Remembering Jessica Mena...

Below you'll find a free form kind of piece about my friend Matt's sister, Jessica, who died in 2009. The piece, when it gets down to it, also deals with the impressions that people leave on us. There are several sections to the piece. I think it's worth the read. I hope you do too.

On a recent morning, I woke up and was able to remember a dream I’d had during the night. The dream was about Matt Mena, my childhood friend. Dreams are strange and sometimes, after we wake, we remember only snippets or individual scenes from them. When it comes to this dream I recently had, I remember only one scene.

I was sitting along the edge of a round, aboveground pool (the type often seen in people’s backyards) and my feet were in the water. I was wearing a bathing suit and was taking in the sun. Matt Mena was sitting next to me. We weren’t talking. It seemed as though he was just keeping me company. I had a sense of impending dread. Dread. This was the dream’s pervading feeling.

Anyway, as I sat there, I looked in the water. Now, this pool, it was very, very deep. Usually aboveground pools in people’s backyards are eight feet deep, max. The pool in the dream seemed bottomless; it was more like a void.

At any rate, there I was, just sitting on the edge, peering into the water with a sense of dread. The feeling turned out to be founded. From the deep, I saw someone beginning to swim toward the surface. I kept my eye on him. He was getting closer and closer. Though he was swimming to the surface, I first espied him when he was quite deep. Don’t ask me how he was able to hold his breath for so long, but he managed. Anyway, I knew why he was swimming to the surface. He was coming for me, to pull me under. I was certain — insofar as people can be certain in dreams — that these were his intentions. I was also certain that this person wanted to pull me under as a prank. I’m not sure, however, if he wanted to drown me. It felt more as if he wanted to pull me under to be funny.

Now, this person swimming to the surface, he knew Matt. In fact, he and Matt were friends. I’m not sure if I were friends with this person but I was certain he and Matt were. Anyway, I was watching him swim upward and before I knew it, this person was moments from breaching the surface, from reaching me and trying to pull me under.

But I was ready.

I had a firm grip on a pipe that was fixed to the pool, near its edge. I knew that this person in the water was about to try and pull me under, but I wasn’t going to let that happen; I was prepared. Anyway, the person finally breached the surface and started tugging on me. But he couldn’t budge me. And he knew it. He had to quickly rethink his plan.

He turned to Matt, who was sitting next to me, and said, “Help me....Tickle him" — referring to me, of course — "Hit his hand!” This person was trying to enlist Matt into helping him drag me into the pool. When I noticed this, I was a little concerned. I knew he and Matt were friends. But Matt and I were friends, too. Anyway, as I sat there, holding on to this pipe — the only thing preventing me from succumbing — I turned to Matt. I wasn’t sure if Matt was entertaining the idea of helping this person but I wasted no time nevertheless. I said to Matt, “Don’t you fucking dare.” Matt then looked at me and his expression said everything. It said that he was by no means about to help this person pull me into the water. His expression told me that he wasn’t even entertaining the idea. Matt was on my side. And I wasn’t, in the end, pulled under.

That was the dream.

Anyway, that morning, the morning on which I woke from this dream, I had an urge. I’m not exactly sure why I had this urge, but it probably had to do with the fact that I’d just dreamt of Matt; it probably had to do with the fact that Matt’s noble actions in my dream reminded me of the strong bond he and I once had. Anyway, the urge was this: to write about Jessica, Matt’s sister. Jessica died of a drug overdose in the winter of 2009. But you would never have thought it. In fact, I never knew Jessica had a drug problem or even took drugs. Anyway, I had this strong urge to write about Jessica after waking up from this dream the other day. So here goes.

*

I can’t remember when I first met Jessica. To me she always seemed pretty young. I was three years older than she. I must have met her in late 1994 when I was 12 because that was the year I became friends with Matt. I must have met Jessica at Matt’s house, at his mother’s second-floor apartment in the Great Neck Terrace.

Jessica had a caramel complexion, sort of like Matt. Unlike Matt, though, who has frizzy hair, Jessica’s hair was straight. It was black, too, and I remember her wearing it long. Her eyes, if I can remember right, were the color of her skin. Like caramel. But I’m not really sure. At any rate, her eyes were light. Jessica always seemed very calm, too. Her voice was smooth and soothing. She spoke at a slightly-slower-than-normal pace. I was never sure why she spoke this way, but it sounded fine and it was completely natural to her; there was no affectation going on.

I remember her room at her mother’s apartment in the Terrace. It had a fire escape and it was always very messy. A mirror hung above a long cabinet across from her bed. I think her walls were painted magenta. Anyway, Jessica was often on the phone when I came over to Matt’s house. (I started coming over often in 1995.) Yeah, I remember her frequently being on the phone or out when we — as in Matt’s friends — came over. She was never too interested in Matt’s friends. She’d always speak to us, but she was never interested in involving herself in our circle. She certainly never dated any of us; at least I think she didn’t. Jessica always had her own friends. She was always very popular. However, it must be said that she could be reticent and she didn’t always seem that extroverted. Therefore, I did wonder at times how she had so many friends. Not that she wasn’t a likable person, she was, but she seemed more the type who wouldn’t be that interested in making a ton of friends. Still, she had them.

Jessica would always ask you a few questions if you were to come to Matt’s house while she happened to be hanging around. She seemed to be interested in you, but, as I mentioned, not that interested. Still, it must be said that, when Jessica asked you a question, it never seemed as though she were simply trying to make conversation. It never seemed like she was talking to you out of a compulsion to be polite. She was asking those questions because she was interested.

To be honest, I don’t have that many memories of Jessica before she entered her first year of high school. I was a senior when she was a freshman at Great Neck South High. I remember that she was in my first period keyboarding class, which I took my senior year. Jessica sat next to me, at the computer to my left. I think I might have even cheated off her during a test once or twice. I remember Jessica as a decent student. I remember always thinking how strange it was that Jessica had entered my high school. She always seemed so young. I always felt as though I was much older than she was, and it was always a bit odd seeing her in the hallways.

However, when I did see her walking in those hallways, ignoring her was impossible. If I’d see her walking, and if I wasn’t too much in a rush, I’d always look her way....I’d always acknowledge her. I also remember that she, too, would always acknowledge me. Most of the time we wouldn’t even say anything to each other. It was usually just a look. We’d make eye contact and sort of grin. But it was nothing flirty. It was more a look that said, “Well, well, well...what trouble are you causing?” Or perhaps the look — and we’d always maintain strong eye contact when we passed each other; we’d maintain eye contact for as long as we could — said, “Oh, you again. God, it’s kind of strange seeing you in my school, but it’s cool.”

Whatever the case, we’d always acknowledge each other. Jessica knew how close Matt and I had been even though Matt and I had grown apart a bit during my high school years and she knew that I’d had a pretty big influence on him. I sort of got Matt into graffiti. In fact, I think I was the person who originally helped Matt get in touch with his “bad” side. At any rate, Jessica knew I was no angel. The expression she had on sometimes when we passed each other let me know this.

Ah, Jessica...what else? I remember that I went to a house party, which Jessica also attended, during my senior year of high school. As mentioned, I always felt as though I was a lot older than she was, and true to form, I remember saying to Jessica at this party that I couldn’t believe that I was partying with her; after all, she was so young, right? She and I were in the backyard of this house and we were sitting on lawn chairs facing each other and it was night. I remember saying that I couldn’t believe that I was drinking a beer with Matt’s little sister at a high school house party. I can’t remember what her reply was but she must have in some way played down my comment. She must’ve replied with something cool. She probably told me it really wasn’t that big of a deal, then changed the subject.

I also remember that Jessica was supposed to study psychology in college. I remember thinking that I thought that that would be a good pursuit for her. You were never able to really get inside Jessica’s head. It was always hard to read her. People would also say, perhaps somewhat jokingly, but still, that Jessica was good at persuading people, that she had strong powers of persuasion. I guess I could see that. It always seemed as though she was always able to read you; that she could see inside you, if you will. Whether this was true or not, I don’t know. However, it felt that way.

I saw Jessica for the last time on an LIRR train heading toward Manhattan. She was sitting with some guy, some guy whose likeness I can’t at all remember. I was traveling on the train alone that day. Jessica and this guy happened to be sitting a few seats away from where I’d taken a seat. Jessica noticed me, I think, and came over. She sat next to me and we started talking. She seemed very interested in what I had to say, more interested perhaps than she ever had been. She seemed very interested in what I was doing with my life. She was asking more questions than usual — though not too many — and she seemed very interested in the answers. This must have been 2008, the latest.

Anyway, we talked for a while and then she and her friend got off the train somewhere in Queens, though I’m not sure where. I really can’t even tell you what we talked about exactly. Our conversation must’ve centered on what she was doing with her life and my journalism. Anyway, I remember that she looked good, healthy. She looked the same way she looked when I first met her — thin, with a soft smile and long black hair. Her voice was still smooth and calming and she still talked at a slightly-slower-than-normal pace. I remember she had a nice smile on when she said goodbye to me that day. I also remember that she maintained eye contact with me for a little longer than someone else might have. She maintained eye contact with me for just a few moments longer, similar to the way she would when we’d pass each other in the hall in high school. And, just like all those times in high school and even before, she seemed to posses an ability to see what was inside.

Slowly Read and Dream

I’m not a critic. Never have been. When it comes to journalism, my thing is writing stories. Let the stories speak for themselves, you know? But that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy critiquing; that I don’t go over things in my head — song lyrics, an actor’s mannerisms on screen, brushstrokes from a Rothko painting — and think about why I believe those things are good, bad, terrible or profound.

With that in mind, I want to share with you a poem that I like; one that I long ago memorized and feel is far superior to many others. The poem is William Butler Yeats’ “When You Are Old.” Now, I can’t say when I first came across this poem, but I can say that I remember being awed by its crushing beauty. I want to share something that I like best about the poem with you, but first, without further ado:

          When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
          And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
          And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
          Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

          How many loved your moments of glad grace,
          And loved your beauty with love false or true,
          But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
          And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

          And bending down beside the glowing bars,
          Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
          And paced upon the mountains overhead,
          And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

In addition to the incredible way Yeats mixes melancholy ideas and images ⎯ love fleeing, a quick, sorrowful expression ⎯ with those that are happier ⎯ a photo album, the comfort of a fire place ⎯ to evoke a feeling of pure nostalgia (a mixture, mind, you, that is quite effective. After all, why do you think that the Beatles song “In My Life” is so popular? It, too, melds sadness with happiness with heartbreak and hope, four feelings that for the most part mark our lives on earth and characterize our relationships with each other), there is something else at play in “When You Are Old.”

The way in which certain words rhyme — or sort of don’t rhyme — in the poem, which was written in 1892 for the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, a woman Yeats loved but who would never marry him, is reminiscent of one of life’s truths.

Read the first line of the first paragraph. You see how it ends at the word “sleep”? O.K., now read the first paragraph’s last line. You see how it ends at the word “deep”? These two words rhyme, of course. But had you realized that while reading the poem?

If you’re like me, you read the word “sleep” at the end of that first line, thought — because, after all, this is a poem — that you were soon to read a word that rhymed with “sleep,” like “beep” or “creep” or, even, why, yes, “deep.” However, by the time you actually reached “deep” at the end of the fourth line, you’d totally forgotten that there was a word at the beginning of the stanza that shared that “ee” vowel sound, and were no longer anticipating the rhyme. The rhyme, so to speak, had been lost.

Nevertheless, it must be mentioned ⎯ and I think you’ll agree if you read the poem a second time ⎯ that a relationship still exists between “sleep” and “deep,” just as a relationship exists between “grace” and “face” and “bars” and “stars” even though these words don’t seem to rhyme when the entire poem is read in one shot. 

The vowel sound of each last word on each first line faintly echoes when you reach its supposed counterpart at the very end of each stanza.

In other words, even though the rhyme “isn’t” there, it sort of is, in a very slight, almost hardly traceable way.

So what’s the meaning behind all this? Well, here’s where the critic part comes in.

We all know that poetry is all about expression; that poets don’t only use words to express meaning, they also use meter, rhyme, punctuation, even the appearance of the words on the page. Yeats, in “When You Are Old,” does this non-rhyme rhyme, this echo-of-a-rhyme technique, for a reason.

He wants to emphasis that nothing in life is eternal and the poignant sadness of such a fact. By making sure in the poem that that rhyme is lost, or gets lost, he wants to draw attention to the way the things we love in life leave us or become less a part of us.

Think of it this way: When we recall all that we love in life ⎯ the beautiful things, the things rich with meaning, with poignancy ⎯ they arrive in our consciences in a powerful way. But for how long will  ⎯ can?  ⎯  these memories be so powerfully felt? Furthermore, how long will we have the opportunity to love the people we love or experience things that are meaningful? It might feel like forever sometimes because life, especially in the moment, can feel quite rich.

But time marches on. And we can’t escape, nor should we forget, time’s eroding powers. Furthermore, we should never forget how time has the power to transform our consciousnesses and snatch people and opportunities from us. Time erodes life, no matter how poignant life seems sometimes.

Yeats reminds us of this fact through his poetry.

Through that lost rhyme, the one that almost vanishes on the way from the last word of each stanza’s first line to the last word of each stanza’s last line, Yeats reminds us. Even though something beautiful exists, it is eventually lost. The rhyme itself erodes to the point of near extinction. Only a faint echo exists when we arrive at the last word of each stanza. Similarly, only a faint echo of the things we love might exist at the end of life, no matter how rich or beautiful or saturated we believed them to be or how intensely we once felt them.

Although this idea is sad, it’s also natural. Life passes and time erodes things. Eventually, we’ll turn around to look at the things we love and, though it’s no fault of our own, they’ll hardly be there. Just an echo of it all. 

It’s like walking out onto a narrow walkway made of rock with someone you love. It’s sundown and the two of you walk out on this path, one that extends from a high bluff, hundreds of feet above a crashing sea. And then, for some reason, you walk ahead of your partner; perhaps something strikes your fancy and you just walk ahead. The sun is beautiful and warm and casts a bronze glow on the rocks and the water and the grass. And you’re absorbing the view and enjoying it, and you turn to mention something to your love, perhaps some sweet remark. But when you turn, you see your love is gone; that you’re standing out there on that pathway alone. Just you and the hardly perceptible essence of something that had been there only moments ago.

Good karma

The other day at work, it must have been late afternoon, I had a craving...a craving for sweets.

See, sometimes, especially when I've worked jobs that have forced me to keep strange hours, I develop serious cravings for cookies or candy. It probably has something to do with the fact that I'm not exactly getting the right nutrition as it is — due to the crazy schedule I'm working — and the craving for sweets is a manifestation, more or less, of malnutrition.

Anyway, so there I was, at work and in the mood for something sweet. And I wanted it bad, you know?

So I looked in my wallet for a dollar for the vending machine.

Wallet was empty.

I really had no idea what I was going to do. No colleague from whom I could borrow money was in my vicinity, and I needed something.

Then I remembered...

That desk.

One woman who works near the vending machine always kept a bowl full of chocolates on her desk. The chocolates, I presumed, were for everyone. Sometimes, when I had no money but was really in the mood for something sweet — it was usually during after-hours time — I would walk by her desk and help myself to a few chocolates. It was good chocolate, too, Dove.

Anyway, so after checking my wallet to see I had no cash and after giving up on the idea of asking anyone for a dollar, I was really happy to remember this woman and the chocolates on her desk.

So I walked back to her desk all excited. My craving by this point was huge and I was also quite proud of myself for remembering that this bowl existed. It was time to seek my reward.

I reach her desk.

One chocolate left.

Just one little Dove chocolate wrapped in sapphire-blue tinsel. The last piece in the bowl.

And so I think to myself.

Why is it this way? Why must there be only one piece left? If the bowl had two pieces left in it, I'd have absolutely no problem taking one piece and leaving the last one for her — whoever she is — benevolent owner of the bowl.

But no.

There's just one last piece of chocolate left. I can't take this piece.

See, I may have taken a lot of chocolate from this lady's desk in the past, but I never left the bowl empty. After all, even though the chocolate is out there for the offering, it's also there for her.

Nope, can't do it. I turn around and start walking back to my desk, more in the mood for sweets than ever — I was primed! — but not willing to take the last piece.

And so there I was, walking in this one corridor, back to my desk, utterly dissapointed, when I look over at a table near a water cooler I was passing on the way.

Oh, hell yes.

There on this table, someone, some kind soul, had put out a spread of cookies. And not just any cookies — Girl Scout Cookies. Shortbread, Lemon Chalet Crème and Peanut Butter Sandwich.

I took a handful, smiled and walked back to my desk.

Reflecting

Here's something I wrote while sitting/thinking in a Barnes and Noble Cafe. I was reflecting on what I was seeing and places I've been and things I've felt. Enjoy.

Sitting here in a cafe with wet socks from the walk here. The cafe is the Barnes and Noble Cafe in the Barnes and Noble bookstore. The Barnes and Noble Cafe, I’m informed, “proudly serves Starbucks” coffee. I’m sitting here at a table with my laptop. The other people sitting at the tables around me read books about Windows 7. They read People magazine and Architectural Digest. Some of them still wear their coats even though we’re inside. One woman, an older lady, sits at a table underneath the Barnes and Noble Cafe sign, which is rectangular in shape and is suspended from the ceiling. The sign says, “Barnes and Noble Cafe”; the letters are backlit. The round Starbucks logo is conjoined to the bottom of this rectangular sign.

The older lady sitting underneath the sign wears a black ski cap and makes use of all three chairs at her table: one for her coat, the other to stack the magazines she’s brought with her to the cafe with the intentions of reading, and the last to sit on. I’m sitting at a table in front of the cooler near the counter. You can buy Fiji Water, Nantucket Nectars and Red Bull, among other drinks.

I opt for coffee. In my wet socks from the walk up here I opt for coffee and grab a magazine from the bookstore’s “newsstand.” The New Yorker. As I sit at my table and leaf through the sweetly perfumed pages, I see an article by George Packer: “Letter from Dresden. Embers. Will a prideful city finally confront its past?” The picture that comes along with the article shows — in a panoramic style — a city of baroque buildings and church towers abutting a river, the Elbe, over which spans a heavy stone bridge that looks like it’s from Roman times. All at twilight. A smaller black-and-white photo next to this panoramic-styled one shows Dresden during less happy times: right after the Bombing of Dresden, in 1945. The city, in this black-and-white photo, is in ruins — nothing to see but shards of grays and blacks and deeper blacks, gutted buildings with no roofs and wispy smoke.

As I read the article, which is good, I can’t help but think back to my time in Germany. I think of a girl I knew from Dresden, a girl I met this summer who proclaimed that Dresden was the most beautiful city on Earth. Fine, I thought at the time. I’m not one to argue. After all, I often heard fond things about Dresden during my time in Germany: Dresden is beautiful; you really ought to go.

Dresden is also the place where a rabid xenophobe this summer stabbed a pregnant Egyptian woman, an immigrant, to death in a state courtroom in front of the courtroom guards too stunned or slow to come to her aid.

Sitting here in my wet socks in the Barnes and Noble Cafe, with a kid standing in front of the cash register asking his friend next to him, “Dude, actually, can you spot me a dollar?” I think of that bread Dresden’s famous for, that sweet bread powdered with confectionery sugar and stuffed with nuts and raisins and marzipan. I remember how I bought the bread one time in Germany because I was curious about it. I bought it even though I knew it was possible to buy it in places other than Europe, namely in America. I didn’t eat all of this bread after having bought it. Too sweet. Instead, I left most of it wrapped up in plastic on a shelf in my girlfriend’s pantry and looked on in horror a few days later, when I was again in the mood for it.

Fruit flies had made their way into the plastic and were using the bread as a breeding ground. Dozens of them crawling about inside the packaging, feasting and laying eggs.

But Germany wasn’t all that bad, I think, as I read this Dresden article and take small pauses from the solid New Yorker text broken up by cartoons and weird poetry to look around this “cafe,” where many teenagers and old men and women sit at their respective tables and snack on processed, tastes-the-same-in-every-Barnes-and-Noble-Cafe cupcakes and cookies, and drink warm sugary drinks made with opaque syrup and other beverages made with non-fat syrup and still other beverages, warm and chocolaty with foam on top for the pleasant texture.

I sit in this cafe with people who read People, old men and women who wear scowls, even though their face muscles are at rest, who come to this Barnes and Noble Cafe, which “proudly” serves Starbucks coffee. Proud, huh? Is that the same “proud” as in “Proud to be an American”? or “Proud parent of an honor student”?

I digress.

Germany was actually pretty nice. My time there was well spent, aside, of course, from that experience with the Dresden sweet bread that they’re so proud of. I turn back to reading this George Packer article about Dresden, which forces me to think more about this baroque city on the Elbe.

But my thoughts just as quickly turn to another German city, as I sit here in the Barnes and Noble Cafe with wet socks from the walk here and high school students around me, studying for the SAT’s, and other people around me who are also importantly typing away on a laptop. I think of Dresden’s sister city to the west, Leipzig.

Now Leipzig isn’t known for the grandeur Dresden is known for. But one experience I had in this less glamorous and more industrial city starts to take hold.

That church.

I think of that church that Rosa, my girlfriend’s friend, showed us. We were visiting Rosa in Leipzig, and she wanted to show us around the city on Sunday. On Saturday all three of us had attended a late-night Halloween party where people came dressed as vampires and Sponge Bob Square Pants and vampires. My girlfriend and I chose not to tour Leipzig on Saturday before the late-night Halloween party because we needed to rest up first from the nine-hour train ride we’d just endured from Aachen, Germany’s westernmost city, to Leipzig, near Poland. Sunday, we all agreed, would be the day for checking out the city.

And so on Sunday morning, out for our tour, we came upon this church. It was nothing spectacular from the outside. In fact, the church was a bit squat and had beige bricks forming the facade. The roofs were slanted and shingled with charcoal-gray shingles. The church had a not-so-high tower in front with an octagonal balcony wrapping around it. It was a Lutheran church, kind of sober. Fine.

But, Rosa tells us, we shouldn't be fooled. This church is an important church. In front of this particular church in the autumn of 1989, men and women, young and old — 70,000 in all — held a candlelit, passive-resistance-styled protest against East Germany's Communist government.

See, for months prior to this particular protest, Leipzigers had been showing up to this church, the Saint Nikolai church, to hear “sermons.” These sermons centered on certain messages in biblical texts, yes, but they also dealt with other themes, namely freedom and democracy. The Saint Nikolai meetings continued until the Communist government decided that they were growing too insurrectional in tone. Police were dispatched. They beat some people in front of the church and dispersed a crowd that had gathered after the violence broke out.

For many Leipzigers, enough was enough. A few days later, they gathered in front of the Nikolai church and their numbers overflowed into a nearby public square. No one was budging. The message, Rosa tells us, was simple: less maltreatment, more freedom. The police, shocked by the amount of people who had amassed to have their message heard, didn’t act.

The balance had shifted.

The people saw that they had more power. They saw that if they gathered in large enough numbers and remained resolute, they could speak their minds publicly — they could demand more freedom — and the government would not, or could not, act against them.

After this act of defiance in Leipzig, more people in the GDR began following suit. More people started amassing in the eastern states to speak their minds, including the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in Berlin on November 9, 1989 — a gathering so large and full of energy it eventually precipitated the Wall’s falling. But, if it weren’t for those initial Nikolai protests, many would have you believe (especially if you're in Leipzig), there’s a chance that the Berlin Wall would not have fallen.

Anyway, so there we were, in front of this plain looking church, famous for an act of rebellion that had occurred 20 years prior. But it wasn’t just roughly 20 years ago that this act occurred. As I stood in front of the Nikolai with my girlfriend and Rosa, Germany was in the midst of celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — it was almost to the day.

Now. Although the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s falling may not have been the biggest news in America, it was huge news in Germany. In fact, the German media, in the run up to the historic day, managed to explore every angle of the story possible. Every anecdote, halfway interesting recollection or personal history was rehashed. It all filled the newspapers.

Germans, you see, are proud that communism, for all intents and purposes, was defeated on their turf. They like to draw attention to this history and, in some cases, even cash in on it.

With that last fact in mind, I stood in front of the St. Nikolai with Rosa and my girlfriend. Although by this time we were all well aware of the church’s history, which seemed interesting enough, it was really on a whim that we decided to walk in.

And this part I’ll never forget.

We walk in the church and start heading down the main aisle toward the altar. The vaulted ceilings are high, and the columns that line the aisle are painted a pastel pink. What really strikes me, though, are the capitals. The highly ornamented capitals at the top of each column depict foliage: stone leaves that shoot from the columns and seem to support the vaulted cathedral ceiling. The white pews to my left and right also stand out. Sure, this is a pretty cathedral, I think, as I walk further down the aisle. But in all honesty, I’m not that excited. After all, pretty cathedrals are omnipresent in Europe. In fact, as I continue to walk down the aisle with Rosa and my girlfriend, I kind of get the feeling that they, too, are not so enthralled — our body language subtlety betrays our sentiments. In fact, it was right then, right when each of us began to slow down and look in each other’s faces, as if to say, “All right, well, I’ve seen just about enough,” that the very first notes were suddenly heard.

The beautifully drawn out first few notes emanating from violins — notes rising up to meet the ear, clear and bright, like rays of light, but for the ears. These are the first drawn out, sorrowful notes to “Adagio for Strings.”

The church all of a sudden resounds with the sound of violins. Then, just as quick, deeper notes are heard — bass notes, which counterbalance those sharp, rays of light for the ears.

Yes, this is definitely “Adagio for Strings,” that undulating, powerful, morose, has-the-tendency-to-knock-you-off-your-ass-with-feelings-of-sorrow-and-longing piece by the composer Samuel Barber. You know, “Adagio for Strings,” the title theme from Oliver Stone’s 1986 film “Platoon.” This is the classical song that brought the drama in that Vietnam-War-era movie to an entirely new level.

“Adagio for Strings” can break your heart. You don’t even have to like classical music.

Those violins, which cut like knives one moment and then, suddenly, come to a complete stop, the last of a sharp, bright sound zips off the many bows. A dramatic pause. A dramatic pause that surely must be one of the most famous in classical music — it’s that spellbinding. A dramatic pause that’s eventually broken by deep cello notes, which begin to mingle with the violin notes that have started up again.

It all sounds as if God were having a conversation with angels.

So I’m walking down the main aisle with my girlfriend and Rosa when this huge song, “Adagio for Strings,” begins to fill the church. A few moments after I heard the first few notes, though, I was already smiling. Or shall I say smirking. Yeah, it was more like a smirk. To be honest, I was smirking because this is what was going through my mind: “Adagio for Strings,” as beautiful and deeply stirring a song it is, as resounding and as fitting it seems, is only being played in this church through a set of speakers for one reason: to make the experience of touring the St. Nikolai a more moving one. And if the people are moved, I'm thinking, they will be more likely to open up their wallets and donate to the church. Cha-ching!

I get it, this ploy, I think, as I stand in the aisle among the pink columns listening to the music. Very clever. Play a deeply stirring and well known piece of classical music through some speakers (you’ve got the acoustics in your favor) and watch as the experience moves people. Coin purses will be unsnapped by the dozens. Real clever of these church people, I muse. Play dramatic music in the same church where, 20 years prior — almost to the day — protests began, protests for freedom, which precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall, a historical event already considered intensely dramatic, and watch.

Watch as people — tourists, natives, whoever — open up their wallets. Watch as the power of the music and the sights move them into doing so.

After all, who can resist?

Religious or not, when classical music is paired with such sights — angelic frescoes, stained-glass windows, sweeping cathedral ceilings — the joining of the two combines to form a sensory experience that pulls at the soul, whether you want it to or not. (In a flash, after having heard those first few notes, I’d gone from coolly detached to emotionally involved.)

And, while you’re at it, why not make the most of the fact that a lot of historical significance already surrounds this church? Why not capitalize on the drama that’s already there by adding more drama? That’ll surely work the people up enough to ensure that they donate more.

I recognize this ploy, these speakers, which must be the source of this sound, because the sound is so voluminous, so perfect, the timing is so right....I get it: just a CD, some well placed speakers and a little faith that people will be moved enough by the whole bit to open their wallets and donate more money.

And then I turn around.

I turn around while standing in the main aisle and I look up. And up there, below the modest pipe organ, there is a balcony, and on that balcony I see six violinists, instruments at the neck, all sitting in a horseshoe arrangement, with a bassist on one end of the horseshoe and a cellist on the other. Standing in the center of this horseshoe arrangement is a man. A man with a wand.

And I listen. And now I watch, too, as the violinists’ forearms move slowly, methodically, with quivering precision. I watch as they saw their bows over the strings in graceful unison. I look to their other hands, running up and down the fingerboards, again in unison. Those hands then pause at the same time, then lock in an identical position — six wild vibratos.

And I listen and watch as all their bodies jerk in their seats in good time with the music, moving with the music. Then suddenly stop.

And I watch as the conductor slowly points his wand in the bass player's direction, and the bass player, bow in hand, slowly saws that bow across his big instrument’s belly. It moans. And I listen as the cellist and a violinist come in. Deep tones dominate....They undulate invisibly but vibrate in the chest. And then the conductor flicks his wand and suddenly all the violinists are again slowly sawing their bows across the cherry wood instruments at their necks, up and down in graceful unison, bright, sharp, beams of light for the ears.

And I stand in the aisle and look up at these eight musicians playing “Adagio for Strings.” Why are they doing it? Just cause, it seems. Perhaps they are warming up for a later performance, perhaps not. Who really knows why. After all, they’re wearing regular clothes — jeans, sneakers and collard shirts.

And I just stand there and look up and feel. Feel the music wash over me, surround me, shoot right down me, vibrate and rattle. The music, in fact, transfixes almost everyone in the church who looks up at the balcony to see. To see one hand wave a wand through the air while others perform wild vibratos. To see bows being brought up and down, obscuring the musicians' faces, then revealing them, then obscuring them again. All gracefully. All in unison, in good time, on a Sunday afternoon.

And so my eyes open wide and my mouth parts a little and I continue just standing there. And as I stand there and hear the music, feel the music, I quietly and privately censure myself for having been, just moments earlier, so sharply, so purely and so undeniably cynical.

The Right Light

Below you'll find something I wrote the other day in my journal. Yes, I keep a journal; no, it's not a diary. It's more like a book with blank sheets of paper in which I write down things that inspire me or I find amusing or scary or hypocritical or beautiful. Sometimes, in this journal, I sketch scenes with words. The end product is usually something akin to a vignette. The following is one such vignette. I "sketched" it the other day while in a New York City office building. Enjoy.

Staring out a window on the 13th floor of a building in Manhattan. It’s around sundown. From this perch, looking down at 7th Avenue, south. The tall buildings, each about the same 20-story height, line one side of the avenue like soldiers. Manhattan is wonderful for its buildings, yes, but also for the shadows that the buildings cast on each other, at sundown.

Looking down 7th Avenue, noticing how those buildings lining one side of the street all seem to have the same shade of faded brown brick. Noticing the geometric shadows on the buildings. Noticing sundown’s sunlight too: where it hits the buildings, the faded bricks appear orange and warm.

Looking down this street, at these buildings bathed in patches of orange light, I’m able to actually start and feel the history in Manhattan. Looking at the tops of these relatively tall buildings, the step-backed terraces, the blind arcades, the deco spires, and think: sundown on this row of buildings probably looked the same 75 years ago. Just like this. High above the noise and the ads and the moving bodies below, sundown on these buildings probably looks the same now as it looked 100years ago or even 125 years ago, in 1885.

And as I look out, I feel a longing mixed with a sense of continuity. The right light has the tendency to inspire such feelings.

Fumbling Toward Oblivion

Yeah, file this one under "late to the party."

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Have you read this book? Um, yeah, holy smoke, it's good. It came out about four years ago, and I had always heard good, great, incredible things about it. I knew that the folks in Hollywood had recently turned it into a movie, which bears the same name, The Road, but I hesitated when it came to buying the actual book several years back even though I’d read all those positive reviews. After all, you know how critics can be: wrong sometimes. Plus, the book, as I’d seen it in Borders, struck me as overpriced. "Sixteen dollars for such a slim book?" I thought. So I balked.

Then just the other night as I was shopping for groceries, wheeling my rickety cart along the “media” section in the supermarket, I happened to come across the McCarthy book again; saw it up on the bookshelf. Yup, there it was amid the Danielle Steel and Dean Koontz books and all the other paperbacks with embossed titles on their glossy covers. This time, however, I noticed that The Road was markedly less expensive -- it was only 8 bucks, a drop in price that can probably be attributed to the fact that the book is being more widely distributed now that it’s also a major motion picture. So I said, $8? Why not, and threw it in my shopping cart.

And so I started on it. I wasn't that impressed at first. At first. Yeah, the prose was spare, powerful and poetic. But McCarthy seemed to repeat himself in the set up. See, the premise of the book is this: A calamity has struck the earth -- or America -- killing almost all traces of life. A father and his young son seem to be the only two survivors of this unnamed catastrophe. Together, the two trudge through the treacherously barren and dead landscape, following a road south (the story takes place in America), where their chances of survival, the father tells the son, will be better.

OK, fine, but the whole book starts off really slow because McCarthy seems incredibly preoccupied with describing ad nauseam the bleakness of this literary universe. We learn, over and over again for about 30 pages, that father and son inhabit a world of ash, scorched forests, death, detritus, gray skies, gray snow, dead ponds, dead flowers, abandoned homes, and of course ash, ash and more ash.

And then if all that’s not enough to slow things down at the beginning, there’s another issue when it comes to The Road: the punctuation. See, Cormac McCarthy really wanted to convey to his readers the barrenness and desperation of this post-apocalyptic world, so he manipulated the actual punctuation of the novel itself in his efforts to achieve this goal. The actual prose, in certain areas, lacks required apostrophes and commas, and there are no quotation marks around character dialogue. None. This whole idea of manipulating the novel’s text as it’s seen on the actual page to further convey mood, if you ask me, is very Joycean. But then again who’s asking me?

Anyway! So all this peculiar punctuation and all the repetitive description led me to believe that the critics were off the mark. Granted, McCarthy’s writing, his actual prose, is so beautiful it probably could’ve carried the novel in and of itself: “The blackness he woke to those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening.” But I was still really starting to wonder why all the critics had been going gaga.

Finally, however, the novel's action started picking up. And my god did it pick up with a vengeance. Cannibalistic predators donning gas masks, armed with bludgeons stalking the road; flashbacks to scenes from the initial apocalypse; dialogue that gives us a torch-lighted view inside the minds of people teetering on the edge of oblivion. Actually, once the action starts heading into high gear, we are no longer distracted by the initial lack of it and are better able to appreciate all the other positive aspects of the writing -- the heartbreakingly beautiful lines, the ruggedly terse dialogue, the vivid descriptions. Once all the elements are there and set in motion together, they begin to form a hard-to-put-down, rhythmically hypnotic -- and sometimes frightful -- tale of love, death and survival.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I may have been late to the party when it comes to The Road. But better late than never.

Missed connections

Weird thing I just noticed about Americans or New York culture, rather. It happened when I was walking out into my hallway to throw out my garbage. See, I live in an apartment building, which means if I want to throw out garbage, I have to walk down the hall to the garbage room. Only one such room exists on my floor, and all the people living on 3, whether we like it or not, must make the small trip in our socks from our respective apartment doors to this room, which is equipped with a chute, if we want to dispose of refuse.

Anyway, so there I was in the hall, knotted, black plastic bag in hand, about to start on down the pink carpeting to the trash room, when I look up and see someone else opposite me at the far end of the hallway. I see a woman. She’s an older woman, probably in her 70s, and I thought I’d seen her before — perhaps we’d ridden the elevator together at some point — but, to be honest, I had no idea of her name.

Anyway, so she’s walking toward me, wearing a pink pajama getup — it was 11 p.m. — and I immediately see that she, too, has something in her hand: a garbage bag. Coincidentally, we both walked out into the hallway at the exact same time to take care of this small but necessary chore.

So she's walking toward this garbage room and so am I, albeit from directly opposite directions. Because she's a lot older than I am, and frail, she was walking at a much slower pace. Still, I sped up my gait upon seeing her to rid the air of any confusion that might exist about who will reach, and ultimately use, this room first.

I think I smiled a slight smile right before I opened the door to the garbage room, though I was pretty aware of the fact that she probably didn't make out this expression because she was still probably too far away from me to see it.

Once I finally got my big garbage bag down the chute — sometimes you really have to push — I closed the door and turned to her — she was now significantly closer — and smiled a sort of smile that seemed to say, "Well, here you are, here I am, both throwing out our garbage, meeting in the hallway at 11 p.m. ... Kinda-sorta funny, huh? Well, goodnight."

Yeah, my smile and the way I gesticulated with my head said all that. I know it sounds like a lot, but it did. Anyway, when I smiled at her, I naturally looked into her face for a moment. She really didn't seem to be returning the smile — actually she wasn’t at all — so I quickly looked away.

And so, walking down the long hallway back to my apartment, I started thinking.

Goddamn, I thought. That’s kind of weird. That whole interaction or, rather, non-interaction I just had. I mean, here we are, two people, living in the same apartment building, living feet away from each other, both walking out into the hallway during the last hour of the day, January 17, 20-fu%#ing-10, we see each other, we know each other's motives, we know we're neighbors for Christ's sake, yet we don't say anything to each other. She doesn't even acknowledge me. Strange. Real strange.

And then I thought, what is this phenomenon with Americans? Or shall I say New Yorkers, because, really, to say that this experience I had in the hallway is characteristic of American life is probably flatly inaccurate. But I certainly have noticed this type of behavior in New York.

A few days earlier, in fact, I’d walked into a Barnes and Noble cafe in the city. Every single table at the cafe was taken by a person and there were about 20 tables. However, not one person at this cafe was interacting in any way with the person at the table to his left or right. Each was too absorbed with reading something off his laptop or smart phone. Each was an island to himself. I've noticed this behavior a lot in New York. So close together yet pathetically isolated.

Walking down my long hallway back to my apartment I also couldn't help but think about a positive tradition they have across the Atlantic, in Germany. It goes something like this. Let's say someone — we’ll call him Person A — is in a cafe, just sitting there with his coffee and newspaper at a table. Now let's say another person, Person B, a stranger, walks into that same cafe. Person A will most likely greet Person B as he walks in. That's right, odds are that Person A will say “tag” or “morgen,” which means "hello" and "good morning,” respectively. Even more interesting, the person who just walked into the cafe, Person B, the newcomer, might greet everyone in the cafe ¾ or at least those sitting — by saying “hello” out loud. Remember, these people are strangers. Still, these exchanges instantly forge a sense of community or connection.

Furthermore, I recalled that often in Germany when one leaves a room or a cafe or a clothing store, anything, the tradition is to say "bye" as you leave. It’s usually custom to acknowledge the people in the room you’re about to exit. In turn, the other people — the barista, the sales clerk, whoever — acknowledge you and also say, “bye."

To be honest, I could never imagine walking down a hallway to throw out garbage in a German apartment building, seeing a neighbor and not saying "abend" (good evening). It would just be strange.

Now I'm not saying I love Germany or that they've got it all figured out or anything, 'cause god knows Germans have their own issues and peculiarities. But when it comes to these small gestures of acknowledgment, the "Deutsch" are really onto something.

So what's up America? What's up New York? Why are we so standoffish sometimes when it comes to just saying "hi" or "good evening”? Why do we continue to allow ourselves to remain so isolated? Is it because of our high concentration of people? Do we simply take for granted the fact that other souls will always be around us? To the point, perhaps, that we feel we don't necessarily need to say hi to, or even acknowledge, the neighbor who's walking down the same hall at the same time of night, during the same last hour of the day?

If so, that's kind of sad.

In Through the Out Door

OK, funny stuff. The other day as I sat at the kitchen table with my girlfriend eating breakfast, I stared — as many do — at the cereal box in front of me. I eat Post Raisin Bran. This time as I stared at the rectangular box, however, I noticed that the Raisin Bran packaging was a bit different from how I'd remembered it. The overall design was a bit prettier. The box's color was a deeper purple and the the Post logo — an oval with the word "Post" inside it — was more bubbly, more three dimensional. In the center of the box there was a big spoon, which displayed the perfect mix of toasted flakes, creamy milk and gleaming raisins. In short, it looked like the Raisin Bran box at some point between the last time I'd eaten the cereal and this time had been redesigned, given a face lift.

After pondering the box and logo a little longer, I turned to my girlfriend who was sitting right next to me and said: "Why do they always have to change things? Why does everything always have to be spiffed up, given a redesign? Can't they just leave the packaging alone. I mean, it's Raisin Brain. Why do they always have to add all these bells and whistles; why do they always have to add new colors and shine?"

Well, my girlfriend — always willing to offer me a counterpoint — turned to me and said: "They have to change the packaging every few years or so. Otherwise, it'll look like the product is old and stale and no one wants to buy a product that looks like it's old or hasn't evolved with the times."

Fair enough, I thought. But I still wondered what this obsession with constantly changing, updating, redesigning was all about.

Anyway, fast forward one week. My girlfriend and I are shopping at the supermarket and we're walking down the cereal aisle. I'm about to pick up my spiffy box of Raisin Bran when I notice something. There's another box that says Raisin Bran right next to it. But the packaging of this other Raisin Bran is completely sober: the box is plain and brown and has no fancy graphics on it. In fact, this other Raisin Brain box looks like it's from a time when people still drove around in massively big cars with massively big steering wheels and public schools came equipped with fallout shelters. The words "Raisin Brain" on the front of of the box were in plain, blocky 2-D letters. This Raisin Bran is also made by Post, I see, but the bubbly Post oval is gone. Instead, the Post name is written in that plain, blocky style as well. 

I rub my eyes. After that, I pick up the cereal and show it to my girlfriend. We both laugh. It turns out, Post recently released some of its cereals in their "vintage packaging." That soberly packaged box of Raisin Brain I saw on the shelf? That's almost exactly what the Raisin Bran box looked like when Post first released the cereal decades ago. No 3-D logos, no golden-brown airbrushed flakes on the front of the box with sparkling raisins and creamy milk, no sidebars telling me about the cereal's health benefits. Just a plain brown, boring box with the words "Raisin Bran" on it. It seems that Post, in a bid to get in touch with its roots or at very least catch the consumer's eye in yet some other way, decided to rerelease this thing and sell it right alongside its modern counterpart.

You gotta love this stuff.

Over the Top and Falling Short

One thing I love about dating a girl from a foreign country is the fresh perspective she offers.

For example, I know what I think of American culture. I know what I think of the fanfare surrounding Super Bowl ads, the death penalty, Hollywood. But it’s interesting — and sometimes shocking — to hear a foreigner’s take on the same things. It really makes you think.

Enter the discussion my girlfriend and I were having the other day about Lady Gaga.Having been in Germany so long, I had been completely in the dark when it came to the flamboyant, 23-year-old pop princess. But recently, after having returned, I flipped on my TV, saw the music video for Lady Gaga’s new single, “Bad Romance,” and quickly came to understand the fuss.

She struck me as original. The set of the “Bad Romance” video looked like a cross between something out of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and a D&G ad. The hook to the song was cheesy yet irresistible, and Gaga’s dance moves looked one part Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” one part “Flashdance,” the other something I'd do in front of a mirror if I knew no one were watching.

The point is, Lady Gaga had my attention. I even thought — I'll admit it — she was kind of cool. And so, I decided to tune in to the American Music Award’s last Sunday after having heard she’d be performing.

Now, this performance. You saw it, right?

She comes out on stage in an ecru body suit equipped with antler-like headgear and a breast plate pulsing with lights, sings a song and does a choreographed number with several backup dancers. Then the stage empties save for her. Once alone, she picks up her microphone stand and uses it to smash her way into a huge glass cubicle on stage where a baby grand piano awaits her. (She needs the piano for her next song.) The moment she starts playing — vrum! — the piano’s lip is lit aflame. She then grabs a glass bottle, which had been set up atop the piano, and smashes it down on the keys with one hand while the other still tickles the ivories. She does this several times, with several glass bottles. All in that ecru body stocking.

Now, perhaps I had been in Europe too long. I don’t know. But I found the performance kind of shocking. Although I had liked the Lady Gaga of the “Bad Romance” video — she had struck me as fresh and unafraid — the Lady Gaga of the AMA’s seemed more like someone desperate to make an impression. It didn’t jibe with my prior notions of her.

And so, struggling to understand this discrepancy and looking for someone to offer me fresh perspective, I turned to my girlfriend. I told her about my shock. I told her that it seemed as though Lady Gaga and American entertainment seemed so intense and crazy after having been with her in Europe for so long.

And then my girlfriend said something that gave me pause.

She didn’t mock me for watching a Lady Gaga performance, which I almost certainly thought she would. She didn't mock Lady Gaga. Instead, after I recounted the performance — the fire, the broken glass, the antlers — my girlfriend simply said, “That’s sick.” Just like that, “That’s sick.” Now, she didn’t mean “sick” as in “cool.” She meant “sick” as in “Lady-Gaga’s-performance-is-what’s-wrong-with-your-country sick" — that we've got serious-societal-problems sick. And she meant it.

Normally, after getting such a response from her, I probably would have backpedaled. (I've come to notice I tend to defend the U.S. out of a gut reaction if a non-American is doing the criticizing.) I probably would've said something like, “No…the performance wasn’t really that crazy. I guess we" — as in Americans — "just like to go all out when it comes to entertainment." Perhaps I would have criticized her country, Germany. It’s easy.

But her comment surprised me in a way that forced me to step back. And then I thought — even though it was hard to admit — jeez, this girl might be right. There is a chance that Lady Gaga’s performance and what it represented had moved past the realm of innovative and into "sick."

I wanted to defend Lady Gaga, American music and entertainment, I did. But something just seemed so off with that performance. Gaga seemed so boldly artistic at first. At the AMA’s she seemed more like a bad front yard Christmas display.

Musicians, of course, are known for toeing the line during performances — even leaping right over it. And many have done so successfully. But those performances worked because, often, the artists’ bold moves were cleverly calculated or their antics reflected an emotion felt by the audience at the time or were an expression of the zeitgeist. Lady Gaga, however, just seemed to be going over the top. And falling short.

I kept on thinking about the discrepancy. I had to try and figure out why Lady Gaga seemed to be striking so many false notes with this performance when she did seem to be someone, initially at least, who had talent.

Then finally, it hit me.

Lady Gaga may not be to blame. In fact, her AMA performance probability doesn’t reflect her merit as an artist. She may not be “sick.” What drove her to put on such a performance, however, just might be.

See, the only thing that’s sick — or, let’s be fair, might be sick — is what current pop stars must do to really get noticed. Think about it. Pop culture in America was always a bit of a circus. Now, it’s being transmuted into something crazier, stranger and even more hyperactive.

Why so? I wondered too. It has to do with the age we’re living in, the digital age. The pressures of working as an entertainer in the digital age and the democratization of stardom are reshaping our artists and entertainment. And not necessarily for the better.

Hear me out.

Being talented is no longer enough. Being unique is no longer enough; nor is being on TV. Everyone can be on TV, a.k.a. youtube. The playing field really has been leveled. So what does a pop star like Lady Gaga, who prides herself on individuality as it is, have to do to really get noticed? To really be different? To really shake things up?

She needs to take her performance to the next level. Burn pianos. Wear body stockings. Break glass bottles on keyboards. All to make that impression. If not, she, or any pop star, runs the risk of not being heard, of being drowned out by everyone — literally, everyone — else out there who also wants a piece of the spotlight, and can now actually get it.

And this new landscape may be difficult for an individualistic artist to navigate. Lady Gaga may truly have something special to offer. But because of the pressures associated with working as an entertainer in the digital age, she may be forced to “up her game” a bit and take her performance, her dress, her persona to the next level.

Unfortunately, she might be going too far. When one’s antics start obscuring one’s talents, that’s usually a sign to take a step back. If Lady Gaga doesn't, she runs the risk of simply being labeled silly. And no artist wants that.

Whole Lotta' Shaking Goin' on

Here's something I scribbled in my Mead notebook a few months ago when I was in Germany. I was sort of bored/in a melancholy mood this particular day, just hanging out in a Starbucks that sat across from a big Gothic cathedral in Aachen, the country's westernmost city. Enjoy.

Aachen, August 16, 2009

Sitting here in Starbucks, not too many people, feeling a bit lonely on a Sunday. I’ve noticed while in Germany that one thing that makes me feel homesick is music, American music. American rock 'n' roll, to be exact. American rock 'n' roll seems to capture, or hold, an innocence, an intensity, an optimistic and fun-loving intensity, which Europe lost with its two World Wars. And forget Germany.

A few minutes ago, one of the baristas here stopped the cafe music that’d been playing. I thought the place was shutting down. But no. She was just switching CD’s. The new CD was a rock 'n' roll one, a “best of” compilation: everyone from James Brown to Elvis to the Temptations. The music got my foot tapping and if anything I was glad the cafe wasn’t closing early. Most stores in Germany don’t even open on Sundays.

Anyway, the music was pleasing enough but then one song came on that really awoke something in me: Jerry Lee Lewis’ 1957 “Great Balls of Fire.” Once I heard the gliss at the beginning, I was “shook” out of my reading. Lewis’ voice was just so full of energy and excitement. The song is a bit horny, actually. All right, it’s overtly horny. But that’s OK; it can be. It can be flirtatious, crazy and a bit boisterous, too — which it is.

And not only did the song shake me out of my reading, it also moved something in me. It transported me for a minute to America. Lewis’ voice made me feel all the excitement, energy and hope that typify the American experience.

No, America is not Europe. Europe may have its museums, its theatre houses, its wine, its architecture and its long history. But America is the land of incredible possibility, of constant change, of dynamism and friction, for good or bad. America is the land of rock 'n' roll.

German diaries

I don't know how many of you know but I'm in Germany at the moment. Below you can find stuff that I've scribbled down -- obeservations, musings, vignettes -- while here. 

Onelove.

snapshot of Cologne cathedral at sundown

Cologne, August 4, 2009
9:28 p.m.

Sitting on the city-block-long set of steps that leads to a gothic cathedral so big and dirty and hulking and beautiful, it looks like something visited in dreams. The spires of this 900-year-old church rise into the sky. Like sequoias, the Cologne cathedral gives the impression of something that has been here before us and will be here after us. The soot caked on its sharp gothic features testifies to its old age. But still it rises. World War II didn’t even destroy it, so I guess it’ll be around for a while longer. Sitting on a city-block-long set of rough marble steps, hanging out here with about 100 other people. The sound of laughter. The sound of low German, of street German, being spoken. The scratching sound of flint wheels as people light up a smoke. The sun has gone down and the sky is a light blue, a soft-August-twilight blue. In the west, however, the sky holds on to some orange. The sun has sunk past a horizon not visible. Apartments and trees block it. But above these apartments and trees, an orange glow. Sitting on a city-block-long set of steps that leads to the gothic cathedral. Sitting, looking at the Hauptbahnhof. The Hauptbahnof has large illuminated letters on its roof that spell out Hauptbahnhof. Each letter is about the size of a person. The font of the letters is characteristic of another time, before Hitler. There’s something 20’s about the style of the illuminated letters, something Deco, something Weimar. There’s a football-field-size stone plaza in front of the Hauptbahnhof. People are crossing it. Back and forth, back and forth, they go, keeping beat with the metronome of time. Sitting on the city-block-long set of steps that leads to the cathedral.

Cologne, August 4, 2009
9:45 p.m.

a must-read

Holy crap. If you're interested in a breaking new story chocked with drama, check this out.

The Status Quo

There are many things I don’t understand about America. Our unbridled optimism, our celebrity obsessions, our cross-country networks of fast food chains...Hummers, hero worship, reality TV.

But I can live with those things. What I can’t live with — and perhaps what I least understand about America — is our perennial failure, our abject and shameful failure, to deal with the control of guns.

Week after week, as sure as death itself, some one of our citizens is walking into a public place — be it a church, school or office building — and opening fire on the soft helpless bodies inside.

Just last Friday, a 41-year-old man armed with two pistols entered an immigrant community center in Binghamton, New York, and shot and killed 13 people in an ESL class.

The next day — hell, the next morning! — a man in Pittsburg turned his very own AK-47 on three police officers who showed up to his house to investigate a domestic disturbance call, killing all of them.

And the list goes on: eight senior citizens shot dead in a North Carolina nursing home; a baby killed after another gunman goes on a rampage in Alabama; an Illinois pastor shot to death inside his church.

And that was all in March.

So now here’s my question: What’s it going to take stop these kinds of killings? How many more innocent people — 10, 20 200 — must die before our government passes the kind of legislation that could seriously restrict the ease with which a man can get a gun in this country? Better yet, is it even possible to pass such legislation? Is tighter gun control something we even want? Or is our gun culture too far entrenched to turn back now.

After that nightmarish scene unfolded last Friday in Binghamton, the New York Times asked a man who worked a few doors down from the immigrant center what he made of the shootings, which had, in effect, just transformed his small rural city into a zone of chaos. The man, a pastor, said that, to be honest, he wasn’t all that surprised by what'd just happened considering how frequently such killings occur in America. "It's like our number came up," he said.

How sad it is to live in a country where mass murder has become the status quo.

For Sarah Tea...

OK, interesting stuff. So there's this music Web site called "seeqpod.com," which I'm always on. What is it? Basically, you can enter a song — like, any song by any artist — and seeqpod will call it up and you can listen to the song for free. You can build play lists and everything. The only catch is, you can't burn the songs to CD. It's sorta like youtube but for music. Anyway, what's great about seeqpod is the wide, wide array of music you can call up. What also makes it great is how obscure some of the songs on it are. For example, type in Elliott Smith and you’ll not only get his major songs, but some of his home recordings, studio outtakes and even some amateur recordings taken at his concerts. Stuff you’d never imagine existed.

Anyway, tonight, doing whatever it is I do at my computer, I entered “John Lennon” into the seeqpod search field. I did this because John Lennon is simply the man. Anyway, a list of John Lennon songs appears, and I'm scrolling and I'm scrolling and I see a song called "The Worst Is Over." This intrigues me because, as far as I know, Lennon never recorded a song with this name. Anyway, I play it and, holy shit, I love it from the first note. That's because the "Worst is Over, " I soon realize, happens to be the early-stage recording — probably done at Lennon’s home — of a song that would evolve into a #1 single. It’s a sketch, if you will, of the masterwork, and both are beautiful.

Here it is, “The Worst is Over” or, as it would later be known, “Just Like Starting Over.”


SeeqPod - Playable Search

Election Day Story

Hey people. Below you'll find a story I wrote on Election Day last year. I was working for the Daily News that Tuesday, stringing reporting to them about what the flavor was like at a polling place in Queens. Anyway, I took it upon myself to write my own little story while I continued stringing, just jotted it down right there on my pad. The story never got in the paper, so I figured I'd post it here. Have a look, if you'd like.

*

“Excuse me, do you have your registration card?” was what Maria Rodrigo wanted to know as voters walked up to a side door at Public School 82 in Jamaica yesterday anxious to get to the curtained booths inside.

The Queens resident was working for the New York Board of Elections for the day, one of hundreds of similar workers stationed at all the polling places across the city whose job it was to welcome voters — both veterans and first-timers — and help guide them to the polls.

“The job is simple but it’s also hard. We’ll be standing here from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m,” she said.

After that, the work still won't be done. Rodrigo is also part of the team that will count the votes after the polls close, late into the night.

But for now, its’ still just Election Day morning and the people — young, old, black, white, Latino — keep streaming in to vote for their 44th president.

Rodrigo smiled as a man who stood by the school’s doorway offered a blank expression after she asked if he had his registration card.

“It’s okay; people forget them all the time,” she said. “Just sign in at the table and then you can vote.”

On more normal days, Rodrigo, who first came to the United States from Sri Lanka in 1995, works at the Jamaica YMCA. She helps people recently released from prison make the transition to the outside.

“It’s a mighty task, and I only get minimum wage.”

Though she stayed tightlipped when it came to her candidate of choice, higher wages and a break or two for people working in such demanding job are two things Rodrigo would like to see the next president offer.

“It’s a struggle, paycheck to paycheck,” the single mother said. “I’m a taxpayer and I’d like a little more comfort from the government. Not a handout — just a little more comfort. Either way, whoever wins is going to have a lot of mopping up to do.”

A little later, a man who just voted wheels his young daughter out in a stroller. Rodrigo, still standing by the door, still greeting and guiding voters, bent down to get face to face with the little girl.

“Well hello there. Did you get to vote today?

“Yeah,” her father said. “She voted for change.”

Wrenching Stuff

Today I worked on a very sad story. A mother and her baby, a baby she never got to see, were buried together. The mother, Donnette Sanz, a New York City traffic agent, was killed a week and a half ago as she crossed a street in the Bronx. She was seven months pregnant. Doctors delivered her baby by emergency cesarean section, and for about a week, the premature infant clung to life. Friday he died. Yesterday was their funeral.

I’ve heard many things from many people while working on this story: “God always takes the good ones,” “The driver of the van should rot in hell,” “This world isn’t fair.” Each comment affects me in its own way. Some I buy into, others I don’t. But let me suspend judgment for a moment to talk about how such tragedies, I think, can be avoided.

With simple responsibility.

If everyone, or at least the majority of people, realized that each action he took has a consequence ranging from from hardly-felt to earth-shattering, this world would be safer and better. It's that simple. It’s also important to realize that there really are no such things as shortcuts. For instance, the driver who slammed into Donnette and caused her death said his "breaks went out." But he had been driving with brake pads so thin, and in such need of repair, that an accident was bound to happen. In other words, this driver chose to take a shortcut: he wanted to drive, but didn't want to meet the basic requirements. This driver might have made thousands of dangerous moves in his life and taken countless shortcuts, and all could have had hardly-felt consequences. But he continued to act negligently, and this time, the consequences were earth-shattering.

The key, then, as we walk away from this tragedy, I guess, is to promise ourselves we won't be negligent with our actions — large or small — when other people's lives are at stake. And that’s friend or stranger.

We've Seen Better Days

America is sick.

Wait, let me take that back. Sick may not be the right
word.

Ailed.

Thirty-two dead on Virginia Tech's campus. Over three thousand soldiers killed in Iraq. A culture that perpetuates, facilitates and glorifies violence.

And we wonder why?

I know—I should probably slow down. After all, you can't blame all American culture for one 23-year-old's psychopathy. And, at first glance, the massacring of VT students seems unrelated to our government's hasty call for war, which has led to a staggering number of GI deaths. But both instances have an important point in common: the ideas for both were hatched on our turf.

And while in the end, violence of course knows no borders, what time would be better than now to ask, is the US serving as a more efficient incubator for violence?

Let’s skip to the part where I answer that: Yes.

Look at our movies, our music, our video games, even our sports. Violence is manifest in each of these categories. Granted, most of us can tell the difference between fictional violence and real-life consequences, and would therefore never let entertainment drive us to such madness. But even the most impervious among us surely have, at some point, been critically influenced by entertainment and fantasy. So what effect is suggestive entertainment having on people with serious mental conditions? Is it not spurring them on?

It must be. If life seems disposable in the entertainment world, some may think it truly is. And while the VT killer was exceptionally psychopathic, he lived in a society that accepts violence as an answer to many questions; he lived in a country in which guns are readily available, and in a state, pronouncedly so, that considers those guns a birth right. He lived in a culture in which characters like Tony Soprano are looked up to and preened on magazine covers; in which many teenagers pass their time playing games like “Grand Theft Auto.” He lived in a country that considers two men pummeling each other’s faces sport.

How could living in such a society not have influenced him? And, if these aspects did, why are we debating campus safety? Shouldn’t we instead be reevaluating the more troubling aspects of American culture?

Now I know I’m not the first to bring up these issues. Turn on any news talk show in the mid/late ’90s—the Columbine era, if you will—and the talking heads would be debating similar, if not identical, issues. At the heart of those many debates, as I’m sure you know, was that famous question: Should we, whenever the opportunity arises, excise—or at least highly limit—violence’s manifestations in our art and culture?

My answer to that? No.

Doing so curtails freedom of speech. And censorship (as history can attest) only leads to other forms of problems, not to mention twisted psyches. Better in this case is to ask, why this fascination with violence? After all, no one is forced to view an inanely violent film or bop his head to hateful lyrics. We chose these pursuits. Asking "why," and exploring what's behind these issues may be tantamount to taking the first steps toward remedy. Here are three brief possibilities.

•Violent entertainment and the culture of it serve as a foil to our tirelessly-pursued “ideal” American lives. Perhaps America is so obsessed with and elated by money, leisure activities, gourmet food, vacation homes, fast cars, etc. that we yearn for something more sinister to balance out "the good life." If we didn’t maniacally insulate ourselves against many of the world’s woes, moreover, we’d better see what life was really like, how grim much of it is. In turn, the darker aspects of existence would fascinate us less.

•Interestingly—and ironically enough—Americans may be more prone to violence because we may be obsessed with protecting this aforementioned way of life. We love our possessions; ditto for our social mobility. But do we love our roaring-on-all-engines type capitalism with equal intensity? If so, are we willing to die for it and the luxuries it affords? Further still, do we believe that the path to righteousness for every country is only attained by mirroring us, as in U.S.?

•Like it or not, the bible and its principles heavily inform and shape American culture. One well-known principle regarding revenge/justice, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” may lie at the heart of many of our violence-issues. Simply put, this saw, which of course originated in the bible, is something that we collectively believe in. Remember when Bush repeatedly said after 9/11 that the US would "hunt down and kill the terrorists"? Remember how much of America agreed? Agreed to "hunt" and "kill"? Were the bible not to influence our country so, perhaps violence—pertaining to retribution or not—would be less acceptable.

Now, I said at this essay’s beginning America was ailed. Although I just listed a few reasons for this sickness, my examples, for what they’re worth, don’t necessarily mean that the sickness is fatal. America, moreover, is not rotten. There are some great ideals buried beneath the bad. But America may never become—or at least may never move closer to becoming the ideal country we purport to be—if we continue to fail to see our obsession with and condoning of violence is actually harming us.


II

All said, it’s time to explore another issue, which is in the same vein. It, too, involves how entertainment shapes our consciences, similar to much of what I talked about in this essay's first half. But it involves what we don’t see. It’s subtle. And that’s what makes it scary.

So what am I talking about? Glad you asked.

OK, think entertainment.... Now think censorship. The American government allows us to watch as much violent entertainment as we please; it’s unfettered. But let that gore spill over into the real-life sector, and it's suddenly off limits. Think about it. We don’t see dead American troops on the nightly news. We don’t see dead Iraqi children, “collateral damage,” on magazine covers. Paradoxically, the things—the images and sounds—we don’t see shape our psyches and imaginations just as much as what we do.

How so? Well, here's where the negative effect of violent entertainment again rears its ugly head. When we read or hear about war, about dead American troops, about "collateral damage," our minds, in the need to process it all, revert to what they know about such situations—i.e., all that has been gleaned from images in movies and on TV. Naturally, we supplant images and ideas. Because of this supplanting, when we read or hear about true-life violence, we may be able to reconcile it better. This is why we may think death is quick; this is why we think it can be honorable.

Would it not be fair to say, then, that America imbibes in the type of violent entertainment it does because it's too scared to ask itself some real questions or see some real pictures or listen to some real sounds, namely the voice of the dying?

Is America content escpaing to fantasy land—as has often been the case—where ketchup is used as blood, instead of asking itself where it truly stands on violence? Is America content to run to the movies when it should be incessantly asking itself about how it feels having started a war in a Middle-Eastern country? About being responsible for civilian deaths in Iraq—because civilians have died by our hand, meaningfully or not.

I ask you: What if our government showed us what the true face of the Iraq war looked like? What would the national mood be then? I’m talking dead American troops; I’m talking disemboweled and beheaded Iraqi civilians. Pictures, movies, lots of them. If we saw these images on the nightly news would we still be in Iraq? Or, more pointedly, if we had always been granted full access to the images of war's effects, would we go with the frequency we do?

And what about Virginia Tech? If we actually saw what those hollow-point bullets did to a nineteen-year-old’s face. If we got actually to see the fragments of that Holocaust survivor’s brain, splattered like oatmeal on the walls, would the NRA still have the clout it does? Further, would the public still stand by the NRA as it gives the same, tired rebuttals when such tragedies occur? Would Americans still be as passionate about the right to bear arms?

Or, America—yeah you!—do we want to continue to live in a fantasy world imagining what such guns do, imagining how violence looks or feels?

I'm not a voyeur, but if we, as in Americans, are so enamored by and accepting of violence, let's stop for a moment and take a true look at it, in every manifestation.

I promise you, you'd hate what you'd see.

Imust Comment

Since everyone and their mother are weighing into the whole Imus thing, I figured, why not. Here's something I wrote on a NY Times blog.

Two things. First, it's incredibly hard, perhaps impossible, to understand how much it hurts to have an epithet hurled at you if you’re not a part of the ethnic/racial group on its receiving end. It’s not fair to say, then, that Imus’s remarks didn’t warrant his firing. Maybe they did. I’m not black; I can’t tell you how deep that well of pain goes.

Second, and somewhat separately, America has lost all control. Our troops are getting killed in Iraq every day, but that's not what's on the front page every day. We’re not obsessed with the Iraq war; we should be.

Until we figure out how to improve — nay, master — the security conditions for our troops and draw up a devastatingly accurate way forward in that country, issues such as those mentioned in my first paragraph deserve less attention. Sticks and stones first. Then names.

Of Olympic Rings, Deadly Dealings

Here's a letter I wrote to the Wall Street Journal. It's about China's shady business dealings with Sudan, home of the Darfur genocide. The authors beg us to reconsider the 2008 Olympics, which will be held in Beijing, now that we have the knowledge that China, albeit in a roundabout way, is supporting genocide:

Mr. and Ms. Farrow raise some hard-to-escape truths about the dark side of Chinese politics and the coming Olympic Games("The Genocide Olympics," Op-Ed, March28). Beijing’s intransigence on Darfur has indeed been debilitating. And, as the Farrows argue, a country that facilitates genocide — however obliquely — should be reprimanded, not feted.

Shockingly enough, China’s faults in this case don’t end with irresponsible business deals with Sudan and a shameful U.N. record on Darfur. Some speculate that the Chinese intend to ease censorship laws for the Games. This policy is flat backward. The Olympics shouldn’t be the spur for freer speech in China — especially, that is, if Beijing intends to rescind those policies soon after. (Wasn’t it the Nazis, after all, who briefly dissolved all signs of overt anti-Semitism at the ’36 Games to give the pretense of a more peaceful society?)

And, while saying, as the Farrows do, that Mr.Spielberg’s participation in the ’08 Olympics could somehow be akin to what Leni Riefenstahl did in ’36 might be shocking, it’s not completely unfounded. Mr. Spielberg — as well as the multinational corporate sponsors now armed with this knowledge — need to take a fresh look at how they will deal with the problem. After all, this isn’t a small conflict of interest. This is genocide.

TIME Magazine — First arrivers. Cultural arbiters. Political heralds.

Sellouts.

Really, have you seen the new issue? The "redesign"? It's pathetic. Trying to keep up to speed with today's "short-term-attention-span" culture, the 74-year-old publication has slashed the page count, shortened the features, and enlarged all pictures.

It's as if People got an upgrade. And for some reason decided to write about John McCain or Shiites.

TIME needs to realize that adapting to the culture shouldn't necessitate the product's diluting; especially, that is, if the product is an American touchstone.

So apparently some brilliant US senator has proposed a bill that would grant Anne Frank honorary US citizenship. Yes, that Anne Frank.

Now I'm all for honorary US citizenship, and I'm sure Anne Frank more than deserves it. But wouldn't this posthumous gesture be more insulting than honorary? After all, the US barred Anne Frank and her father, Otto, from entering the US in the early 1940s. In fact, during those crucial years, Otto wrote dozens of letters to our consulates pleading for citizenship or at least safe passage.

I hate to say it, but granting Anne Frank US citizenship today would parallel the way in which the Catholic Church handled the whole Joan of Arc affair. Let's not embarrass ourselves in such a way.

Welcome to the Big(otry) Time

New York City is a pretty liberal place. We have sex shops, a surfeit of artists, relaxed liquor laws and an entrenched immigrant population, to boot. So it came as somewhat of a surprise today, after reading a Times article, to learn that gays in Manhattan are still harassed, assaulted, even tormented, for showing the slightest bit of affection in public.

The question left buring in my mind after reading the article was "why?" Why does affection among gay people scare some? Why does it enrage others? Why, moreover, do seemingly normal people feel the need to meddle in strangers’ lives?

And then it hit me — power issues.

We're all, in a sense, born powerless. Besides the literal interpretation of this statement, we as humans don't have much control over many — and some of the most important — facets of our lives.

For instance, cancer could crop up in my liver today, and I could be dead in six months; lightening could just as soon strike a relative dead; a girlfriend could just decide one day to pack up and leave.

Take it or leave it, this is the human condition.

So, with all this in mind, let's return to the question of why people — even to this day, at the height of the information era—still harbor such hostility toward gays.

Simply put, it's an issue — unlike the aforementioned — over which one can exert his control. One does have the power to confront a homosexual couple and say, "Hey, I think what you’re doing is disgusting; life shouldn’t be lived that way."

After all, when we denounce, we pronounce. By upbraiding a gay couple and the way they live, the persecutor is at the same time highlighting what he is not. Doing so gives him a better understanding — or a seemingly better understanding — of who he is, of what he stands for, of his character. The persecutor's yearning to better define himself stems from his not truly understanding the world in which he lives (not even coming close to understanding it).

I guess we can say, then—and pardon me if you find these truths to be self evident—persecuting gays, for some, gives a sense of power, when really we're all powerless, floating 'round and 'round in a universe as vast as ignorance.

A Step in the Right Direction

Mission Accomplished.

No, not that mission, silly. North Korea. We actually got Kim Jong Il and his cronies this week to call off their nuclear weapons program. If the DPRK makes good on its promise, it will be the first time any country armed with nukes agrees to give them up.

And like any good deal, this one comes with perks. Quoth Time magazine:

"The North is to receive an emergency shipment of 50,000 tons of fuel oil from the U.S., China, Russia and South Korea. The oil is desperately needed to run electric power plants in the impoverished land. If the North permanently disables [another nuclear reactor], the deal calls for another 950,000 tons of oil to be donated."

Granted, President Bush is still far from accomplishing his most prized mission. But he and those folks over at the U.N. (emphasis on those folks over at the U.N.) played their hand nicely against the Dear Leader.

Closing thought: Too bad Iran doesn't need oil.

Eats, Shoots and BlackBerries

We writers are a picky sort. Hand us any piece of literature—be it a pamphlet, an invitation, even a menu—and the first thing we do, besides read it, of course, is scan the text for errors. We can’t help it.

So it's no surprise, then, that on my subway ride to work, I find myself pondering the ads on the overhang—admiring the cleverness of some, while deriding the grammatical sloppiness of others.

Now, I don't mean to bitch (O.K., maybe I do) but if you're a Madison Avenue copywriter, you're well paid. This means it's your earthbound duty, when writing one or two lines for a product, not to screw up. With that in mind, let's now bring some of the worst offenders to task, shall we?

First up, Research in Motion (RIM). As the maker of BlackBerry, a device catering to top-tier business people, power brokers and intellects alike, you’d think RIM would take the time to edit its copy thoroughly. Here’s the company’s main tagline for the BlackBerry:

“Ask someone why they love their Blackberry.”

Ostensibly, a fine tagline. But if we look more closely, we see that the tagline's first pronoun, "someone," is singular. Therefore, the second pronoun, "they," and the possesive adjective, "their," which both refer to the antecedent, "someone," should be singular. I'm not going to even mention the verb. I will say, however, that were this copy free of errors, it would look like this:

Ask someone why he loves his BlackBerry.

Or, if referring to a corporate shark of the fairer sex:

Ask someone why she loves her BlackBerry.

Moving on.

Perhaps the only thing worse than a company making a grammatical error in its copy, is a company making a logical inaccuracy in its copy—while trying to be cute.

T-Mobile, anyone?

T-Mobile has this little feature on its phones, the “Fav 5.” All it is, really, is a glorified speed dial (albeit one with a dime-size picture of the Fav 5 member whom you're calling). T-Mobile markets this product by posing a question to the ad's viewer, asking him who he'd include in his Fav 5. (Optimally, T-Mobile believes, you'd choose your closest friends.)

“Who knows you secretly cry at chick flicks?,” asks one ad.

Admittedly, that's sort of funny. But we're not here to laugh. So, T-Mobile, listen up and listen well. If someone knows you’re doing something, e.g., crying at a chick flick, it’s NO LONGER A SECRET.

Better would be:

"Who knows you cry, in seceret, at chick flicks?"

All this faulty copy is very unsettling, I know. But the worst isn't over. In fact, just when you think you've suffered all the grammatical and logical errors your heart can handle in one day, you return home on the subway, only to see another flawed T-Mobile ad, for the same product nonetheless.

“Who gets all your inside jokes?”

I'm going to try and make this as simple as possible. This statement is redundant. If you share an inside joke with a friend, of course he "gets" it. Getting an inside joke is an inherent quality of an inside joke.

T-Mobile's idea expressed correctly would be, "Who gets all your weird jokes," or, "With whom do you share inside jokes?"

Advertising: 0
Chad: 1