Who Asked Me?

I watched the inaugural yesterday. It was a decent show, and I’m waiting to find out exactly what “childish things” we’re going to be asked to put aside. I’m there for the new president, but if it means parting with my 1968 Nolan Ryan/Jerry Koosman rookie card he may have to go it alone. He is, however, welcome to my remaining Bank of America stock.  I remain skeptical but hopeful, which for me is a fairly optimistic condition. It was quite an impressive crowd – about as substantial as this country can muster at a non-sporting event. And there seemed to be plenty of good feelings all around, which is perfectly OK if kept in perspective. While there was something legitimately stirring about the images of black people in the crowd watching in joyous disbelief at the proceedings, I’m still a bit apprehensive about some white folks who seem a bit too anxious to cash in on this “shared struggle.” Let’s get this out of the way at the onset. As noble as it may have been, a vote for Obama never translated in to knowing what it means to be black in this country.

That’s precisely what I like about this guy. He was always two steps ahead of all of this effusive, altruistic bullshit. He’s known that his mere physical presence speaks to the barriers shattered, and seems anxious to get on to the business at hand. Let’s not fool ourselves – image has played a big part. Given his cool demeanor and articulate nature, he still wouldn’t have landed this gig if he looked like Bookman from Good Times. But he doesn’t, and up to this point he seems like the complete package. I read a New Yorker article some time back that included an email exchange between Obama and Patrick Gaspard, his campaign’s political director. It was after Obama’s first debate with McCain in September, and Gaspard wrote “You are more clutch than Michael Jordan.” Obama’s reply was to the point: “Just give me the ball.” This quote stuck with me, along with an image from just after he’d won the election. He was exiting his first national security briefing a day after becoming President Elect, and his expression was fixed and serious. Most of the boyish ease and natural assurance from his acceptance speech just the previous evening was absent. Whatever they’d told him, it was apparently sobering.

It’s your ball Mr. President, good luck.

I got my dad the eight DVD set of Ric Burns’ history of New York for Christmas. I watched the entire series two summers ago shortly after moving in to my apartment in Brooklyn. The first few episodes concentrate on the city’s origins, much of which take place in the areas that are now Brooklyn, the New York Harbor, and lower Manhattan. I got a charge out of pausing the discs on occasion and going up to my roof to take in this exact view as the sun set on the city. I used to think that life peaked at a certain, arbitrary point, and that everything on either side was either climb or descent. But I’ve come to believe it’s a series of potential peaks only attainable by the virtue of sustained movement. Some descent is almost guaranteed. This doesn’t mean that you’ve always got to be packing your bags for somewhere else, but you can’t park your chair on the roof and enjoy the same great view forever, either. But I digress.

If San Francisco is a little like the smart kid in the Gifted Studies program who’s read a lot of books but sucks at sports, then New York is like an intelligent, hot girlfriend who’s a little too loud and is always in your face. Of course neither is remotely like either of these things, but it’s as good a summation as any. What is a city, other than its people, its physicality (including climate and location), and its history? “Vibe” is kind of a hip word, but any perceived vibration is relative to that which is being put out by the individual. My buddy Mark in New York told me a while back that he thought he’d spend a year of his life in Los Angeles before he was done. He’d just come back from a visit there and enjoyed the detached, unspecific sense of freedom he’d experienced. “I think my Los Angeles might be your New York” he told me.

I was in Los Angeles not too long ago, staying with my father in a Torrance Marriott Residence Inn, due to circumstances largely beyond our collective control. I was laying on the couch and he on his bed, both of us having had a few drinks and he with chocolate cookie crumbs adorning his Hanes t-shirt just below his chin. He was reflecting on his life, a tendency for which I cut him ample slack in due respect of his having just turned eighty. Somewhere along the line the conversation switched to the potentially daunting question of why anyone chooses to push on  “I don’t know why I keep going,” he offered. “I guess I just wake up every day and I’m still curious how it’s all going to turn out.”  His response stuck with me more than he likely realized, and over the coming months I’d go back to it with a mixed sense of appreciation and envy.

I like the jogging route that I take most days in Brooklyn. The highlight comes when I turn down Remsen Street and head for the Promenade. There, all is revealed – Manhattan from Wall Street up to the Empire State Building and points beyond, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Liberty in the Harbor. There are always people taking pictures, except on the harshest of winter days. But part of the appeal for me is that I’m in motion, and not attempting to capture any of it. When I look west toward the Statue of Liberty, I typically picture California somewhere in the distance beyond. And then it’s gone and I’m finishing the rest of my run. There could be worse highlights to a day, and it’s as good a reason as any to keep on going.

When I was first kicking around New York back in 2003, I lived in a lot of sublets. There were five of them in a period of one year, and more to come after. It was an odd existence, but no more than some that had come before, or since. It felt like the thing to do at the time. The thing about what feels like the thing to do at the time is, you can fight it if you like, but you always know you’re in a fight.

I had one particular personal belonging that I carried with me from sublet to sublet back then – a Willie Nelson poster from a show I’d attended at the Fillmore in San Francisco in 2002. It was a mosaic of his face comprised of stuff that the artist felt best represented Willie. There were rusty old nails and bits of straw and pieces of bone and buttons and sunflower seed shells and pot pipes and plug sockets and bullet casings. It bore a striking resemblence when you pulled back from the individual components and took in the whole. I don’t know why I threw this in my bag before I left San Francisco, but I did. With one exception, every sublet I lived in was already furnished. One had a kind of lizard theme with ceramic geckos and salamander art on the walls and everything painted some shade of green. There were also a lot of Richard Nixon artifacts; Nixon bowling, Nixon buttons and pins, “Nixon Now” signs. Another place in Manhattan had more of a bohemian theme and smelled of curry. But the one part of me that I lent to each was Willie Nelson. I’d tack him up before I even unpacked my bags, marking my official arrival.

I’m still living among someone else’s furniture these days, but I’ve been here for well over a year and it’s starting to take on my own shape through repeated use. Willie is back in San Francisco, framed and on the wall. I figured he’d put in his time and deserved a rest, even if I wasn’t done. In his place now is an image of Neil Young from the cover of his 1969 album “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.” I’d always wanted a reproduction of this cover but could never find it. Then last year I tracked down a reasonable facsimile (as the kids like to say) from some hippie retro poster dealer in Nottingham, England. It cost a fair chunk of change to have it shipped, but I figured it would be up there for a while longer so it was worth it. The image of Neil and his dog stands alone, without the album title. But that’s OK because I’ve got the tune ingrained in my head at this point.  Everybody seems to wonder, what it’s like down here .. I used to see it from the perspective of a guy who was trying to get back home, but like any great song its meaning has changed for me over the years. I don’t seem to be fighting that as much of late either.

The days are rocketing through November and I’m in the wine shop next door, radio starting to play Blue Christmas and announcer commenting on Elvis leading holiday sales again this year. “Jesus,” says the attractive thirty-something woman pricing Port beside me, recognizing neither King – Memphis nor Bethlehem – but the fact that it’s here again and she hasn’t even thought about Thanksgiving dinner.  I put my eight dollar bottle of Pucela red on the counter and the register jockey takes note in his thick Brooklynese: “We’re halfway through November, you’re wearin’ shorts, an they’re playin’ Christmas songs on da radio.” Try as I might, I couldn’t sum it up any better. I’ve just returned from a run up Henry, across Atlantic, down the Promenade and back up Court, and forty degrees doesn’t feel all that cold anymore. But time is passing and I’m admittedly struggling to get my head around the rest of it.

Jumping back a month, it’s a Tuesday morning in October and a classic example of one of those “why the hell did I move here?” days. Horizontal sheets of rain slap my front windows and my water-logged trek to the corner bakery produces only a soggy hoodie, lukewarm coffee and stale muffin.  Returning home I sip, chew, ponder, then make my break for the door and the station.  The train comes immediately and I find a seat and start scribbling on a yellow legal pad with an old Waterson fountain pen, like some kind of authentic scribe and poseur relic.  Soon I’m deep in, breaking only on occasion to note lack of connection and my soaked, tattered jeans hems. I push on about Charlie Brown, brown puddles of rain outside my second grade classroom window, and my mother’s warm kitchen back home. I look up once at the pierced lip girl observing and then again a moment later to note the station: Fifty-Seventh. I’ve overshot my stop by two. I put my earphones in and cross the platform to wait again.

This time it’s late and halfway through my wait I see the outline of a figure coming down the track from inside the tunnel. As he approaches I realize he isn’t an MTA employee but a homeless man, possibly one of those “mole people” I’ve read about. He makes his way off the track and is preoccupied with tearing the pages from a large, soiled fashion magazine he’s been carrying under one arm. His pants ride well below waist, revealing more crack than all that moved through Miami in the late 80’s. I’m listening to Dylan – Not Dark Yet – and along with a nattily dressed business dude am the only person observing this man. He hikes his pants to a more reasonable level and I refocus on a mariachi trio, also waiting for the train. It comes. Doors shut. They begin to play.

There is no less welcome train entertainment than mariachi, particularly on a day as rainy and downcast as this. Their unintelligible hi-yeeee’s, straight legged slacks with snakeskin boots, and loud slapping stand-up bass technique is unavoidable and inescapable. On the floor by the foot of the accordian player is half of a ripped dollar bill, lending itself in some inexplicably appropriate way to the scene. Passengers separate rain-glued pages of their dripping Posts, note their dampened attire, and generally do anything but make eye contact with the jubilant three whose music better reflects a far drier, sunnier Mexican day. Doors open. Music stops. Nobody tips.

Forward again to the present as I sip my surprisingly decent eight dollar Pucela and watch YouTube clips of the ’78 assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Sean Penn has a film coming out next week based on the events, but I have strong childhood memories. As I watch the small pop-up box on my laptop, the news footage is all in film and possesses a surreal, distant quality, almost as if it’s been dragged from someone’s memory and reorientated for the current era. They’ll probably figure that trick soon too, and I’ll take it for granted. Diane Feinstein announces the murders and suspect while hand held lights bounce around the dark interior of City Hall, allowing for passably reasonable exposure. Thirty years ago, the week after Thanksgiving.  Jesus Christ.

I had planned on dropping this election stuff after the results were in last week, but it remains too large to ignore. The country, and much of the free world, would appear to be in the grips of Obama-fever. Granted, it was an historical moment when America put a black guy in the top spot by a substantial margin. What it says about the country can be debated now that the election is over, but as far as the man himself goes, much remains to be seen. He’s intelligent, gives a great speech, and along with his team ran a nearly flawless campaign. But the national and international media has whipped itself into such an adulating love-fest, they can’t seem to distinguish between legitimate news and effusive gushing. Considering the praise bestowed upon this man months before he takes his first breath as President, I have to imagine he’s feeling some pressure. He comes off as a calm individual, but there must be some temptation to walk up to the podium and utter Harvey Keitel’s line as Mr. Wolf in “Pulp Fiction”: Well, let’s not start suckin’ each others’ d*cks quite yet.

You don’t have to be Tony Danza to realize we’re living in troubled times. We’ve got two wars going on and the incoming economic data is generating the cheering effect of a Todd Solondz film. But elevating George Bush to a moronic caricature responsible for all the country’s ills is a far easier task than solving these very real problems.  Obama didn’t even have to demonize Bush – the job had been taken care of well before he got the nomination. All he had to do is what seems to come naturally for him: remain level-headed and not make any serious gaffes. Now he’s got the job and people are already treating him like he’s single-handedly liberated France. My sense is that he’s a cool enough character to understand the premature expectations, and already acknowledged as much in his speech on election night in Chicago’s Grant Park when he expressed pointedly that it wasn’t about “him”.

Obama’s campaign mantra evolved around two vague but powerful concepts: hope and change. The ecstatic mood among his supporters and many non-supporters following the election was a result of the affirmation of hope. Perhaps this country isn’t as racist or single-minded as they’ve made us out to be. Maybe this idea that anything is possible here is still alive. But change – ay, there’s the rub. It probably isn’t quite as easy as putting the right guy in there. Incriminated and held to as much public ridicule as he’s been, George Bush could likely still tell the new President a thing or two about reality versus expectation, and even more pointedly, what to expect if and when the love runs out. It’s a lot to be put on any man’s shoulders, but particularly on one who is both young and setting new precedent by his very appearance. Let’s hope the good will continues in the years to come.