A litany in two-part discord

1. Jean Simmons. I was madly in love with Jean Simmons for years. The look on her face when she stared up at Kirk Douglas as Spartacus, dying in slow agony on the cross, holding up their newborn child and begging “Die! Please die!” Jean Simmons as Estella in Great Expectations. Jean Simmons in any damn thing. Oh God, be gentle with her.

2. Abraham Sutzkever. I didn’t know he’d been alive this long. He was 96. He lived through the Vilna ghetto, he fought as a partisan, he was one of the greatest of Yiddish-language poets. I grieve him now.

I wrote about him 10 years ago. I read into him. A poor memorial, but the best I can manage. Forgive my inarticulacy.

THE MAGICIAN OF ATLANTIS
after Abraham Sutzkever, “The Lead Plates at the Rom Press”)
(for Miklos Radnoti, 1910-1944)

Without bread there is no Torah.
–Wisdom of the Fathers

When someone comes to kill you, kill him first.
–The Talmud

1

I, Abraham Sutzkever, poet of the lost city of Vilna,
unacknowledged legislator to the dead,
amateur magician and factotum of the resurrection,
turned my pen back into a sword: abandoned then
the music of the line, the heartbeat of the metre,
for the heartbreak of the Grand Guignol God’s
broken promise and the broken lock: went by night
into the workshops of the Rom Press,
God’s abandoned printing-house of Vilna,
to seize the lead plates used to print the Talmud
and melt them down for bullets.
A Shin, first letter of one of God’s names,
would make a slug to kill a German.
One letter less, one fewer Nazi: in the end
they would be gone and the world
would be without words for this Creator.

2

Jews, it is said, answer questions with questions,
live by the paradox that expands like the universe
to a place only dreamed of: where the holy and profane
conjoin to form the Question that,
like a monstrous Sabbath carp, devours
the stinking fish of smaller questions
left to rot in the marketplace of ideas:
sucks them into the black maw that holds the unanswerable Whys
of this yeshivabucher God who answers devotion with
a city of starving human xylophones who play no music.

So we would knead this lead,
transform it to a cruel bread that could not nourish
that we could not eat but that might nourish us;
we would invoke the alchemy
that takes the poet, lover, holy madman,
puts into their hands the gun and torch
as Moses our teacher traded his staff
for the serpent and the sword,
(perhaps) hear the commandment
gasped by an overburdened Angel of Death
to the man turned ritual slaughterer
in the abattoir God makes of History and of Love:
“Remember Amalek and what he did to you!”–
truly use the letters of the Law,
melt them to save our lives
so we could flout them later:
bake white bread for Passover,
to stay alive for one day,
one night more.

3

In Moscow not a year later, Stalin himself
turned me from Poet into Hero
with a medal on my chest:
whispered “Zhid” at me through
his vodka-drooling mouth: and smiled
from the black hole that swallows questions.

I have outlived them all.  At my death,
no one will be left to chant psalms
in the Vilna Great Synagogue.
There is no Great Synagogue
and only a Vilnius, a world transformed,
a world lost.
If my words outlive me, perhaps
they will obliterate the killer
with songs and lamentations left behind:
my final act of magic.

KTW/7-7-95

Notes

Abraham Sutzkever (b. 1910) was one of the leading Vilna-based Yiddish
poets of pre-World War II Poland and Lithuania.  During the siege and
destruction of the Vilna ghetto by the Nazis he fought with the
partisans.  He was rescued from the final liquidation of the ghetto by
the Russians and indeed received a medal from Stalin.  He lives in
Israel.

Miklos Radnoti (1909-1944) is now recognized as one of Hungary’s
greatest modern poets and translators.  While a member of a slave labor
detail, he was murdered during a forced march through Yugoslavia in
October 1944.  His last poems were found in a small notebook in his
coat when his body was exhumed in 1946.

Yeshivabucher: literally “yeshiva booker,” a Talmudic scholar in
training, hence a receiver and purveyor of received ideas.

Amalek: leader of a tribe that attacked the rear of the column of
Hebrews fleeing Egypt, slaughtering the very young, old, and infirm.

Just happy birthday, M. Reinhardt

All anyone has to say: Happy 100th birthday, Django Reinhardt, who overcame terrible injuries, who played right past the Nazis who exterminated most of his Romany people, who all but invented jazz guitar. Gone at 43, remembered today when he would have turned 100.

Love those archtops....

A Belated Epitaph for Connoisseur Pipes

One winter evening in 1976, during early rush hour, I was quick-marching across West 46th Street to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, when I passed a tobacconist and pipe-seller working under the name Connoisseur Pipes. Inside there were rows of beautifully-carved natural finish pipes on wall mounts, a smiling gentleman on the sales and display counter, and a customer dressed in a camel’s hair coat, looking over a pipe he had just purchased. The owner had just swabbed out the pipe with a pipe cleaner soaked in Johnny Walker Black scotch whiskey, and the customer drank off the rest. Why waste good whiskey, after all?

I asked the owner about the whiskey. I always thought rubbing alcohol would be sufficient. “I just cleaned the pipe with it,” he replied. “Would you put something through a pipe you couldn’t drink?” Made sense to me, and I never forgot it.

I was a here-and-there pipe smoker far more addicted to cigarettes. I could never quite smoke a pipe, even a good one, without inhaling the gunk into my lungs. Probably I was better off with pipes but you couldn’t tell me anything, could you?

The only Jaguar you could smoke...

Years later, in the later 1990s, somehow I discovered that Connoisseur Pipes had moved to a build one block from my office, in the lower plaza of a building on the Avenue of the Americas. I strolled over. The owner was the same man I recalled from 1976. Of course he was grayer but the mustache and hair were still a bit unruly, but his manner was still gracious and just a bit fussy. However, since I knew nothing about pipe smoking, I surrendered to it.

He came out from behind the counter. “I’m Ed Burak. Welcome!” I told him my name. Only later did I learn that Ed was a legend among pipe makers and dealers. He told me directly he was not a carver but a designer: he sketched out and drew what he wanted, and someone else carved it. Which may account for the prices of some of his creations. “High” doesn’t quite express it. He chose the woods that would best express his designs: beautifully grained, unpolished, perfectly balanced for the mouth. I bought my first Burak for $125. It was like smoking the essence of God. Right: you did not buy a Connoisseur, you bought a Burak.

Ed also oversaw the preparation of the tobaccos he sold. Again, they were not cheap. They were nothing but the best smoking tobaccos you’d ever find. Some I found along the way were as good, but none were better. And Ed (and his wife) had a courtly and gentle manner about them. Ed would not just sell you stuff, he’d interview you and then educate you about the art of pipe smoking. He’d do his best to match you with the pipe you could afford. You’d know pretty damn quick that if you wanted a drugstore pipe, you’d best head for the nearest Duane Reade.

Ed would discuss the art of carving and tobacco mixing. He’d discuss how to light a pipe–yes, there really is an art involved. It’s easy to learn but if you don’t learn it you’ll have a lousy smoking experience with an unlit or overly hot pipe that will burn the inside of your mouth and contribute to the real danger apart from the mythologies about pipe smoking.

Right, mythologies. I said it. I’ll repeat it.

Today I found out that almost a year ago, in February 2009, Ed went out of business. He closed the shop. The rent on the store had to be confiscatory and the taxes and other restrictions of the Bloomberg-controlled nanny state undoubtedly were killing his mail order and walk-in trade. Ed refused to put up a website. He told me he had more business than he could handle just on repeat phone and mail orders.

I hope he’d put aside enough money to live on. I hope he could latch on with a maker who has not gone under, a maker like Marks or Nachwalter.

I quit smoking in July 2005. I tried to stay on the pipe and instead went into a 711, bought a pack of American Spirit non-filters, and heard this weird voice in my head asking “Ken, what the fuck are you doing to yourself?” It’s now almost five years. The cough is long gone. One doctor I might have early-stage emphysema after 45 years of pack-a-day cigarette smoking since 1960. Another said my lungs sounded clear.

And yet there is an aspect of artistry to pipe smoking that I continue to miss. There is the design, there is the taste and smell of a really good tobacco, there are the complex acts that add up to a comfort-food experience. I have smoked some of the worst crap ever made–an aromatic tobacco called Flying Dutchman that smelled not like the sea but like the perfume in a seraglio. Others–more than I can name–were delightful and all had different tastes. Tastes. You didn’t zhluck this stuff into your lungs, you rolled it around in your mouth like you were at a wine-tasting.

With the demise of Connoisseur  I find that another part of my civilized experience of New York is gone. In Pennsylvania, where I am now, there are a lot more tobacconists than in New Jersey, where I lived for over 33 years. One shop owner commented that the taxes in Jersey are confiscatory. I don’t doubt it. “Gotta find a way to keep the young ones moral after school,” like the musical said. That’s why supermarket cashiers steal cigarettes by the carton and black-market them.

Finding out about the end of Connoisseur Pipes makes me a trifle sad.

Oh…postscript…if your appetite is whetted, a mint-condition used (that’s “estate” to you collectors) Burak can cost you a month’s rent in a really good apartment. I would love to hear comments from other Connoisseur patrons who miss the place as much as I do.

PPS: I started again. A corncob followed by a “basket pipe” from A Little Taste of Cuba in New Hope, PA. I felt guilty for 30 minutes. Then I realized I like it and I’m not inhaling at all. But it’s one of those socially unapproved pastimes that make you sound a bit unsavory and dangerous, like a guy who plays with live ammunition at a Fourth of July picnic.

And on the 8th day, God created Hell

About 40 years ago, during my 18 months as a pretend social worker for the City of New York,  I sat on a couch in an apartment in the East Bronx, I think 172nd Street, interviewing a new client, a well-spoken, neatly dressed black woman with a Haitian-French accent, who brought me up short because she was entirely nonbelligerent and did not demand things from the City in a voice that made most of my clients sound like Putney Swope.

In other words, she acted dignified and grateful that I came to talk with her. She offered me coffee and I shook my head: thank you, but no. She had little enough.

She had nothing.

Who was she?

I wish I could remember her name. She was an island of quiet dignity in an ocean of sordid Gimme. I remember some of their names–the ones who had street smarts and who supplemented their welfare income via prostitution, numbers running, and benefits padding via forged birth certificates. But this woman had still not forgotten she was a lady, not someone fronting for a Temptations song. Whether that came later?…

Her greatest fear that day in 1969 was that her young children were increasingly curious about the neighborhood kids who were running the streets.

What brought her to East 172nd Street?

Duvalier, torturer

She told me she was married to a Haitian journalist. Liberal? Conservative? Non-political? Take a guess. He could read and write. He disappeared one night. No one dare play down the prefigurations of Pol Pot’s Kampuchea in the Haiti of the Duvaliers and Aristide. Papa Doc’s Tonton Macoute snatched the woman’s husband, took him away, but did not return a body she could bury. More than likely there was no body left. And there sat Duvalier with his picture of Pope Pius XII behind him, pretending Christianity while he practiced voodoo.

And the government expelled her. A woman with no practical education, no survival skills, and with two young children. She ended up on Welfare in New York City. She attended the neighborhood Catholic church each morning where the old Latin Mass helped anchor her in a strange land because it was her common language (even Duvalier could not kick out the Mass). And she prayed.

I wonder if God heard those prayers or whether she and her children were engulfed in the massive and valueless Public Assistance slum that had destroyed and would destroy so many before and after them. I wonder if any of them are still alive.

And I think this morning about Haiti, her homeland.

I sat last night in a diner in Bristol, Pennsylvania watching the insufferable Anderson Cooper (the name still reminds me of an accounting firm or a tire) playing anchorman while reports of an horrific 7.0 earthquake–35 seconds of pure hell–were coming in from Port au Prince, about 40 miles from the epicenter.

Not again. Not there. Why again? Why does God seem to have it in for Haiti out of proportion to any discernible logic?

Some years ago, an historian named  Norman Davies wrote a two-volume history of Poland called God’s Playground. This was the nation overrun by Sweden, Russia, Austria-Hungary, you name it.

What then is Haiti if not yet another playground for the horrors of history run mad? It is the land of the Cat5 hurricane, the earthquake, American support for bastard dictatorships. It is the land where the pirate Christoforo Colombo, on December 5, 1492, stuck his boot and where his mutinous and restless seamen (what a great  pun) raped their first women. It is a land where Toussaint L’Ouverture fought to expel the French and probably terrified the American slave-holders into even more vile repressions that sped up the inevitability of the American Civil War. It is the land where an impotent JFK withheld aid from Haiti because it was clear that Papa Doc was pocketing the money while his people starved and were “disappeared.” It was the land where sanctions did not matter. They still don’t. The illiteracy rate in Haiti hovers around 80% or higher.

There is so much more it is hard to comprehend or to accept. The Dominican Republic on the other side of the island of Hispaniola is hardly Paradise, but compared with Haiti….

Pray for Haiti. It is Hell in the New World. It never deserved its fate except that it, like an abused partner, trusted the wrong people.

Did his life speak or did he also witness or does it make any difference?

This item today in the New York Times–so incredible and difficult to believe that it’s hardly comprehensible by the mind that does not belong to God.

I have no possible explanation for why this man did not become an emotional vegetable much less a piece of cinder. The miracle is he died after a long and apparently productive life. God speed to him, along with my gratitude that I did not have his dreams.

The Awful Rowing Toward Farewell

Consider first this beautiful lyric by Joni Mitchell (I don’t know about copyright or I’d give it):

I Had A King

I had a king in a tenement castle
Lately he’s taken to painting the pastel walls brown
He’s taken the curtains down
He’s swept with the broom of contempt
And the rooms have an empty ring
He’s cleaned with the tears
Of an actor who fears for the laughter’s sting-

I can’t go back there anymore
You know my keys won’t fit the door
You know my thoughts don’t fit the man
They never can they never can

I had a king dressed in drip-dry and paisley
Lately he’s taken to saying I’m crazy and blind
He lives in another time
Ladies in gingham still blush
While he sings them of wars and wine
But I in my leather and lace I can never become that kind -

I can’t go back there anymore
You know my keys won’t fit the door
You know my thoughts don’t fit the man
They never can they never can

I had a king in a salt-rusted carriage
Who carried me off to his country for marriage too soon
Beware of the power of moons
There’s no one to blame
No there’s no one to name as a traitor here
The king’s on the road
And the queen’s in the grove till the end of the year-

I can’t go back there anymore
You know my keys won’t fit the door
You know my thoughts don’t fit the man
They never can they never can

It occurred to me yesterday that I keep returning to this song after breakups. I heard it first in 1968. It was the first song on the A-side of Mitchell’s first vinyl. I heard it again a day ago as a relationship of 14 years’ duration winds toward farewell.

It makes me cry. It did 40 years ago, and it does now. Joni and I have both gotten older (she’s 66) but the pain remains endlessly renewable.

I am not a king. I have never been a king, not even in my own imagination. Yet the abandonment Mitchell sang of, the awful hurt of being rejected and set outside a beloved’s life, have less to do with gender than with the capacity to feel pain. So it can be me in leather and even lace, someone pushed outside the imagination of someone else. It can be the recognition that a “forever” relationship is no more forever than chocolate melting on a sidewalk in August.

And it is truly sad and seems inevitable. Someone indeed painted the pastel walls brown and took down the curtains. Thus, there really is no place to hide when grief comes.

And there is no one to blame or to single out as a traitor. Too many relationships seem to end, I fear, as pistol duels where both participants shoot themselves or one another.

And why does pain, among all the available emotions, seem eternal?

Someone must, at last, tell an inconvenient truth

I wonder if Holofernes would have forgiven her...

The truth is about domestic violence. It is not The Usual. The Usual should be sufficiently reprehensible and vile. The perpetrators of said man-on-woman violence ought to be locked in a cell which is then thrown away.

I am talking about the dirty little secret: domestic violence committed against men by their wives, partners, girlfriends, or whatever is the “correct” term du jour.

The dirty little secret lives miles down the shaft at the bottom of a mine. It looks like the muck-pit Daniel Day-Lewis slogs through in There Will Be Blood. You can’t see the truth for the grease on the floor. Nobody wants to “go there.” The context gets lost. Even in man-on-woman violence the context gets lost. Sean Hannity plays Martina McBride’s “Independence Day” as his opening theme. He pretends it’s a song about revenge for 9/11. It’s a song about a woman avenging herself on her abusive husband by burning their house down over him. Aha! Not so much fun now, is it?

The most famous case of a woman avenging herself on a man is the case of Lorena Bobbitt, who endured her husband’s violence (including marital rape) and infidelities until the famous amputation incident.

What if a man avenged himself on an abusive woman? What do you suppose would happen?

What happens when a man goes to the police in some towns and reports that he’s been subjected to domestic violence or a continuing pattern of domestic abuse?

If you’re me, nothing happens. The cops shuffle their feet and giggle.

Right, this is about me. It’s the secret that will not stay a secret anymore because I’ve had enough lies.

I have been in a relationship with a woman since late 1995. Yes, yawn, it was illicit from the get-go.

My life turned into a country & western song.

Somewhere in the second chorus my Significant Other punched me in the face. It was on May 4, 2007.

I forgave her because somewhere I am enjoined to forgive. But I made a sad mistake. I also chose to forget. Nobody who has been assaulted can forget what happened. That almost guarantees it will happen again.

And it did, in October. Again the blaming me for everything that is wrong. Captiousness, fault finding, character readings without the tea leaves, and then burst into the bathroom while I’m sitting on the can, bellowing “You have no rights of privacy in this house.”

I tried to have her arrested. The cops thought it was funny. “Oh, the most you can get for that is harassment.” Proving to me that the real first name of all police officers is Dumb, as in Dumb Cop.

I talked to a priest at my church about what happened. He said it is almost impossible to develop a group made up of men who have been assaulted in their homes.  Nobody wants to come forward and tell about it. We’ve all fallen victim to The Ethic.

The Ethic states you do not hit a woman. Ever. It is the woman’s insurance policy and guarantee that she can do the most reprehensible things and be immune to physical retaliation. Like a burning bed. We–men–are taught to turn the other cheek so she can get a better shot at it.

Something is way the hell wrong when a woman garners sympathy and the man is treated like a pussy because he would not–in self-defense–punch out the lights of the woman who attacked him. Hey, what’s a big guy doing getting walked on by a “mere woman”?

So I would love to hear from men out there who have been similarly mistreated by women they loved. We need to go public, gentlemen. We need to make our voices heard. Or do we really like being victims and pussies?

By the way…I’m hunting for another place to live. As I said, I can forgive. But forget? Are you kidding me? Those who forget the past are condemned to find another woman who will beat the fuck out of them.

The joy of Barbara Ehrenreich + The Secret + The racist attack on Obama

And I thought this was going to be short…

First, I’m on Barbara Ehrenreich’s mailing list, so I got a notice about her (relatively) new book. I will let you look at the cover and title for yourselves:

I love it when people see a social trend that shares my own non-sweetness & light disposition, i.e., a problem is not an opportunity except for more catastrophe. As the recession has propelled us into double digit unemployment, the relentlessly spewed trash about how you can wind up in a better situation than the one you lost simply reeks of week-old kitty litter. You are being told a lie. The only opportunity is to face the situation head-on, do what you must, and rail. The current situation of economic disaster generates a series of lies about attitude adjustments and horse-cock slogans like “I’m not unemployed, I’m between jobs.” Right. When people who made $90,000 a year are fighting for 30-day contract jobs for $15 an hour, this country is so over….

Second, and related: the epitome of the age of positive delusion is the irredeemably meretricious book and DVD calling itself The Secret. I watched a pirated version of the DVD. It was mind-boggling. I was being told I can wish my way into riches, happiness, and damage-proof relationships. The flip side is I can wish death and ruin on people who have hurt me, and I will have my revenge?. That hardly fits the happy-happy joy-joy message, does it?

Finally, there is this:

Barack Hussein Obama, mmmmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm.

I hear this most often, being in the New York area, from Rush Limbaugh, and from the despicable King of the Court Jews, Steve Malzberg. Malzberg in particular, going back to his days as the gofer for Art Rust, Jr. (a black man!), is a somewhat soberer and more pointed version of Glenn Beck. He has fangs like a black mamba and they drip poison.

Barack Hussein Obama, mmmmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm.

The Hussein part is easy because Malzberg is really a Birther who seems to endorse the theory that Obama was born a Muslim in The Land of Booga-Booga and actually has a bone through his nose.

The mmmmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm stuff is even worse. The last time I heard that was the last time I saw Gone with the Wind. The sound belonged to Hattie McDaniel, the black woman who played Scarlett O’Hara’s mammy. Whether Malzberg came up with it or Limbaugh, who is much more intelligent, the fact remains it is the most blatant expression of racism against the President yet. And it’s only the start. Right: Obama is making more mistakes than a blind tailor or seamstress. He’s proven his maladroitness and spastically bad timing one time after another. But to make him sound like a Civil War mammy…well, the only people that’s not beneath are Limbaugh and The Court Jew. It’s perfectly incredible but in America circa 2009, what’s incredible anymore?

On Hiatus

I’m going to be out of commission for awhile (short, I hope) while I hunt down another place to live and then figure out how I’m going to pay for it. I’ve had a life change in the last few weeks that makes moving a necessity. What I dread is having to go into one of those “Senior communities” where the only people I see under 55 are in the supermarket. Right, I am 65–but most days I feel either like 100 or 19, depending on whether the Wellbutrin has kicked in yet.

So the marching orders:

1. Find a place that’s affordable

2. Figure out what’s disposable and throw it out

3. Move

4. Become so busy that I don’t have time to grieve.

And please spare me the happy horseshit of “It is what it is.” Sometimes it is precisely what it should not be because at this age I don’t deserve it.

Ceci n’est pas une vacances

No, this is not a vacation I’ve been on. It’s not even a declared rest period after we drank our milk, ate our cookies, and took our afternoon nap.

It’s the fun of having real life going like a jackhammer up your butt. It is:

1. The pending severance of a 14-year-long relationship with my Other. She is planning to sell the house and buy an apartment in Manhattan. Whether this is a pipe dream (see famous Magritte image not included here) or reality, I am on notice, and am seeking to leave this place where I have dwelt sometimes happily, sometimes in misery, for over nine years. The End of the Affair my ass. This is more like the sacking of Rome by the Goths.

2. The search for an apartment I can afford in an unaffordable state. Did I mention I despise New Jersey?

3. The hustle-hustle to keep the adjunct teaching work that makes the rent possible.

4. The adjunct work that is sapping my strength and contributing to the stress that is blowing my glucose numbers through the ceiling.

5. Did I mention that the apartments I’ve seen thus far within my price range either have plumbing that is somewhat out of commission or are in buildings that will not accept animals? Love me, love my cat. So far the neighborhoods for that kind of apartment remind me of places I used to visit when I worked for the Welfare Department in New York.

6. I paid about $900 yesterday for a new timing belt and water pump  after my car quit in the speed lane of the Garden State Parkway. How I got across five lanes of hostile drivers is beyond my knowledge, but God must have something real special planned for me. Maybe I’ll star in the remake of Snakes on a Plane, only it will be a real plane with real snakes.

6. And I’m still trying to write.

But…

I saw something humbling while waiting for my car. A woman came in leading a young boy of about 12. His head was clean shaven. Clearly this was the result of chemotherapy for a childhood cancer. And without hair it was hard to tell his sex. I did not stare, but thought: this child may not make it another year and his mother will grieve him more than I have ever had to grieve anyone. So my car is laid up. That nightmare I have been spared.

All the same…in the aggregate…Father, if it is your will, let this cup pass from me. But if not, then your will, not mine, be done. And the mercy I ask for myself I ask also for that nameless child. May he live to manhood so he can have a car kack out on him.

Pietà, Signor, pietà.  Amen.