Spring Structure View Lament

As I stand on the hillock behind my house looking over the gentle slope that rolls down to the stone wall that separates the cemetery from Woodside, I am filled with sadness because of the warm breezes that blow down the back of my neck. In the darkening sky I watch the empire state and Chrysler buildings jump to life I lament the warmth that I’ve been crying for all winter long; this the first winter of our puppy, Lucky. As the buildings get to full voltage on the horizon on the other side of the stone wall, graveyard and river the skies fall dark. Through denuded branches the empire state glows two flavors of pink in a spring cross-marketing promotion of breast cancer and brassieres. The Chrysler building arcs a bright deco-rococo filigree in the center of the mountain of Manhattan skyline. The brilliance of the verge of sky and city on that warming cold spring evening seen through the branches flogging the sky pulls at my heart. Soon the warmth will stimulate the branches and coax out the flush-lush green that will blot it all out. In a week, two, or a month I will stand above that brown stonewall topped with concertina wire and see nothing but trees and leaves. The obstruction will be celebrated far & wide. From the 7 Manhattan-ites will remark “how bucolic” it looks with all the trees & Tudor buildings. I will cringe thinking about all of the views the foliage has suffocated.
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I.
The picture of the building is cracked
Irregular lines and shadows of lines
Scribble in every direction, track
Crossing out the columned stone station

II.
Cops quickly passing a crenellated
Columned, staired stone castle
The cracks are crooked boughs
Of December trees, up and out gasping

III.
Long branches reaching for sun long gone
Zig-zagged boughs couldn’t dodge trucks
Cracked and reversed lay bare winter pain
Now I can see how summer shade is struck

IV.
The spring brings out cover to hide
The old “house.” The green pollution smears
The leisurely passing of what’s inside
The strength of the skeleton structure

After Winter Falls

After Winter Falls
Through snakey black trees
A hard world emerges
Out the grey windows

Folks, kids, dads, and moms
Love and hate and pain
Streets of hOpetemism
The course of city life

Branches separate
Branches unify
People living out
City life as humans

Spring buds out green life
Tinting strong lines green
Blotting out the lives
That run past the windows

Buds to leaves become
Hinting at the branch
That holds leaves up, out
Over and along

Bulbous leaves foam out
Green from everywhere
Lush plush green of lies
Life of lives to hide

Dawn

Cali Day 5
Waiting for sunrise over the east-bay hills from the west berkeley tracks

Grumpy shape-up from “quiet please” motel tells us all that we’re ready to fly back home @ 1:30.

stack of Corn meal pancakes: poached eggs and applewood smoked bacon, currant scone with lemon cream and sourdough toast with scrambled eggs (extra toast & syrup because they’ve cut to 1/2 rations to keep prices low).

Royal cafe above solano: been going there since village days (where my daughters learned to like runny eggs).

The hit toy of the vacation, better even than the mood rings, is a series of multi colored blocks teathered with bungie elastic: insainly playable.

Burritos from Gordos Taqueria in Berkeley on jet blue gave me a twinge of missing cali that I felt when I’d enjoy my last slice of pizza before returning to grad school during breaks. The grilled chicken, guac, salsa picante & frijoles are somehow un-replicatable in nyc.
-sigh-

Driver’s licence has expired, but in spite of the fact that the airline noticed homeland security didn’t: I was spared the sanctimonious predations of finger wag

Insane jostling for overhead storage space: I’m resenting the later boarders who’re repacking the stuff above my seat: even though I can see down her shirt.

Manchester united vs. Inter Milan on jet-blue flight: good start to flight
Punchline: espn showed only the 1st 1/2

Back to nyc with a newly minted 14-yr-old daughter, more confident -look-’em-in-the-eyes- son, and happy 7-yr-old: bittersweet because of time change (amped kids on cali time).

Next Morning:
Retrieved Lucky-Limpy from the pound & she woke things 1 & 2 with happy licks & buzzing tail: sleep is strong with thing 3.

Cali Day 4
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The mesage on the tablets/
Was your ad here/
Space for rent/ (aplogies to the clash)

3rd street in Berkeley

I wandered around the swank shopping precincts/
That erupted on 4th street like mushrooms/
As the flatlands were gentrified since 90/
Store after store & even a whole factory/
Building retrofit mall have died & dried/
The flouncy organic linen garments/
Hand-picked cotton dresses that hide/
Or camouflage curves and desire in plain/
Earthtone wrappers have blown/
Away in the recession and hard times/
Of necessities and rent leaving empty/
Architectural spaces with neatly lettered posters/
Prophetic tablets of our times before 1000 sq ft/
And the message on the tablets/
Was Space for rent/

The days roll out slow & finish quickly when you are on vacation in a motel with three kids.

too sick to scurry in his warren

Two hours on the berkeley marina (formerly known as the city dump). Watching the dogs run through the weeds in the rain by the bay. Across the icy waves occassionally pelted by rain showers that hung between san francisco and the east bay we watched the “ground squirrels” flit about the rocks and burrows. One didn’t run and sat shivering by its warren like rocky the guinea pig did before he died.

A quick trip to peet’s for hot cocoa after the rainy bay: it proved that thing 1 is lactose intolerant (it almost ruined chez panisse).

We took the kids -7, 12, & 14- to Chez Panisse for their first truly gourmet meals: it is never too early to start to develop refined palettes.

Avocado citrus salad with hot peppers: Roast chicken leg, garlic mash potatoes & broccoli: linguine with arugula pesto & sun dried tomatoes, and ricotta:
YeLlowtail jack with fennel pesto & artichoke hearts with two wound yukon jack potatoes & plain noodles with grated cheese: mandarins & dates: and surprise! Straicciatto ice cream with chocolate hazelnut compote (?).

banana JUNIOR

Fentons for a birthday: coffee cookie dream, toasted almond, hot fudge & caramel, malted whip-cream & nuts & a cherry.

Dessert for a 14th birthday with another family that’s a good fit for us: simltaneously reviling and enjoying the rich excess of an old fashioned blue-collar ice cream joint.

According to my newly minted 14-year-old birthday wishes are the most powerful.

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cali day 3
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When are we meeting & where
I’ll have at least one groggy teen
Who’ll resent doing anything for
Either of the siblings, that means
Unless this one’s the star
There might be hell to pay

The only sound in the little motor court/
Was the broken blinking charged neon sign/
That bug-zap-buzzed itself to full-on orange/
In slow but determined sweeps of obi wan’s/
Charged light saber’s sounds so alien out here/
In the mission revival motel by the tracks/
Of the southern pacific by the bay flats/
Qui-i-i-i-i-et Please the sigh would say/
Through the clenched teeth of shock therapy/

Four hours spent with ivy & her dad,/
whom I miss more than when I left/
California when all was well with the world/
Reminds me of the greatness of friends:/
It restores my faith in my choice in friends/

Simple fare with a berkeley family/
The avocados and acme bread,/
An array of madarins and mangos/
Salami & smoked gouda with corn-nuts/

Remind us that the finest meal is/
Eaten with true friends and made of/
Simple elements in the spirit of the family we left behind/
Berkeley is on my mind/

Best thing about this year’s oscars? Watching it on the west coast so I can bag ZZZZs at a reasonable hour.

Dinner @ meaghan’s with her beautiful fam/
Plenty and happy nothing too glam/
A costco of roast & 2 costcos of that/
Broken anonymity opened that trap/

Cali Day 2

West Berkeley Agitprop

Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 1:39am

Early am photo safari around west berkeley & the rails: sad the destruction of graffitti by gentrification now forclosed

As has been my pattern since the kids were wee, I’ve always gone out for walks or exercise before they woke or after they went to sleep.  I remember exploring Sunnyside and woodside when they were babies and I visited NY with them.  This vacation I woke before anyone and walked around my old neighborhood.  I walked to 4th stret, teh trendy shopping district of Betty’s Ocean View that sprung up in 92, but is now bloated and long inthe tooth.  I went to the Albany Bulb and walked around the racetrack but avoided UC Village, which is so gone now. I wish that I had the time to  go on, but hopefully later I will.

John from easy street, paradise

A little gray-bearded man announced himself that way to me on McGee Street on Saturday morning.

Backyard flower safari/
Three big girls of 7/
And a toddler brother/
Pressed aphids & buds/

We sat in the comfy livingroom/
While the kids played out in the yard/
We sat nustled in the familiar memories/
Of the time when they were too wee to be alone/

The two previous stanzas were keyed in right after we had a wonderful afternoon with Noel and Joellen and all of our kids running in and out & playing with the recently departed Buster.  The bigger kids eavesdropped on the adult conversations, but the little ones could have cared less what we were doing (except when they needed us for something).

Two sets of rails/
By the homeless/
In the morning/
Little train at night/

The day started with my predawn perambulations around the tracks and warehouses that remain in West Berkeley.  By first light most of them are empty, though still warm.  Interestingly, they seem less fecal and dangerous than I remember them from when I lived there before.  There were way fewer bicycle parts too, so perhaps they are less larcenous.  That night we went on the little train in Tilden park which is, to paraphrase Rocky Horror, a different set of rails.  It was so nice for me to see both of them in the same day.  I love it when the world ties together disparate strands of my soul.  The kids still laugh when I mock fear of the tunnel on the Redwood Railroad (only Lennox beleives it).

Albany bulb pheonix
Of graffitid rubble
Homeless encampments
Embellished into popart

We went to albany bulb/
The Bay area landfill/
Where the homeless created/
Art on the crumbled surfaces/

Highways made into land/
A rough primative landscape/
With plinths and columns breaking/
Out from the hardscrabble ground/

The wonder of the vagrant community/
The forced intimacy of ostracization/
That can make a two pound jar of peanut butter/
Obeisance and sustanance worth celebration/

Archtypall community/
Lost entirely to the well-to-do/
Lives around campfires of rubbish/
On the bulb made into art/

Fire-pits and shelters decorated/
In the manner of homer and hopi/
Cro-magnons and vikings huddled/
In their decorated hovels and loopholes/

Here is the chronicle of my five days in California After I submitted grades and a draft of my Powerpoint Paper to In-Transit.  These were written on my crackberry as facebook notes and updates as well as twitter-tweets.  Day One seems a bit cryptic, so I’ll embellish in bold.

Rockaways from Jet Blue 91

Cali Day 1
Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 1:37am
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Day 1 in CA/
royal cafe for a familiar breakfast (our favorite breakfast place where the kids learned their restaurant manners and I love the cornmeal pancakes with poached or fried eggs); where we met Diane and were remembered by the staff (Diane was one of the staff workers and ex residents of University Village in Albany CA [we hashed over residual bigotry in Albany Schools and the architectural destruction of the village community])./
noon mtg: familiar faces and places
Books, chairs and views that are perfect/
Le Petit Cheval bun (vermincelli salad w/ fish sauce), pork chops, pork sandwich (Simply the best low-hassle Vietnamese food I’ve ever had: Le Cheval in Oakland is better, but more involved)/
smyth fernwald flashback (Chandler and Mason’s last daycare before public school) with Mary and Leslie we recounted three years in kids life (Fond memories of really good kids)/
dinner @ greg & chalon’s was so comfortable and affiming of our friendship (I am amazed at how close I feel to Greg, Chalon Sophia and Maya, they were one of the families who spent my 40th Birthday with me: damn fine people)/
chandler to sleepover with zoe, arnelle & meagan (sleepovers have unseen costs when tired kids return)

2/9/2009 5:29 AM
I went to Comicon twice over the last weekend and had a smashing time.  It is funny how much you learn about yourself in unusual environments (More on that later).   Back to the quotidian, I went to an academic panel on Friday (as well as just walking around and engaging in my geekdom).  At that panel I learned about storyboarding and I got some great ideas about teaching comics.  I want to quickly write down the plan that I got (at http://dw-wp.com/).  They did a quick “story lottery,” where you have each student draw a picture (of the same character?) and then you through a voting system put them in order to make a narrative.  I think more about this can me seen on their website (and they showed a place where they had a completed random one done in a bookstore in Brooklyn).  I never did find their booth after the panel or the completed one in BK.
Comicon was full of the people I always wish that I could have admitted that I was when I was younger.  I loved being there and have to say that the excitement of the crowds when I went on Friday and Sunday was refreshing.

I saw myself over and over.
The self I wanted to be
The self I was
The self I am
I saw the Stafford that was
Who could never admit
That he loved Comics and art
When he was a teenager
And had to disco down and check
It all out
When I was into my comics’ renaissance
1987 was too old
To put my shoulder to the task
I was more a “mature guy”
Who just happened to read comics.
Needless to say, at 49
I am a mature guy who loves comics
I don’t think Ill ever be able to let my hair down
And dress up as a soul samurai or planetary assassin.
Sigh, when will I loose my reserve?

Other things that have been happening.  Old Friends including Henry Jackson have found me on facebook and I am really not free to be friends to more than my life right now.    Here’s a bit of odd confluence; at comicon I saw the vampyrella booth and they still use the design he did in the 70s for her costume.  I’ve also found my JH best friend Stephen Ferry.  Funny, I thought of him as I rode the bus up from comicon to meet Chandler at rehearsal at Hunter.  I googled him and found his website.  Sent him an email and got a response as I got off the crosstown bus. Quick.  He is a photographer based in Columbia and quite good if the time I spent on his site this AM is any indication.

So what got my muse working on overtime this AM was the fact that we bought nine boxes that will become a bed (2 boxes not counting mattress & box spring), a dresser (2 boxes), a sideboard (3 boxes [186 lbs]) and a bookcase (1 long box). Each of these boxes looked pretty much the same from the outside. They are all rectangular in all three dimensions and weigh way more than they should because they furniture is made out of pressboard, which is factory and mill waste mixed with mildly toxic petrochemical waste. I like to let the furniture air out in the middle of a room for the first few hours after it sit un-crated to let the formaldehyde disperse a bit before I have to sleep or eat on it (Middle Age, Middle Class Neurosis).

I was thinking while I was building the dresser (46 steps [or stations of the cross], which makes it fairly complicated by Ikea standards). There is a place where there were stacks of these dressers, in their 3 boxes totaling 186 pounds stacked to the rafters, or as high as the engineers said you could stack them without damaging them. Tons and tons of wood/pressboard/hardware dressers in neat stacks ready for shipping into containers for the Ikeas all over the world. Each of these Ikeas will sell hundreds of these dressers and then the scene/act/ritual I performed yesterday will be re-enacted in bedrooms and livingrooms all around the world.

So when Joao, Min, Piotr or Sven looks out over the inventory, stacked to the rafters of his sweltering or frigid warehouse, does he think about all of the people who will open these flat boxes and go through the Ikea ritual of assembly. I am sure that he or she is aware that the boxes  will go to millions of places that the worker will never even know of, much less visit. Further, can the factory worker in the global capitalist assembly line even afford the dresser that the American Me considers a bargain too cheap to concern myself of its larger impact (environmental, social, political and labor)? So is he or she aware of the steps that are drawn in pictures by some Swedish artist who is earning a living wage? Follow me along as I walk you through the Sunday service of the Ikea Ritual:

First there is the advent, with the releasing of the pent-up formaldehyde fumes acting as a chemical censer or thurible. In church the smoke symbolizes the prayers rising up to heaven: for the agnostic it’s just the chemical warfare of capitalism against the masses (which we volunteer for, to save $€£¥). Next we open up the pictorial hymnal with the picture of the neutered assembler calling the 1800 number as the only copy. The 1800 number, like the prayers, fumes and smoke goes off the to an ecclesiastic phone tree where one can happily spend the rest of one’s life on hold in multiple languages. (The difference between Heaven and Hell is the Muzac.)

Next you have to take inventory of your own tools. For this you will need to be pure of heart, have a hammer, two screwdrivers, and the allen key of life (provided). For if you are found wanting in any of these ways your dresser will be impure, and you will be angry three times a week when your sock drawer disassembles as you try to get dressed for the job you think is better than the furniture-worker you made redundant by shopping at Ikea.

Then you can put the parts and tools into a bowl, which you will dip your fingers into as if it were holy water, one brief ablution for each step: peg, screw, fastener, etc… However, with of with the tools they have and the tools they include (and if you are particularly pure a power drill with a Philips-head-bit and a bottle of Elmers Glue ™) you can build a piece of furniture that will last until you lose your job and have to move.

Finally, once all of the preconditions are met, you can begin the genuflection before the hymnal and components. Enshrouded in the fumes from the crate you can look at the pictures in the hymnal, ignoring the futile 1800-COPY, and begin to genuflect this dresser into being. Kneel, read the hieroglyphs and try to match the neutered pictograph in each and every detail. It is like a

As I assembled mine into the wee hours of the night there was, no doubt, a person in Asia getting up to slap hers or his together for his or her home. Was this his first Ikea assembly? Does he know that if he wants it to stay together he should use some Elmer’s glue? I think that after the first or second one I built I started reinforcing them with glue because without it, well…

(Faith is a key component of the Ikea assembly process, perhaps just as important as the tools or organization)

From the first play, "Drunk."

Chandler is performing in part of Shalimar’s annual “shot play festival:” this year titled “BINGE.“

I decided to go into Manhattan and catch opening night for my birthday.  It was another nice transit authority quality time with a kid.  When we are on the subway we talk, and unlike the car, there is no radio to fight over and you can look at one-another.

While Chandler prepped I went out and went to Rice and Beans a Brazillian place on 9th ave that I’ve been wanting to go to.  I actually really liked the food, though it was much more upscale than I was comfortable with and I ordered an inexpensive dish because I don’t treat myself when I should (and I over indulge myself when I shouldn’t).  Here is what I wrote before I ate:

Its my birthday I’m sitting alone @ a pretentious Brazillian joint on 9th ave waiting for my food. Smooth samba washes over the crowd of Manhattanites searching for authentic exotic.

(The fact that I was sitting alone in a restaurant typing on my crackberry says I lack the refined skill of irony.)  After I gobbled down the sautéed vegetables, sweet plantains, collard greens and red beans I was more charitable about the crowd.

MMMM, Chandler’s play,  is near the end of the short play festival, next to the last as I recall.  The scene is four “girls” laying about on the floor talking about their favorite foods.  They are eating junk-food.  Hardly a word or sentence gets finished with each of them riffing on the observations of the previous.  Chandler’s obsession is chocolate.  I suppose I could include lines from the script (which I had to make sure that this was legit and not exploitative), but I’ll summarize it here now by saying that Chandler’s part is in love with Chocolate, and she brought to life this obsession in a way that is completely different than the way she actually loves Chocolate (she is a 13-year-old so chocolate is still very important).  When her character is soliloquizing on chocolate the dream of someone else steals my daughter and she is truly suppressing someone else’s anxieties by dreaming of the sweet commodity.  Seeing Chandler there being someone else was a strange experience for the dad who has to wake her for school every morning.  Her hard work has paid off and she is, indeed, an actress working in the trade.

The play itself, which Chandler is only one of the cogs in, is about comfort food and its ability to evoke or suppress feelings.  From what I got watching it last night one of the characters had recently lost her mom.  The dialogue does not didactically spell this out.  Instead we have to glean this from the subtle reactions and interaction of the women on stage.  Most of the time the foods that they soliloquize, in-between interruptions and sparse Mametian dialogue for four “girls,” are cleverly symbolic.  Chandler’s chocolate was a straightforward paean to the commodity that gave flavor to the sugar trade.  I found the pickle soliloquy a bit racy, but chandler claims not to get any of it and it was hysterical.  I wonder if any of the older cast members have explained any of the double entendres to her.  The vegetarian soliloquy was the most opaque because it dealt with an absence, so the cast member goes on and on about Thanksgiving dinner but leaves out the turkey and defends its absence.

I’m not sure what to make of it other than it sounded like the most reasonable “Last Supper,” which if I’m not mistaken was the working title of “MMMMMMM.”  The title change makes the play more amorphous and, I think, less preachy.  The payoff was, strangely, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  I guess that is the ultimate comfort food of a certain era.  I think of it as the culinary sound track to the 60s suburban childhood I never had.  Writing the play around retro-comfort-food was clever and kind of strange after Gus’s pickles, a vegetarian Thanksgiving and chocolate (CHOCOLATE, MY CHOCOLATE).  I felt like the play with its intricate and precise direction and dialogue receded to comfort food as a default suggesting that, perhaps, comfort is lowest common denominator consumption, rather than something that will nourish and enrich us.

The other short plays, which ranged from good to confusing, deserve a shout-out here:

The first play was about the lack of boundaries in an office with three women who behave strangely when drunk come to work on a Monday.  I was torn between the cluelessness of Jen Taher’s new hire and the coming-out saga of the newly sober Jessica Hendrick.  Kim Gainer’s imperious queen bee drunk (and object of desire) was awful in its realism.

The second play, “Dr. Oz and the Secret of Longevity,” in which Chandler has a cameo, was a hilarious and tragic trip back to my 1980s (well except for the fact that the short play was longer than 70% of my relationships in the 80s).  The adulteryed (cuckolded)  polite husband and the stoner dealer without boundaries both broke my heart with their inability to understand Phyllis Johnson’s relapsed character. The canned food seemed gratuitous, but the insane denial in the face of bureaucratic defeat on the part of Miss Pugh.  The ineffectualness of Erwin Thomas as the husband holding on to a marriage to a relapsing wife was painful (especially now that I am married).  Craig Peugh as the tactless stoner/dealer was an amusing bit of work.  The timing and interaction was one of the elements that made this play work so well.

“Eugene’s Got to Eat” was a strange post-modern amalgam of issues that add up to a prolonged metaphor on addiction and recovery.  The cast was amazing, but the symbolism was a bit heavy.  I think it should have followed through with the lucha-libre mask from the onset and gone into the surreal rather than making it a domestic addiction story.  I want to say that the music and syncopation did work, but I would have liked more story.

I had the embarrassing honor of being a fake guest in “The People Who Make it Happen, Hatred For.”    This parody of a daytime TV show cooking segment was funny (once I stopped shaking).  Jennifer Avery Semrick made the maniacal faux cheer of TV Hosts really scary.  I had once entertained the fantasy of going to one of these shows taped in New York, but seeing this made me want no part of “TV-Life.”

I went to see Album at LaGuardia’s Black-Box theatre last Friday night. It was a simmering evening depicting the high-school years of four teen-aged men and women. The picture above was the set for a stunningly complete emotional depiction of adolescence.

Jocelyn Catasus was the supportive friend who knew too much without being a know it all. I wish I had had friends like her when I was in school. Her performance was alive without showiness; her Peggy was the teen in control who you could still see the insecurity in.

I knew “a Billy” like Aaron Berke’s Billy, but that was at Cambridge Friends’ School (where I went to repeat 6th grade). The patina of experience he spread on the basically insecure character covered like cream-cheese on a bagel.

Bridget Giuffrida’s Trish was the most teen. In her I saw my daughter. From the opening strip poker scene where she was self-consciously modest to the pure terror she showed looking around the cheap motel room after her character had run away with Boo, she was vulnerable in a way that totally supported the “Brian Wilson monologue.”

Christopher Diaz’s Boo reminded me of my own insecurities in Highschool (though I tried to embody a cross between the hockey shy player Bobby Orr and paisley-psychedelic George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic [oil and water: do not mix]). When he put on the horn-rimmed ray-bans and affected the tones and cadences of Bob Dylan I was back in the commune I grew up in in Boston with insecure and pretentious posers all around.

When the last scene came together at the Quarry and they had all reached the “biological-growing-up” they had so frantically sought throughout and receded to the Album of the title like a year-book of HS nostalgia I felt the bitter-sweet youth I lost so long ago trying to grow up too quickly. These young men and women brought four awkward years to life with this exceptional play and I think that having the writer as the director made this all the more special.

CODA

I went to see the play with my almost-in-high-school-daughter who had rehearsed with them one day because she was using a monologue form the play for her High-school auditions (applying to HS in NY is akin to applying to college in the rest of the country, but that is another story). The play-write and director, David Rimmer, had generously invited Chandler to come sit in with them one day at rehearsal. He said that she was really helpful because she was the age of the cast in the opening scene and brought a lot to the truth of the play (chronologically). Watching the play with my daughter made me aware of how important first love, biological and emotional, –so long lost to me– shapes the rest of our lives. I want to thank David Rimmer, Jocelyn Catasus, Bridgit Giuffrida, Aaron Berke and Christopher Diaz for bringing this all alive to me.