smoked dozens of large Havanas every day. Was any trace of the smoke lingering in the room? Probably not, but the imagination easily supplied it….

And Morgan, of course, died a rich man—as he had been born. Here’s Wikipedia:

At the time of his death, he only held 19% of his own net worth, an estate worth $68.3 million ($1.39 billion in today's dollars based on CPI, or $25.2 billion based on 'relative share of GDP'), of which about $30 million represented his share in the New York and Philadelphia banks. The value of his art collection was estimated at $50 million.

Upon his death, the majority of Morgan’s art collection went either to the Metropolitan Museum of Art—which curiously had just happened to make him president in the years before his death—or was sold to pay estate taxes. OK—so who bought it? Enter the second rich guy….

Henry Clay Frick, unlike Morgan, was born with only a pewter spoon in his mouth. From a Mennonite background growing up near Pittsburgh, he had a good head for numbers. He also had a vision, and managed to team up with a good friend, Andrew W. Mellon, to buy some beehive ovens to turn coal into coke. And that was useful because the country needed coke to power the steel industry, which was booming. And so, on his honeymoon, Frick took a little time off—business is business, after all—to meet a guy named Andrew Carnegie. Yes, that Carnegie. In one of the interesting glimpses of how Wikipedia works or doesn’t work, here’s its description of their relationship:

This meeting resulted in a partnership between H. C. Frick & Company and Carnegie Steel Company, and was the predecessor to United States Steel. This partnership ensured that Carnegie's steel mills had adequate supplies of coke. Frick became chairman of the company. Carnegie made multiple attempts to force Frick out of the company they had created by making it appear that the company had nowhere left to go and that it was time for Frick to retire. Despite the contributions Frick had made towards Andrew Carnegie's fortune, Carnegie disregarded him in many executive decisions including finances.[7] Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie developed a relationship when working together.

Am I the only one thinking that “Frick and Carnegie developed a relationship when working together” is somewhat at war with the earlier statement “Carnegie made multiple attempts to force Frick out of the company they had created?” At any rate, I was curious enough to run over to the Frick collection history page to hear a more biased / less sanitized chronicle of the affair. And here it is:

Frick grew disenchanted with Carnegie and became honorary chairman of the board in December 1894. Five years later, Carnegie abolished Frick's position as chairman of the H. C. Frick Coke Company and the two went to court over the value of Frick's interest. In March 1900 a settlement was reached in which Frick received $30 million in securities. In 1901, having moved from Pittsburgh to New York, Frick became one of the directors of J. P. Morgan's newly incorporated United States Steel Corporation; his official biographer noted that he was the largest individual railway stockholder in the world.

OK; here’s the time to say it. Henry Clay Frick was a true son of a bitch. Nor am I the only one to say it: portfolio.com ranked him as number 11 of the worst CEOs in American history. And what did he do that was so objectionable?

Well, we can start out with the Johnstown Flood of 1889. Johnstown, Pennsylvania, sits at the bottom of a wedge of mountains, which at one time had a river run through it. So sometime in the early part of the 19^th century, The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had built a dam above the city; the resulting reservoir, the land around it, and the dam itself was then sold to a group of rich guys—some connected to Carnegie Steel—who made a lovely little resort up there, overlooking the town. What didn’t they do? Well, the engineer of the steel mill in the town kept telling them—do some work on that dam. But things got a little busy, and there was heavy rain and a big snow melt off, and guess what happened? Right—one of the largest natural disasters in US history: here’s you-know-who on the subject:

The total death toll was 2,209, making the disaster the largest loss of civilian life in the United States at the time. It was later surpassed by fatalities in the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Some historians believe the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane and 1906 San Francisco earthquake killed more people in the U.S. than did the Johnstown Flood, but the official death toll was lower.

Right, and an earlier sentence from the same Wikipedia article has the chilling information:

Henry Clay Frick led a group of speculators, including Benjamin Ruff, from Pittsburgh to purchase the abandoned reservoir, modify it, and convert it into a private resort lake for their wealthy associates.

OK—so what to do? Frick and his friends organized a little group to throw some money at the victims. Here’s Wikipedia again:

When word of the dam's failure was telegraphed to Pittsburgh, Frick and other members of the club gathered to form the Pittsburgh Relief Committee for assistance to the flood victims, as well as determining never to speak publicly about the club or the flood. This strategy was a success, and Knox and Reed were able to fend off all lawsuits that would have placed blame upon the club’s members.

Oh yes, and Carnegie built the town a library….

Things were even uglier in the Homestead Strike of 1892, when Frick sent 300 Pinkerton agents up the river to crash through the pickets and stop the strike. What happened? At least nine people were killed, a riot ensued, and the state militia had to send 8000 guys to break up the affair. Understandably, people felt that this was all a bit excessive, and Frick became known as the most hated man in America. No surprise that Emma Goldman’s lover tried unsuccessfully to kill the guy in July of that year. And so it’s not for nothing has “frick you” become a substitute for a harder, though one-letter-shorter, epithet.

And one feels it, walking into the museum. There’s a chilliness that no heat can burn off—the granite or limestone or whatever-it-is seems to exude cold. But what is there, in that museum, is meant to impress.

Well, it’s Art History 101—so anyone who wants to skip the Met but still see the great Masters in a couple of hours now has that alternative. True, some rooms make me want to run screaming out of them—why is it that Fragonard always stimulates the gag reflex. And there is an especially large and gauzy Renoir that has to live in a hallway (along with a Degas and assorted other masters). But consider—I went to visit a show that had one Vermeer: The Girl with the Pearl Earring. But the museum? It has three Vermeers, and if memory serves, there are only about 70 works of the master left on the planet.

For all his bastardry, I can’t help thinking that Frick had an edge over the modern equivalent, the hedge fund mogul. Because what greeted me this morning, over the print edition of The New York Times? Here it is:

Grisly Warhol Painting Fetches $104.5 Million, Auction High for Artist

It is, Astonished Reader, a silkscreen diptych of a car crash. And also this week, a Francis Bacon triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold for over 140 million bucks. And to whom? Here’s what Roberta Smith, in another article in The Times, had to say:

Auctions have become the leading indicator of ultra-conspicuous consumption, pieces of public, male-dominated theater in which collectors, art dealers and auction houses flex their monetary clout, mostly for one another. The spectacle of watching these privileged few (mostly hedge fund managers and investment-hungry consortiums, it seems) tossing around huge amounts of money has become a rarefied spectator sport. These events are painful to watch yet impossible to ignore and deeply alienating if you actually love art for its own sake. 

Emblematic, isn’t it? Frick was at least a real life, fire-breathing, sulfurous-stenching bastard. But a hedge fund manager?

Please….

A Musical Labyrinth

OK—here’s what it looked like….

But that was hardly the point—the piece was billed as an “audio installation,” and it was done by the Canadian artist Janet Cardiff, who had used the motet Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis in 1570 as the basis for her piece. And it was a simple concept, really—the motet is composed for forty separate voices. Yup, forty people all singing a different part. And Cardiff had recorded each part, and played each through a separate speaker. Thus, you have forty disembodied voices—all joined together to sing one amazing work.

The idea was that you could walk around from one speaker to another, and experience the work as if you were both singing or—alternatively—walking around and through a choir.

Did I do it, the two times I heard the piece?

Nah—as an orchestral musician, I know the feeling of being in a cello section, and hearing the distorted sounds of various members and sections of the orchestra. But yes, there were people moving around—attracted perhaps by this voice or another. As well, some people were slowly circling the room; one father was allowing a girl held in his arms to point out where she wanted to go.

But I wanted to experience the work as Tallis had intended me to—with a choir behind me, ahead of me, and on both sides. Actually, there are eight choirs of five voices each; here’s a great description via Wikipedia:

It is most likely that Tallis intended his singers to stand in a horseshoe shape. Beginning with a single voice from the first choir, other voices join in imitation, each in turn falling silent as the music moves around the eight choirs. All forty voices enter simultaneously for a few bars, and then the pattern of the opening is reversed with the music passing from choir eight to choir one. There is another brief full section, after which the choirs sing in antiphonal pairs, throwing the sound across the space between them. Finally all voices join for the culmination of the work. Though composed in imitative style and occasionally homophonic, its individual vocal lines act quite freely within its fairly simple harmonic framework, allowing for an astonishing number of individual musical ideas to be sung during its ten-to-twelve minute performance time. The work is a study in contrasts: the individual voices sing and are silent in turns, sometimes alone, sometimes in choirs, sometimes calling and answering, sometimes all together, so that, far from being a monotonous mess, the work is continually presenting new ideas.

The work is not often performed, as it requires at least forty singers capable of meeting its technical demands. The discipline that comes with performing the masterpiece is highlighted in the importance of the conductor and the performers alike. Whilst performers are distributed throughout a venue, the conductor becomes truly the hub for the piece throughout, as often there is little or no visibility between the performers, and a large venue will present acoustical challenges, not regarded with traditional choirs co-located.

OK—so what’s the experience like? Well, you’re awash in sound, even though the piece starts with a single voice from the back. Part of it is the echo—and for an echo, what better place that the Fuentidueña Chapel in The Cloisters? 12^th century, almost austere, with the dominating presence of a painted crucifix hanging from the opening of a half dome. Thus, it was a combination of new and old—the music and architecture matching, the speakers and technology varying.

And the piece itself has always struck me as one of the strangest I know. It’s surprisingly dissonant, and seems almost modern at times. It always feels as if Tallis has slowed down time—everything is a sonic deep underwater oceanic swell. You’re as suspended as the crucifix, though you are, in fact, experiencing the passion.

Because it is deeply moving music—less music than experience. And about music, words fail. Can I tell you transcendent, as Jim Dwyer, a writer in The New York Times called it? Of course. But it also feels as if Tallis is working out some psychic odyssey—it has the feeling of being a musical labyrinth. And what’s a labyrinth? Here’s what one writer had to say:

The Sacred Labyrinth Walk, Illuminating the Inner Path, is the ancient practice of "Circling to the Center" by walking the labyrinth. The rediscovery of this self alignment tool to put our lives in perspective is one of the most important spiritual movements of our day. Labyrinths have been in use for over 4000 years. Their basic design is fundamental to nature and many cultures and religious traditions. Whatever one's religion...walking the labyrinth clears the mind and gives insight. It calms people in the throes of life's transitions.

For me, Tallis had stepped through the centuries, taken me by the hand, and led me—eyes closed, body swayed—through to the center; then he had taken me back to the same shore. Or rather, not to the same shore, though it was and wasn’t. Why? Because I was different.

Before I die (reposted)

(Note from the webmaster: Mr. Newhouse is on holiday, so here's an older post of his, originally published on July 30th.)


Well, she’s a talented lady, our Candy Chang.

Inventive too. Also fecund. Go onto her web page, and you’ll see (http://www.candychang.com).

And she fills me with envy! Why can’t I think of stuff like that? She’s out there in the community doing these goofy projects, but they’re wonderful. She’s stenciling “this would be a nice place for a tree” on barren sidewalks—tremendous idea, one we could use in Puerto Rico, which has major tree phobia.

Or what about putting the little red and white adhesive name tags—the kind that say “Hello! My name is _______”—on abandoned buildings? Only hers say “I wish this was a __________.”

But my favorite?

Before I die.

Here’s a building I’ve actually seen.

Unless I’m wrong, it’s Fredericksburg, St. Croix. But following Candy’s lead in New Orleans (where the project started), it became this.

What’s the big idea?

Well, Candy suffered a personal loss—know that one!—and decided that most people don’t think about the important stuff. What, she wondered, do I want to do or see before I die? And why did it take a major loss to force her to the question?

Shouldn’t we all be thinking that?

So she created a stencil—wow, that girl is a dab hand (hi, Franny!)—with the E-xacto knife! 

As you can see, it took off.

And it comes in Spanish, too!

It’s totally neat. 

So here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna send this to my friend Sonia (Nick has an abandoned house in Old San Juan) with the message…

…Let’s do it!

Oh, and my three wishes?

1.     finally see Harry.

2.     watch Helen Mirren in the role of Franny in the film version of Life, Death and Iguanas.

3.     attend the trial in the Hague of George W. Bush for crimes against humanity!

To the dungeon with Friends

So when did it start?  I wrote yesterday about the importance of routine, of structure. And then the day I had planned for myself fell completely apart. I did something I rarely do…

Cleaned the house!

And I am horrified to state that I’ve barely begun. This despite devoting three hours to the task.

Today, I woke, did the trot, and came back home. With only an hour before my class at eleven, I decided not to write, but to read the newspaper. Had a good class—during which, incidentally, the office ghost (yes, I’m serious, there is one…) opened the door of the conference room we were using—came home and went to eat and write a post.

What did I do? Wasted an hour and a half talking to the owner and an acquaintance from years back.

Felt annoyed and ungrounded. I also remembered something that had troubled me about yesterday’s post.

It’s not either / or but and / both.

I had compared, yesterday, depression to diabetes, and suggested that urging Pablo to think positively was like urging a diabetic to lower his blood sugar.

And I believe that.

I also think that to leave one familiar but dangerous place and venture to another unknown but better place takes real work.

I know, because I did this, the computer tells me, in the last week of February.

Readers of Iguanas will know that I lost my mind in December after a bad experience with an antidepressant. In the last week of February, I willed myself to allow something / someone to replay, really, relive the experience. I consented to a couple weeks of emotional maelstrom, going from terror to hysteria to wild fits of laughter to elation; someone had their finger on the emotional fast forward button.

Was it an existential edge? A mystical experience? A spiritual journey?

I knew two things. I had to fight as hard as I could, and trust with utterly no reason to think I wasn’t willing myself into madness.

And I wrote like crazy.

This is what I wrote, on a Wednesday, the third day of that week. (By the way, I just thought—is that true? Did I remember correctly, that the 29^th of February was a Wednesday? Well, I just checked. Yes.) 

Even now, I find it chilling.

To the Dungeon with Friends

It took me perhaps thirty seconds to type the words above.

Why?

Because I am relearning everything.

It’s like being a stroke patient.

OK—here’s the process that you know so well, and I don’t.

First—assuming that you have opened the program Word (I didn’t, I did PowerPoint first) you must make a decision. Save As or not? Then you must move the cursor. Your finger must be on the touch pad. You must move it slowly to the top left of the screen, where there is….

Hey, let’s see what is that thing called? The Office Button? Whatever it is, I really hate it. It’s about as stupid as Peruvian furniture with all of those damn curlicues.

STOP!

“You got distracted. Return to your task. Where is your finger? What were you trying to do?”

“Save a document, Sir.”

“Then what do you need to do?”

So enters the first of the friends, Susan, who writes, “how are you doing?” This, for Susan, is an unusual phrase. Or perhaps not. The phrase of hers that most sticks in my mind is “you are observing fear like a cultural anthropologist. That’s a mystic.” Oh, and “Bach when I can’t think, Beethoven when I’m….”

Emotionally troubled? Confused? Can’t remember the exact word.

Also got distracted.

So it might have been Susan, who stuck her finger on the iPod today, and pressed the Bach violin partitas. I’m relearning my mind as well—I don’t know anything.

Well, to be digressive (and I certainly am these days, or have I just noticed it?) the lady who’s playing, Lucy Van Dael, well, may not be quite a lady. She takes those things on, grabs the sheets of music and throws them into her violin and then she roars. She’s a beast, and like a beast, can also be tender. Think licking her cub….

And she must have wanted out of her cage really bad, because even though she started decently with the first movement of the D minor partita, she growled and then attacked the chaconne.

So we’re off, it’s raining a bit, and I do my rain walk. I walk all the streets of the city, and if it rains, well, there’s usually a balcony.

Rain holds off, but that demon who has snatched Bach and put him in her paws is now flailing him in her mouth. Or rather, she’s extracting every last drop of blood and savoring it.

So am I.

And we’re three streets up, she and I, and I turn the corner, and that magical moment in the chaconne arrives.

Right—just as I turn the corner.

So who’s playing?

Well, we go on, if it’s we, and get to the next corner. I’ve passed Mona’s house, who’s moved but is still there, and I wonder about the music we played together and where that went and then I turn the corner—corner again, written through tears—and I stop and think…

‘God I miss it!”

Playing.

Most, the feeling after playing.

I’m in tears, and once again, by the sea.

I’m close to one fort whose door I have petitioned and moving to the second fort, whose door I have pounded.

Enter Margaret, whose words have resonated as much as Susan’s. “You fearlessly break down the barriers between reality and what we don’t see or refuse to see….” As well as “has it ever occurred to you that you are too hard on yourself?”

Well, I or the violinist am or are walking to the fort. And I’m remembering yesterday, with my students.

They are, of course, teaching me more than I they. And I had told them yesterday.

Particularly interesting because I had struggled to be mindful all day before leaving like mad (as in insane.) And then arrived to face the most challenging student of my 20-year career.

I charge the law firm 30 dollars an hour. For this student, the rate should be 300. But who should bill whom?

“You passed the test,” I say, as the class concluded. 

She had told me how to make blood sausage.

Also, she had told me what teaching is. Not that I didn’t know—I often say, “I don’t teach, I observe learning….”

Just had never done it.

And this girl is Harvard.

The next class—equally good, though much easier. Then, from the struggle of the learning or the teaching (don’t know which way I mean that) I went to plead exhaustion from my third student.

Who tells me that she’s busy—can’t take class.

I’m punchy, and I have the silliest conversation in the world, or my world at least. Actually, there are three of us, because the secretary is a yard away, giggling and smiling at the insaneness of it all. (I wrote inaneness, computer corrected to insaneness—you choose….)

“I do hope that secretary doesn’t know English,” I say, knowing that she does. And then, leaving….

“I don’t think I know your name…”

She tells me, and I tell her…

“I’ll forget, you know….”

She nods, and I leave and go to the bathroom.

The door slams and I think “SHIT! MINDFULNESS!!!”

And I am laughing hysterically. And then I remember the bathroom at Wal-Mart, where I, so depressed, had thought, ‘they’ll have come get me…’

That thought does not help.

Or does it? 

For I am laughing so hard that truly….

OK, breathe, concentrate, locate my hand, reach for the doorknob, open the door, feel the motion of air brush across hand, exit.

And BAM!

I’ve slammed the goddamn door again!

Well, go out the door that says Pull and which in fact I push (though I did get out) and I am laughing as hard as the Buddha who sits on my desk. Fortunately, just as silently.

Or loudly.

I don’t know.

Nobody looked funny at me….

‘So what is it about bathrooms, Marc,’ I think, as the lioness chews her Bach. At this point, I’ve gotten to the second fort. I decide, yeah—I’ll go there.

It had been the scene for which I replayed the scariest moment of my recent life.

Oh, and Margaret had that day pressed Brahms, Piano Concerto Number One.

“Porn music” I had thought, starting out that day.

“Another one of my fuckers” I had snarled, getting to Cristo Street.

“On the fucking way to Golgatha,” I had raged, walking the path to El Morro.

And I am being flailed.

By the wind—my worst fear is hurricanes.

By the music, which has become a chain.

It is a brutal SM scene, this trudge to the gate of the dungeon, and two people—slaves as well as I—are in front of me. I drop my sunglasses and am whipped, lashed. And I later will write…

“FUCKING A!  I’ll finally see blood!”

But that’s after the fact, because I am told to go, to approach, and…

…to follow the slaves ahead of me.

They cross the moat.

I cross the moat.

They touch the door.

I form a fist and pound on it.

Or not. Because the “I” is not there, it’s the HE.

“Fucker thinks he did it!”

Now a fucker as well as a slave.

“Turned the fucker around and walked him over the moat,” I write later.

And the slave is walked and then he whimpers, “how did I get through  it?”

BECAUSE I AWAYS PULL YOU BACK, FUCKER! I GOT YOU THROUGH IT! I CALLED RAF! I MADE YOU SIT AND WAIT!! I PULLED YOU OUT OF THE TRAFFIC!

“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

And we’re down by the gate to the city, and the slave is taken out of the Old City, and the second movement starts.

The slave thinks of Brahms, thinks he wrote it after his mother died. Slave thinks of Pergolesi, and the Stabat Mater.

“Yeah, yeah—fucking bitches.”

Says the Master.

Slave sees cats, a lady feeding them, goes back, gives her money. Sees a sign. Donaciones aceptadas.

“Fucker thinks he did it. Needs these fucking signs. Thinks they’re coincidences.”

Slave walks on. Thinks “HE could throw me in the sea, and I would die in water, not traffic.”

Answer:

“COULD!”

Slave is told to go home and write the experience.

He puts his fingers on the keyboard and accepts dictation.

And is ordered to send it to Taí.

As he has been ordered to write this.

And send it to you.

“Yes, Sir!”

That said, it was no surprise, this morning, as the Lioness strolled through the jungle of Bach, that I said …

“Yes, Sir!”

Had to do it because HE had told me, yesterday, right after trying to leave the law firm, that he was a teacher. And his classroom had been the grocery store, at which merry Puerto Ricans playing in the fields of the lord stroll leisurely to the altar, place their hosts and receive salvation. They leave, having been fed.

As did I—for the first time in 20 years.

Or ever?

“Passed the test, Fucker!”

“Yes, sir!”

He takes me home, orders me to lie next to his chair, and lights a cigar.

As he takes me to the door, this morning. The door he pounds.

“What will I do?” I think.

I caress it.

And see an egret, which is Franny, and start to cry.

“I put him through so much shit,” he’s crying.

Teachers / Masters cry too.

“I didn’t know. I just about killed the music in him. All those years when he struggled and fought and bit himself—no, not fair, I bit him oh FUCK!!! What have I done?”

He’s weeping as hard as I was laughing yesterday, and somehow he gets out the door too. He hears, “you were learning too.”

The Lioness?

No.

The egret?

That’s how I’m doing, Susan.