The Best American Poetry

Squibs 397-403 [by Alan Ziegler]

397: When I was a kid, sometimes I’d look down as I walked and imagine I was flying. Everything on the ground became magnified in its smallness—rivulets of rain water in the gutter became mighty rivers abutting cliffs, grass a golf course, dirt a desert. I thought about this today as I came across the fork in the road, and then saw a half smoked cigarette as a limousine, followed by a lumber yard, and fall foliage in the snow.
Wee wee wee I flew all the way home.

 

398: I have nothing prepared for the 6^th grade Science Fair. In desperation, I copy a diagram of the human brain onto a piece of oak-tag, and add some facts from the encyclopedia, including the similarity between the human brain and the sheep brain. I tell my mother I am going to make a brain out of paper maché, but my brain can’t get my hands to do it. The next day my mother brings home a sheep’s brain she got from the butcher. I display it next to the oak tag, and my table gets lots of attention.

 

399: From my 7^th grade school notebook: “In Science we went over chemical equations and actions for how electricity is produced in a dry cell. I don’t get it at all. I doubt if I’ll ever get it.” Two years later, researching an idea for a science class project, I read that a copper wheel and magnets can turn on a light bulb. I start to get excited about electricity. I buy the material and meticulously follow the instructions, but the bulb stays dark. I have no choice but to turn it in anyway, with a short composition about how it works, knowing it doesn’t. The teacher is fascinated and beckons me to the front of the classroom. I hope for a miracle, and feign shock when nothing happens. The teacher consoles me, says this is what science is all about, and gives me an A, which makes me feel even more ashamed. After teaching creative writing for many years, I come to realize I earned that A.

 

400: Youth in Repose. December 1965, a blind date at a fraternity party rushing me, you were doing a favor by doubling with your friend, who soon disappeared upstairs with my friend. Lights went low, music simmered, liquor flowed, no place for strangers. You stewed. No choice but to go out into the chill night. We talked and laughed and stood close together creating warmth. You worried about your friend. We found them back downstairs, entwined on the couch, youth in repose. The room was free upstairs, but you said no, no, I can’t do that. You wrote me a couple of weeks later, a “thank you for a fun night,” told me about your Christmas visit home, the trimming of the tree, how nice to be with your family. I never answered, not looking for “fun nights.” Twenty years later your unusual last name jumps out of an obit page: a man, would be about your father’s age. I skim down to find your name among the survivors. I am truly sorry.

 

401: College Friday, the doorbell rings in Alicia, surprising me from New York. I think of all the ways my weekend will now be wonderful, but the most-lasting joy will not be the sex, the sharing of new records, the movie downtown, or the huge Chinese meal. It will be the eyes, her eyes when I wake in the middle of the night, large and brown, arms-length away, wide open, eyes in love.

 

402: From our correspondent on the scene. The ventriloquists’ civil war has turned ugly. Outside a club, a man in a midnight blue tuxedo leans over the weeping, smoldering remains of a wooden figure sheathed with tattered pieces of the same blue cloth. Nearby, a man in a white suit lies, limp, a goofy grin spanning his throat, which cackles as the blood gurgles.  

 

403: My mother and I walk to the synagogue to see Grandpa Popowsky. I am four. She explains that it is against the rules for mommies to go near the grandpas at shul, so I will be the messenger. She hands me a piece of paper and nudges me into the large room. Men walk about aimlessly, heads bobbing, making strange sounds. The room is crowded but everyone seems alone. When I play make-believe—vroom vrooming with a toy car—occasionally I look around to make sure the world is where I left it, but my grandfather doesn’t pause, so I tug on his pants. “Avram”—he calls me by my Hebrew name—“is there trouble?” I want to play with the men, and my mother isn’t allowed to pull me away. But I am a good boy and give my grandfather the message. He pats me on the head and resumes his vrooming.

    If I had vroomed with my grandfather, might I have received a message that would speak to me for the rest of my life?

Squib 396 [by Alan Ziegler]

396: The supply room is empty, and no one knows when the next delivery is due. No one can remember the last shipment or who ordered it, only that we were well-stocked for a long time. We call every number in our Contacts and say, “Please bring more.” Some are sympathetic, some blasé, others downright rude. No one says when we can expect supplies. “At least we have each other,” I say to the room, but the others are gone. Just me amidst empty closets, empty chairs next to empty desks.I can barely see in the twilight and turn on a lamp. The bulb gives a final flicker and dies. There is simply no point in looking for another one. The sun, too, runs out. I am left with a night’s supply of darkness. I shall make it last.

Squib 395 [by Alan Ziegler]

395. The voice on the radio is hysterical. We turn it louder until we can’t make out the words, drowning out the phones and sirens. We shut the windows and harmonize in a hymn. Your hands throw scary shadow figures onto the wall. My fist shadows pummel them.

Squibs 388-394 [by Alan Ziegler]

388: In my small writer-in-residence cabin at Interlochen, I live as if I have several rooms, working wherever I wind up: curling up in corners, prone by the fireplace,  perching by the window, or sometimes even at my desk. There are times when I am desperate for a paper clip—a modicum of organization is all I need, but I need it badly and instantaneously, and relocating to locate one is an onerous and potentially work-killing task. But the thing about paper clips is that you stop needing one about as quickly and often as you start to need one, so I tend to toss newly-detached paper clips willy-nilly. I make a cool discovery: Once the cabin is primed, whenever I need a paper clip all I have to do is feel along the floor or table without even taking my eyes off my work. Most first-time visitors will graciously stoop to pick one off the floor only to be rebuffed: “Please put that back where you found it.”

 

389: On my lap is a large manila envelope containing my mother’s x-rays. I picked them up from one doctor, and am taking them for a second opinion. This is the kind of opinion only some people are entitled to. The envelope is open at one end, with an indent in the middle from which protrudes the tip of the x-rays, for smooth removal. Held to light, this film tells a story, in a language foreign to me. We have been told that the story is a sad one. The new translator concurs.

 

390: Are we on the wrong road? Or the right one, but only up to a point that we have passed? Or haven’t we gone far enough? This car speeding past us into our future might know. Or the oncoming lights on cars going back in our time.

 

391: In college, my Sex, Censorship, and Literature class is visited by Dwight Macdonald. He leafs through one of the skin magazines the professor keeps on hand for class consideration and says, “You know who these girls are? They’re hookers, that’s who they are. That’s where they get them.” After class, I show him one of my pieces and he points out that the character I am profiling doesn’t change (a concept I will continue to wrestle with as a writer and teacher). I tell him I’m doing a series on protest movements for the student newspaper, and he says, “I’d like to see them. Send them to me at The New Yorker.” I never do (oh why oh why?). That night, after a few drinks, he asks me to take him to the Vale Cemetery, to search for the grave of Captain Mordecai Myers, who, I learn, was a mayor of Schenectady, and, more importantly, Robert Lowell’s great-great-grandfather (“Poor sheepdog in wolf’s clothing!”). We scamper in and out of cemetery lanes for what increasingly becomes clear is a mission with little chance of success. Still, I thoroughly enjoy playing Peter Lorre to Dwight Macdonald’s Sydney Greenstreet.

 

392: To rehabilitate my runner’s knee, I buy a bottom-of-the-line stationary bike. Its only bell or whistle is a speedometer/pedometer (not even a bell), which brings me memories of the Christmas bicycle I got as a kid (my father carrying one for my sister and one for me off the back of my uncle’s truck). By the time the pedometer reaches 500, the bike squeaks and changes resistance unpredictably. That is all right with me, just like riding on rugged terrain. I set myself distance goals, measuring miles on a map: Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel boarding house in Asheville; Elvis’s Sun Sessions in Memphis; Cisco singing Woody in Oklahoma. The bike gets squeakier and balkier, bothering Erin so much that I can’t ride while she is home. “Get a new bike,” she complains, but I have to finish my journey. I triumphantly cross the Golden Gate bridge and glide to a halt outside the City Lights Bookstore. I don’t think the bike could have made it another mile. I remove the pedometer to keep like a medal, and lovingly deposit the carcass in the garbage heap on the street. I proudly show off my medal to Erin, who asks me how many kilometers there are in a mile. I am somewhere in the desert, with no way out.

 

393: I am staying with Gay and Art on Martha’s Vineyard, late August. I have gotten up the courage to go riding with Gay; my horse is named Sundance, and Gay assures me that he is too old and sweet to gallop off with me hanging on to the rein for dear life. As we trundle through the brush, flies keep bothering Sundance. I shoo them away and in gratitude Sundance seems to be more responsive to my amateurish requests. Gay and her horse lead Sundance and me out onto the empty beach, where the late-afternoon sun glints off Tisbury Great Pond. We can hear the nearby ocean, which Gay grew up calling The Big Waves. A man appears in the distance and waves us over. I’m concerned that we are breaking an ordinance, but Gay doesn’t seem worried as we trot closer. When we are within shouting distance, he says, “I just wanted to make sure you two know how beautiful you look.”

Squibs 381-387 [by Alan Ziegler]

381:
Everyone has stories to tell
Some big, some small—
Know someone long enough and well
You’ll hear them all,
Though details may morph as years swell
And tales grow tall.

382: Hey cowboys, a traveling tip: It’s better to ride off into the sunrise.

 

383: As I sulked, a swan came out of the river. I told her all about you, pointing to where you lay in the sun, eyes closed, pink sweater beside you. I mentioned your eyes and how they matched the grass. The swan started toward you. I told her you wanted to be left alone. She turned and eased back down into the river. Why, she hardly knew you — and understood so quickly it put me to shame.

384: “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know!” I’ll take your word for it: the minuend (the amount you have forgotten) is greater than the subtrahend (what I’ll ever know). But is the minuend of what you still know greater than the subtrahend of what I know now?

386: Elegy for Phil Ochs (original draft written April 9, 1976). I hear the news, awakening from a nap to the radio. “Death of a folksinger,” the announcer says, and I tense waiting to hear which one. It’s you, Phil. I think of the first time I saw you perform, in 1963 at the Newport Folk Festival, how you strummed between songs and I got the feeling new songs were forming even as you performed the old ones. And the time you were sitting near me at a bar on MacDougal Street, talking politics with some people whose names I probably knew: “What we need is an armed army of Trotskyites,” you said, and I quoted you over and over as if you’d said it to me. Then there was your billed farewell performance a few months ago at Folk City. You did a perfunctory set, ending with a few lines of an unfinished song about Sonny Liston, who lost his heavyweight title rematch to Muhammad Ali after what some called a phantom punch: “Sonny, Sonny Sonny, why’d you have to take a dive...” After the song, you asked the bartender for “another vodka and orange juice” (I thought it strange but elegant that you didn’t ask for a screwdriver) and introduced Sammy Walker with, “This is my last night. This is his first night. I hope you don’t bother HIM.” And I was angry; we were your devoted fans, how did we bother you? Today you hung yourself in your sister’s closet; what did she do, other than harbor you through the dark days, which you'd convinced her were ending. Phil, Phil, Phil, why’d you have to take a dive?

385: Elegy for Laura Nyro (original draft written April 9, 1997). Laura, Laura, I say your name over and over as if singing a song for you. I have been listening to your first songs since I heard the news yesterday, the songs you wrote before you (and I) were twenty. I remember in 1967 thinking: Bill must be nuts to make you play the wedding bell blues, I’d love you when you cry and become a California shoe shine boy just to shine your shoes, even if you wound up hurting me (though you never meant to). I’ve been singing along with you all day—how did you know so much so young? Did you know there wouldn’t be much time, and wanted to take your freedom for as long as you be? And now you’ve had to go. As I walk on a Manhattan morning, goodbye Laura.

386: I tell the story counterclockwise, getting younger until “This is where I came in.” I continue. Not much to do now. I tire of being asked, “Who the hell are you?” If this thing ever kicks out of reverse gear, they’ll find out. Yes sir, they are in for some surprise, given what I know now.

387: Dogs spend their entire lives in assisted living.

 

 

Squibs 373-380 [by Alan Ziegler]

373: Would you prefer to:

    a) be a mule

    b) be a pig

    c) be a fish

    d) swing on a star and be better off than you are

    e) none of the above

374: Mr. Plant, my senior year high school history teacher, “confided” in us that the government and our textbooks don’t tell the whole truth, but there’s a book that does, except you can’t find it in a bookstore. He asked us each to bring in $3.00 and he would buy the books for us, but don’t tell anyone because it would take too long to get official permission. A few weeks later, Mr. Plant was absent several days in a row. The principal asked me to come to his office, and keep the meeting confidential (he trusted me because I was editor of the school newspaper). “We have not been able to reach Mr. Plant. There’s a rumor that he collected money from his students for a book.” I confirmed the rumor. “Did you receive the book?” He was relieved to hear that we had not, and told me the book was None Dare Call it Treason, a right-wing polemic adopted by the John Birch Society. The school reimbursed our money and we never saw Mr. Plant again, though one of my classmates swore he spotted him walking on the Long Beach Boardwalk wearing a dress.

 

375: Paused at an intersection on a desolate Northern Michigan road. A blue vintage Corvette whizzes by, the model used in Route 66. I used to dream about being the Todd of a Todd-Buzz Corvette-rambling duo. (Todd went to Yale and will have a lucrative future when his drifting days are done.) Another vintage Corvette, followed by another and another. I count to 16, when the intersection becomes still, ominously bereft of Corvettes.

 

376: I wake in the middle of the night and can’t find my left arm. Not draped over my wife or squished under my chest. I panic for a few groggy seconds. There it is: by my side, but somehow detached. I remember hearing that prisoners in German concentration camps were sometimes forced to sleep in such confined spaces that their whole bodies fell asleep while their minds remained conscious. I muffle a scream into the pillow as I shake my arm awake, breathing rapidly until I can once again embrace my wife.

 

377: On the 1-train, the ragged man blesses me for my dollar. At my stop, the train lurches and I stumble toward the door somehow eluding passengers. With a final harrowing jeté I land upright on the platform. The ragged man yells out, “Good balance, sir! Not bad for an old dude.”

 

378: I am five, in the hospital with a mysterious infection, led into a small auditorium—the audience a sea of white. I stand on stage and realize my pajama bottoms are sagging. I keep them up with one hand, while the audience listens and takes notes. I hear something about my parents “claiming” I am allergic to penicillin. A nurse takes me back to my room and gives me fresh pajamas to change into. While I am naked, a little black girl in a hospital gown walks by. Our unhappy eyes meet, and I feel no shame as she passes the portal that briefly connects our lives. Oh, little girl, I so hope you made it out of there. Oh, old woman, I so hope you are still out here and now know that the sad, naked little boy made it, too.

 

379: I float over what remains of her life as her voice shrivels like smoke born in a faraway explosion, getting weaker as it wisps into a whisper. But still I hear it, I hear what she is saying, her words like birds shot in flight carried off on a stretcher of wind. I drown to the ground, having breathed my first breath without her.

 

380: Assignment: Identify every hat (by manufacturer, model, and retail price) worn in This Gun for Hire (1942, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake). You may substitute any black and white crime drama made between 1940 and 1955, or, in the interest of fairness, restrict your search to the second screenshot.

 

Squibs 365-372 [by Alan Ziegler]

365: Late 1950s, Lassie barks for help through the darkness. The T.V. picture has gone kaput.  My father says “I’ll teach you to fix it” and removes the back to reveal a landscape of small tubes. He plucks out several and drops them into a paper bag. We drive to the drug store where, hidden in a back corner, is a scientific-looking object the size of a vending machine.

He instructs me how to plug the tubes in—one at a time, matching the slots with the numbers on the tube—and watch as the gauge points red or green. It reminds me of a game on the boardwalk.

He sets aside the only tube that turned the gauge red, and finds its match in the cabinet. Home, he re-plugs all the tubes except for the new one, which he lets me do. Lassie comes home!

 

366: The ancient writer, told he has hours to live, asks his doctor to bring him his books, and he starts paging through them. “Why didn’t you ask for your wife?” “I’ll have eternity with her in heaven. These are going straight to hell.”

 

367: Now, while the time since your death is still counted in weeks, I’ll be walking along and there, just beyond the ability of my eyes to distinguish faces, I’ll see someone who looks like you, and for a few milliseconds my brain will form your face. At first it was a little unnerving, but I’ve come to look forward to and treasure those milliseconds, and I will mourn them when they are gone.

 

368: The houseguest opens the refrigerator, smiles, and says, “Someone brought home baked goods from Entenmann’s.”

 

369: “Garçon, un bock! I write to please myself, just as I order my dinner…” [George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man]. I don’t need the menu, just bring me whatever looks good today.

 

370: My mother’s critique: “Received your article to-day and for a routine write-up, you sure made it into interesting reading.”

 

371: The evil that men do lives long after them, along with automatic renewals.

 

372: The only priest in the remote village announces he will be moving to a faraway parish in a week. A run on Confessions, future absolutions granted; pray now, sin later. Hail Marys peal from every corner, alley, barroom, bedroom. After the priest departs, it is holy sanctioned hell on earth. Except for a pious few, who eventually set off to find the Garden of Eden and scrounge for seeds.

Squibs 355-364 [by Alan Ziegler]

355: Unemployment Office,  92^nd and Broadway, mid-1970s: Laid-off (not fired) workers wait weekly on long lines to affirm they are actively looking for work. No check-in, no check. So many dancers, musicians, and actors on those lines that if you yelled “And five six seven eight….” the opening of A Chorus Line would break out.

 

356: “Over and back,” was my favorite basketball violation. I’d have done it all game if they let me.

 

357: Beauty and Pizza, meet Parlor.

 

358: The following contains one falsity: On Saturday Night Live in 1992, Sinead O’Connor adapted Bob Marley’s “War” to include “child abuse” (repeated), nine years before the Pope formally acknowledged the problem. She tore a picture of the Pope (you won’t see it on the reruns). Two weeks later she was booed off the Madison Square Garden stage at a tribute to Bob Dylan, who came out and scolded the audience.

 

359: 
Second verse same as the first.

Second verse same as the first.

 

360: Sultry spring Saturday in Schenectady, 1970. Local hamburger joint advertises special appearance by Bippo the Clown—all day, bring the kiddies. “Damn everything but the circus!” I shout, and we head on over. An elderly couple is smoking in a booth, a bored teenager stands behind the counter wearing a white paper hat. “We’d like to see the clown.” “The clown went home.” “The clown went home?!” “Yeah, no one came to see him.” And thus the phrase the clown went home enters the lexicon, with a multitude of uses.

 

361: Sometimes my second move only becomes apparent after I make the first move, yet would not have been viable without the first move.

 

362: I still get angry at characters on screen who do something stupid even though I know the words were put on the page by someone like me.

 

363: I improvise on a Santana song in my head, barely aware I am fretting the notes on my forearm. “What song are you playing?” someone asks. “Samba Pa Ti.” "Nice intonation!"

 

364: Assignment: Research and write a 50-word biographical sketch for every extra in The Life of Emile Zola.

(Big) Squib 354: My Visit with Louis Abolafia [by Alan Ziegler]

December 1968

    My grandmother and her sister live in a rent-controlled walk-up on East Fourth Street between First and Second. The Hells Angels are headquartered around the block. Through the school playground across the street, you can see the police station used for Kojak exteriors. Almost directly across the street is the campaign headquarters/studio of Louis Abolafia, an artist who recently lost the Presidency to Richard Nixon by more than 31 million votes (no matter, Abolafia at 27 was far too young to serve).

    When I stop by Abolafia’s tiny storefront, I mention that my grandmother appreciates how he always smiles and waves. “Yes, the old people like me,” Abolafia says, but he is distracted. “I must have been out of my head to not show him that one.” He shakes his flowing hair in disgust and explains that he just showed a potential buyer several of his paintings but forgot one of his favorites. 

    Louis Abolafia: self-proclaimed Renaissance Man, the Patron Saint of Fourth Street, The Caped Crusader for Peace, and the Love Candidate for President. His nearly-nude campaign poster proclaims “What have I got to hide” but reveals a typical politician’s proclivity to conceal at least part of  the truth.

    The New York Times covered his campaign kick-off in May 1967, a marathon Cosmic Love-In at the Village Theater (later the Fillmore East) with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, The Blues Project, and Timothy Leary.

    Abolafia is not new to the media piñata of the 60s. In December 1964 he was arrested for putting up one of his paintings on the balcony of the Metropolitan Museum.

Abolafia’s friendliness with the elders on the block is not the only way he bridges generation gaps. His headquarters also serves as the Runaway Clearing House, where Abolafia acts as an intermediary between runaway kids and their parents.

    Today, Abolafia is hiding much more than on his poster, wearing a plain white turtleneck and brown slacks. He excuses himself to “make some bread,” and resumes sorting out the paintings he showed the buyer, still upset about the one he forgot. The phone rings and he asks me to take a message. I search for the phone amidst the unsold canvases, periodicals (from Life to the East Village Other), and half empty Coke cans. I know I am getting close when I come across a waste paper basket covered with telephone numbers. I add a new name and number and we start our interview.

    I ask about his platform and he makes an Oh-that-again face. As he starts his rote answer (love means “being open hearted”), I mouth I’m sorry and he smiles. The rest of the interview is conversational. His campaign didn’t “make a move financially but did well spiritually,” and he garnered plenty of free publicity because “freakiness is almost as good as money on today’s market.” He did all the big TV shows (Merv Griffin, Johnny Carson) and was written up in magazines all over the world. At a party, Ruth Dayan—wife of  Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan—asked his brother Oscar if he was related to Louis Abolafia.

    Abolafia sees his political action as an attempt to counteract the tendency toward fascism in this country. It is not an ideological conflict but rather a philosophical one of love versus hate. He believes in a grassroots cultural revolution but feels that politicians should play a part. “A politician can voice the view that all men are really the same and brotherhood is beautiful and spread this message around the world.  Cultural missionaries all over the world. Mix, marry, mingle. Break down nationalism. Prevent the spread of communism or any ideology. We’ll be part of an assimilated world. This is the only way you’re going to achieve world union.”

    Notable among Abolafia's skeptics is Li'l Abner cartoonist (and right-winger) Al Capp:

    Lou puts down the effectiveness of the revolutionaries, feeling that the beyond-expectations success of the George Wallace candidacy is evidence that reaction is setting in.

    “Tell me, revolutionary out there, who’s winning? Every time I speak to a revolutionary they say, ‘Oh, we’re winning, we’re getting more people on our side.’ Well, if you cannot find a common bond between man, you’re gonna fight them, and I’m not sure of the intelligence of the hippie-yippie community to take over this country. I can’t see a bunch of ignoramuses running the country.”

    We talk about the violence at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and I mention my recent visit with Abbie Hoffman. “Rebellion is going to cause reaction which is going to cause a lot of bloodshed. I can’t get into violence. I think it’s gotta be done through love or charm or straightening out our Karma, but it can’t be done through violence.”

   Abolafia disagrees with Abbie Hoffman that the people going to Chicago knew there would be violence. “There were conflicting reports on what was going to happen. The L.A. Free Press wrote that they were going to have to give us permits because of all the people that would be going. I was at one of the big rallies and Allen Ginsberg started “Om-ing everybody to death. I pushed him aside on stage and I said, ‘Goddamnit, Ginsberg, stop Om-ing everybody to death and tell them they’re going to have their heads broken in!’ And he said, ‘Abolafia, Abolafia, Abolafia.’ And I said, ‘Ginsberg, shut up!’ This after he had fed me goat’s milk up in the country. But Allen’s all right. He’s a poetic rebel, right? He’s love.”

    [A few months later at the trial of the Chicago Seven—originally the Chicago Eight—Ginsberg described Abolafia as “kind of a Bohemian trickster” who crashed the rally: “He just appeared from nowhere and got up to the microphone and started yelling into it. ‘The police out there are armed and violent. You are walking into a death trap.’ I went over and sat next to him, and grabbed his leg, and started tickling him, and said, “Hare Krishna, Louis.”]

    So, how would Abolafia bring the country together? “I’m gonna do it by starting cultural centers in every part of this country. To bring out every talented kid and hope that these intellectuals and painters and artists will help the society.” His ideal cabinet would have “intellectuals, writers.” They would sit around and draw up offensive policies for “extending America” not defensive “what are you gonna do about communism” policies. “Take all the money from the war and buy out the ghetto problem. We have the greatest weapon in the world, economics, and we can do anything we want with it. We can make beautiful things happen. We have been brought down so much since the Second World War. We’re losing the greatest chess game in the history of the world.”

Postscript:

    This post is based on contemporaneous notes. 

    At the 1967 Cosmic Love-In, you could buy a banana from an artist for 15 cents, and get 3 cents back if you returned the peel. At 2019 Art Basel, the price of a banana went up considerably.

    Louis Abolafia relocated to the West Coast, where he co-created the Exotic Erotic Ball in San Francisco in 1979. He died of a drug overdose in 1995. He was 54. 

    Two people who make cameo appearances are still with us. Louis’s brother, Oscar Abolafia, has had a notable career as a photographer. Here he is at a showing of his work in July 2018.

    And here is Ruth Dayan (who divorced Moshe in 1971) a couple of weeks ago, at the age of 102.

 

 

Squib 353 [by Alan Ziegler]

It’s been 12 years since publication of the expanded edition of O Holy Cow!: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto (edited by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely) and the ensuing scandal when the book garnered no major awards due to bias against Spoken Word. Consider this classic of architectural angst, which spawned the “Tighten it!” self-help craze (whose acolytes claim that those three syllables uttered repeatedly by world leaders can lead to peace in this shrinking world):

Alienation

I think my head shrinks a little
In this indoor stadium
I am...
The mike is getting bigger.
And I have to tighten it.

Now The Library of the Other America will be publishing The Dialogues of Rizzuto. This excerpt has already become a linchpin of Columbia’s updated Core.

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Phil Rizzuto, Frank Messer

SCENE: A Broadcast Booth. The pitcher has thrown four consecutive balls, but the umpire called the fourth one a strike. The fifth pitch was called ball four.

    Rizzuto: If you’re a fatalist, you would say he was meant to walk.

    Messer: Is that what a fatalist is?

    Rizzuto: I don’t know, I never could figure out what a fatalist was.

    Messer: Is that a fatalist or a realist? A realist would say he was meant to walk.

    Rizzuto: I don’t know, we could have a good discussion on that if we get some rain.

Squibs 343-352 [by Alan Ziegler]

343: Darkness falls but stops just short of my shoes, so I dance home, light on my feet.

 

344: One night Greenwich Village early-1960s Fat Black Pussycat, Tiny Tim opens for Richie Havens. A buck cover and another dollar gets you a burger. Tiny Tim (who has yet to record “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” or get married on the Tonight Show) plays ukulele and sings both voices of Paul and Paula’s “Hey Paula.” Richie Havens (who has yet to open Woodstock or play Clinton’s inauguration) muses at length about the wonders of watching a helicopter take off and dazzles us with his thumb-fretted open chording.

 

345: After a rough weekend, and a few drinks, she looked me in the eye, kissed me, and said, “You’re good.” Her stare glared and she added, “Too good.”

 

346: Mid-1980s I am helping someone I don’t know very well move into a downtown walk-up. While taking a breather leaning against the van, an acquaintance passes by and points to the boxes. “Moving in or out?” “Actually, helping Gerard Malanga move in.” “Let me get this straight,” she says. “You are helping a cult poet and Andy Warhol collaborator move.” She nods and goes on her way.

 

347: In the late-1950s my father went to bed at 8 to get up at 2 for his milk route. He would often emerge, baggy boxers sleep-squinty eyes and, without a word, lower the T.V. volume and return to bed. He never lowered the volume before going to bed.

 

348: I have a blind date for homecoming weekend freshman year—football game, dinner, party. She’s not a student, lives in town with her family. I am smitten at first sight and throughout the game I try to impress her with my college wit. I walk her home so she can change for dinner. When I return and knock on her door, a man answers and says his daughter isn’t home. I fumfer that we’re in the middle of a date and he repeats with father sternness: “Young man, I told you she is not home.” But then there she is, nudging her father out of the way. “I am so sorry,” she says as she hands me a piece of paper as she closes the door. “This is my friend. Call her. She’s likes philosophers.”

 

349: In the 1970s I come across a small crowd in Central Park surrounding a man with a wagon and several cats. I love animal acts. I watch as he slowly convinces each cat to jump into the wagon. When they’re all lined up, he takes a bow, and then nothing. I ask someone applauding if I missed the act. She replies, “That is the act.”

 

350: One night Greenwich Village early-1960s Gaslight Café. The bill is John Hammond, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs. In the middle of Hammond’s set, he looks out at the audience and says there was a guy here last night, came up and played the harp with him. “Are you out there, John Sebastian?” Sebastian (who has yet to form the Loving Spoonful and write “Do You Believe in Magic,” one of the great rock songs) is indeed there, and the two harmonica-cats wail the blues.

 

351: Late-1960s Dow Chemical, maker of napalm, is a target of anti-war protests. Dow’s billing number for long distance calls gets leaked to the underground press. One night I call Vermont from a payphone and recite the code to the operator, who replies, “Compliments of the phone company! Far Out!”

 

352: Whenever I hear or think of Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” (originally written for his suite Black, Brown, and Beige) I am infused with feeling, imagining a family dressing for church, peaceful from turmoil at this hour apart from time. “Come Sunday, oh come Sunday / That's the day.”

Squibs 335-342 [by Alan Ziegler]

335: She said Yankee Stadium (the original) “is very sensual.” I cautioned her to use sensuous—appealing to the senses—rather than sensual, or people would think she is sexually aroused by Yankee Stadium. She replied, “I know the difference.”

336: In the Lake Tahoe Airport (or maybe it was Reno), 1979 (or perhaps 1980), the only other person in the waiting area looks like Freddy Cannon, whom I last saw singing Chuck Barris’s “Palisades Park” at one of Alan Freed’s Brooklyn Paramount shows. A vaguely familiar man enters, stops short, then spews out (the gist, based on fuzzy recollection): I work with Andy Kaufman, who is right behind me, and this could be awkward because Andy asked to meet you backstage but was turned away and Andy was crushed because he assumed you were mad at him because you thought Andy has been making fun of you in his act but he really and truly loves your music. Freddy replies (more fuzzy gist): Oh no, I didn’t know it was him, I would never turn away another performer, professional courtesy and all. And in walks Andy Kaufman, who (and this is not fuzzy) stops and stares in surprised awe like he can't believe his own twinkling eyes.

I left them getting along famously. In 1981 Andy hosted The Midnight Special and called Freddy “one of the most creative forces in 1950’s Rock & Roll,” before accompanying him on “Tallahassee Lassie.”

337: When I tell students about Ezra Pound reciting Browning’s “Sordello” to Yeats at Stone Cottage, I can feel them thinking, “Wow he’s smart.” When I tell them about the time Allen Ginsberg read “Wales Visitation” to me in Schenectady, I can feel them thinking, “Wow he’s old!”

338: I once had a phone number that could be dialed by spelling out either Doc Kiss or Doc Lips.

339: In a dream I get on the bus marked “Dream Bus.” After a while I ask the driver, “Where does this bus stop?” and he replies, “It doesn’t.” “So, how do we get anywhere?” “We don’t.”

340: My confession to my father after he came home and smelled the embers of a trash fire: “I lit a match.” Case closed.

341: Ah to go back—for ten minutes—to Winter 1970, changing buses at White River Junction, browsing vending machines and, with my only quarter, foregoing the candy bars of my childhood and, for the only time in my life, selecting a black plastic comb, climbing into the Plainfield bus delighted with my purchase.

342: I am done but I am far from finished.

Squib 334 [by Alan Ziegler]

TITLE

One of my bookshelves contains a novel by the German writer Peter Handke called "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick"; I read the spine a lot. Although I haven't read the book, it's such a wonderful title that I feel like I have, just like it seems that I have read Irwin Shaw's short story "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses." Actually, I think I did read that story a long time ago, but I can only remember the title, which proves my point. In fact, sometimes I feel like I wrote "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses."

Handke has other great titles, including "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams"; "Short Letter, Long Farewell"; "A Moment of True Feeling"; and "Self-Accusation." I've read them often—the titles—with great pleasure. But the one I come back to the most is "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick."

I know that anxiety; I played goalie for one season in school. But I'm sure the title can be appreciated even if you have never played soccer. You can feel it, can't you? One against one, no intermediaries. The ref blows the whistle. The kicker scuffs cleats in the soil (no artificial turf in Handke’s mind), looks at all the places in the goal where you are not. Then glowers at you, searching for a shadow in your eyes that says "I don't belong here."

The kicker is feeling anxiety, too, but the title couldn't have been "The Kicker's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick," which doesn't sound right because the syllable "kick" is repeated. Even if you changed it to "The Shooter's Anxiety...." it wouldn't be as potent. The goalie has more anxiety. The kicker has nothing to lose; the worst that can happen is the score remains the same.

But the goalie can wind up with this thing in the net, this thing that only the goalie and counterpart on the other team (that distant soulmate) are allowed to touch with their hands.

The kicker is aiming at your territory, arousing your animal instincts: being scored upon is allowing your home, your nest, your lair, to be invaded. It's the goalie who risks feeling like the tearful Parisian in that famous newsreel photo of the German occupation. ("The Citizen's Anxiety at the Occupation"? No, too serious, stripping the title of metaphor; better to stick with a game.)

Handke’s title evokes other, more mundane, moments causing universal anxiety, such as: "The Birthday Celebrant's Anxiety at Blowing Out the Candles." You've felt that, haven't you? Your family and friends are gathered around. The cake is aglow. You wait for your will to coalesce as the wax starts dripping. You don't believe in birthday wishes, but you respect the power of suggestion. You're more afraid that if you don't extinguish all the candles the wish will never come true, than you are hopeful that if you do get all the candles the wish will come true. Can you muster enough wind, will you spit all over the cake? Your loved ones are silent; their lives cannot proceed until you have acted, like the crowd at a soccer match as the cleats are scuffed.

The year I was goalie, we played for some kind of championship. We lost 2-0. I was successfully invaded twice. Twice that thing wound up in my home, my nest, my lair. I remember nothing of my saves, except the taste of delicious dirt.

The first point has stayed with me; it is repeatedly posted on my mental scoreboard. A penalty kick. I followed the kicker's eyes—grass green—and lunged to my left. Too soon, too far. His eyes had followed mine following his and he went the other way. A flick of his foot and that thing went by me, pounded against the net, and whimpered to a stop at my feet. No one came to claim it. I had to clean up my own house.

The second goal was in the heat of the game, when anxiety is diluted by adrenalin. Pain came after the score, but no anxiety before. It's the difference between a rollicking gun battle and a cold duel.

Walking home after the game, I ran into a classmate. "How you doing?" he asked.

"I lost," I confessed.

"Lost what?"

"Soccer game. Two zip. I was in goal."

"Hell," he laughed, "if you had won three-two, you'd be the hero."

Another moment has just washed up on the shore of memory. The real game ended seconds before the penalty kick: The shooter stopped scuffing his cleats, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

Squibs 327-333 [by Alan Ziegler]

327: My socks do match—they’re just not identical.

328: Two movies in which Robert Redford has a one-item, no-preparation, hand-held meal:

    All the President’s Men: Cellophane-wrapped grocery counter pastry.

    Brubaker: Chunk of raw cabbage.

 

329: If criminals really could turn themselves into the police they’d get away with almost anything.

330: Mr. Honeywell, meet Mr. Todd

331: From childhood through college I had a habit of playing with the hair behind my right ear. Playing doesn’t do it justice: I did masterful manipulations, curling my hair into satisfying textures. One day in a college class, a voice behind me said, “Stop it. You’ve got to stop it.” I did—forever. Now my habit is to manipulate words into satisfying textures, and I sometimes hear that voice: “Stop it. You’ve got to stop it.” I won't—ever.

332: Mr. Honeywell and Mr. Todd, meet Mr. Dithers.

333: When I was five, I was in the Peanut Gallery of The Howdy Doody Show. Buffalo Bob promised us a gift after the show if we behaved. I imagined perhaps a Mr. Bluster figure (I had to wait for Ebay to get one). But it was just a candy bar from a sponsor.
Recently, I realized there must be archival clips from the Howdy Doody Show and maybe I could spot myself. I went through the openings of several shows (smirking like a kid when Buffalo Bob addressed "Mr. Doody"), and there I was, a tad awkward with absolutely no idea that the future me would one day be watching. But was it really me? Erin said no, but she didn't know me then. I sent the clip to my sister, who also said no, but had evidence: "I was sitting next to you." I was most disappointed, until I watched again, imagining it as a clip from the bio-pic of my life, with an actor who would be billed as "Alan at Age 5." 

Squibs 322-326 [by Alan Ziegler]

322: Footnote to “A Note on Memory in ‘On the Road with Phil Freshman’

    When I visited the former boarding house known as Dixieland in Look Homeward Angel—now officially the Thomas Wolfe Memorial—I took pictures of various objects, including one of the beds. Rereading Angel years later, I came across a description of “the old cream-colored bed, painted gaily at head and foot with round medals of clustering fruit.” A few days ago, I excitedly wrote on this blog: “I saw that bed. Sure enough, ‘round medals of clustering fruit’ are painted gaily on it.'” I even included the photographic proof.  

    But this morning—to adapt Max Jacob—“Now, as I looked at the photograph, I saw that what I had taken for a cluster of fruits was a medal containing a few exquisite flowers.” 

     Did Thomas Wolfe remember fruit where there were actually flowers? Did he consciously change flowers to fruit. Were there medals of fruit and flowers?

    What is certain is that Thomas Wolfe's description altered the neurons and synapses in my cortex so that my memory of a photograph of flowers became a memory of a picture of fruits. This photoshopped memory would not be denied even as I stared at the picture with my lying eyes. Which was one of the points of the piece. 

323: Little Sun, meet Snaker and Spider.

324: Whether or not we lived on the wrong side of the tracks was a close call because I could see the train from my window.

325: I didn't like tomatoes when I was nine, but there was a whole pile of them on the table alongside bagels, lox, onions, pickled herring. My father’s wisecracking friend Joe was the guest. I liked him because he always gave me ballpoint pens with the names of companies on them. I thought he worked for a lot of companies but my father explained that Joe only worked for one—a pen company. The tomatoes were so red that I decided to give them another shot. Incredible, sweet like pizza. I took another and another. Finally, Joe said, “Hey, Alan, why don't you help yourself to a tomato.” That day I learned I love two things: great tomatoes and expertly delivered sarcasm.

326: Booby, meet Trap.

Squib 321: A Note on Memory in “On the Road with Phil Freshman” [by Alan Ziegler]

          [click for On the Road with Phil Freshman]

            Lauren Gravitz writes that autobiographical memories “begin to take lasting form in a part of the brain called the hippocampus…Neurons communicate with each other through synapses — junctions between these cells that include a tiny gap across which chemical messengers can be sent…Through a process known as synaptic plasticity, neurons constantly produce new proteins to remodel parts of the synapse…This creates a network of cells that, together, encode a memory…Over time, and through consistent recall, the memory becomes encoded in both the hippocampus and the cortex. Eventually, it exists independently in the cortex, where it is put away for long-term storage.” [Nature]

            My brain can’t wrap itself around the miracles executed by the billions of entities in its tiny space any more than it can comprehend the enormity of the Milky Way—or the design and construction of equipment depicting the infinitesimal and the infinite.

            Fortunately my brain can immediately grasp “As he caught his footing, his head fell back, and the Milky Way flowed down inside him with a roar” (from Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata). I’d love to see how my synapses sparkled when I first read this.

            Some writers are blessed with great memories. Thomas Wolfe could remember watching his sister climb a hill on her way to school when he was 18 months old. He put that memory into Look Homeward, Angel. Also in Angel, he describes “the old cream-colored bed, painted gaily at head and foot with round medals of clustering fruit” in the boarding house based on the one his family ran in Asheville (where he hadn’t been in many years). I saw that bed. Sure enough, “round medals of clustering fruit” are painted gaily on it.

            A flawed memory is not a fatal flaw; sometimes it can be an advantage. Filling a memory gap with invented truth may produce something more interesting—and appropriate to the story—than the actual experience. Even when attempting a faithful rendering of the past, we fall prey to imprecision. You can tell the truth about all you remember, but all you remember may not be the truth. In his preface to Reveries Over Childhood and Youth, W.B. Yeats writes: “I have changed nothing to my knowledge, and yet it must be that I have changed many things without my knowledge.”

            My neurons and synapses were kept hopping in my medial prefrontal cortex (among other areas) while living through, remembering, writing about, re-remembering, and revising “On the Road with Phil Freshman.” The piece as a whole relies on good-faith fidelity to experience, but, as William Maxwell writes in his autobiographical short story “Billie Dyer”: “For things that are not known—at least not anymore—and that there is now no way of finding out about, one has to fall back on imagination. This is not the same thing as the truth, but neither is it necessarily a falsehood.”

            In the working manuscript for Based on a True Life (where this piece will reside), I have changed names to protect people from the flaws of my memory and the hops of my fancy. But I could not bear to change Phil Freshman, so I tracked him down (not difficult—he is a well-known editor; currently president of the Association of Art Editors).

            Phil took issue with both his entrance (“he replies with a wry smile that his most recent job was shoveling chickens for Colonel Sanders”) and exit: “I go everywhere, I do everything, and I never have any fun.”

            About Colonel Sanders, he wrote that he “never worked in one of those places. But again, this is memoir and not history.” I appreciated the allowance Phil made for memoir, but I was puzzled because by then “shoveling chickens” was firmly ensconced in my cortex. I responded, “Hmmmm—very interesting. Why would my memory make up the phrase ‘shoveling chickens’? Is it at all possible that it was something you might have said though not true?” Phil threw me a bone in his reply: “Yes, I suppose I could have said it, just to create an image. I've been known to do such things, and my wife rolls her eyes heavily whenever I do.”

            Phil checked in with my cousin, Ellen (real name), who confirmed the broad strokes: “He [Alan] definitely went to Oregon and I do remember getting off in some small town around Mendocino? but don't recall any of the other details. I have some impression that you [Phil] were there, but it's been a long time!!! He had enough specific memories that even if he didn't get some details right, I'm sure he had felt a real connection with you or you wouldn't have been immortalized in this way.”

            Phil responded by contributing to the memory quest. “I'm wondering if the town with the drug store was (is) Ferndale. Tiny town filled with gemlike Victorians. Houses, that is.”

            Ellen also contacted her long-ago boyfriend, whose cortex was bereft of the whole deal. “I don’t even remember a cousin of Ellen’s—let alone the trip to Oregon he narrates.” But he did confirm the one detail I would have removed without verification—his stepfather “did fight with the partisans in Northern Italy during WWII.”

            And what about Phil Freshman’s cherished farewell, “I go everywhere, I do everything, and I never have any fun”? Before I contacted Phil, I realized he might have been quoting someone, and I found a 1936 cartoon (The CooCoo Nut Grove) with the words coming from the animated mouth of an actor playing Ned Sparks, linked here: Ned Sparks caricature

     

(Ned Sparks in Magic Town)         

 But I was foiled again by Phil: “To my knowledge, I had never heard of Ned Sparks before reading your piece. This was mentally confirmed when I looked at the YouTube bit…and felt absolutely no memory tug.”

           The only memory tug that I feel is Phil Freshman on that August night in Berkeley a half century ago. The memory remains a mystery; the story will remain the same.

Squib 320: On the Road with Phil Freshman [by Alan Ziegler]

            August 1969, after my stint at the Riverside Press-Enterprise, I hook up with my cousin Ellen and her boyfriend Greg in Berkeley. We will drive to Oregon and stay at Greg’s mother’s ranch. Ellen introduces me to Phil Freshman and tells me he is going with us. I barely know Ellen and have never met Greg, and I stiffen at the intrusion of yet another human being to deal with (though I love that his name is Phil Freshman). I tell him about my reporting job in Riverside and he replies with a wry smile that his most recent job was shoveling chickens for Colonel Sanders. By the time we climb into the car I feel comfortable with Phil Freshman and am glad we’re sharing the back seat.

            Past Mendocino, after Highway One merges with the 101, Phil Freshman notices a sign for Eureka and says we’ll have to get off the 101 because a few years ago he stumbled across a little town somewhere south of Eureka and always wanted to return. Phil tells how he befriended a couple of elderly women at an old-fashioned drug store/soda fountain. They bought him sodas and talked with him for hours. Phil promised them one day he would return and buy them sodas.

            Phil can’t remember the name of the town or where it is. He suggests that we drive around and see what happens. We have no schedule to keep and I am pleased when Greg says why not and turns off the highway. After taking random turns and going in and out of small towns (“Nope, this isn’t it”), Phil says, “This just could be the place.” Greg drives slowly up the main street.  I point out a drug store/soda fountain and Phil screams, “That’s it!”

            We go in and sure enough there are two elderly ladies at the counter. One of them turns around and exclaims, “Phil! Come sit down!” Phil and the ladies sip and talk for an hour while the rest of us have lunch at a table, with me marveling how no one seems to think anything unusual just happened.

            At the ranch in Oregon, Greg tells me that his stepfather was a resistance fighter in Italy during World War II and, among other things, set up booby traps for German soldiers on motorcycles: he would string a thin wire from tree to tree about neck-high, and then hide and watch a Nazi continue riding from the neck down, while the head bounced around the road. Greg’s stepfather is quiet and somber; I want to talk to him about killing Nazis, but can’t bring myself to ask. If I was still working on the newspaper it would be my job and I would have no problem.

            The house is plush with books of all kinds. Greg’s mother invites us to pick up anything of interest and feel free to write in the margins if so moved. “I feel insulted when someone borrows one of my books and doesn’t contribute to it.”

            After a family dinner heavy on the zucchini, I awake nauseous and barely make it out to the porch before losing the zucchini and everything else over the railing. I sneak back to bed, seemingly undetected, but the next morning at breakfast Greg announces—with a hint of admiration—“Alan was heaving away!” Everyone laughs, but rather than being mortified and retreating into myself, I find the laughter so much better than commiseration, and join in the celebration.

            When we get back to Berkeley, I have one night before my flight to New York, where I will reunite with Alicia. I want to go into San Francisco, but everybody is busy, including Phil Freshman. I go anyway, trying to think of myself as Leonard Cohen alone and brooding through a strange city until captured by a woman for a brief encounter to be immortalized in song.

            On the cable car heading up to Fisherman’s Wharf, three young women with English accents laugh and joke with the conductor. I am trying to figure how Leonard Cohen would play it when the prettiest one—with short, dark hair—tells me how romantic I look with my hair rustling in the wind. I slowly shake my head to give my hair more rustle, and she sits next to me.  “I’m Linda.”

            When we reach Fisherman’s Wharf, Linda invites me to join them. I ask her where in England they are from and they start giggling. Linda confesses that she is from Long Beach (a short ride from Lynbrook) and tells me they just graduated from Buffalo State University (a longer ride from Schenectady, where I’ve spent the last four years).

            I try my best at an English accent, and we hop on and off cable cars for the next couple of hours. Periodically, someone announces a new country—“Spain!”—and we start a new accent. Following their lead, I am able to talk to strangers without a press card—street singers, cable car conductors, bartenders.

            As midnight approaches, I start to think about what could happen between Linda and me. I have never been unfaithful to Alicia, but this is a version of me with a version of Linda. At 2 a.m. we wind up at their car and decide to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. Linda and I sit in the back seat, the sides of our thighs against each other, her head nesting on my shoulder.

            Back in San Francisco, Linda lifts her head. Now, Linda is Linda and I am me; going any further would leave me with a secret to carry back to Alicia. I would be unhappy until I told her and even more unhappy after I did. I ask if they can take me back to Berkeley. Linda quietly says “Okay” and puts her head back on my shoulder. Linda and I hold hands, and when we get to my cousin’s house, she says, “Come find me in Santa Barbara.” I kiss her briefly on the lips, and then kiss the others on the cheeks. Everything has gone right tonight, and we called it quits before anything could go wrong.

            The house is dark. I feel exhilarated and want to tell someone all about my night. I am even tempted to call Alicia. I tiptoe through the living room, feeling for furniture.

            “I’m up.” It’s Phil’s voice. As my eyes adjust, I see him stirring in his sleeping bag, now sitting up. “I’ve been waiting for you. It got so late I knew you must have had an incredible night and I bet you want to tell someone all about it.” I tell him everything, embellishing here and there. After I am done, Phil says, “I’m so glad I was here to listen.” A sweet drowsiness ripples through my body and, as I fall asleep, I am quite pleased with life.

            Phil Freshman says goodbye the next morning. He is gone briefly then re-opens the door, cocks his head back in, and says, “I go everywhere, I do everything, and I never have any fun.” Later, as I fly over the Grand Canyon, I chuckle once again in admiration of Phil Freshman’s farewell.

To Be Continued, with a note on Memory (including comments by Phil Freshman)

Squibs 313—319 [by Alan Ziegler]

313: “Are you back?” Yes, from every place I have ever been.

 

314:

Citi Field offers Nathan‘s hot dogs with free sauerkraut out in the open for anyone to take in any quantity, just like in the 60s at the second Nathan’s, in Oceanside on Long Island, run by Murray Handwerker (son of the original Nathan), who set up a stage in the back where you could see the likes of the Dillards for free as you ate your hot dog with unlimited sauerkraut. Yankee Stadium also offers Nathan’s hot dogs, but not sauerkraut.


315: Here’s your petard back. Now go hoist yourself.

 

316: My elementary school music teacher, Dr. Frisch, selects all but five fifth graders to be in the chorus. I am one of those left behind. Instead, I join the school newspaper, and play drums in the band (run by another teacher), marching in town parades. (I can still play “Cadence Number Two” with my fingers.) One day in music class Dr. Frisch overhears me say something snide about the chorus. “You think because you’re in the band you’re a musician. You’re not a musician—you’re a drummer. Drummers aren’t musicians. You’re a faker!” A couple of decades later, I return to my high school as Poet in Residence, warmly welcomed by former teachers. In the faculty room, I spot an old man in the corner dozing in an easy chair, his few tufts of hair like spent tumbleweed. Dr. Frisch. I slowly approach him, and he snorts awake, as another teacher says, “Alan Ziegler has returned to us. He’s famous!” I indulge in a few seconds picturing the young Vito Corleone being reacquainted with Don Ciccio. “Dr. Frisch, your chorus made me a writer!” I say. He smiles and nods his head. “Yes, yes, Alan…”

317 (from the untold history of baseball—Pitchers and Catchers): Herbert Steadmire, after noticing a large number of early-season arm strains, was the first team owner to see the wisdom of having pitchers come early to Spring Training. The following season, his team outpitched early opponents, but the pitchers suffered an inordinate number of leg strains. “We’d better also bring catchers next year,” he told his manager.


318: Lyrics on the cutting room floor:

            You set me up just to knock me down
            You could win a prize at the carnival.
            You invite me home then you skip town
            Never enough is always that’s all.

 

319: At Allard in Paris, after the lunch crowd has thinned out, Erin and I have two things in common with the old man under the painting: fine food on our plates and precious time on our hands.


We are luxuriating in our canard de Challans aux (beaucoup) olives when we notice the old man seems to have fallen asleep.



The serveurs leave him be. This is Paris. As we devour our profiteroles, the old man calls out, twice. A serveur approaches and the old man continues his chant, clearer: “Camembert! Camembert! Camembert!” The serveur  bows and returns with a fine looking piece of cheese surrounded by grapes imbued with the seeds of life.

Squibs 309—312 [by Alan Ziegler]

309: I have an appointment with my room. But my room doesn’t show. I wait and wait but there’s nowhere to sit, nothing to read. My legs grow weary, so I go home. And there’s my room, looking very cross.

310: Edward didn’t sound like anyone else in the high school. He called boys Mr., sing-songing the first syllables of mister and the last name: Mister Ziegler. He was large but timid, especially afraid of electrical wires. A teacher told us his “brain was different.” The rude kids called him names referring to his mental development, but most of us were extra nice.

         He could tell on what day of the week any date in the past or future would fall, which he was constantly asked to do, though I don’t recall anyone verifying—or knowing how to verify—his answer. He played trombone in the school band without looking at the music, and during rehearsals he would occasionally step up to the podium and conduct, to the cheers of his bandmates. He did it once during a concert, and got a standing ovation.

         Someone had chalked a home plate on the back wall of the Water Company—across the empty lot behind my house—creating a makeshift stickball field. Off to the side was a small conglomeration of machinery surrounded by a chain-link fence with a sign warning of electrical danger. One Saturday, as I was mowing the backyard, I saw a couple of the rude boys hanging out with Edward, throwing a ball around, always over Edward’s head. I couldn’t hear what they were shouting, but I could guess. Edward was laughing, so I turned away. Then, a horrified, horrifying howl. The boys had tied one of Edward’s hands to the chain-link fence. He repeatedly screamed, “No, No!” followed by each boy’s name preceded by “Mister.” I knew Edward wasn’t in danger but he didn’t.

         I went into the house. When I next saw Edward in school he said, “Mister Ziegler,” and I asked him on what day my birthday would fall in fifty years.

         Half a century later, what haunts me is not that I didn’t do anything to stop Edward’s pain, but that it didn’t even occur to me there was anything I could do.

         I choose to remember that Edward immediately answered, “Wednesday.”

311: Early in my relationship with Erin, during our first full evening with her parents, Paul and Esther, I had a trick up my sleeve: a card trick I learned from a pre-famous Penn & Teller VHS tape. The purpose of part one of the trick is to fail. A modest amount of skill is required to force the Three of Clubs on the subject, then, following improvised card trick maneuvers, you triumphantly pick, say, the Ten of Diamonds from the deck and declare with brimming pride: “Is…that…your card?!” To which your subject either consoles you or gloats at your failure. You explain that you’ll work on it for next time and go on with your evening. Later, you turn on the T.V. and there’s Penn Jillette from the VHS tape playing a local news anchor. After a few minutes, lo and behold as if by wizardry, the newscaster flashes the Three of Clubs and says , “Is…that…your card?!”

         I imagined this would result in befuddlement followed by applause, but we never got that far. When I sprang the Ten of Diamonds on Esther and said, “Is…that…your card?!” she stood up, applauded, and replied with a resounding “YES!”

312: Artists should not be compelled to “stay in your lane.” Artists should, as the speaker of Robert Creely’s “I Know a Man” suggests, “buy a goddamn big car, / drive…” But always heed Creely’s speaker’s friend’s advice: “he sd, for / christ’s sake, look / out where yr going.”

Squib 308: The Early Days of Television, Second Wave [by Alan Ziegler]

            In the early 1970s, cable comes to Manhattan, agonizingly one neighborhood at a time. The main draw is being able to watch Knicks home games. A company called Teleprompter (they write it TelePrompTer) is awarded the northern half of the island, with the stipulation that they offer Public Access channels. Teleprompter voluntarily throws in an equipped, staffed studio for anyone to reserve for live broadcasts. (Subsequently, they add commercial public access, spawning the likes of Midnight Blue and Ugly George.)

            Someone in my poetry workshop—which meets weekly at Westbeth—knows a curator at the Whitney named Tom with ambitions of producing for television and film. Tom invites a few of us to appear live on his Public Access show. My roommates will watch from home and give me notes.

            The studio, at 125^thand Lenox, has a big T.V. camera on a dolly along with lighting and sound equipment, and even a room to apply make-up (we don’t). Before we go on the air, Tom hands me the title card and asks me to hold it chest-level when the opening theme plays. “The cameraman won't show you.”

            The show feels good, though I don’t know if anyone is watching beyond my three roommates. As we’re leaving the studio, I am approached by Taylor Mead—of Andy Warhol Factory fame—who watched from the viewing room provided by Teleprompter for locals not wired for cable. Mead says he’s about to go on the air but he loved my poems and maybe next time we can get a drink.

            When I get home I ask my roommates how I looked, and one of them laughs and says, “Pretty silly holding that piece of cardboard and just staring into space.” I ask about the rest of the show, and another admits, “After about ten minutes we turned to the Knicks.”

            Excited about this entree into the entertainment world, our workshop forms The TelePoets. Tom will videotape us reading poems in city locations, and edit the segments for his show. “Who knows, maybe a local channel will pick it up for their public service quota.” After a couple of unedited segments, we stop hearing from Tom, who doesn’t answer his home phone. He’s asked us not to call him at work, but we’re worried and I call the Whitney.

            “There’s no such curator,” a man tells me, and asks what he looks like. “Yeah, that Tom,” he says, then with audibly clenched teeth adds, “Tom’s no longer here. And he worked in the mail room.”

            That evening, my phone rings. “Hi, it’s Tom, did we have a misunderstanding?”

            “We sure did. Do you want to explain?”

            “Well, I had you down for 4 p.m. today.” And I realize it’s Ted—my therapist—and I flaked on that day’s appointment.

            The TelePoets never hear from Tom again, and our show dies in development. I hold out hope (against hope) that one day Tom will emerge as a highly successful movie producer, and will start his Oscar acceptance speech with, “It all started in the mailroom…”