Another Hundred People Just Got off of the Train

It is a city of strangers, as Mr. Sondheim wrote. On the whole, though, I'd say Bostonians impart warmth and neighborliness despite the descending temperatures these days. The first night by myself (well, with Kate) back in September, we went for pizza at The Upper Crust. When we seemed flummoxed by the counter service and the absence of printed menus, a lady with her family saved our table for us while we waited in line. I would have given her a slice of sun-dried tomato and eggplant, but my stomach vetoed firmly.

Some days, it does feel like another hundred people get off the train, some to stare, some to stay (in my way, naturally). I walked toward the Babcock St stop on Wednesday about 30 minutes before work, knowing that the train was too far ahead for me to catch up. A long red light held it indefinitely, and hope against hope, I decided to run for it. When I just hit the caboose, the light recanted, and the T blazed onward. Did I remain in the dust and patiently wait it out? I have been indoctrinated into city values now: patience is a virtue only when it's warm. I cut across moving cars to signal a bus, which arrived like a godsend. If this was the ride to heaven, though, God's gonna run out of room. But we were moving rapidly, so I endured the zombied faces around me, who never bothered to move out of the way of even a pregnant woman exiting, and the pungent odors that come with public transportation. 

We passed the T I had missed around Boston U. Do I disembark and run for the train? I'll have to meet up with it at some point to get downtown. But in protest of the block-apart stops of the green B line, I continued to let the wheels go round and round. Another potential transfer point came, but I thought, we're almost at Kenmore. I might even make the T before the one I see.

The traffic light took nine minutes. Today, in comparison, it took two. Not only was the bus commune the smelliest but also the most dawdling. I race down the stairs, swipe my card through the turnstiles, and book it to the T... that I see pull away in front of me. A few minutes late; missing the T is always a viable excuse (if you don't overuse it). After an eternity, a T comes to save us, or so I think.

Instead, the driver announces with booming authority that this train will be taken out of service. The signs still read "Govt Center," and the masses inside are bemused. "Everyone off!" Two loaves of bread and fish could not have fed the multitudes that poured off the train, and all of them seemed to know each other. High schoolers, I overheard. Was this some twisted kind of field trip, exploring subterranean Boston? They were downright angry, as I would be if I had to share enclosed spaces with the lot of them. And I hadn't encountered so many racial epiphets since I'd read Huck Finn.

Next train comes; the herds pack in. I learn that the life of a sardine (really, the death of a sardine pre-consumption) is unbearably squished. That's when I hear from a girl literally beneath my armpit that they were deliberately evacuated from the train because they were being immature and pushing the buttons of both the T and the irate driver. I hate to stereotype, especially when we all poke at undergrads, but I'm now convinced that T licenses shouldn't be distributed until you can watch R-rated movies, buy cigarettes, and learn long words that don't begin with "mother."

We pull into the next stop, at Hynes, and more refugees stand on the platform like wayward immigrants rejected once they stepped off the boat. Sure enough, they're part of the same collective. I arrived at Emerson 45 minutes after my journey began.

Cities definitely bring out eccentricities. At New York Pizza last night, I swear a man told his woman (wife? mistress? "secretary"?) that she should get an abortion, just slipping it into conversation before immediately switching to the humdrum details of his perfunctory day. More outlandish, I found, was when his warm pastrami sandwich was delivered. The woman jumped up and hovered in the corner, saying she couldn't bear the smell of it. When he told her it was just cured beef, she looked incredulous. She consented to sit back down, but admonishing him the whole time, for the smell just wasn't right. I assume that she did not share the same public transportation this morning, or else that pastrami would smell like manna in comparison.

A Stranger in Paradise

We can count them on one hand: Bartok, Telemann, Hindemith. I'll wager Mozart, in duets and quintets, evinced some interest. But most top-notch composers never took a shine to the viola. Nested between the commanding cello section and the outcast second violins, violas slog through the machinations of the tormented, repeating their sixteen notes ad infinitum. If the melody ever passes their way, it's probably because the other strings grew bored with it. How can this hefty cousin to the violin unify its dark contralto C string and nasal A?

It's easy to engage in cocktail banter that descends toward viola jokes. Even violists chuckle, knowing that they become more reputable the more they put themselves down.

How brave of Hector Berlioz, then, to construct a symphonic travelogue, Harold in Italy, around the enigmatic viola. It acts as a lonesome spectator upon whom the surrounding orchestra refracts its jubilant, occasionally sainted grandeur. Standing in for "Harold," the soloist must feel apprehension. His playing steers away from sensuality, for other colors in the ensemble will carry that, but gaiety also eludes this vagabond. In the second movement, he appears as a wanderer lost among the peasants and the chimes of an abbey. Famished for notes to play, he feeds off their reverence and quietly, with little virtuosity, he is consigned to the countermelody. In a strange land, his task stays familiar.

Harold tours the countryside, the vineyards, the mountains, and just when the spark strikes him, he repeats his theme in the fourth movement, asserting his vitality before the villagers. There is something so earthy about his voice; his tones are not dulcet but burnished. Before he can enter the realm of the spiritual, however, his passport is revoked. The spectacles and sounds of Italy engulf and overpower their visitor, though not out of xenophobia. Italy's wonders reflect off the spectator, but he is merely the narrator who provides passage to these insights. In this symphony (and it is not a concerto), the viola must physically leave the stage in the fourth movement. His place, Berlioz asserts, is to acquiesce; he does not shine individually but as part of a collective endeavor.

But oh, for that rich lower register, the violins think, shocked out of their melody-centered world. For just half an hour, they also see a new world, built upon the inner voice and its capacity to see, from a distance, true visions.

And a hero doesn't come till the nick of time...

Last night I was in the presence of Stephen Sondheim, who was interviewed at Northeastern. There was this collective sense of awe that rippled through the crowd, and when he'd mention some of his shows, people would instantly applaud them. One girl cried when she asked him a question. Culture comes to Boston, and we reciprocate with enthusiasm.

First thing off: Sondheim fidgets a lot in his seat. I, who also cannot sit still, must be destined for greatness. He doesn't come across as senile at all, which is impressive when you're 78, and he's still writing music. He does, however, have this amusing old-man clap where he swings his arms out really far (in a "the fish was this big" way).

He talked about the upcoming revival of West Side Story, and how the Sharks will speak and sing in Spanish when they are angry or getting their rumble on. Spanish has this great passion and crispness, he said. Scores like Gypsy were quick to write because he knew exactly what performer he was writing for. One of the easiest songs he ever worked on was "Smile, Girls," which he wrote in a day with Jule Styne; naturally it was cut the next day from the show.

Anyone Can Whistle didn't work, he feels, because of its "smart-ass" writing. And so good reviews stayed at bay until Company. He began Follies much earlier than Company, but when Hal Prince decided to direct both, he insisted on Company first. Then came one of his biggest successes, A Little Night Music. The beauty of a song like "The Miller's Son," he said, is that Petra is the lifeforce of that show, avoiding the facades the others put up, which is why such a tertiary character gets the 11 o'clock number. One lady at intermission remarked that "A Weekend in the Country" was surprisingly hummable, and Sondheim replied, "yes, well you've just heard the chorus twelve times. Of course it's hummable."

No discussion of Sunday in the Park with George or Into the Woods. He does yearn to write another grand Romantic score like Sweeney Todd. That show was his love letter to London, he said -- and the first time, they hated it. Maybe the Brits can't reconcile love and cannibalism. He said Assassins, out of all his shows, most fulfills what he set out to accomplish. And though the moderator kept insisting that Passion is his most direct work, Sondheim didn't agree with that assessment, saying that he feels the score still functions on indirection. He said his music often has lots of "busy-ness" in the accompaniment because he composes on piano, which only sustains for so long; he doesn't often consider instruments like strings that could hold notes indefinitely, thus his piano copies are fairly note-driven.

Road Show, soon to open in New York, will be the final revision of what was Bounce. People asked why he'd worked on it for 14 years, and he replied that he was first took interest in the Mizner brothers in 1952. Sondheim is currently halfway through a book with his complete lyrics from Saturday Night on (next year's Christmas present?). If one can't always share the same physical space as Sondheim, this might be the next best thing.

And the walls come a-tumblin' down...

"This hole don't look big enough." Fantastic. At least our ceilings will (fingers, toes, eyes crossed) be fixed next week. And now the repairman got stuck in my bathroom.

Gmail usually places relevant links at the top of your inbox, like spam casserole recipes in the section of unloved e-mails. Today's, though, has no relevance to my e-mails or to fact: "Sarah Palin" is the headline, "www.good.is" is the link. Riddle me this, comrades.

Words that the Google spell check does not recognize: Gmail (really?); inbox; www. I understand outdated editions of Word doing this, but it's time to deal with the twenty-first century. Let's not even get into grammar check. It told me to substitute "It's" in the phrase "Its most recent issue." No wonder people get these two confused if their word processor doesn't know the difference. Please, people, turn off grammar check right now. Rip off the Band-Aid; learn participles and subject-verb agreement on your own. The world will be better off.

Which brings me back to the governor of Alaska. At the top of her lengthy entry on Wikipedia (also forsaken by spell check), it says "the neutrality of this article is disputed." Her page has 211 sources - that's more than Jesus gets.

Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho

They're about to drill a hole in my living room wall, aka the part of the wall that looks nice and doesn't need refurbishment. Thanks, leaky pipes. Of course, the pipes aren't leaking on my floor, just on the second floor. But they want to "see what's up." It's damp and gloomy outside now, so that probably won't help. Ah, there's the sound of drilling, from the apartment below. Nothing says rise-and-shine like overbearing machinery. Toss the roosters - this will ensure that everyone for miles around wakes up when you want.

Kalyn, by the way, I'm sorry I didn't write this last night. I know your waking up in the morning depends upon my blog. Don't kill yourself, please (that was last week's entry). If you need incentive to wake up still, I'll send you a drill that gnashes your walls to smithereens.

Oh, now we switch to the refreshing sound of hammering. Anyone heard that Ellen sketch? If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning, I'd hammer in the evening... Once you get a hammer, you realize you don't hammer as much as you thought you would. Unless your job is to fix leaky pipes inside walls. Maybe they could install a cool trap door afterward; if they need to go back in, secret passage through the bookshelf!

We almost got a free piano from Craigslist. (Train of thought: I want a bookshelf; people don't give them away on Freecycle; people do give away pianos. Three degrees of separation. Kevin Bacon sold separately.) Someone came in before us to snatch it away. But now we need one to cover up our desecrated wall.

Don't it always seem to go?

I was inspired by tonight's reading, and the T I took back. Ergo...

The Ride Home

We're having a pah-ty, a woman crows
In an invented dialect of self-inclusion
Step right on,
We'll be moving in a moment,
Called out through unflattering microphone distortion
Three minutes, sixteen seconds,
And I await salvation from this seventh circle of lethargy
The moment has passed
Nobody's having a pah-ty

A Herculean ogre of man stoops to fit beneath the ceiling
His peppered hair obfuscates my destination
Red neon reads ST. MAR
My mind wades out to sea
And I'm enraptured by the crash of waves
Snap back - that's just the train tracks

We lurch, jump-start, and emerge from extinction
With the panic level of a Prozac devotee
Have you seen American Psycho?
Return to the world of the living
Same girl confesses, he's slightly odd
I like them slightly odd

Apartment windows kindle our journey from the abyss
This stop was requested, yet none depart
Our shuttle impervious shields us refugees
My neighbor scans stage directions
Lipstick for Pagliacci, speaks woman one
You aren't much different, homicidal lunatic lover
Passengers perform for a pinch-thrift public
While acting as if nobody is there
Come on, people now, smile on your non-gender-specific brother
Wait, that's my stop
Get the hell out of my way

Oxymoron. 1a. Microsoft Works

I've always felt good about spelling. But sometimes I get caught on words like "dicey." I tried to write "dicier" in a Word document, but the red underline appeared. Bill Gates doesn't have the widest lexicon, but I thought maybe I was the fool. I spelled out "dicey" just to be sure - no problems there. Mild vindication. "More dicey"? Aye, the abhorred grammar check. Right-click (cause I still got Windows) and what does it substitute? "Dicier." I make the change and move on. What, then, gives Word a conniption? "Dicier."

Dicing reminds me of "Dexter," which is rocking this season, and that reminds me of the bird now chirping at my sock. Dexter (the bird) has a thing about white socks. He looks so puzzled. Where'd the foot go? And will it come back? It's like when my grandfather used to steal my nose when I was younger. Cool and upsetting at the same time. What if he couldn't reattach it? Things couldn't have gotten much dicier than that.

Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen

Yesterday Kate and I laughed about the fact that suicide is a crime. Can you get arrested for attempting such a crime but not succeeding? Maybe you get a Capra-esque Clarence instead to guide you through a miserable world sans you. And where does the law stop? Are there statutes for, say, auto-assassination?

It's no joke, but it kept popping up these past two days. Someone made a suicide crack at game night, common when a game of Clue is afoot. This afternoon I read my first Redivider story - and it was hardcore - and discovered that suicide is the refuge for an author's inspiration. (Or just a refuge from life, as per David Foster Wallace.) I took a break to watch the first episode of "Huff," but the Grim Reaper followed. "What's it about?" Kate asks. That's when the teenager shoots himself in the mouth and blood flies on his therapist's walls. Slow-motion hides nothing. "My weekend," I reply.

So I take a break from taking a break. Back to Redivider; story two awaits. But it knows (they always know) what's on my mind. (Only the subject is on my mind - as Douglas Adams says, don't panic.) And it delivers. Yes, it's also about suicide. Thank goodness we had those symphony tickets for tonight, as a diversion from a series of unfortunate fictional events. The program? Mahler's Symphony No. 6, sometimes referred to as "Tragic."

Bit by bit, building up the image

Why in the second presidential debate - which I blew off for Gil Shaham's amazing performance of the Stravinsky violin concerto - are there still factual inaccuracies? You get off the podium and speak Directly To The Voters, but you're still twisting things around.

McCain, we'll start with you. You're not going to give $5000 to individuals like you said but to households. It's a big difference. This is like when Obama said in the first debate that 95% of the "American people" (whoever they are) will receive tax cuts. Same deal - 95% of families. The score: McCain -1, Obama -1.

McCain, you also said that Obama voted 94 times to increase taxes. Factcheck.org pointed out that at least 40 of these don't really count. That's a half-point docked. Oh, and offshore drilling will decrease the price of oil? Really? The sad thing is that people believe that. I'm taking away two points for being delusional.

If anyone knows where the number $700 billion came from, help me out. McCain says we're giving it to "countries who don't like us" - then be an Indian giver and take it back! Minus one for confusion. I feel like we're surprised our hands are gritty from playing in the sandbox.

And Obama, dude, you said in the first and the second debates that Iraqis have a $79 billion surplus. Their surplus is at least $30 billion, which is way lower but still sounds impressive. Can't we just trust the facts to be right? Two points off for repeating this one and not getting it right between debates.

Final score: McCain -4.5, Obama -3. Biden, +1 for correctly defining the word "maverick" for us all in clear, non-jingoist language. Please let us strike it from Webster's on November 5.

Steam Heat (aka The Dharma Bum)

A momentous thing happened today. True, I braved the 66 bus, not knowing entirely where I'd end up, but that's not this story. For some reason, I got up at least an hour earlier than usual. I awoke in the arctic tundra that has replaced my room, feet nearing hypothermia, and went to take a blessedly hot 20-minute shower. I step out, place my hand on the radiator - and it's warm. Yes, my captive audience of three, the heat arrived at 146 Coolidge Street today. Was it karma for not indulging in an extra hour of sleep? Is that what they call dharma? Ironically (take note, Alanis), what drove me out of bed on this unusual morning was not the heat but the usual frigidity. In my excitement, I slipped tea on the hardwood floor. The living room now smells of orange, pekoe, and warmth.

I come home from the symphony tonight to find myself sunbathing ten minutes later. We have reached the oasis of Boston, and it is good. If I complain that my apartment is too warm, please slap me across the face with a halibut. Preferably dead - I don't promote animal cruelty.

Do any of you meat eaters find it difficult to express your views to the face of vegetarians? Or worse, the (shudder) vegans. "Survival of the fittest": there's one choice phrase. "I need the protein to gain weight": not many people say that, so it buys me stalling time. But what about animal rights? Lots of veggie-ers consume fish, but it seems we are just as cruel to them by, you know, killing them, slicing them open, throwing them on a grill, serving them as lox on a bagel. Don't get me started on the people who are against veal.

Maybe they don't mind being cooked. I am currently roasting and loving it, just like McDonald's does. (What does scare me is the meat that isn't, served by restaurants that aren't like MickeyD's. What were McNuggets made of before they used all-white meat?)

A Month Since My Last Confession

My first sin: I have started a blog. My second sin: I have sucked you into reading it.

How's Boston, you ask? I'll get there. This will hopefully (yes, that is correctly used) serve as a source of stimulation and conversation. You must reply if you are reading. If you were too busy to reply, you wouldn't be reading.

Before the soul-searching, I decided to open with two poems that I wrote in the last month, one of which I admire much more than the other. Surrounded by MFAs, I feel that I must contribute to the literary world when I get a chance.

7:41
On the sill sits a fan.
Mine or hers; doesn't matter either way.

Its leaves rustle with the fingers of dusk,
teased by motorcycles riding on the air.
Lamplight frees itself from the confines of this room
and soars down the block,
splintered by coathanger branches up high.
As the streetlamp melds to the curb,
sight picks up the radio transmission.
Its call, "walk this way," repeats
until a Buick passes, hustling its amigo down the road.

Cerulean heaven takes on an icy green,
but the voices pervade,
swirling around the lamppost,
sectored by the windowscreen,
and caressing the still fan.
It perches, waiting to be turned on,
though it rustles sans breeze,
without my hand coming near.


Afternoon Forecast

Sirens overpower the nasal hum of indoor cooling.
My skin prickles, like it did
Throttled vowels in a low masculine voice coast across the floorboards.
Papier mache walls betray our secrets.
What they say, I can't be sure.
What you said, I can't
The sun seizes me from slumber, thrusting upon me through smudged glass panes.
Sleep comes calling for some of
I brace myself to look down into the alley,
Where trash-can lids play checkers with desperate vagabonds.
A city bus docks at the curb, narrowly missing a pedestrian.
What a gift, to be spared
Kaleidoscopes dance on my retinas, courtesy of the glare.
I can't see, though I can.
Another layer of urban haze frosts my awareness.
You can't see at
And this gloom appears as the February mist,
When we sat on that pier and chortled until we
Red light dissolves into green.
The pride of variegated lions crosses the street.
We were fierce together,
And now we're at stalemate when we are
I'm unaware of the clouds, sweeping in as white noise.
Shouldn't the mere presence of the sun,
In brief flickers,
Be enough?

There they are. I am self-published. Give me my degree this minute!