The Episode With The Lizard

It didn't register at first. It’s like, when you see something out of the corner of your eye and your subliminal mind tells you in great detail why what you're seeing just isn't possible, so your concious mind -- wimp that it is, simply throws up its hands, rolls its eyes, and says “ok, you know better”.
Nonetheless, there it was; on the top edge of the black marble backsplash, in my kitchen on the Upper East Side, sat a green Anole, serenely basking in the dusty ray of sun showing through the window. I searched surreptitiously for something to coax him into, and considered the possibilities that might have brought him to me, but the more I thought, the less sense it made. I hadn't been to Miami for over a year, and I was fairly certain that, had he stowed away in one of my suitcases, he’d have either been discovered by now, or, more likely, an unfortunate sneaker casualty; but like I said, here-- incontrovertibly, (and apparently in perfect health,) he was.

Settling on an oblong plastic take-out container from Noodles 28, I poked two small holes in its’ lid with the point of a pairing knife before gently sweeping him in between lid and bottom.

Figuring I’d take him where we always take mice to be released from our “Have-a-Heart” traps, I slipped on my top-siders and headed out the front door towards the East 86th street entrance of Central Park.

“So, have you done anything about finding a job yet? What about school? Are you doing anything about going back to school?”

Annoyed, I was about to answer when I realized I wasn’t on my cellphone with my dad, and that it was in fact, the perforated take out container that was talking to me.
“You know, your life is just passing you by. You’re not getting younger, and I’m just concerned your going to wake up one day in your sixties, and realize you’re still waiting for your life to begin”
“Shut up.” I hissed, “You’re a lizard. What would you know about waking up at sixty and realizing anything? Besides, I’m waiting to hear back on those submissions to 'The New Yorker'.”
I quickened my pace towards the park, while it occurred to me, the two smoking barbers I’d passed on eighty-eighth and third had interupted their own conversation and were looking at me, the way two smoking New York barbers would look at a poor schizophrenic who'd gone off his meds and was threatening to spin on his heels any second, walk back, and ask them if they could plait his pubic hair.

“You know,” he said, “ you can wait forever. In the end, nothing ever comes from waiting. Why don’t you do something pro-active? Call them back for crissakes! And what about that volunteer position at the Central Park Conservancy? That's a good way to make valuable contacts."

“The guy from The CPC already emailed me back. He said they only have high school students volunteering in the office in the Summ… I’M TALKING TO A LIZARD!!!”

“And? What if I was a guy with a long white beard and a staff? Would you take me more seriously then? Look, don’t let the package fool you guy, I’ve been around.”

“Yeah? Like where?”

My take-out container sighed impatiently. “For 24 years, from the day you and your family moved to Miami, I sat in your room, just behind that red toy clock on top of your bookcase. I watched you throughout junior high, high school, college… all those part-time jobs you got and lost, every time you came home depressed after school, or a bad date, or just a bad day… I’d crawl out onto the ceiling over your bed and read every word you wrote in that sketchbook of yours. You weren't bad. Morose as all hell, but you were good. You showed promise. You had a keen insight. But you never could get over what everyone on the outside kept saying… 'you’re not normal blah blah blah, you’re weird, you insist on doing everything differently, just to be different, anything possible just to not fit in… you don’t know how to take direction…', and what did you do? You ate it all up. Every last word. You believed them! You let them get inside you, until there wasn’t anything left. I’ll tell you, it makes me sick what they do, these self-riteous cannibals of the spirit. They took you, a creative, intelligent and sensitive kid, and just because they were afraid of tcoloring outside the lines, or maybe, who knows? Maybe because they were jealous, they did every single fucking thing in their power to crush you. And you let them crush you. You hardly ever write anymore. You spend your days in your room watching t.v… or maybe you poke around on the Internet, or you write a clever sentence or two in your blog. You were brilliant, and now you're sitting there, like you're waiting to be called onto the stage or something.. like this is a dress rehersal for crissakes! I just get so frustrated.”

Stopping for a red light on the median of Park Avenue, I sighed, a wave of sadness, slight nausea, and the realization that I reall had allowed myself-- even after years of therapy, to become stagnant, a victim of others' conceptions. “So, what do I do now? I’m lost. I feel like I just don’t have anything inside me. No matter what I do, the ideas don't come. And when they do, it’s like I just don’t have the mental energy to do anything about it. So tell me, please, what do I do?”

The take-out was quiet for about ten seconds, then,
“Eat me.”

“Huh?”

“Eat me.”

“What?”

“EAT ME!”

“I can't, I’m a vegetarian”

“I’m green”

“You’re not exactly asparagus though you know.”

“If you eat me, the weight of your past will become like steam; in its’ dissipation, you’ll become light yourself. You’ll have drive, vision, and clarity. You’ll be able to let go of every failure you ever allowed yourself to be defined by.”

I opened up the white plastic box and the small green creature crawled out into my cupped hand. I looked into his face and he blinked back at me.
Paralyzed on the Park Avenue median, the traffic dissolved around me, and I closed my eyes.

in front of you she stands, undoing her necklace looking down
into your face
there’s something innocent and touching in her gesture
the purposeful sensuality
the firm belief that you want her
and you do
on her knees she crumples to you on the bed, and she's in your arms
your hands grasp her fragile winged back, open fingers spread
against your biceps the sides of her breasts
her breath all
liquor and smoke
and the fine, almost imperceptable fuzz at the corner of
her lips
the kiss
it’s a wet one
and right now, you’ll tell her
whatever she wants to hear

so she’ll be yours
for an hour
or a night
and tomorrow
you’re gone.

New Recruit

He just goes to me, “You’re going to misunderstand what’s about to happen to you, and for that, I am profoundly sorry.” and sticks the knife in, and that’s it, game over. Except that it wasn’t over at all.

So, what happened see, I'm on my way home from Food Emporium, when I see this homeless guy I kind of know. Well, I don’t really know him, but whenever I see him and his dog, (he has a dog) I usually give him a couple of bucks or buy him some food or something. This time, I was broke, and I’d just used the last of my foodstamps for the month, which sucked big time, because it was only the seventh. So, I see him sitting out front and it’s freezing outside, I mean like in the teens and windy, and he’s sort of huddling behind his cart inside 3 or 4 coats and when he sees me, he says hi because I usually give him some money or buy him some food. So I notice his dog isn’t with him, but there’s this other homeless guy, maybe 60 or 70, (it’s hard to tell) talking to him, and he’s really skinny and he's wearing this old looking army jacket but he looks kind of peaceful and stuff, so I ask my friend, well, he’s not really my friend, but you know what I mean, where his dog is, and he tells me he’s been leaving his dog with a friend because its been so cold and this way he can go into the subway at night or go to the shelter and stuff.. so, I’m standing there, talking to him and I feel a little guilty, you know, standing there holding groceries, on my way home, so I tell him I don’t have any money this time, but I just got him some cheese and a bottle of water, and I take a package of string cheese and a bottle of water and give it to him, and tell him I just used the last of my food stamps, maybe so he realizes it’s kind of a sacrifice for me or something.. then the other guy smiles at me, and I smile back, thinking he must see that I’m a good person or something, not like all the rich snobs that live around here, and I say to the two of them have a good night and stay warm.. so I’m on my way home now, and I turn onto my block and suddenly he’s right there in front of me, and I have no idea how he got there, because I just left him in front of Food Emporium, and he’s got a knife, so the thought “how the hell did he get in front of me so fast?” is replaced by “who's this asshole in front of me with a knife?” and he just goes to me “ You’re going to misunderstand what’s about to happen to you, and for that, I am profoundly sorry.” and that's it.. it's like a flash, no pain even, and I’m here, in this stupid waiting room, and some guy's tellin' me I'm about to be drafted into Heaven's army or something, because there’s some kind of angelic war going on..

So, what about you? How’d you get here?

I'll Take Manhattan

I live in New York City.
More specifically, I live on the Upper East Side of New York City.
To be precise, I live on East 88th street, right in the middle of the block that spans from Third to Second Avenues, sandwiched between the working class, mostly Irish and German neighborhood of Yorkville to the east, and the notoriously priveleged district known as Carnegie Hill to the west. On our block we hear more birds chirping, even in Winter, than we hear on the grounds of our Catskills country home, surrounded by acres of woods in the Mid-Hudson Valley.
On the west uptown corner of Third and 88th, there's a pizza parlor we used to order from often; they made the thinnest crust pizza for blocks around, and in New York, convenience causes the phrase "blocks around", to denote as relatively vast a region as "miles around" in almost any other city on Earth.
If you walk down our block from Third, towards Second Avenue, on the left side at the corner (the uptown west corner again) you'll see a pub we do our best to avoid on St. Patrick's day, as well as on Friday and Saturday nights, especially in the warmer months, when the "B & T" or Bridge and Tunnel crowd come into the city and make it impossible to park. On any given weekend eve, you'll see these 20 somethings, their untucked oxford cloth shirts, gelled spikey hair, "dirty" jeans and chunky square toed shoes, or halter tops, high heels and the ubiquitous clouds of cigarette smoke blithely clogging the sidewalk. Directly across 88th, on the Downtown west corner is a (relatively) new resturaunt with water pitchers I've often admired through the windows that the head chef on his cigarette break outside the kitchen door last summer told me were Le Creuset. It's called Café d'Alsace, and my girlfriend and I have yet to try it. (Unfortunately, they don't have too much for vegetarians on their menu.)
Back up "the hill" as my girlfriend and I call it, on the downtown west corner of Third and 88th, is a Deli that delivers with a ten-dollar minimum. Usually that requires little more than a carton of orange juice, a pint of half and half, and a 2-litre bottle of Diet Pepsi. Since we've discovered that they deliver, we've talked about ordering from them on at least 6 occasions where we're already too comfortable in our house clothes and just a little too installed on the couch to get up the energy to throw on a coat and walk up the hill, but have actually only ordered twice.
My girlfriend's mother lives a scant eight-block walk from us, on the corner of 80th and First, and her sister and niece live two blocks from there, on York, between 81st and 82nd. These are the boundries of our self imposed ghetto.
We denizens of New York, are more insular than we like to admit. Living on this tiny island that's become the corner where much of the world meets, has fostered a species as rare as any spawned in the Galapagos, that invariably sees the rest of the world as foreign and maybe a little bit deprived ("How could you possibly live anyplace where you can't get vegetarian Peking Duck delivered within 25 minutes at 10:30 on a Sunday night?"). It seems Saul Steinberg was dead on with his famous 1976 cartoon, "View of the World from Ninth Avenue", wherein New York is depicted as the center of the world, and New Jersey as a desert wasteland, bordered on it's west side by a lilliputian Pacific Ocean, with Canada to it's north, and Mexico, it's south. In fact, to many of us, going downtown to St. Marks for dinner, is akin to going out of town, and I won't even mention going to another borough. In my admittedly ridiculous mindset, Brooklyn often seems further away than Miami.
As provincial as all this sounds however, I must say it takes an immense amount of self-control on my part not to sound like an ambassador for the "I Love NY" lobby as I extoll my city's praises. There really aren't that many places you can walk a few blocks and be in a completely different cityscape, a shopper's dream peppered with purveyors of fashion frequented by the world's wealthy, a few more blocks and be in a park where it's easy to forget you're in a city at all, and a few more blocks and you're in the midst of Broadway's bustle, and all of this along one street.
No, for all New York's shortcomings, its overcrowded streets, potholes that could swallow a Mini Cooper, over-reaching real estate developers, high city taxes and ostensibly xenophobic citizenry, I wouldn't live anywhere else.

The Problem With Cheap Tampons

"Shit"

Ma’ayan was in the bathroom and I asked what the problem was.

"I just got my period and I'm out of tampons.  I hate to do this to you, but will you run out and get me a box?"

It was 11:45 at night, and the only place open in our neighborhood was the corner bodega.  When I got there, there was one box of tampons.  They were in a dusty faded red and white striped box, looked about 20 years old, and the writing was in some language I'd never seen before, but they were definately tampons, as far as I could tell.  I bought them and shuffled home to my dear girlfriend.  She was a little grossed out when she saw that the box was so dusty and old.  "They're gross!

I could get toxic shock or something!"

Nonetheless, she used one, and we went to bed.

The TV or my need to pee or both woke me up at 4:34 and I groggily made my way to the bathroom.  When I got back, there was Ma’ayan sound asleep, naked and spread eagle on the bed, and there, poking out of her vagina was not the usual white string, but something that looked like the tip of a tiny lion's tail, and it was wagging.

"Ma’ayan!" she snored at me in response.  I opened up my cellphone and shined the blue light on her crotch.  It was definately a tail of some kind.  I gave it a little tug, and suddenly saw a little cloven hoof sticking out below a small brown hairy rear.  As I pulled more, Ma’ayan began to wake up.  "What are you doing? We can't have sex.. go back to sleep."

"But there's a little horse or a goat or somthing in your vagina!"

She sat bolt upright, turned on the light, and looked down, and suddenly began to sob, but not like she was upset or even shocked or scared... she actually seemed happy.

"I knew if I waited long enough, I'd get one... don't you see?  It’s the giraffe I wished  for on my sixth birthday!"  and she pulled it the rest of the way out.

There, sitting on the bed, between my girlfriend's open thighs, was a 3-inch tall baby giraffe, trying to get its land legs and failing miserably.

"He’s so cute!" she squeeled. 

He was, but...

"I want to call him Benny.  Quick, go get me some milk from the fridge."

It's been 3 weeks now, and Benny has become part of the family.  He's brought us closer than we ever were, and he's not even high maintenance or anything.  The trouble is, he's now nearly 9 feet tall.  The Karils, our downstairs neighbors have started to complain that they hear clopping on the floor at strange hours of the night, and plaster is falling on their heads, and our chandelier, the one my mother bought us for the new apartment is broken.  The other day, Mr. Karil cornered me in the elevator, and I had to tell him that my  300 pound Aunt Margi is staying with us and she’s a slightly deranged aging flamenco dancer... I had to promise that we'd only let her practice in the afternoon.

Also, the ashtray that became a litterbox that's now a sandbox that's sitting in the middle of our living room is becoming insufficient, and since Ma’ayan works days, and I stay home, I'm the one who has to empty it 3 or 4 or 5 times a day, and I've already stuffed up the toilet several times.  Giraffe poop doesn't smell much but it's pretty big and can really stuff a toilet.  Don’t quote me on this, but I think we're going to end up having to move to Jersey or something soon.

The first observation Z made, was of a young woman walking with a child’s carriage past his building on his way back from the laundry room. She was talking avidly and excitedly apparently to the carriage’s occupant, and Z thought to himself, “how nice, she talks to her child as an adult. No baby talk, no cooing, no patronizing…” and she seemed perfectly normal. Then, as she came closer, Z began to overhear the content of the conversation:
The woman- “how can I depend on you for anything? You say you’ll pick it up and yell at me when I remind you but here it is Thursday, and you still haven’t gotten the laundry.”
The baby – “... “
As she came yet closer and just as Z was about to condemn her as insane or at the very least unfit to pilot a carriage on a public sidewalk, he noticed the thin black wire hanging from her left ear.

Life in New York--
To live on a small island through which flows the entire world.

a man falls in love a hundred times a day
this girl's ass
another's hair
another's awkward smile
and another who carries a book of children's questions
it's touching you see?
she enters your field of vision long enough for the beginnings of attachment
to be born
then
she is gone
a momentary feeling of loss
(almost imperceptable grief)
and you move on

sad today
we are driving in the car
you sit beside me in silence
I try to engage you
how was your day?
but the quiet stays between us
like another planet
and you tell me
I'm distant.

.............................

there is a certain September echo
the ring of a dog's bark across the concrete courtyard bounces off brownstone walls
there is a certain September echo
even in the light (if that makes any sense)
evening sweeps up third avenue
traffic, headlight dawn cuts the dusk with pointed yellow fingers
the bright light cheese scented warmth of our corner pizza place pulls at us but our wallets beg to differ
instead we go home to sock footed jeans off on the couch
maybe you'll make a salad you say, and we can warm last winter's frozen soup in the microwave.
back on the couch, your head in the crook of my shoulder
we talk about the early chill in the air, and how the spider plant looks like it's dying again
an echo of last September

Letter From A "Self Hating Jew"

While reading an article this morning on Haaretz.com about the director Ken Loach's boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, I was struck by one of the reader commentaries at the bottom of the article. More specifically, it was one of the responses to another reader's comments. A Mr. Larry Saltzman, of Santa Barbara, California, expressed the following;

" I agree with Loach. The occupation of Palestine and the recent war against Lebanon are worthy of any sanctions and boycotts that can be successfully imposed on Israel."

to which, Ronald Ginson, of Lee's Summit, Missouri replied by calling Mr. Saltzman a "self hating Jew".

While I heartily disagree with Saltzman's assertion regarding sanctions and boycotts, that is a matter for another day and another blog. My argument today, is with Ginson's use of the term "Self Hating Jew".

This term, is simply too easily and too often bandied about by members of the right wing who see the world in black and white; those Jews who stand with them are immune, while those who oppose their platform, or any element thereof, are summarily dismissed as self hating.
Well hear this; I`m a Jew, and an Israeli, and I love being a Jew, and an Israeli and for that matter, I simply love myself. (Where's the self hate?) I also oppose the war in lebanon, and the occupation by my country`s government of the palestinian territories. Furthermore, I want peace, and the only way I see this happening, is for my government to assist in establishing a Palestinian state, aiding in building a working infrastructure, and for both us, and the Palestinians, to open a new page. This is all very simplistic I know, but I'm trying to be brief and stay close to my original point; the "self hating Jew".
To be honest, I don`t know many "self hating Jews". I assume that when one uses this term, one means it literally, as it`s far to simplistic a designation to hide any subtlties. So, when you, Mr. Ginson, call me a "self hating Jew", which I'm sure you inevitably will, please keep in mind, that Israel and the world in general, are full of people like me, who both love our Jewish-ness, and our Israeli-ness, and despise the actions that are so often carried out in the name of our supposed well being or protection. If that makes me a "self hating Jew", then I can only wish you and the others who favor this term the healthy level of self esteem I and my ilk enjoy.

the sun breaks our window
into rainbows
on the floor
on the couch
she waits
for me to arrive
while beside her
I sit
remote
control in hand
watching CNN

.......................

with scissor words, she cuts
me off
she doesn't get it
she says
and i fall, an apple
to the floor
slightly bruised
and softened

I collect Jewish stars. I have several. They range in style,
material and size, from a small austere silver one without detail
that's about 3/4 of an inch by 3/4 of an inch, to one I was given at an art fair by an israeli artist
that's made of some kind of stained glass looking plastic with silver
and turquoise detail, to one that's approximately 1.5 inches by 1.5
inches, is made of rhodium plated silver (very shiny), and is covered
in cubic zirconia (very sparkley). I refer deprecatingly to the
latter as my "big honkin' hunk o' jewish bling". There are also
several others I've not bothered to describe. I'm seldom without one
of my stars. I tend to wear them according to my moods.

When I'm feeling a particularly deep sense of israeli / jewish pride, tinted
with shoshana damari, chava albershtein, and arik einshtein songs
playing against the background of my consciousness like the soundtrack
to a movie, I will usually don either the small austere star, or the
larger flat silver one I made myself. Both invoke in me a feeling of
nostalgic pride, based not on flashiness, but in connectivity with a
culture and history that flows through my veins and organs.

I will sometimes put on my bling star when I'm feeling ironic. Naturally, I get stares walking down second avenue, with my long "Jewfro", and my ironic/ iconic rock-star gleaming on my chest, about heart level, big and sparkly enough to be seen at least half a block away. On these days, I've usually got mashina and kavveret playing in my head, and on my ipod. This is my "downtown" star, even though I live on the upper east side.

When I'm feeling a draw to that part of me that is linked
with creativity and the arts, to the artists and artisans who, with
their hands and hearts give birth over and over to the beautiful and moving expressions
in my culture, I will wear that handmade star I got from the artist at
the holiday fair in Union Square two years ago. Two triangles of smoky blue composite plastic,
connected and outlined in silver like stained glass, with a spiral etched silver
disc in the middle, and in the middle of that, a blue round mounted
piece of turquoise. I was instantly drawn to it when I saw it hanging on the wall of her makeshift booth, it's design is
personally significant on so many levels. The turquoise is my
birthstone and favorite color, and the spiral is a symbol I used to
see in my dreams, recurring time and again.

Once, at a party, bedecked in my "BLING" star, I joked with someone that
I wore it for protection. Not because of any kind of metaphysical or
spiritual properties one might ascribed it, but, because it was so
big, sparkly and bright, there wasn't a
bullet that could get past it, or a driver that wouldn't see it, even
during a blackout in the middle of the night in the fog.
These are the outstanding stars in my collection. From time to time, I take out my long nose pliars and pry open their bales to change the chains or cords they'll hang on, and subtly change their style and significance.

Last April, a young boy with a belt packed with 4.5 kilograms of
explosives entered the Rosh Ha'Ir Falafel Resturaunt near the old
central bus station in Tel Aviv. When he detonated it, 9 people were
killed and dozens were injured. Two of the injured were friends of mine; a
16 year old boy named Daniel Wultz, and his father, Tuly. So often, when
there is a "pigua" (terrorist attack) in israel, I feel an almost
swelling sense of pride in my israeliness, brought of some
superconcious mantra;

"No matter how much you keep trying to destroy us (me), you can never
take away from us (me) who we are (I am). We (I) will survive!"

In these times, though I am grieving, I will typically reach for my "bling",
because it's the loudest neon sign I have, and it screams louder than I ever could "I will survive!"
This time however, things being closer to home and more personal, my mantra and it's accompanying star seemed both insufficient, and innapropriate. In fact, looking through my drawer of stars, I couldn't seem to
find one that fit my mental state on this occasion at all. I know it sounds
stupid, but my stars really do give me strength, or at least the self illusion of it. They're a part of me the way any form of self
expression is part of us, they are part of the poetry I live.

Some 6 weeks after that april day, my friend Daniel died of his wounds. Since then to be honest, I haven't really worn my stars that much. Suddenly, donning a piece of jewellry as an outward expression to the
world that's meant to sum up something that's so intrinsic to who I am feels shallow, not worthy of the weight of its intention. For now, my stars will sit in their drawer, un-worn. I'm looking forward to the day when, once again, I can feel that nostalgiac little inside smile, or the flooding of pride I feel when I take one of my stars from my drawer like an old compatriot, and place it on my neck. For now though, while the grief and pain last, I'll express myself more inwardly.