New York is a ghost town in the summer. And it’s always a
ghost town to me. Yes, there are the parts swarming with tourists, the horses
looking for understanding as they pull at their sharp silver metal bits, the implacable
wish fulfillment of the folks from the towns driving the whip as the carriage
pulls out into traffic. The kids pulling on arms to see the zoo. The
catalog-dressed families, neat and rigid, taking pictures not too far away from
the hotel. The children climbing the statues – the statues where I played, where
I made sure my son played. I’m up there still, and so is he, bumping his head
on the Alice in Wonderland statue. There are the benches where I didn’t sit
because you didn’t sit there. There’s the plate glass of the restaurant I used
to eat at, the façade of the department store I used to be brought to for new,
crisp clothes, idling in between the cosmetic counters while adult purchases of
creams were made. The myriad samples that came out with a word. I’ve never
gotten so many, but that world is dead. I can’t recreate it, but it swirls
around me. That corner where I waited in the rain for the friend that never
came, the window of the bar that invited me to look in, like an abyss, a time
machine that clicked with every part of my memory, and shook me through. The
deep earthquake of the perfectly fitting piece.
There is no present here; there is only the so-called voice
of the past, which doesn’t seem to whisper as much as it turns my head to look
while a shadow moves past and goes. And then we are back in the present, and I
might as well be on another planet, because nothing is recognizable and there’s
no place for me. I stare at the present and it ignores me, doesn’t turn my head
to look at anything, except the hawk swirling above 79th Street,
making neat circles between the buildings, going up but only so high. It’s me,
equally unable to escape, as to explain why I stay.
It’s a place that only makes sense when it reminds me of the
past. When they play the right music, the dancers on their skates look like
they’ve been doing it since the 70s. It’s the last time anything here was
normal for me, and that’s definitely the wrong word. But the tragedy of it all,
the colors, the dancers and dangers moved together to the same beat, a giant
heaving mess when a woman stopped me to ask “where did I get my shoes?” in rhythmic
tones of respect, no fear, a shared appreciation for glittery things uptown and
down. When I lean over the fence, my heartbeat slows and I take a deep breath.
There is a reason to survive. The smile of the man moving his hips perfectly to
the beat makes me want to dance. I can’t help wondering if the woman in her
polo dress with her button-down husband and neat baby with its own stroller feels
like this is her time. I turn away.
Then there are the places that remind me of somewhere else,
the cafes with dogs so reminiscent of other cafes with other dogs. Not so much
litter. Not so much of anything that really fits, and a crowded insistent retention
of place that doesn’t remind me of any café I ever sat in. The dogs grab for
each other and food, and their owners stand in the middle of the path, and the
coffee drinkers look miserable, and then my head is turned again, and it’s the
past, and I’m walking through the Sheep Meadow, before it was protected with its
chain link fence, and I’m walking with dogs who are gone, and people who are
vanished into the world, even if we’re Facebook friends. Friends with a name –
from then – and I’ve been so many places and things I don’t know what we would
say to each other if we did meet. Would he remember the giant pyramid of beer
cans in his room at the top of the town house, his housekeeper reminding him to
eat. We were 15. He drank. I smoked. He probably still drinks. I’ve joined him.
Restaurants, bars, funeral homes, department stores, apartment
buildings. Parks and statues, cabs and horses, windows and doors. The last two
pretend to open, the past a sheeted wall between me and the interior. Every
granite façade is a link, every architect’s dream another haunted house. And
around the swirl of ghosts, the actual reality of the city crumbles. It’s a
soulless wreck, potential and promise reduced to two colors that don’t match. There
are no bells here, except the one that tolls “I told you so”, no lengthening
shadows except those of the passersby who refuse to relinquish any part of
their sidewalk territory. Perhaps it’s because I am invisible, just like the
sights I see before me that no one else can share. Soulless and empty, a series
of fragments held together by the dead. Then they turn me again, and I’m a puppet
in their hands, and all I see is the past. I keep thinking there must be a
message, some idea that links it all together, but in the rush for the train,
for the bus, for the sticky green pieces of paper that are slowly being
electronically dripped into an account I can’t touch, I can’t hear it. Just
when I think there is something there, I’ve been thrust along with the crowd, I’ve
been awakened by the alarm clock, the explosion, the siren, the garbage truck.
There is no room here for reflection, in this linear conveyor belt, where
stepping out of step invokes annoyance and pity, pity for the ignorance of the
rules of the game. It’s a carnival, with a grimacing clown pushing you into the
tent, repeating “play play play” until they break your will or your mind.
It’s a graveyard of unfixed stones, every nameless plot fed
into a massive machine that drives people who think they’ll avoid it. I won’t
forget the names, the stories, and the past they escaped, even if it’s
threatening to swallow me up. I won’t forget, I call out, and they smile at me,
the placating rictus of the night nurse.
“Play the game” is all I hear. “You won” or “you lost” over
and over again, but for no reason that makes any sense. I try to figure it out,
and it begins again. “Play the game.” I know the rules, but I don’t like them,
even the ones in my favor, although most of them aren’t. I always knew that the
winners cheated, I watched them do it, I watched them teach me how.
America is the end of the world, the last place. It’s
cursed, no doubt by those from whom it was stolen. Or maybe it’s just New York,
but when I think of Cleveland or Baltimore, I’m not that convinced. I’m old
enough to remember the Connecticut shore as countryside, and old enough to have
seen it destroyed, miles and miles of derelict factories and tarmac covered
parking lots where the bright spot is a suburban mini-city of insurance
companies. It’s death, it’s been killed, and it’s another graveyard. America
the Beautiful. We’re told to keep saying it in Orwellian fashion, because it’s
going going gone, and the lie is all we’ve got now. The pain caused by thinking
it through is enough reason for most people to either stop, or draw back confusedly,
like a horse from smoke, or a loud horn. The more you fight it, the bigger the
pain gets, and it’s a thread out that I’m clinging to, like in the myth, volume
down to zero on the constant “play the game, you’re crazy if you don’t.”
It’s a big soundscape of big buildings and screeching
sounds, the soundtrack to the stories of success and failure, success and
failure, failure, and failure. This is what you did wrong. America, land of the
self-help book. If I’d only done this. Next time. Next time. Next time, the
song everyone sings when they don’t hear “you won.” “How was your day?” “Good.”
“Bad.” “Good.” “Bad.” We’ve gotten over the hump. It’s Monday. It’s Friday.
Here, weekends are another excuse to try to win. We’ll get up early. We will
run. We will do internships. Children will watch their nannies talk on the cell
phone to their own families, their own friends, while they stand there,
breathtaking on the verge of understanding the big lie they’ve been born into,
heartbreaking as they hold their expensive bear, and look for light in the
people rushing for the train, the bus, the cab, again and again. The guy who
hands out the free daily paper tries to energize us, fill us with his energy.
He gets quieter and quieter. Then a new person comes, and the cycle begins
again. No one notices. He’s the newspaper guy. He’s already lost, according to
the thin woman with blunt cut blonde hair and strappy flat sandals and a pencil
skirt. He doesn’t quite see it the same way, but she’s already pushed past him.
Her train is coming in, and today will be the day she wins. She feels it.
Insecurity and feelings of panic are chemically induced
illnesses, according to the website. We need to have sympathy for those
afflicted by this illness, especially if it’s ourselves. The bright headline
that announces “THINGS YOU CAN DO TO WIN OVER DEPRESSION” turns out to be a
dismal menu of symptoms, followed by a check that says drugs and doctors at the
bottom, with the total, and a Thank You For Coming in neat red script. You went
here, you bought it, and even if you try to forget what you did, the cookies in
your email, in your computer will remember. You can try to erase it, like the
time you looked at that strange website with fleshy close-ups, but your spam
has your number. Your personality is writ large in the spam folder. At least
someone’s noticed. Even if it was supposed to be your shameful little secret.
If only you’d read the book. The one that told you how to
raise your children like a rich man, discipline them like a bitch, diet like a…well,
like one of the many people who really are starving. The woman who just walked
past me – she won the game, obviously. There’s no one around for blocks that’s
as thin as she is. Her eyes bulge out and her doe-like bone structure puts me
in mind of the plastic skeleton that hung in my Science classroom. I wonder if
her invisible stone will say “I won – for a day.” She’s too short to be a
model, and not turned out enough to be a ballerina. Life’s a bitch. Play the
game.
We all keep creating our caves of reality, and crying bitter
tears when we see the light. Our children shake before they sleep, frightened
of the endless loop that awaits. The moments where it seems we are alive,
really, break through, and we see beauty, we’re desperate to stay there,
clinging on. It’s oxygen, and I take a deep breath, and pray what I feel the
rest of the time isn’t really true, as I get ready to submerge again.
It’s not winning I’m worried about, but surviving.
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