Finding and Losing Freddy

I seem to be running a war on my life. It’s two PM, and what have I done?

Well, I spent the morning wondering about 10AM, which was when the alleged plumber was supposed to show up. Instead—no need to sit down for this news—he arrived telephonically at noon. I went downstairs to let him in….

Nobody….

Right, checked the shoe store, above which I live.

Nobody….

Call the number that had just called me—nice you can do that with cell phones—and got the company, not the plumber. The plumber, it turned out, was on the next street up, and so the guy at the company patched in the plumber, who said he would come down one street. What did he do? Of course, he walked up one street.

I have wanted this plumber more than I ever wanted my first sexual experience or my first—and only—husband. And now, like so many things including my childhood and my faith in the essential goodness of people…where is my plumber going?

The company guy is busy explaining to Freddy, the plumber, that he is going the wrong way. Freddy, instead, is describing absolutely everything he sees—some of which are phenomenological. “There’s a woman parking her car,” reports Freddy.

Freddy, dear?

“Two cats are mating,” he says.

This I ponder for a moment—have I ever seen two cats mating on the street? It occurs to me: no. So why Freddy and not me? I do live here after all….

“Do you see any businesses on your street?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

“Freddy,” I beg, “go back to where you were. Stand absolutely still—describe every store you see. I’ll come find you, Freddy, BUT DON’T LEAVE ME!”

Oh—and I forgot to mention that all this is occurring in a construction—more accurately destruction—site, and that’s important to know, because their reaction—those big burly guys—to a desperate middle-aged guy professing his love and need for Freddy?

“No me dejes, Freddy!”

“Te quiero, Freddy!”

Bésame mucho, sings one. Kiss me a lot….

Freddy, in the meantime, has retraced his steps and is in front of the Bombonera, a long and now defunct tradition. I race to get him—talking nonsense on the way. We return, only to be greeted with cheers, whistles and catcalls. Oh, and scattered applause.

I grab Freddy’s hand—he’s the ebony on the keyboard, I’m the ivory—and raise it above our heads. We both bow.

“Freddy is the plumber,” I tell the guys. They give me a special smile.

Freddy, amazingly, is completely unfazed by this ridiculous situation, and gets right down to work—in this case pulling the handle off the faucet with such force that it crashes and breaks. Oh, and he will later inform me that it would be silly to buy a replacement because they’re ridiculously expensive. Who would want such things?

Well, it turns out that Freddy, of course, doesn’t have the parts and will have to go Bayamón to get them. I instantly object.

“You’ll never come back, Freddy,” I tell him. “People disappear in Bayamón—lost in traffic jams, or aimlessly drifting around in Plaza del Sol, or who knows what. Don’t, DON’T go to Bayamón!”

Before Freddy, I was a baritone—now I’m a mezzo-soprano in a very bad opera. Is this the moment to sink to my knees, and gaze upon him beseechingly?

He leaves, as so many men do, paying absolutely no mind….

I sit down at my computer. What to write about, today? I could tell you the improbable story that the redoubtable—love that word, by the way—New York Times served up this morning. It seems that the FBI arrested two rabbis in the New York area. And what for? Blackjack in the synagogue? Cocaine in hollowed-out Torahs?

Nope, the rabbis were employing a hit man to work over husbands who were unwilling to give their wives a divorce. Here’s the Times on the subject:

In some Orthodox Jewish communities, a divorce is granted only once a husband provides his wife with a document known as a get. And stories of the frustrations and obstacles that women face in their quest to obtain a get are commonplace. While a woman can sue in rabbinical court to try to secure a get, some husbands do not comply with the court’s edict.   

Right—be warned, any Orthodox Jewish readers of the blog, the little lady wants out? Give it to her—otherwise you’ll get kidnapped and worked over, and by the way, these guys are professional. They don’t leave marks, so when you go to the cops, they’ll just think it’s some weird Jewish thing, and shrug it off.

I ponder this for some time. Can I write about this? Is there enough here for a post? Can I combine it with some other story?

It’s no use. Freddy has come into my life, Freddy has left me. I am desolate. How is it in French? Je suis désolé. Better, I think.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing to write about today, and guess what? There is also no going to the bathroom because Freddy has dismantled both faucets and turned off the water. Fortunately in reverse order. But if I turn the water back on? It’ll be like the fountains at Versailles, though horizontal.

It took me back a bit to the 70’s, in those pre-AIDS days that we all very much enjoyed. Guys came into your life, and then they left. So long, baby-cakes!

Well, it’s 2:41, and page three, and exactly 904 words.

And Freddy?

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

(From Sonnet XLIII, Edna St. Vincent Millay)

St. Vincent

Wonderful what the Internet can do.

Consider it—you’ve wondered often and on for years about that “St. Vincent” in Edna St. Vincent Millay. But by the time you’ve summoned the energy to find your keys to go to the library to look it up, life has intruded.

The telephone has rung….

The cat puked on the floor!

And it’s occurred to you—why bother? Who, beyond Edna (long dead), cares?

Now, of course, you’re sitting in your favorite chair. The iPad (that wonderful aPple product) is on your lap. And you have the answer in seconds.

Well, Voracious Reader, I can now tell you. Yes, she was named after the hospital in New York City.

Not the only mystery about her. She was a tomboy—OK, incipient dyke—and went by the name of Vincent in her teens. Principal of the school didn’t buy in, and called her any female name beginning with “V.” Mother was a nurse who divorced her husband on the grounds of “financial irresponsibility.”

Well, she gets started early, our Vincent, when her poem “Renascence” gets fourth place in a national competition, though the first place winner said hers was better, and the second place winner gave his prize money to her. Lives in Greenwich Village, has affairs with both men and women, is an outspoken feminist. A wealthy benefactress hears her poetry—as well as her piano playing—and sends her off to Vassar.

Here she is—a dish!

Also a nice magnolia tree….

She wins the Pulitzer in her early thirties, and then marries, though both she and her husband had lovers throughout their marriage. They buy a big farmhouse in upstate New York, and a 800 acres island off the coast of Maine.

In the process, she may have settled down, a bit. She supports the Allies vigorously in World War II, and pays for it. Wikipedia reports that “Merle Rubin noted: "She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than Ezra Pound did for championing fascism."

She dies young—fitting for the poet who burnt the candle at both ends—after falling down the stairs in her big house. Her sister Norma and husband move in, and become friends with a 17-year old Mary Oliver. Oliver stays for seven years at the house, and helps organize Millay’s papers.

Oliver goes on to become a major poet and wins the Pulitzer herself.

She seems to have had it all. The respect of her peers: Thomas Hardy—yes, the English novelist and poet—said that there were two great attractions in the United States, the skyscraper and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Recognition—always nice to have a Pulitzer! Love in many guises.

And enough money for a little island.

For all her merriness, there seems something dated and sad, now, about Millay. The adventuresome, outspoken girl has somehow become an older, historical woman. The dyke has become an icon….

I cannot but remember

I cannot but remember     When the year grows old—

October—November—

How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows

Go down across the sky,

And turn from the window

With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves

Were brittle on the ground,

And the wind in the chimney

Made a melancholy sound.

She had a look about her

That I wish I could forget—

The look of a scared thing

Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall

The soft spitting snow!

And beautiful the bare boughs

Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,

And the warmth of fur,

And the boiling of the kettle

Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember

When the year grows old—

October—November—

How she disliked the cold!

Monday Morning Musings

It’s curious when the structure of a second language works its way suifficiently into you that your first language seems strange.

“I am very sick,” said the note that Raf left on the stove last night.

And he was. I was woken at 5AM by the sound of it all—an alarming and unsettling way to begin the day.

And several hours later, I’m uncaffeinated or perhaps precaffeinated and wondering—what does that mean?

In Spanish, he would have written, “estoy muy enfermo.” (Actually, in good Puerto Rican Spanish, he would have written, “estoy bien enfermo.”)

There are, you see, two verbs in Spanish for the verb “to be” in English. And if Raf had written, “yo soy enfermo?”

He would have confessed—I’m one sick dude.

The verb ser—as in “soy enfermo”—is used to denote permanent characteristics, natural states. The verb estar is used to denote passing, temporary states. Soy feliz—I’m a happy kind of guy. Estoy feliz—right now I’m happy.

Well, I knew all of this because Ofelia had told me, those decades ago when I was putting my three words of Spanish together and seeing looks of blank confusion on the faces of my auditors. And she—a better teacher than I—gave me a very nice example. Listen carefully—a person says estoy casado—I’m married.

Not a good sign. Clear implication—right now I’m married….

Soy casado—you must meet my wife!

What Ofelia didn’t tell me, but what I figured out later, is that this all comes from Latin—duh!—and gets into Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan. The verb ser in modern Spanish comes from esse in Latin. The verb estar in Spanish comes from the Latin stare.

Stare has the literal meaning of to stand. And it can be used that way—think the Stabat Mater, Mary standing by the side of the cross.

But it can be used more figuratively—“as things stand now” or “let’s see how that stands….”

These verbs, by the way, are copulas or copulative verbs. Of course, when I learned them—in a gentler, more refined time—nobody would have used the term. “Linking verb” was the term used. (Though it might be kind of fun to make the experiment, slide up to a babe at the bar, and whisper, “Hey, baby, you wanna link?”)

And the development of the ser / estar distinction took place late. Here’s a page—thanks, Wikipedia!—from Cantar del Mio Cid. Check out the third line, which reads Es pagado e davos su amor. Today it would be Está satisfecho, y la da su favor. (He is satisfied, and gives you his favor.)

The other curious factor is location. Notice that the three languages that develop the copulae are in the remote backwater of the Iberian Peninsula. Everybody else—with a few exceptions—generally continues to use their verb to be as did the Latin.

Well, it isn’t much of a post, this. I’ve not added anything significant to your day. But I did remember a poem with the “thus in the winter stands a lonely tree.” And that haunted me for a bit.

Looked it up, and here it is:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.