Two ladies, and one very much not....

OK—today’s post is a double feature.

Let’s get the ridiculous part over with first.

Readers of this blog will remember Ofelia, once a boss, always a friend. She operates an important language school (she bristled when I once wrote “a very good little language school”…) and has a quality that is fast disappearing.

Graciousness.

It used to be cultivated, aspired to, worked for. It now languishes with those other arts: needlework, playing the piano, writing thank-you notes.

That’s half of what you need to know about Ofelia.

She’s a whiz of a teacher.

Much better than I, actually. She’s una maestra de corazón (literally, a teacher of the heart—figuratively, a born teacher) unlike me. It’s just a thing I do.

Now then, enter the other character, La Comay. This would be the lady very much not-a-lady.

Not even a woman….

A drag queen, in fact, whose real name is “Kobbo” Santarrosa. And every day, he gets all gussied up in a dress and high heels and finally a cabezudo. That’s a big foam head.

Here the story get murky. There is something to like about La Comay. His show opens with a candle in front of little Lorenzo—the kid who saw too much, which cost him his life. La Comay isn’t gonna give up until that murderer is brought to justice.

The other hand?

Easier just to tell the story.

We were in the doctor’s office, Ofelia  and I, and the room was predictably crammed. Just as predictably, there was a television, on at the usual 900 decibels. The show came on.

This was during the hapless reign of our governor (or governess, as some called her) Sila María Calderón. She was our first and only female governor—we haven’t repeated the experiment.

And she entered into office a married lady, then became a divorcee, and then—feeling perhaps very gay (in its first meaning)—decided to date!

Well, the island was on its ears! Sila had a boyfriend! And not just any boyfriend, but one of her cabinet ministers, a guy named Ramón Cantero-Frau. (Mr. Fernández, who loathed him, immediately took to calling him Cantero Fraud….)

Well, this is an island where people have to know! This is the land of the presenta’o! (Literally, presented / figuratively, nosy) We take a generous interest in our neighbors, and look—ya gotta talk about something, right?

Cantero Frau’s car pulls up to the governor’s mansion. Instantly, swarms of journalists are waiting for hours. Will he spend the night? Are they doing it in the gubernatorial equivalent of the Oval Office? Oh, the delicious wickedness of it all. Don’t tell me!

Yes, do….

All right, so now you have all the elements. And you will have guessed that La Comay, seeing the entire island jump on this boat is not gonna be anywhere else.

And it’s the day after the First Couple goes to the movies! Yeah, there they were, Sila and Cantero Frau, right at the Fine Arts Cinema!

And La Comay that day was especially merciless. His parody of the scene—Sila was eating popcorn and spitting out the kernels; Cantero Frau, of course, was trying to get into her pants—had everybody in stitches.

But one.

She stood, that teacher, and immediately took charge of the classroom. She used a word I didn’t know but recognized immediately—vulgar. She stated that she had every confidence that NO ONE in the room was enjoying the show and so would take the liberty of turning off the television.

This she did, in a room with more silence than I’ve ever heard in Puerto Rico.

An awesome performance.

As was the performance this morning of the music the iPod chose to give me.

Marian Anderson singing the Alto Rhapsody.

It’s almost sad that the one thing people remember about her—if they know anything at all—is the famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial. It’s so compelling that it crowds out what was really a remarkable life.

Here’s how I remember her.

I know the story, but I don’t know who it was. Furtwängler? Toscanini? Von Karajan? It was, at any rate, one of the great conductors being hounded out of Germany by the nazis (no—no caps, computer! Not for them, and not in these  times…). Right, so what was his response?

He conducts his last performance for the music-loving Germans. And brings out Marian Anderson—as black as the keys on my keyboard—to sing for the Aryans. They conclude the concert with the Alto Rhaphsody, receive a standing ovation, and leave the stage, arm in arm.

This would be termed having the last word.

Oh, and one other thing about Anderson.

Two, actually…

She was a complete lady—once sweeping the stage before her concert, always gracious, always in control.

She had an amazing voice and sang with her brain.

Don’t think so?

Here’s Jessye Norman….

Marian Anderson was a woman of such quality, compassion and modesty that her humanitarian efforts alone would warrant our adulation. But she was also blessed with a matchless voice - a voice with so much warmth, richness and mobility that Arturo Toscanini was moved to call it a voice "heard once in a hundred years."

Marian Anderson, 1965.
Credit: The New York Times.

I became acquainted with this glorious sound at about age 10, through a recording of Brahms's Alto Rhapsody, and was so overwhelmed I wept, not really understanding why. When I was 16, in the early 1960's, I traveled by train from Augusta, Ga., to Philadelphia to participate in the Marian Anderson Voice Competition. I was so young and thrilled at being there that I was unaware that perhaps I should have been anxious as well. I did not win a prize, but the gentleness and warmth of that experience remain with me to this day.

It was in Constitution Hall in Washington that I first heard Miss Anderson in person, in 1965. Her voice filled the vast space easily, whether singing Schubert at full strength or "Deep River" with a profound hush. She was queenly in her every gesture. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to permit her to perform in this hall on racial grounds. Eleanor Roosevelt broke ranks with her fellow D.A.R. members and helped arrange a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, a historic event that has been called America's first civil rights rally.

Miss Anderson and I both attended a Metropolitan Opera performance of "Les Troyens" in 1973, when I was privileged to meet her for the first time. She recalled having sung in Augusta some 20 years before, and I was happy to tell her that the city still thought of her visit not only as a watershed but also as a blessing. On the occasions when we were able to sit and talk, I found her interest in me flattering, but I preferred listening to her speak about herself. How could she show the world such poise when she was faced with touring a segregated United States? How could she not take exception to her exclusion from the Met until late in her career? How could she be so deeply spiritual without being at all sanctimonious?

She wore the glorious crown of her voice with the grace of an empress and changed the lives of many through the subtle force of her spirit and demeanor. If the planet Earth could sing, I think it would sound something like Marian Anderson.


Jessye Norman is an opera and concert singer.

The New Day versus The Spokesman

There are times he gets after me, that father of mine. Remember when he felt I had slighted Haydn, and I had to do a whole post on him? Remember the rant I did on the federal judge, and then I had to abase myself on my knees, the next day, and write a post balancing the previous one?

Well, he had a quiet voice, big feet and little steps—that father of mine. The rest of us shout and lope. But he knew how to make himself heard.

OK—the truth. I tuned him out as an adolescent, but look—that’s hardly a jaw-dropper. Find me the kid who doesn’t tune out his old man. 

Besides, he went on and on and ON about it—or so I felt at the time.

The liberal bias of the press. The blurring of the lines between commentary and strictly-the-news. Journalistic ethics.

‘Let’s see if I take the third movement a little slower will I get that damn passage right or will it keep messing me up and why can’t I figure out what to do….’

“When I was a cub reporter the first thing the managing editor said….”

Dear Reader, you have just lived five years of breakfast table at the Newhouse family.

Well, he’s gone, dammit, so I can now quietly say it.

He was right.

“He’d be spinning in his grave,” said Eric, when I told him about the latest allegations on the island.   

In his honor, I’ll try to give you a balanced report.

In the left corner we have El Nuevo Día, or The New Day. The newspaper was founded 42 years ago by Luis A. Ferré, an ardent Republican, art collector, skilled pianist, and statehooder. Ferré had serious money—the family had a little cement factory and Puerto Rico was booming at the time. The New Day, however, has over the years been less and less pro-statehood, and most people who favor statehood believe that The Day is in bed with the other party, known as The Popular Democratic Party.

(Time out for a rant—the computer, not content to censure or tsktsk my generous act of creating new words to enrich the language, is now suggesting that I not use the passive voice. It suggests, instead,  “Luis A. Ferré founded…..” NOOOOOO! The focus of my sentence is the newspaper, not the founder, dammit! Somebody out there in the blogosphere—can you tell me how to deactivate spell check???)

Returning calmly to the ring, we have in the RIGHT corner El Vocero. It started in the 1970’s, was for years the yellowest of tabloids, and then got respectable in the early part of the aught’s. Parent company is Caribbean International News Corporation. This summer, the paper took the step of distributing for free. Politically, most people believe it is aligned with the statehood party, or The New Progressive Party.

(JESUS, this kind of writing is boring. I can’t believe Jack and Eric between them put in half of a century in this salt mine. I’d rather clean bathrooms. And, by the way, Jack edited out the “unusual” that I had placed before the word “step.” Damn!)

Right. So what happened? Well, on the 17^th of October—that would be 6 days ago—the New Day made several allegations against The Spokesman (El Vocero). It claimed that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had found that El Vocero had received over 24 million bucks (come off it, Jack—that’s just informal, not pejorative! OK, DAMMIT—that’s dollars!) in a scheme of creating companies in order to receive incentives. Additionally, the paper alleges that El Vocero has a contract with the municipal government, exchanging advertising in lieu of payment for the municipal fee.

(Just had my third cup of coffee, and my eyelids are still virtually GLUED together. JESUS, what did they PAY these guys to do this! Surgery was more fun….)

A further allegation—hey, was that a snore I heard—is that El Vocero has an outstanding debt of 17,422,239.89 (notice that attention to detail—just love that 89 cents there…) with the state government. However, the parent company of El Vocero signed a contract with the government. This is illegal under Puerto Rico law.

(You know, there’s absolutely no reason I can’t take just a little nap. What about those hours after surgery, when I was busy writing instead of sleeping? Aren’t I owed?)

Right—any backup for these allegations.

Well, I tried, I really did to read the NLRB’s findings. Maybe you can do better…. (Here's a fragment of the document):

On  September  24,  2010,  Administrative  Law  Judge Michael A. Rosas issued the attached decision.  The Respondents  El  Vocero  and  News  Distributor  each  filed exceptions(1) and a supporting brief, and the Acting General Counsel and Charging Party filed answering briefs.

The  National  Labor  Relations  Board  has  considered the decision and the record in light of the exceptions and briefs and has decided to affirm the judge’s rulings, findings(2) and  conclusions,(3) to  amend  the  remedy,(4) and  to adopt the recommended Order as modified and set forth in full below.(5)

We  reject  Respondent  News  Distributor’s  contention that the complaint should be dismissed on the basis that the Union filed the  unfair labor practice  charges in this case for purposes contrary to the Act.  News Distributor alleges, in substance, that the Union has a financial interest  in  The  Daily  Sun,  an  English  language  newspaper published in Puerto Rico, and filed the charges as part of an overall  campaign to support that paper  at News Distributor’s expense.(6)  Even assuming [arguendo] that these allegations  are  true,  the  Union’s  motive  for  filing  the charges is irrelevant to the disposition of the allegations in the complaint, which was issued by the General Counsel in the exercise of his authority under Section 3(d) of the Act.  There is no contention, and no evidence whatsoever, of any improper motive on the General Counsel’s part.

(1)There are no exceptions to the judge’s findings that Caribbean International News Corp. (El Vocero) violated Sec. 8(a)(1) and (5) of the Act by breaching its December 26, 2008 agreement with the Union, and by making unlawful unilateral  changes to  employee pay dates, severance pay, vacation, medical insurance benefits, and bumping rights.

(2)The Respondents have implicitly excepted to some of the judge’s credibility findings.  The Board’s established policy is not to overrule an  administrative  law  judge’s  credibility  resolutions  unless  the  clear preponderance of  all the relevant  evidence  convinces us that they  are incorrect.  Standard Dry Wall Products,  91 NLRB  544 (1950),  enfd. 188 F.2d 362 (3d Cir. 1951).  We have carefully examined the record and find no basis for reversing the findings.

(3)In adopting the judge’s finding that the Respondents are alter egos, we agree that El Vocero and its alter ego News Distributor had “substantially  identical”  management,  business  purposes,  operations,  customers,  and  supervision.   Further,  as  the  judge  found,  during  News Distributor’s first year of existence, it was “almost entirely dependent on the  continuous transfer of funds and in-kind  contributions from El Vocero,” as well as for its cost-free office space, supplies, and equipment.  However,  we  do  not  rely  on  the  judge’s  finding  of  common ownership between the Respondents.  Nonetheless, common ownership is not a prerequisite for an alter ego finding.  The Board has found an alter ego relationship in the absence of common ownership where both companies were either wholly owned by members of the same family or  nearly  entirely owned  by  the same  individual, or where the  older company maintained substantial  control over the new  company.  See, e.g., Summit Express, Inc., 350 NLRB 592, 594–595 (2007).  We adopt the judge’s finding that El Vocero maintained and exercised substantial control over News Distributor.

We  also find that El Vocero formed News Distributor for the purpose  of  evading  its  collective-bargaining  obligations.  As  the  judge found, El Vocero’s President Miguel Roca formed News Distributor in March 2009, while the collective-bargaining agreement with the Union was still in force, but waited until it expired to announce the decision to subcontract the  circulation work to News Distributor.  Roca  admitted that he  did  not want to  deal with the Union  and,  as the judge found, unlawfully invited employees to deal directly with him while predicting that  any  dispute  over  the  plan  to  close  the  circulation  department “would [result in]  an impasse.”  These facts support  our finding  that News Distributor was formed with the unlawful motive of avoiding El Vocero’s responsibilities under the Act.  Diverse Steel, Inc., 349 NLRB 946, 947 (2007); see also Midwest Precision Heating & Cooling, Inc., 341 NLRB 435, 439 (2004), affd. 408 F.3d 450 (8th Cir. 2005) (“only reasonable explanation” for decision to “go through the legal hoops of creating a new corporation. . . .” was unlawful motive of reducing labor costs by repudiating  collective-bargaining  agreement).  Together with the  other  evidence  discussed  above,  this  factor strongly supports  our finding that the two entities are alter egos.

(4)Payments to employees arising from their unlawful discharges shall be made in the manner set forth in F. W. Woolworth Co., 90 NLRB 289 (1950), with interest  as prescribed in New Horizons for the Retarded, 283 NLRB 1173 (1987), compounded daily as prescribed in Kentucky River Medical Center, 356 NLRB No. 8 (2010),  enf. denied on other grounds sub  nom.,  Jackson  Hospital  Corp.  v.  NLRB,  647  F.3d  1137 (D.C. Cir. 2011).

Payments  owing  to  employees  as  a  result  of  the  Respondents’ unlawful unilateral changes in contractual benefits shall be computed in accordance with Ogle Protection Service, 183 NLRB 682 (1970), enfd. 444 F.2d 502 (6th Cir. 1971), with interest as prescribed in New Horizons for the Retarded, supra, and Kentucky River Medical Center, supra.

Payments owing to  contractual benefit funds as a result of the Respondents’  unlawful  unilateral  changes  shall  be  made  in  accordance with Merryweather Optical Co., 240 NLRB 1213, 1216 fn. 7 (1979).  To the  extent that  an  employee  has made  personal  contributions to  a benefit or other fund that have been accepted by the fund in lieu of the Respondent’s delinquent  contributions  during the  period  of the  delinquency, the Respondent will reimburse the employee, but the amount of such reimbursement will constitute a setoff to the amount that the Respondent otherwise owes the fund.  The  Respondents shall  also  reimburse  unit  employees  for  any  expenses ensuing from their failure to make the required health insurance premiums and pension fund contributions, as set forth in Kraft Plumbing & Heating, 252 NLRB 891, 891 fn. 2 (1980), enfd. 661 F.2d 940 (9th Cir. 1981), such amounts to be computed in the manner set forth in Ogle Protection Service, supra, with interest as prescribed in New Horizons for the Retarded, supra, compounded daily as prescribed in Kentucky River Medical Center, supra.

(5)Finally, we shall modify the judge’s recommended Order to comport with the Board’s usual remedial provisions and to provide for the posting of the notice in accord with J. Picini Flooring, 356 NLRB No. 9 (2010), enfd. 656 F.3d 860 (9th Cir. 2011).  For the reasons stated in his dissenting opinion in J. Picini Flooring, Member Hayes would not require electronic distribution of the notice.

(6)The judge found, and we agree, that News Distributor has failed to establish that the Union’s relationship to The Daily Sun was detrimental to El Vocero. 

Member  Becker  notes  that  News  Distributor’s  argument  that  the judge should have made a finding that the Union filed the charge for an unlawful  purpose  is  also  untimely,  because  News  Distributor  neither raised this defense in its pleading nor litigated it at the hearing before the judge.  It is well established that the failure to raise  an issue in  a timely fashion before the judge operates as a waiver of that argument.  See, e.g., Ang Newspapers, 350 NLRB 1175, 1181 (2007).

(What!!! You mean they had to wade through that morass for six decades—my father and brother between them. Look, no wonder we’ve all descended to the gutter of ogling Kate Middleton’s boobies.)

Here are the links to the documents: 
http://especiales.elnuevodia.com/documentos/vocero/home.html
http://especiales.elnuevodia.com/documentos/vocero/JuntaNacionaldeRelacionesdelTrabajo/DecisionJuntaNacional-Pleno.pdf

Right—and what does The Vocero say? Mentiras--LIES that would be and yes, that’s the word they used. They deny having a debt with the government. They claim that El Nuevo Día is hurting financially due to, and cannot compete against, a free newspaper. They allege that the Ferré family….

Know what? I can’t, I just can’t go on. The brain is tired. 

I tried, my good father, and I have failed. I didn’t make it to the end of ONE piece of investigative reporting. I can feel your disgust radiating down from the cold, windswept hilltop of the Jefferson Prairie Cemetery. 

Confession—I even descended to La Comay.

Gentle Readers, stay tuned!

NOTE: This post published at the express order of Marc Newhouse over the just objections of his editor, who winces at his formatting of the material cited from the NLRB....

Beatus Vir

A question for you, Gentle Reader.

Sleep in a bed last night?

I know now—if the question surprises you, you’re lucky.

I’m happy to say that last night I did. And this morning I chatted briefly with someone who did not.

I had a hankering, starting off on the trot, for a bit of Monteverdi. Perfect music for a Monday morning, and it had been years since I had heard the Selva morale e spirituale.

Well, it’s exalted music, and a fine performance. Beach was good too—the water surprisingly smooth after a week of rough seas. Then it was time to get back home and start the rest of the day.

Of course, I had to clean my feet first, because walking with sand pressed by the sock into your feet is annoying. Fortunately, though the showers installed by the government no longer work, the surfers have rigged up a little hose that provides no-doubt-bootlegged water.

So that’s where I saw the guy, my beatus vir. 

The first rule of the day is to say hello to everyone. It’s something that was constantly adjured on us (to us?) at Wal-Mart, and though few people did it, I did. It brings you into contact with people you’d never interact with otherwise.

He had an El Greco face with one of those marvelous noses: thin, elongated, curved inward and then outward. Salt-and-pepper hair, thin, brown eyes. And sunken cheeks.

Oh, and he had a bar of soap and was busy applying it to his blue jeans.

The jeans he was wearing.

Right—no washing machine.

Did the greetings, and he asked where I was from.

“Wisconsin…You?”

“Nowhere, really. I’m on the streets.”

“How long?”

“Two weeks and five days.”

OK—he’s never been homeless before, but now, yeah. And he’d been living with his mother, but she was in a project, and they have rules, see? Anybody living with her, and they kick her out. And she’s 86, and he’d die of shame if they kicked her out….

So he left.

Pretty hard, he says, to be on the streets. Went to Salvation Army this morning, but they couldn’t give him breakfast.

They only feed four people breakfast a day.

What about the place in Santurce.

“Yeah, La Fondita de Jesús? They told me to go there….”

I pass the hose back to him—feet are washed now. He wets his shirt, and starts rubbing the soap all over it. Logically, he pays special attention to the armpits.

“You know, I couldn’t get into City Hall to ask for help. They told me if I was homeless I couldn’t get into the building. Politicians—they come and kiss you when they’re campaigning, then they kick you the rest of the time….”

I put on my socks, and empty change and keys from one of the shoes. Put the keys in my pocket.

“If I can get out to Bayamón, I can stay at a place there. I’ve seen it. It’s real nice. They give you your own room. Like a hotel….”

Costs $1.25 to get to Bayamón.

I’m ready for the trot back home. He’s soaping his neck, now. I offer my hand, which he bumps with his elbow. It’s a Puerto Rican thing.

“Good luck,” I say.

“Hey, you left your change,” he says.

Duh….

“Take it,” I say.

“Sorry to bother you and all,” he says.

“You didn’t bother me, not at all.”

Nor did he. In fact, I felt honored. Honored to meet someone with the nobility to point out the dimes and quarters and pennies that had such terrible value to him and were almost worthless to me. A guy who moves to the streets so his mother doesn’t get kicked out. A guy who cleans himself painstakingly—I wouldn’t—and chats with a stranger and exposes his pain matter-of-factly and then apologizes.

I’m calling him a guy. Wrong—beatus vir.

Beatus vir

Beatus vir, qui timet Dominum:

In mandatis eius rolet nimis.

Potens in terra erit semen eius;

Generatio rectorum benedicetur.

Gloria et divitiae in domo eius;

Et justitia eius manet in saeculum saeculi.

Exortum est in tenebris lumen rectis:

Misericors, et miserator et justus.

Jucundus homo qui miseretur et commodat.

Disponet sermones suos in judicio:

Quia in aeternum non commovebitur.

In memoria aeterna erit justus.

Ab auditione mala non timebit.

Paratum cor eius sperare in Domino;

Confirmatum est, cor eius:

Non commovebitur,

Donec despiciat inimicos suos.

Dispersit, dedit pauperibus:

Justitia eius manct in saeculum saeculi,

Cornu eius exaltabitur in gloria.

Peccator videbit, et irascetur;

Dentibus suis fremet et tabescet.

Desiderium peccatorum peribit.

Translation

Blessed is the man who fears the lord:

He delights greatly in his commandments.

His seed will be mighty on earth;

The generation of the upright will be blessed.

Wealth and riches are in his house;

And his righteousness endures forever and ever.

Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness:

He is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.

Good is the man who is full of compassion and lends.

He will guide his affairs with discretion:

Because he will not be moved forever.

The righteous will be in everlasting remembrance.

He will not be afraid of evil tidings.

His heart is fixed, trusting in the lord;

His heart is established:

He will not be moved,

Until he gazes at his enemies.

He has dispersed, he has given to the poor:

His righteousness endures for ever and ever,

The strength of his soul will be exalted with honour.

The sinner will see it, and will be grieved;

He will gnash with his teeth, and melt away.

Stumbling around….

Any blogger who hasn’t signed up for stumbleupon.com might consider doing it.

Well, Jack would know the feeling. What happens when there’s nothing to write about? It was his greatest fear—what if everybody woke up normal one morning, and nobody was busy building a teepee in their backyard or searching for hidden treasure on an island in the Mississippi River? What would he write—“Mary Smith punched in at 8AM and left for lunch at 11?”

Used to worry about it on the green sofa, those mornings after breakfast when he closed his eyes and his breathing got suspiciously deep….

Well, well—there are days when the muse is off somewhere else, sitting on someone else’s shoulder. Actually, there are days when the muse comes and looks you straight in the eye, shakes her head, sticks out her tongue, and announces “I COULD sing, but I won’t!”

Today’s dilemma is that the muse may or not be singing—it’s impossible to know. I’m in the café, and a guy ten feet away is speaking what I presume is Russian—some sort of Slavic language that makes the speaker sound chronically angry, at any rate.

Right—so it’s a day to borrow someone else’s creativity….

Hey—what about Marc Johns? He’s dripping with the stuff….

Has this little tendency to make art in public though private spaces…. Here’s more….

Nice sense of whimsy, hunh?

But it’s not just in bathrooms. His oeuvre (waited half a century to use that word!) can be found online and purchased. Who wouldn’t want to have this on the wall?

How about…

OK—last one….

I’m outta here!

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.