Now I Understand
Sometimes
Or maybe I don’t understand anything at all. Ever.
When I worked in the field of infectious disease many times my clients would go off their meds. They said taking them every day, or twice, or whatever the protocol was (which was often unbelievably complicated—this one with food, this one two hours after food, this one on an empty stomach) – whatever it was, it reminded them on a daily or thrice daily basis that they were living with an HIV or AIDS diagnosis. No forgetting about it unless you forgot the meds.
(Or “buy me a cup of coffee” but I have no idea how to make that option work.)
The process eventually got more streamlined but by this time many of the people who managed to survive the early days of the crisis are now dealing with a whole new set of aging issues. Even when you’re glad to be alive you can be overwhelmed.
I don’t live with an infectious disease, just some other shit that nags me all day long and at its worst is limiting. Recently, it’s been imposing limitations that can sometimes, but not always, be overcome. Sometimes I want to give up.
But you’re not allowed to say that. When did we start not being allowed to say things? I guess, always.
We have a show tonight, Sunday, May 3, at Lucky on B. Tomorrow, Monday, May 4th, I’m reading at One and One and on Tuesday May 5th I’m part of a reunion reading of Bowery Women at the Bowery Poetry Club. I had to turn down the Kerouac reading on Wednesday due to a doctor’s appointment but we’re going to do part two Saturday May 9th at the Central Park Bandshell. And Tuesday, May 12, is the 11th St Bar, presumably with a rehearsal shoehorned in someplace.
I have not done so many things in one week in a long time and I’m not sure that I can. It’s one event at a time. I can’t cancel the medical appointment, for which I waited two months. Everything beside the 11th Street Bar is negotiable.
And I still can’t wear my cool boots and reliably catch my breath. I should get a manicure. I’m too tired to go get a manicure and I haven’t even done one of these shows yet. And there’s more than a little anxiety bouncing around. And guilt because my dog wants to play and has every right to want to play and I’m here at the computer trying to make sense of the senseless.
An embarrassment of riches and I’m not complaining but I do have trepidations.
In other words, fear. Another thing we’re not supposed to have, although courage is overcoming fear. If there were no fear there’d be no need for courage, not that we’re talking about climbing mountains or race car driving here. Or saving lives by running into burning buildings. But fear doesn’t have to be rational. There’s a poem I like to end sets with sometimes, called “Jane Ormerod’s Basement” which is an homage to some lines of hers that are among the best I’ve ever read/heard:
We refuse to enter the basement because of something that happened in the attic,” from “Belongings (Must Dress the Character”).
We usually do this with a background of “Sweet Jane” if it’s recited with musicians.
Here is the poem and some more about fear, not that we really need more about fear. But in the middle of anxiety attacks, sometimes you write.
Jane Ormerod’s Basement
You can’t love your child because nobody loved you
You hate the Bronx because you got mugged in Brooklyn
You’re afraid to get a dog because they killed your cat
It’s what happened in the attic
It’s what happened in the basement
Years pass
Nothing matters, everything counts
Love
Loss
Life
What else is left besides fear?
Sobriety’s irrelevant if you don’t want to drink
Success is compromised when everything runs smoothly
Love only happens when the garbage is taken out
Loss is another way of saying Wednesday
And life, as usual, doesn’t care
There are stoops on East 10th Street
We sit in a sliver of sun, talk about Monk and Coltrane,
Coney Island and the poems we wrote and didn’t write,
the first books we bought, HOWL and Ferlinghetti,
the people we miss, lives lost in the thick air,
indecision and a cup of coffee, club soda and a car,
we circle and return to certainty and all that matters
Love, Loss, Life and what else is left besides fear?
Could be a book title, don’t ya think?
This next one is one of several versions of Fearless/My City, having to do with NYC during the pandemic and the post-pandemic era. There’s a recorded version by Joe Sztabnik and Gary Barnett done in the studio known as Joe’s Basement which can be found on YouTube.
Fear/less: My City
You’re too stupid to be afraid, my mother used to say.
Maybe I was. Wandering the streets, riding subways, entranced by the Red Hook light hitting metal,
by the clotheslines, the pigeon coops.
Getting lost, coming home after dark, keeping secrets.
Painfully shy, my fear of people never caused fear of my city.
I was not afraid, at age seven, in Brownsville,
going to the store with my cousins,
tucking our dollar bills under our arms,
just in case.
Not afraid, at nine, walking to Coney Island
along McDonald Avenue, the rank smell
of caged chickens following us,
trying to find out if it was still all there
in the winter.
Not afraid the night I rode up to El Barrio alone because the Young Lords had taken over a church and I was convinced that the cause would keep me safe. And it did.
I learned the rules of the street along the way.
Who to avoid. When to keep your mouth shut. Stay away from doorways. Walk like you know where you’re going. Never take your money out. Jump the gates. Climb the fences.
Run faster than the knife that might cut your pretty young face. Don’t tell anyone.
Survival skills. And no matter how smart, young girls do not get away unscathed.
Some bad people, some bad nights.
But I was never afraid of my city.
Saturday evening, September 17, 2016.
We are sitting in the Garden at 6th and B, waiting to do some music.
Some poems.
My friend Ron texts me from Prague.
Explosion. Dumpster. Chelsea. Injuries.
Second device. FBI. Homeland Security.
Cause “not yet determined.”
Images flood my mind as I read.
Eagles of Death Metal. Paris.
Pulse. Orlando.
Young people bleeding on the dance floor. Dying.
The screams.
The smell.
The Towers.
The falling bodies.
Tonight, twenty-nine injured.
Were they sleeping?
Watching television? Eating dinner?
Do we have the right to be angry?
What about our bombs?
What about the Syrian children?
What about my friends?
What have we done?
We are here, making music and poetry,
Feels as far away as Ron, in Prague,
But here. We are all here.
Greetings to everyone, messages Ron.
Be safe, my darlings.
More texts.
Are you ok? Are you ok? Are you ok?
I do the checklist.
My son’s in New Jersey.
My daughter’s at home down here.
Wait...Gerald lives in the Chelsea Hotel
Janis and Kevin and Michael
and Tessa Lou and my cousin Lynn,
who hates me, all in the neighborhood.
Are you ok? Are you ok? Are you ok?
Before 2001, we never took attendance.
Not even in the 70’s when they called it
Fear City.
But we were not afraid of our city.
We were always home.
On rooftops, street corners, broken
glass, basement clubs.
There was no word for homeless.
We were always home.
I am not afraid of my city.
Neither am I intrepid.
I have my panic attacks on Upper East Side avenues, Armies of tight faced women
marching by.
I’m afraid to ride a bike in traffic.
My heart races in stalled subways
and stopped elevators.
But I’m no longer afraid of people.
And I am not afraid of my city.
I hate every new wrinkle and crumbling tooth but I’m glad that I did not grow up in fear. And I got to grow old.
I remember the feeling of invulnerability.
They say all young people feel it but I don’t think they do any more. I see it in their eyes.
What in the world,
like Bowie said,
What in the world can we do?
We live.
I live.
Newscasters look at us with sad eyes.
Sometimes we get scared, too.
But when I lie in bed at night,
thirteen flights above the river,
listening to rain or traffic noise,
I am struck almost senseless
by the lights of the bridges and
the safety of my concrete walls
I am not afraid of my city.
That’s it for now. Except for a little quick one. Bottoms up.
Before Anyone Knew We Were Gone
Linda LaLa and I bellied up to the bar,
one of the few dives left on the avenue.
She ordered her usual Tequila & Terror
and I chose a popular cocktail, the Whiskey Fear.
It was an August afternoon, but the sun had already set.
Our credit cards had expired and the ATM was broken.
We watched closely as the bartender checked citizenship papers.
Let’s blow this pop stand, I said, before anyone knows we’re gone.
The way you describe the constant negotiation between gratitude, exhaustion, fear, and obligation is such a specific kind of overwhelm Puma, the kind that comes not from a lack of life, but from too much of it pressing in at once. The schedule alone would be enough to rattle anyone, let alone carrying a body that won’t always cooperate and a mind that won’t stop turning things over.
What you said about meds as a daily reminder of illness -- how there’s no real “off switch” -- echoes through everything else here. Even when the circumstances are different, that same persistence is there: the body tapping you on the shoulder, the calendar filling up, the dog needing play, the poems needing voice. It’s a lot to hold at once, and it makes sense that fear slips in through the cracks.
And the fear you describe isn’t abstract -- it’s lived-in. The kind that accumulates over time, attaches itself to places, to memories, to the body itself. That line -- “Nothing matters, everything counts” -- that’s the paradox, isn’t it? You can feel both at once and not be wrong about either.
I also hear the care in how you’re approaching the week: one event at a time, honoring the doctor’s appointment, letting the rest be negotiable. That’s not failure -- that’s navigation. That’s survival with intention.
For what it’s worth, I relate to the limits too. I only really have the stamina for one event a day -- especially if it involves something like a long, draining bus ride across the city. There’s just a point where the body and mind say, that’s enough input for today, and pushing past it doesn’t make anything better, just blurrier.
Your writing holds all of this without flattening it. The fear, the city, the history, the humor (“Tequila & Terror” is going to stick with me). It doesn’t try to resolve anything too neatly, which is honest. Sometimes just naming the weight of it is the work.
I hope tonight goes gently, whatever that ends up meaning. Even if “gently” just means you get through it on your own terms.
I so like that you write about things we feel but people think.we shouldn't feel. I'm having a very hard time and a friend says'compartmentalize'. Tuck that fear away
The heck with that. I feel better reading your posts. Honesty is the answer.