Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - City Facades - Ludlow Street - Between Rivington & Stanton. by Jordan Myers

I jump on my bike
on Hudson Street,
head east on Greenwich
Avenue, cross Sixth,
find myself on St. Marks
–––– then keep east.
At the park I bail, ditch
the bike, walk down
Avenue A, & embrace
the life I lead all those
years ago. Mid-twenties,
when all my friends
lived in the East Village
or knew someone
who was having a party
who lived in the East Village,
so we went there: East Fourth
between A and B, or east Fifth
/ between B and C, or East
Sixth / just west of A.
I’d let myself get too drunk
on whiskey and stay up late
and stand on rooftops
and wonder if my life
like an engine would ever
turn over and begin. I knew
how to get on the J, knew
how to hail a cab
and surrender alone
across the Williamsburg
Bridge toward Bed-stuy
or Bushwick at dawn.
Knew my address, knew
where I lived, knew
my name and age, knew
my height and weight,
and knew to drink water
before collapsing into bed,
but still had no idea how
to come home.

Monday - August 24, 2020 - Movie reviews for films that first screened a minute ago: Meet Joe Black (1998). by Jordan Myers

It’s been a minute, but I first watched Meet Joe Black (1998) twenty-two years after its release, on an early July evening. I started the film at midnight. My thought process must have been this: if it holds up, I'll stay awake. If it doesn't hold up, I might finish it in the morning. Looking back, I know this much: although I did stay awake, I'm not sure that the film holds up.

I can grasp the film’s how, but I do not understand its why. I get that Brad Pitt plays death, who is visiting William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins), and is helping him see and enjoy the value of his life before he passes on to the other side. I grasp that Parrish, when pressed by family to introduce his friend, death, gives death a name, Joe, which prompts: "Joe who? Does he have a last name?" Parrish's son-in-law asks, "Joe Black," Parrish responds.

By a film holding up, I mean a film that honors its end of the bargain. If you're going to ask people to watch a three-hour film, you not only have to keep them tuning in, empathizing with the characters and enjoying their performances, but you also have to bring it all home in the end –––– and even if not in a big way, then at least, in a satisfying and worthwhile manner. Meet Joe Black misses on this point, yet the irony is this: the film literally ends with fireworks.

Yet, even setting the fireworks aside, this is where Meet Joe Black misses the mark the most: it's a three-hour film about death, which kills off its best character within the first thirty minutes, just because. What's worse, we don't even get to spend long enough of a time with the character to learn his name: we just know that he's played by Brad Pitt, and that he meets Parrish's daughter, Susan (Claire Forlani) in a diner in Manhattan on one shimmering sunny morning. We know that he buys Susan a cup of coffee and finds a way to charm her so much so that even talk of marriage and spending the rest of their lives together becomes fair game. 

This is one of the best scenes I've ever watched. Not because of what "coffee shop guy" and Susan say to each other, but more so the way that they're both incredibly careful and calculating, yet even despite their caution, over just one coffee, they create something genuine and deep and meaningful between them.

This is not easy to do, in life, and it's definitely not easy to create and capture in film. So when it happens, when the awe of the spark of love-at-first-sight descends down from the heavens, it must be honored, cherished, and treated with reverence and deep respect. Which means you can't go killing off the guy in a car accident three minutes later!

What kept me hooked within Meet Joe Black was the possibility that "coffee shop guy" might come back from the dead. What prevents me from sitting through Meet Joe Black again is knowing that he does, indeed, come back, but only sort of, and for a while, i.e., a few hours. But sort of is only enough to keep you hanging on once, which I did.

Meet Joe Black wants to please. It wants to delight. It wants to be liked. And in one regard, its desire to be accepted can be met: visually, it is a beautiful film.

Bill Parrish owns a media company and lives in a mansion in Providence, Rhode Island. He's turning sixty-five and his other daughter, Allison (Marcia Gay Harden), is in the midst of planning an extravagant birthday party for him. The mansion, together with the force of Anthony Hopkins’ character adds a decadence and grace to the film,  which does inspire.

In fact, to the film's credit, Joe Black says this better, after Parrish tells him, "I still don't understand. Why'd you pick me," Black responds, "I chose you for your verve, your excellence and your ability to instruct. You've lived a first-rate life, and I find it eminently usable."

Yet, as the viewer, who had immersed himself in a three-hour journey, I did not just want to find the characters within Meet Joe Black eminently usable. Or at least, that's not all that I wanted; I also wanted to enjoy them. Use only gets you so far. And although Meet Joe Black is an ambitious and yearning work of art, which deserves praise and honor for its effort, after taking this three-hour journey once, I neither feel nor see the point in traversing its belabored and prolonged expanse again. 

Sunday, August 23, 2020 - Sunday: flash fiction. by Jordan Myers

The sky must have gone dark. We can’t remember when; night fell.

Saturday, August 22, 2020 - “The Actor’s Instrument” - Edward Dwight Easty - Part II. by Jordan Myers

Last Saturday I recounted my first introduction to Edward Dwight Easty’s On Method Acting (1966) and presented the block quotation that opens the book and serves as the central thesis of Easty’s book: “The Actor’s Instrument.” 

For clarity, and as a point of departure for Part II of this series, the quote, once more, appears below:

“An actor’s instrument is his whole self. It is his body, his mind and being, complete with thoughts, emotions, sensitivity, imagination, honesty and awareness. Try to imagine the actor’s instrument in much the same way you picture the musician and his violin, the artist and his canvas, paints, and brushes. Think of them as one and inseparable. Just as the musician practices daily on his instrument, always perfecting its response to his will through training, and the artist mixes his paints, brushing them on with the precision and beauty accrued only by drill, so must the actor be concerned with the training and development of his instrument and its responses to his commands.”

In Part I, I raised this question: what, if anything at all, separates The Actor’s Instrument from The Writer’s Instrument? Said otherwise, if the Writer’s instrument is not his pen, paper, typewriter, or laptop, then it has to be the same as the Actor’s instrument: his whole self.

Yet, even this answer –––– that the Actor’s Instrument is the same as the Writer’s Instrument –––– fails to capture the thin line that separates acting from writing; where does one begin, and the other end?
 

Watching the Actor use his Instrument to bring a character and a story to life is intriguing ––– and captivating –––– in a way that watching the Writer use his Instrument to bring a character and a story to life is not.

The Actor, even when he is completely still and silent, is in motion. He is in motion, even in his stillness, because at any moment, we know that he can (or could –––– or just might) move again. Thus, our bodies (and our hearts) can and do respond to the cues and cadences of the Actor’s when he is using his Instrument with control and mastery.

The physicality of acting is easy to overlook and take for granted. Here’s why: when the Actor’s Instrument is in-tune and functioning at a high level, we forget that it’s even there –––– we’re immersed in the character, and with everything we have, we’ve fallen into the story –––– we’ve become, in effect, enraptured. 

This effect, this enrapturing, can happen as well when a reader has been pulled, completely, into the world of a story that the Writer has created; however, the physicality of this connection –––– the connection between the Reader and the Writer –––– is absent.

The Writer can be off somewhere else –––– anywhere else, as the Reader is engrossed in the story that she has created. In this regard, the question of what constitutes the Writer’s Instrument is easy to overlook. If she, the Writer, is not there in the room and on stage; or there, upon the screen, as the Viewer is connecting with the work which her Instrument has created, then the question of how ––––– and through what Instrument –––– the Writer has created her work is less pressing.

It becomes something that may be discussed and considered, some vague and unknown –––– other

time, but it does not rest at the forefront of our imagination and consideration. Said otherwise, the mystery of how the Writer's Instrument creates her story is less captivating than how the Actor's Instrument creates his character, and as a result, the question of the Writer and her Instrument, is simply asked –––– either less often, or if not less often, then certainly, with less fanfare and fascination.

Yes. Writers are interviewed; and questions are asked of them, questions like: "how did you come up with this character?" and "what motivates you to write?" but without the physicality of the in-person, or on-screen connection, the answers to these questions shimmer and shine less brightly.

Yet; this is what makes writing so important, and powerful, and beautiful: without the writer, there are no characters, and without characters, there are no actors.

However, this question can also be walked through in the other direction: without the Actor, the Writer's characters only exist on the page, and with characters who only exist on a page, the Writer's access to a broader audience is severely depleted.

Thus, one could ask: who needs the other the most: the Writer, or the Actor?

Friday, August 21, 2020 - Postcards from New York: Roosevelt Barbershop - Ninth Avenue (Between 57th & 58th). by Jordan Myers

Hello Hello! It's been a long time but I did it: I got my haircut, in New York, on Ninth Avenue (between 57th and 58th), at Roosevelt Barbershop. I only noticed the shop two weeks ago, when I was standing at the walk-up coffee shop known as Birch, which stands next door.

The place is lo-fi, and I love it. And by lo-fi, I mean, vintage, and by vintage, I mean it feels like a home –––– as though you’re getting your haircut in someone’s kitchen on a Friday evening, and while you’re resting in the chair, your mind starts thinking about which of the two movies you rented from Blockbuster you’ll watch first. Said otherwise, the atmosphere isn’t piped in; it’s already there, and it arises all on its own.

There's only two chairs; which are now divided by a plastic panel of a structure similar to a ziplock bag, which descends from the ceiling and doesn’t quite reach all the way to the ground.

Hesitant and masked, earlier today, I pulled open the door and walked in. My hesitation was less about an uncertainty as to whether I wanted to get my haircut there, but more a response to the size and intimacy of the shop. One cannot walk in without being noticed, and given the domestic and quaint feel of the place, I felt compelled to enter the shop in a quiet and reserved manner.

There were two barbers working, one male and the other female, both in their late forties or early fifties, and one male customer, mid-to-late twenties, who was getting a new doo. 

I took the chair farthest away from the door and asked for my standard cut; which is quite low: a “one” all the way around (I had shaved off my beard; which was becoming far too bohemian (it had been growing since April), the weekend before).

 The radio, which was of a small and compact variety, the type of which one would take to the beach, stood on a shelf in the corner, and played Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to do With it?"

 The woman who was cutting my hair ––– mea culpa, I did not introduce myself and ask for her name, from time-to-time, asked me to hunch down in the chair so that she could reach up to the top of my head. For about five minutes, she sang and also hummed along with Ms. Turner, not quite knowing the words.

Her colleague, slightly younger, with glasses, and who was moving with the efficiency and swiftness of a master barber as he was finishing with the other customer in the shop, was laughing, and spoke out across the shop in Spanish: "¡No sabes las palabras!"

Thursday, August 20, 2020 - Hoopin’! Via Matthews-Palmer Park: West 46th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenue). by Jordan Myers

There is a park on West 46th Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenue. It’s also a playground.

You can go there and be whoever you want. You can go there and do whatever you want.

In the morning, I like sitting and facing north on the steps that ascend toward the south.

I like the feeling of the sun on my face.

I like the casual way four men in work-boots and heavy khakis and denim play basketball:

standing and shooting and talking, then –––-

every now and again /

an almost quick drive to the hoop.

There’s no keeping score. They’re all on the same team. Work is in a little, but not now.

The oldest and sturdiest amongst them: early forties, stocky and a few inches over six feet, wears a black t-shirt, black denims, black low-cut Keds, and a black backwards-facing baseball cap.

With love and a booming voice, he calls out tips, instructions, and advice toward his compadres:


“Use your body! Use your body! Lean into the contact!” he says.

One, bounces the ball, gradually ––––

and slowly, between his legs and glances up at the rim,

as the other, with intention and focus, squats in front of him, as a declaration: his arms stretched-out wide –––––– in defense. 

I like how their fourth, the only one wearing a mask (light blue and white), and the least athletically gifted of the crew, shoots his J’s without jumping -––– 

and with only one hand: the ball, held like a trophy in his right palm before his eyes ––––––

everyone watches, and waits . . . then at the decisive moment, he does not shoot

/ but propels the ball toward the rim.

The ball only hangs in the air for a moment,

rotating and careening through the wind

just long enough for everyone to glance up

toward the trees’ branches and leaves:

dancing and swaying above the backboard /

then between every exhale, and every inhale,

ruffling and resting

quietly beneath /

the all blue

/ and the all clear

/ morning sky.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020 - One rainy morning walk toward the Jolly Goat. by Jordan Myers

Here’s one thing that happened in New York on August 19th, 2020 - a Wednesday.

It was a rainy morning in the middle of August and the first hints of autumn could be felt in the air. Here’s what the first hints of autumn felt like. It was cold enough to walk two blocks without breaking into a sweat. Also the pulsating rhythm and noise and suffocating feeling of the sun had subsided.

Here’s another thing that happened: I walked south along Tenth Avenue and allowed my mind to decide between two or three places for coffee: Sullivan Street Bakery (47th), The Jolly Goat (47th), or Rex (north on 10th, near 57th).

Even if only for a moment, the pandemic felt like a distant memory. I felt this distance the most when I gently set the straps of my mask over my ears and set it into place over my mouth and my nose as an afterthought, rather than as an act of war and panic against a novel coronavirus.

Here’s another thing that happened: I looked east and south at the giant buildings that rise above Midtown Manhattan as I walked south along the span of 10th Avenue (between 49th and 48th street) where there’s just an open space –––– a vacant lot. Who knows what was there before? It’s empty now. There’s a rhythm to the emptiness, a beauty that has attached itself to its vacancy.

This was true this morning and it’s still true as of this writing: The Jolly Goat had a rectangular sign that hung out front that was white and glowed in yellow that read “COFFEE” in black font. It draws you in.

Here’s a description of the drink that I ordered: An earl grey tea, with steamed oat milk. It’s called a London Fog. The owner who was baristing and also working the register, Murat, and I laughed about the first time that he heard the name, “London Fog.”

Here’s what he said, something like this: “These three women, who definitely weren’t from New York, and who were definitely visiting the city –––– I could tell because they were so lively and up-up-up ––– walked in and one of them ordered a London Fog,” he said. “I had no idea what it was, but she told me it was just Earl Grey tea and steamed milk.” Easy enough on any day –––– two points plus on a rainy morning.

Tuesday - August 18, 2020 - City Facades! - Hudson and Charlton (with a special guest appearance by Paolo Nutini). by Jordan Myers

In a city where millions of people, literally, wear masks; the facades of buildings speak more loudly than ever before. One could describe certain streets and avenues as vacant, empty, or deserted, yet this is only true when no-vacancy, full, or crowded refers to the presence of the physical human beings who stand on, and walk over and across these streets and avenues.

Even without the physical presence of a teeming population that adds their collective breath and voices to the spaces at the foot of these facades, there is still life here: the life of all that has already happened in these spaces, and the life of all that ever will happen over and across these spaces –––– the life of the imagination.

How can anyone measure the population density of an emotion, a memory, or an idea?

Monday, August 17, 2020 - Hoyt Street / Carroll - Mira Fisher

Hoyt Street / Carroll

It’s 4AM, mid-August. I dream-wake to the sound of rapid conversation. From my open window I see two figures standing with e-bikes on the street below. I don't speak Spanish but can just gather that corasons are involved (or was it calzones? They are delivery guys). Whatever it is, it is dire, this is a red eye rendezvous and there are restless hand gestures that I can just detect in the street light. One man raises his hands in front of him. "The calzone is...this big." Or perhaps, "I love you about...this much." They are urgently comparing units of space. 

HEY!!! I yell. It's sharp like a bark, and shoots right at their helmets before bouncing down Hoyt street. They stop as if struck, and then some moments pass of the clearest silence before they mount their bikes and whizz in opposite directions. My voice is a force, supposedly from the sky even to me, and their obedience is pious. I vaguely missed them already as I giggled myself back to sleep.

- Mira Fisher

Sunday - August 16th, 2020 - Fiction Sundays: “Upon the Street Below.” by Jordan Myers

I was walking across 47th Street on a Saturday in July, wearing chinos with a button-up shirt. I was picking up coffee for Elise and myself. I had spent the morning before on the phone with Andrea’s friend Monica. Monica knew Andrea from college. I knew Monica from work and Andrea through Monica. I had met Andrea three weeks before on a Saturday. That was the end of June. We were on a rooftop in Queens at night.

  I had been at the party on the rooftop in Queens at night for an hour, and was on my way out when Monica stopped me. She introduced me to Andrea. We shook hands. I was going home that was all. Andrea asked me about my job, about how long Monica and I had been working together. I said about a year. I said we both worked in financial advising. We were both helping people spend money wisely. Andrea asked me where I stayed in the city. I was living in Brooklyn, she was living in Queens. She stepped away to grab a beer and I thought of walking out the door without saying goodbye. I stayed. She returned.

            She said Monica had thought we should meet. I can’t remember what kept me up on Monica’s roof through the June night so long besides Andrea’s smile. Then it was three, and we were still standing beside each other, and I said I needed to go. She asked that I call. I said that I would.

            I woke up the next day to a rainy Sunday, showered, and went out for a sandwich and coffee. The sky was dark. I felt light. I dropped into Michello’s, a small place a few blocks away from my apartment. I stayed for a while. Hector stopped in an hour later. By the time he got there I had already reviewed a few spreadsheets for work with Andrea on my mind. I had ordered another coffee with Andrea on my mind. I had looked out the window at the stormy late June sky with Andrea on my mind.

            Hector was meeting me before he went to see Carolyn. I told him about the night before, about the woman I had met. He smiled. He asked when I would see her again. I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know. Two weeks passed.

            I worked and went home. I worked and went home again and again.  Once on the subway in the evening I sat across from a woman who looked like Andrea. Had I known what to say I would have spoken to her. She stood up and walked out at Canal Street. I moved my briefcase from my lap to the open seat to my left and thought again of Andrea.

            The Wednesday after I met Andrea I sat around a chess table in Hell’s Kitchen Park. For an hour I sketched out as best as I could the shape of her face, the nape of her neck, and what I could remember of her smile.

            Two Saturdays after the night on Monica’s roof I picked up the phone in my apartment and called Andrea. She answered. We both laughed. I asked whether she’d want to meet the next day, Sunday afternoon. She couldn’t. I asked whether she’d like to meet for dinner Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or any evening. She couldn’t.

            I went out that night. Hector and Carolyn and Elise and I took the train over into the city and went drinking through the evening. Elise and I had broken up in January. We found a bar with a roof-deck a few blocks south of Washington Square. I sat beside Elise. She had long brown hair and eyes that were a light green. She wore a dress that ended at the top of her knees, a navy blue print with white stripes going diagonal from her left shoulder toward her right knee.

            I kissed her. Carolyn and Hector left. Elise came back to Brooklyn with me. We made love. She left in the morning. I heard from her Tuesday and she wanted to get back together. I told her we should meet to talk about it and we did. We got back together.

            Elise and I were having fun again. Once we met in Central Park and shared a pitcher of iced tea with a bit of whiskey. We stayed out all afternoon beneath the early July sun. We didn’t leave until the park closed at night. On our way out we stopped for a while beside and beneath a yellow lamppost. We kissed.  I had missed her.

            Then one Friday in July, I was walking along 47th street and spotted Andrea again. I had spent the night before at Elise’s. I saw her first and she didn’t see me. I kept walking but she looked up then saw me. She called out to me. I stopped and turned around. It was the hottest day of the year. Her hair was in a bun.

            I walked over to her and we embraced. I hadn’t seen her since we were on the roof that June night. She asked where I was headed. Two men in big boots, white socks, and jean shorts walked out of a doorway to my right, carrying a large white sofa wrapped in plastic. They walked between us. As they passed I held my words. I said I was headed to grab a coffee. It was ten in the morning. I went west. She headed east and asked that I call sometime.

             Two weeks passed. Elise and I went to the Bronx Zoo on a Saturday. She was wearing the same navy summer dress. She laughed at the flamingos and reached for my hand. I asked about her brother. She said he had decided which schools he would apply to, that he might move out east. We took the train back into Midtown. She fell asleep on my shoulder. It was late August.

            Hector and I went running on a Thursday after work along the Hudson. He was faster, though I kept up as best as I could. I thought I’d call Monica that weekend. Elise and I stayed in Friday night and didn’t leave her place until Sunday morning. We went to the movies. A woman was having a mental breakdown and looked to her husband for support that he couldn’t give because he was having a mental breakdown as well. They divorced. I drank a ginger ale and wrapped my arm around Elise’s shoulder. When we walked out of the theater it was night.

            Elise was thinking of quitting her job. She told me over dinner on a Thursday night in mid-September. She let the glass of red wine hold still against her lips for a while as she paused between sentences, waiting for my words. I didn’t care what she did. For whatever reason I thought of why we broke up in January. She needed promises. Again she asked what I thought and I told her I didn’t know. If she wasn’t happy with her job, then she should look for something else. Two weeks passed.

            On a Friday, Monica called me just after I walked out of the office. She was having people over that next night. I was invited. Elise for the weekend was out of town. I showed up around nine, hoping to see Andrea again. She wasn’t there. I spoke with Monica, thanking her for the invite and asking how she had been. Busy she said. We were all busy. We were all in New York in our twenties and thirties and busy.

            Monica walked with me down the steps toward the living room, away from the roof. I sat there in the love seat across the coffee table from where she sat on the sofa. Elise was calling me. I didn’t pick up. When she’d return I decided, we’d break up again. Monica got up and poured herself a drink in the kitchen. I followed. Finally there she asked about Andrea. I said I hadn’t spoken with her. Monica was leaning against the refrigerator and looking out over the island that faced the living room. It was late. Most everyone had gone home. I told Monica I would like to see Andrea again sometime and she said she would set something up. I left and walked home toward the train through the night.

            I only left one blazer and button-up shirt at Elise’s after I gathered my things from her place. We were through.  I called Andrea again the moment I returned from Elise’s for the last time. It was the third week of September and I let the windows in my bedroom wide open. The late summer wind blew in. She answered. She’d love to meet sometime. We set a date for the next Friday. The week went fast.

            At 8:00pm on the 28th day of September I was waiting outside La Primavera Cafe on Elizabeth street wearing navy chinos with a light grey blazer over a white button-up shirt. Andrea arrived at five after.  We went inside. We sat near the window. We talked and talked and talked: about the first night we met, about her and Monica in college, about what would happen if the world ran out of green apples. I didn’t know whether I was falling in love with her. After dinner we walked north along Broadway for a while. The taxis’ headlights moved toward us then away from us. I held her hand. We found a quiet place for coffee not far from Cooper Union. We sat inside listening to the conversations around us. It was nice just being near her without speaking.

            Elise called me the next day, and the Sunday following, and the Monday and Tuesday afterwards as well. I called back and she didn’t answer.

            Monica and Andrea and I had dinner at Monica’s place in Queens, the three of us and Monica’s brother Stanley. Stanley was in from Cleveland. He worked in accounting and was in the city on business. He and I were washing dishes a long while after Monica and Andrea had finished cooking and the four of us had eaten the steak frites and steamed vegetables. I was washing and rinsing and he was drying. He asked me about Andrea, whether we were an item and I said I didn’t know yet. He smiled. He said be careful with her.

            Two nights later Andrea asked me over to her apartment to have dinner with her and her friend Chloe. And Stanley would be there as well. I showed up around eight with a bottle of wine I had never heard of. Andrea buzzed me up and answered the door. We embraced. Stanley was strewn across her sofa, his pant legs rolled up, the buttons of his shirt undone, presenting his chest. It was mid-October. He stood up and shook my hand. His boss needed him to stay in New York for a while longer. He had been sleeping on Andrea’s couch. He got up, moved toward the stereo, asked whether I enjoyed classical, and played a bit of Verklarte Nacht on a compact disc.

            Andrea’s friend Chloe arrived a few moments later. She sat beside me on the couch. Andrea and Stanley were in the kitchen. Chloe knew Andrea from work. Chloe had heard so much about me. Chloe had heard so many good things about me from Andrea. Chloe asked whether I smoked and if I did would I like to join her on the balcony. I didn’t but said I would join her. Chloe was tall. Five feet nine inches with black hair to the length of her shoulders. Though it was in the mid-forties that night, she was wearing a summer dress.

            Chloe had a denim jacket around her shoulders when she walked in but left it on the table near the sofa. We looked out over the balcony. We couldn’t see much aside from the street directly below and the apartment building across the way. We looked into the neighbor’s window and she asked me how I met Andrea. On a rooftop in Queens in June I told her. She dropped and stomped out her cigarette then reached into her purse for another one. Stanley walked into the living room behind us and said that he needed help. I’ll let you smoke I said to Chloe, and went back inside.

            Elise was calling me. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and picked it up then hung it up. She called again and I let it ring to voicemail. She left a message that I deleted without listening to. I pulled the vegetable lasagna from the oven and set it on the counter beside the bread maker. Stanley said he’d open the wine then moved to the living room with a corkscrew and did. Chloe stepped into the room again before drifting toward the kitchen. We all had wine and lasagna. Stanley asked whether any of us liked classical and moved toward the stereo. He pulled the Verklarte Nacht out and replaced it with a Wagner piece. He smiled and joined us again in the kitchen. After dinner we all went out to a bar that had just opened a few steps away from Andrea’s.

            Through the night I walked alongside Chloe as Stanley and Andrea took steps beside one another. They were just ahead of us. Chloe said she designed clothes but couldn’t find enough clients to open her own store. I asked what type of clothes she made. Women’s clothing, all types. She said she made the dress she was wearing. It was a pale yellow and sleeveless, of a length that went just past her knees. I said I liked it because I did. Andrea said this is the place and looked back at me and Chloe. Stanley showed his ID and went in. We all did the same. It was loud.

            We made our way to the bar. Chloe stood to my left, Stanley stood to my right, and Andrea stood to Stanley’s right. Stanley ordered drinks for the four of us. Everything was poured and handed out. He gave the bartender two twenty dollar bills. We said a cheers. Stanley dove in to asking me whether I preferred the Verklarte Nacht to the Wagner. I said I didn’t know and yelled that it was hard to decide beneath the music that was already playing at the bar. Chloe laughed. Stanley said that he used to prefer Wagner ––– above all other composers ––– but that over the last year he’s fallen out of favor with Wagner’s work. I didn’t care.

            Andrea and Chloe excused themselves and headed toward the bathroom. Then there I was, with Stanley. He said not to worry about he and Andrea. That they had something years ago but it was cool now.  We stayed for two more drinks. Along with the wine I felt drunk. We stepped out into the night around two in the morning. Andrea said Stanley was crashing at her place and that Chloe and I were welcome to join. Chloe said she’d take a taxi back to Brooklyn. She suggested we share a ride. Andrea said she’d call the next day.

            Inside the cab Chloe leaned against my shoulder. I placed my arm around her. Together over the Pulaski Bridge we watched Manhattan pass by across the East River, the Empire State Building lit in a deep orange, and the Queensboro Bridge with white lights, delicate and bright behind us.

            I called Andrea three nights later. I heard Stanley in the background. I think I heard Brahms as well though it’s hard to be sure. She said I should call her again over the weekend, that the four of us should meet again soon.

            I met Hector and Carolyn for dinner after work the Wednesday before Halloween. They asked whether I had plans for the weekend. I didn’t. I invited Andrea to Hector’s that Saturday night. She said she couldn’t make it. She said one of Stanley’s old friends was having a reunion, and that it would be okay if I joined.

            I went to Hector’s and Carolyn’s party with Chloe. She was Albert Einstein. I was Albert Einstein’s research assistant. She ordered me around all evening. We laughed and went home together for the first time that night. In and around her apartment, Chloe and I spent the next afternoon talking, reading, drinking wine, and all the while waiting for the winter storm. The trains stopped running. Through the evening it snowed twelve inches in four hours. And for a while we sat out there on the fire escape, just beside her bed, watching the snowflakes. Quietly they landed and gently they collected upon the street below. 

Saturday - August 15th, 2020 - “The Actor’s Instrument” - Edward Dwight Easty - Part I. by Jordan Myers

There is an idea that I like very much, which I first discovered in Edward Dwight Easty’s On Method Acting, which was first published in 1966.

I first read the book four years ago; though I can’t remember how I came across it –––– whether I saw it in a bookstore and it caught my eye, or whether I was browsing books on the creative process and it grabbed my attention. All I know for sure is that it was not recommended to me by anyone. This was a book that I summoned into my experience, one that called me up on the telepathic telephone and demanded that I answer its call; and begin reading its pages, at once.

Like many, I’ve long been fascinated by the thin line that divides a heartfelt and moving performance from one that presents, and therefore exists, as hackneyed and canned, and therefore: quickly becomes excruciating to watch, and nearly impossible to sit through.

As a poet and writer, concrete methods, measurements and instructions exist for creating strong lines and compositions: show don’t tell; drop the adverbs; keep it as simple as possible; use flowery language sparingly (if at all). But if these are a few of the more common tools for helping poets and authors; and screenwriters; and playwrights create the lines that the actors will rely upon to bring their characters to life, then what methods, and tools, can the actors rely upon in order to create realistic and moving characters on the screen, and on the stage?

Keep in mind, this line of inquiry was not moving through my mind when I first picked up (or ordered) On Method Acting; or if it was, it was happening in an intuitive and organic fashion, rather than as a deliberate and intentional series of thoughts and resulting actions. All of this is to say, I did not will myself toward this book; instead, I must have been in a calm and serene and curious vibrational state, and as a result, I allowed this book to present itself to me, and thereafter become a part of my experience.

This past July, I recalled the enjoyment that I felt while reading On Method Acting, and began looking for the book again. As I have moved a number of times since 2016, I couldn’t locate my copy, thus, following the same impulse that I followed four years ago, I ordered a copy of the book again. I’m glad that I did; and am enjoying reading it once more.

Here’s the block quote, which is printed upon the very first page of the 1989 version of On Method Acting:

“An actor’s instrument is his whole self. It is his body, his mind and being, complete with thoughts, emotions, sensitivity, imagination, honesty and awareness. Try to imagine the actor’s instrument in much the same way you picture the musician and his violin, the artist and his canvas, paints, and brushes. Think of them as one and inseparable. Just as the musician practices daily on his instrument, always perfecting its response to his will through training, and the artist mixes his paints, brushing them on with the precision and beauty accrued only by drill, so must the actor be concerned with the training and development of his instrument and its responses to his commands.”

For a number of reasons, I love the passage above: its precision and rhythm; its descriptions: quick, clean and neat; combined with the strength and clarity of its thesis –––– “The Actor’s Instrument is this _______,” makes for a gripping and important first hook of a passage.

Even more lovely, is one aspect of the Actor’s instrument which has been left out from this passage, which I’ll describe, through this light: Easty compares the Actor’s instrument to the Painter’s canvas, paints, and brushes; as well as to the Musician’s violin; however, he does not extend this comparison to the Writer’s pen. Why not? Because the Writer’s instrument is not his or her or their pen, nor is it the computer and keyboard that he presses his fingers against so that words may appear on a screen. Instead, in the same way that the Actor’s instrument is “his body, his mind and being, complete with thoughts, emotions, sensitivity, imagination, honesty, and awareness,” the same must be true for the Writer.

Whenever I have tried, whether intentionally, or absent-mindedly, to write from outside of my body; without my whole mind and being, without my thoughts, emotions, sensitivity, imagination, honesty and awareness, I have been disappointed, if not more severely: quite angry and resentful toward myself.

If the Writer’s instrument, like the Actor’s, is his body, his mind and being, complete with thoughts, emotions, sensitivity, imagination, honesty, and awareness; and not his pen; then what separates the Artist’s canvas and paint brush, as well the Musician’s violin, from the writer?

At present, I can only say that there is an answer to this question, and that it is, indeed, an important inquiry; but please, if you’ll allow me the time and the space to rest and fine tune the instrument from which I am writing these words, we’ll pick up here again, and I will get back to you.

_____

Part II

Friday, August 14th, 2020 - Postcards from New York. by Jordan Myers

Hello, Hello! Here’s what happened at dusk. I stood at the corner of West 66th and Amsterdam Avenue and walked into the middle of the street. You can do that now. You can stand in the middle of the street; in the middle of these giant avenues and take photographs now. You could do that before but you didn’t have as much time. You definitely couldn’t do that before during rush hour. We used to have rush hour. We have rush hour now but only kind of. The traffic isn’t bumper to bumper at rush hour. I’ve driven around the city only a couple of times since March. The traffic is almost welcome; it means our city is alive. Some people say our city is finished; that we won’t recover this time. I find this hard to believe. The people who root, quietly, for the demise of New York City forget that the city isn’t just an idea. It’s an actual place. People live here; people have lived here. People are living here.

Thursday, August 13th, 2020 - The Memorandum: Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks’ memo offers temporary relief for tenants, and clarity for landlords. by Jordan Myers

The Memorandum, dated August 12th, 2020, and signed by the Chief Administrative Judge, Lawrence K. Marks, of New York State’s Unified Court System, and which the New York County Lawyers Association sent to its members earlier this afternoon, helps everyone. In brief, tenants have gained time; and landlords have gained clarity.

While the nuances and caveats concerning the newly-amended procedures for administrating commercial and residential landlord/tenant matters in New York State are extensive, this much is clear: their impact is felt most immediately by residential tenants: no one will be evicted from their home before October 1st, 2020.

For tenants who have been calling upon Governor Cuomo to cancel rent and/or extend the stay on evictions past the previously set (and fast approaching) August 20th date, this new memorandum creates a window for a sigh of relief, even if only a small one.

For landlords, the Memorandum, though broadly, does outline the steps that they can and cannot take against tenants who have fallen behind on their rent obligations. More specifically, if the landlord had initiated an eviction action before March 17th, 2020; then the landlord has an opportunity to utilize the Court to summon their tenants into a virtual conference with the Court. However, if the landlord had initiated an eviction action after March 17th, 2020, then they’ll just have to wait –––– as per Chief Judge Marks’ memorandum, those cases have been suspended.

The text of the introductory paragraph of the Memorandum appears below, while the document, in its entirety, can be read on the New York County Lawyers’ Association’s website.

___________________________

“In light of recent revisions in statewide restrictions on the filing and prosecution of eviction matters in New York State arising during the course of the Covid-19 public health emergency, attached please find a copy of AO/160/20 (Attachment A), which amends the temporary protocol for handling of those proceedings in several significant respects. In brief: (1) eviction proceedings filed on or after March 17, 2020 continue to be suspended; (2) cases filed before March 17 may proceed; (3) residential eviction cases filed before March 17 ––– including cases where a warrant of eviction has already issued but not been executed ––– must be conferenced before a judge before any further action is taken, and no outstanding or new residential warrants of eviction may be executed prior to October 1, 2020; and (d) commercial evictions may proceed without a conference. The order is described in further detail below.

___________________________

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020. by Jordan Myers

Artie makes no promises. The stars, two shooting / at night it’s cold; the first breath of fall.

Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - A precarious city from afar & tears of joy at Jack’s Wife Freda up close. by Jordan Myers

One question that I have had, often, of late, is this: has New York City ever been in a more precarious state.

The articles describing the downfall of the city are being published in droves:

New York Times – Retail Chains Abandon Manhattan: ‘It’s Unsustainable’ 

Fox News - American taxpayers footing NYC's bill to house the homeless in boutique hotels

Bloomberg –New York and San Francisco Can’t Assume They’ll Bounce Back. 

In March and April few were writing about a city that would never recover. The national focus and narrative was different. Here was the novel coronavirus, wreaking havoc on a city that was woefully unprepared for its arrival. Yet, although we acted late ––– with our mayor telling us to go on about our regular lives (even through the first half of March), when we did act, we acted fast.

Our governor asked that we go on P.A.U.S.E. (Policies - Assure - Uniform - Safety - (for) Everyone), and we did –––– we sheltered in place. We stocked up and stayed home. Or we got out of the city for a while. We applauded essential workers, clinking and clanking wooden spoons and metal pots and cast irons pans together from our fire escapes ––– or through the cracked open windows of our apartments every evening at 7:00pm. And we watched, in shock and horror and sadness as the number of confirmed cases and deaths steadily increased. Of course, some of us weren’t lucky enough to just watch. We lost some twenty thousand of our friends and family members and loved ones. And of those who lost loved ones, we took time, and we still are taking time, to grieve.

In June we spoke in words and phrases consisting of key markers and measures, attempting to make sense of stages and progressions, which, upon reflection, simply did not make sense: Phase I means construction workers (I thought they had already gone back to work?); Phase II means retailers (which is different from a grocery store or a drug store), offices, and outdoor dining. And Phase III was supposed to mean indoor dining, at fifty percent capacity, but that, as yet, will have to wait.

To write of the downfall of the great metropolis from the perspective of a major media corporation makes sense: make it good, and make it sensational. Infrastructures must careen and crash; revenue ––– projected as well as actual –––must plummet; storefronts had better be vacant; unemployment had better skyrocket; and landlords and tenants had better duel and dance a one-two step of missed rents and pending evictions if the illusion of a destroyed and forgotten city is to be upheld.

When New York is written about through the lens of a nation that’s struggling to find itself; while rebuilding its identity in the wake of a massive and steadily growing call for greater justice, equality, and accountability, it’s just easier to leave the entire city for the birds.

These are the giants who loom above our Manhattan streets: The New York Times: 242 West 41st Street. CNN: 10 Columbus Circle. Fox News: 1211 Avenue of the Americas. CBS: 51 West 52nd Street. NBC: 30 Rockefeller Center. Bloomberg News: 731 Lexington Avenue. And the list goes on. In some respects, we need these giants (even Fox News!). We need them because they can crank and churn out stories about our city and broadcast those stories to the entire nation and the world. Day in day out, they’re painting the picture for the nation of what goes on within and throughout our streets, which gives people something to chew on and consider about New York, New York. And in that respect, we’re always a part of the national conversation, and often heading the table. But this much is clear: if you paint too broadly; if you churn out too quickly; and if you showcase too indiscriminately, too often, you’ll either overlook, or otherwise misdraw the truth.

With my entire heart, I miss the New York that I lived in this past January and February. It felt pristine; we felt untouchable; our streets and subways were overflowing and crowded; and rush hour was actually a thing. But the reality, we all know, was different from the perception. Even before the end of March, and April, the luxury condos that were sprinting toward the sky; altering Manhattan’s skyline; and hovering, precariously over Central Park as well as the avenues and streets of Midtown Manhattan, were nearly deserted.

The luxury market was tapping out. Billions of dollars worth of real estate had been built to attract foreign investors, but the Russian oligarchs and the Chinese billionaire moguls, as well as investors throughout the world who were previously keen on New York’s luxury residential real estate market, were no longer eating the cake. And the people who were and are living here, either couldn’t afford to live in these places ––– or simply chose to spend their money somewhere else, or save.

Here is one reason why independent publishing is needed: I cried today while standing outside of Jack’s Wife Freda at 224 Lafayette Street. I wept, quietly and softly to myself, tears of gratitude, as the waiter who took my to-go order, Chulo, was kind and caring, and cheerful and attentive, and encouraging and humorous; and because he kept refilling the glass of water, which I hadn’t asked for, though I was, nonetheless, oh so thankful to have while I waited.  

Precarious means it’s not over yet. It means we could fall, but it also means we could rise again. It means that we could actually create a city that’s more beautiful, heartfelt, and compassionate –––– one where the car horns keep honking (I miss that sound!), but also one where it’s not impossible to find a place to live without demonstrating that you make 40 times the monthly rent. A city where people work together and look out for each other more often. A city that the titans who blast out the images and stories that describe what our city feels like won’t be able to capture; but that’s okay and here’s why: that city has already arrived. You just have to be here, to feel it.

- Isaac Myers III

Monday, August 10, 2020 - On Coffee & Tea: O Cafe - 482 Sixth Avenue (West 12th Street). by Jordan Myers

The first coffee shop that I ever fell in love with stands at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 12th Street.

It’s named O Cafe, but I call it O Cafe My Cafe; in homage, slightly, to the Walt Whitman poem: O Captain my Captain!

Although O Cafe is the first coffee shop that ever held my heart, it took years (nearly a decade) before I realized that I was in love.

I must have first set foot in O Cafe (My Cafe) on some afternoon or early evening in late August of 2011. That summer, a few days before Hurricane Irene, I had moved to New York and was set to begin classes within the New School’s MFA program.

Distinctly I remember the many transportation mistakes that I made over those first few months in New York. Here’s one: When I was first living in New York I was living in Harlem with my uncle. On the evening of our orientation, which had been pushed back by a week because of Hurricane Irene, my uncle gave me clear and precise directions for how to get downtown from where he lived, 148th Street and Lennox: Take the 3 train.

This was easy enough. The last stop on the 3 was (and is) 148th Street, so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t make the mistake of heading uptown when I meant to head downtown –––– go south, check. I got that part right.

Here’s what I missed: over and over again I checked the address for the building within the New School’s campus where orientation would be held: 66 West 12th Street. Got it, check. 66 West 12th Street, roger. Sixty-six. West. Twelfth Street, copy.

Fifteen minutes later I found myself walking around Lincoln Center, and wondering why the New School’s campus wasn’t nearby. Here’s why: I was looking for 12 West 66th Street!

Maybe this was my first ride ever in a New York yellow-cab: I promptly raised my arm at one of those forever long blocks near Lincoln Center and hailed a cab. At some point I told the driver that I was looking for the New School, and that “it should be somewhere near here,” –––– “Not far from NYU,” I explained.

I can’t remember whether he told me to check the address again, or whether I checked the address again by my own volition; regardless, upon reflection, I knew that I was had, and I found out how.

I know that I didn’t visit O Cafe that night; I was rushed and hurrying into orientation, so I couldn’t have popped in for a tea. There was no time.

But maybe it was a week later; on a Tuesday or a Wednesday evening, sometime around seven in the evening, before an 8:00pm workshop with Elaine Equi or a seminar with Robert Polito. I must have walked in, and not known what to order. This was before I had been introduced to the espresso ––– cappuccinos and lattes were still foreign to me.

All I know for sure is that the first time that I stepped into O Cafe, I was twenty-four and wholly fresh-faced to New York, New York. Here was that city –––– live and up close; and there was my twenty-four-year-old-self –––– curious; excited, and not nearly as prepared as I thought I was for the journey that rested upon the horizon, of which I was just getting my first taste.

Nine years later I can feel and make sense of what happened; and can articulate why I fell in love.

O Cafe My Cafe became a home. I was living with my uncle for the entire first semester and missed having my own place. I didn’t know Harlem, or any other place in the city well, but the corner of West 12th Street and Sixth Avenue became a landing space, a point of stability and consistency.

I must have gone in before class once, and then made a point to go in, again and again, as those first days and weeks and months of my life in New York slipped by. Gradually, I must have grown accustom to ordering a hot tea and finding a place to sit within the cafe –––– which has expanded since 2011.

I must have fallen in love with sitting near the front of the place, by the giant windows, and watching the men and women ––– and on occasion, some of which were my fellow classmates (and professors) drift by as they’d walk north and south along Sixth Avenue.

I must have loved writing and reading poems for class there. I must have loved seeing the same baristas and ordering my go-to beverage, which had to have been a green tea, of a variety of which I simply cannot recall.

Sunday, August 9, 2020 - Fiction Sundays: Jeff Haber “Nobody in a Land of Dripping Green.” - from Issue No. 5 - Autumn 2018.

Photography by Adrian Moens - January, 2019. Jamaica, Queens.

Jeff Haber’s “Nobody in a Land of Dripping Green” is a sprint of a short story. And like a sprint, while you’re in the midst of it, you’re not thinking about breathing; your breath; or how to keep enough air in your lungs to carry you over a great and spanning distance. Instead, you’re just moving –––– as fast as you can –––to the endpoint.

One thing that Haber’s story does well relates with its ability to capture and include detailed descriptions of small moments in time –––– moments, which at first glance, may seem unimportant and forgettable, but after further reflection, actually mean quite a bit.

Even while in the midst of a sprint; Haber slows down for just along enough to show us, for instance, how coffee is made:

“I use a rag to pick up the pot and pour the scalding water into the cups, and Dana stirs the coffee until all the particles disappear.”

At times, these small, yet important descriptions are paired with gigantic questions, the type of which, loom over us all:

 “I watch a lizard crawl up the column with the bullet holes and wonder when I’ll die.”

And while sprinting through the present, the story’s narrator also carries us into the future; once we get there, we move just as quickly.

“A month from now I will eat lunch with my dad at Georgia Diner on Queens Blvd to talk about the Philippines. He’ll get meatloaf, and me, tuna salad on rye with french fries. We will walk around the block, each smoking a Korean cigarette, and he will say “These burn quick don’t they.”

______________________

We stop at a roadside fruit vendor on the long drive from the small airport in Butuan.

The rain taps on the wood of the stand. Dana and I wait in the mud while her dad gets three red plastic bags full of produce, including durian. When we first enter through the gate at her grandma’s I notice a rusty sign hanging from the wall that surrounds the property. I ask Dana about it but she doesn’t know. After a dinner of fresh fish, backyard-slaughtered lechón, the fruits, and rice, Dana and I remain at the table with her grandma. Everyone else leaves.

Dana mentions the sign and her grandma explains, “I was in the logging industry, and liked business. My husband did not. He was a lawyer. But we never quarreled. We respected and supported each other, and it was not easy. There was a miniature ‘Vietnam’ here for a time. You saw the bullet holes on the column in front of the house. But we got through it together, and we sent the children away because it became too dangerous. I remember, calling them in America. To hear that they were waking up when it was still dark and driving them- selves in the cold to work in hospitals, made me upset. But better that way there than dead here.” She gets up slowly, and Vilma steps forward from the shadows to walk with her upstairs to bed. Under which, Dana tells me, is a loaded AK-47.

Before I came to this giant house in the province of Mindanao, I knew her grandma as a church goer and gambler who lived in a two-bedroom apartment off Parsons Blvd with her daughter and son-in-law, at the same complex as Dana and her family. During parties she sat in a straight-back chair, wearing lots of gold jewelry and watching everyone while petting the shihtzus. I gave her a kiss on the cheek for the first couple years, until Dana showed me how to properly greet and bless a Filipino Lola. Take her hand, bow slightly, and touch her knuckles to your forehead. No one knows her age. And here, with her half-wild dogs, red palm trees, fighting cocks, help, and authority she looks like the younger woman who exists in the pictures on the wall behind her desk in the massive living room. Standing fabulously stoic next to her husband in his dark green three-piece Gucci suit. Laughing over a martini with a local diplomat. She is too wise for the slowness, misery, and loneliness of physical decay, but nonetheless succumbs.

Dana and her family go to sleep but I don’t because I feel like drinking. I grab a bottle of San Miguel and two glasses and sit down at the plastic table on the patio with the men who stand guard through the night. They share one glass among the four of them, pouring, drinking, and passing. I try to speak English with the oldest guy, Al. He teaches me a few Bisaya phrases, but I forget them just as soon as I hear them. He has a warm cowboy’s face with hard-earned wrinkles. We listen to Christian Rock on a transistor radio and smoke my Korean Marlboro cigarettes.

In the morning, Dana slides open the glass door that separates the room we slept in from the one with her sleeping mom, dad, and brother, which is filled with the noise of the air-conditioner. I tip-toe right behind her in a t-shirt, black jeans, and flip flops with socks, for the bugs. She opens a heavy wooden door. Master is snoozing on the pink rug like a smelly old baby. The pungent odor of his white fur reaches my nose as I step over him and gently close the door. Dana pets his head and whispers “good morning.” He barely moves, looks at us warily, and returns to his dreams. Leading a pack of ten dogs must be tiring. He seems to know something we don’t. We wave goodbye to him as if to a withered onion and descend a suspended staircase that spills into a dim hallway the length of a bowling alley.

All along the hallway are big rooms no one has slept in for years. One of them even has a sixties style circular bed, perfect for a soft-core porno. Many years ago, people stayed here because it was the closest hotel-of-sorts near the port at the bay. Businessmen, travelers, prospectors, murderers, and thieves. Dana’s parents told me the house is haunted by the ghosts of these former lodgers.

At the end of the hallway we cross through another door and go down two more flights. Everything is still and cool and a little dusty. Like a museum. We traverse the length of the house in the opposite direction to the kitchen. I am irrelevant and obedient in this atmosphere, my flip flops sound cute on the glossy, smooth stone floor.

Nobody is in the kitchen. Dana fills a heavily-used pot with water and places it on the stove. I find two mugs, instant coffee, and a spoon. We wait for the water to boil and Sai Sai enters, clutching the doll Dana’s mom brought her from America. She’s the child of the house. Marcia, the eldest female worker, is a few seconds behind. Sai Sai tries to tell me something, almost confidentially, about the doll. Dana translates, “You look like my doll’s friend, Bill-Bill.” He’s the ghost only Sai Sai can see. They say she talks to him.

I use a rag to pick up the pot and pour the scalding water into the cups, and Dana stirs the coffees until all the particles disappear. Kittens gather at Marcia’s feet. She shuffles in her slippers across the floor, pries open the busted door to the backyard and kicks and claps at them, giggling. One of them tries to stay, meowing, but Sai Sai darts over and shoves it outside. “It is so early, why are you awake?” Marcia asks us in English. It sounds rhetorical.

“I need to smoke,” I say to Dana. So we walk back to the other side of the house, this time slowly to avoid spillage, reach the patio, and sit on the plastic chairs which are glazed with dew.

The cigarettes are made in Lithuania, burn too fast, and taste much lighter than the Camel non-filters I normally smoke. But they were cheap at the duty free in Incheon. As dawn peels away the grayness of the sky, we soak up the racket made by the hidden birds of the jungle, who scream like a chorus of forgotten souls being stretched on a medieval rack ––– strained waves from different places, possessing a hypnotic and deliberate rhythm. I watch a lizard crawl up the column with the bullet holes and wonder when I’ll die. I envision a weed at the edge of the tarmac at JFK, and the eyeball of a subway rat, and then I let them wilt and scurry. The spookiness is beautiful and so is Dana, drinking coffee in her nightgown.

A month from now I will eat lunch with my dad at Georgia Diner on Queens Blvd to talk about the Philippines. He’ll get meatloaf, and me, tuna salad on rye with french fries. We will walk around the block, each smoking a Korean cigarette, and he will say “These burn quick don’t they.” After we shake hands, I’ll watch him get in his car and head to Long Island before the snow gets worse. Two weeks later he will be dead from a heart attack.

He believed that having kids counteracted the inevitable. That replacing your disappearing elders with brand new humans is simply part of the life cycle of brief joy and then loss. But I don’t know. Dreams are not meant to last longer than you are willing to fight for them, and fuck all the rest.

We finish our coffee and hand the cups to Marcia in the kitchen. Dana’s grandma calls her over to her desk. She tells her to tell me not to give the guys alcohol, as it could impair their ability to keep us all alive if a threat violates the perimeter of the compound. Her grandma says this without lifting her eyes from the stack of browned papers containing all information related to her land and its ownership once she dies, which she continuously edits and revises.

________________________

I’m riding the N6 bus on Hillside Ave at the fringes of Jamaica, staring at Caribbean restaurants I want to eat in, and trekking out to Elmont for my dad’s birthday. His actual date of birth was three days ago on Thursday, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to go see him because Jewish cemeteries are closed on Saturday, if they have gates. I wonder if he cares. Certainly, the cold and speechless November ground doesn’t, under which he rests. His head- stone reads, Best Father Brother Uncle Friend. Centered, in a list format. My aunt, who stole all his money, chose this coffee mug language. The empty plot next to him says much more. My mom bought that, even though they were divorced for almost twenty years and he owed her over $130,000. “So he won’t have to sleep next to a stranger,” she said.

I jump off the bus and skate half a mile down the road on the pebble-ridden sidewalk and enter the labyrinth of dead Jews. I know exactly where to go, and when I get there it’s the same as always. I don’t know what to do or say. I tell the dirt, stones, and dusk that I’ve got a new job at a law firm in Midtown and am making just enough to get by. I say, “I didn’t get you anything because you can’t accept gifts. They don’t mean anything to you. My appearance is the gift, and I know that isn’t much but here I am.” I kick the dirt to make it neater, remove a few weeds from the bush on top of him, and place a rock on the headstone. Then stare down at the ground. A Super 8 film reel plays behind my eyes, showing me the current state of his body, which has been laying here for almost two years.

Not long ago, he was an incarnate mix of Roy Orbison, Charlie Sheen, Richard Benjamin from the film adaptation of Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus, Willy Loman, Robert De Niro’s character in A Bronx Tale, and a tinge of Ralphie from A Christmas Story. The work- ing man, with a Brooklyn accent as thick as his ignorance. He made his name in the garment district by buying and selling odd-lots of discount women’s clothing to TJ Maxx, Conway, and Marshalls. After 9/11, he said “They don’t need guys like me no more,” and eventually found middle income success by selling service contracts for the placement of clothing donation bins on private property throughout the tri-state area. He called himself “the bin guy” and scoffed at anything even remotely “hoity-toity.”

My dad grew up near Avenue J and E 15th street around the corner from DiFara’s and was a wise-guy teenager eating pizza at that place when it opened in 1964. Whenever we went there he’d tell me about how Harvey Keitel was a regular fixture on the corner, and describe the characters who hung around Artie’s Pool Hall, beneath what is now a Flushing Bank. His dad moved the family to a house on Long Island in ’72 and he never lived in Brooklyn again, but eternally praised his childhood there as the happiest days of his life.

I look straight ahead at the countless rows and remember last November, when Dana and I went to a cemetery on Staten Island to visit Alfred Chester. A crazy bald gay Jewish writ- er from Midwood who died in obscurity the same year my dad left the neighborhood.

BQE, Verrazano, Exit 7. I still have my car. We locate the site using a map the cemetery office sent me as an email attachment. The marker is lopsided and disjointed by a tree root. I brush away the various pieces of garbage and plastic bags that litter the ground in front of the tall stone, and then wash it with soap and water. I introduce myself and Dana to this Beloved Brother and Uncle, whose weird stories make me less afraid, and thank Alfred for being a writer. We turn away and get back in the car. The gray sky presses on the windshield. I roll the window down a crack, light a Camel, and faintly hear a little girl’s voice traveling on the wind.

Saturday, August 8, 2020 - James Baldwin’s & Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s insight for Huey Lewis and the News. by Jordan Myers

Have you ever heard of Gaia? It’s a website. You can watch yoga videos there. You can follow along with the yoga videos as you watch, but you do not have to. I signed up for a seven day free trial three days ago; though it might actually be an unusual number of days –––– eleven or twelve.

Or I may be remembering the price of a monthly membership: $11.99 if you elect to be billed monthly, or about two dollars less if you sign up for an annual plan.

Gaia is new age. Its goals, as far as I can gather, are well-intentioned and important: transcendence, enlightenment, healing (individual as well as societal); and harmony (on the inside, as well as on the outside). I skipped past the yoga videos. I meditate; but I haven’t reached a point in my life wherein I’m ready and wanting to devote the time and energy that it takes to begin a yoga practice.

With yoga I imagine, one has to ––– like most anything else –––– start from somewhere. Over the last three or four years, with meditation I have found and am developing a deeper and deeper way in. But yoga is different. I can’t find an entry point, nor have I found a motivation for looking for one. I run. And I meditate.

When it comes to physical and mental and spiritual and emotional exercise and development I’m either moving forward or sitting still. I do like the idea of yoga ––– a practice that I’ve long-envisaged as a halfway point in between running and meditation: paying close attention to the body while moving the body, slightly, and not quite sitting completely still. If I do find the entry point into yoga, I’ll first break the news here.

Gaia is more than yoga videos. It’s a place on the internet for people who have grown tired of fighting and scraping by; who have also become (even if only a little bit) disenchanted with the motivational coach-speak of personal development circles; and who also ––– and perhaps this is the most important: have not quite found a religion ––– a spiritual home, in which they can comfortably sink into.

Gaia is new age, but Gaia is NOT a spiritual home. It’s a website on the internet; that’s all. It’s not anything to get wrapped up in or washed away by. One cannot rely upon the videos and articles on Gaia’s website to direct and affirm one’s emotional, mental, or spiritual path. It’s not what the website is there for. And any website which purports to be on the internet for such purpose –––– I would run from, and fast.

Gaia features videos created by people who believe in the power unconditional love, which is a mighty force. A mighty force indeed. A force so mighty that in fact, very clearly I can draw a line between what my life felt like (and looked like) before I had known how to consistently (and at will) experience and enjoy its power.

There is a Huey Lewis and the News Song from 1985: “The Power of Love,” which knows this to be true:

"The power of love is a curious thing
make one man weep, make another man sing
Change a hawk to a little white dove
That’s the power of love.”

Through quoting Huey Lewis and the News, I jest, but only kind of. As it is true, indeed, that the power of unconditional love is, in fact, a curious thing. This much I know for sure: were it not for the power of unconditional love, I would not be here this evening, writing these words.

This is one of the many vagaries and joys of writing: to write at all is an act of love. To get words down is to express that one’s heart is beating; that there is air and breath in the lungs, and that the mind is working through something ––– anything at all. It doesn’t have to be important. It’s love all the same. And even if the words that appear are overflowing with hate, the fact that they’re there at all ––– means love is at work, and a transformation is possible.

This is what Huey Lewis and the News got right: the power of love is a curious thing. And this is where their 1985 smash hit left off: love is curious because its source, as well as its application, are often wildly misunderstood and misapplied. This is one reason why enhancing love with unconditional love can be advantageous.

To go further, I need the help from two of the greatest minds of the last one hundred years: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Baldwin. About three months ago I was standing in my apartment and looking out the window, where two helicopters were hovering –––– and for a while ––– above Midtown Manhattan. Our nation (again) was waking up! Enough (again) had become enough.

Through conversations with family and friends and within my own social circles, one common theme that resurfaced, again and again, was the idea that this time –––– things were different. Things had to change -–––and fast. This idea ––– that things were different this

time ––– was a speculation. And like all speculations, the depth of its truth, was only limited by how deeply we believed in its premise. And we, of course, “we” is relative.

Here’s what I knew then, and what I still know now: this time, for me personally, it’s been different. Here’s why: (the power of) unconditional love.

This is what I know and can feel within myself now, which I did not know (nor could feel within myself) when I first heard that Colin Kapernick was taking a knee: Unconditional love is more of a frequency ––– a vibration that one holds and embodies ––– as opposed to any one act (or series of acts), or any one thought (or series of thoughts).

It’s a state. It just is. And once you learn to access this frequency and hold this vibration –––– the frequency and vibration of unconditional love ––– you can watch your world start to change.

Personally, I do not know whether it is possible to reach this frequency and to hold this vibration (of unconditional love), without meditation. Personally, I know that I do not have a chance, at all, to hold this vibration without meditation. The beauty of all of this is that it requires a practice.

This is not a state that is reached once, and then checked off of a list. Instead, the only reason that I can spend this evening, writing these words, and expressing these feelings and ideas, is because I have spent three or four years growing and developing my meditation practice, and working with an incredible therapist and healer, who has revealed to me the truth of my own power, and the value of learning to consistently hold this vibration ––– the vibration of unconditional love.

Perhaps other people can get by without meditating and still embody unconditional love. I cannot.

Let me be clear: it is not that I become harmful, or vengeful, or hateful, or selfish when I am not embodying this state. In fact, I may be nicer to other people when I am not embodying this state. Why? This is because embodying the state of unconditional love includes holding a love, respect, and honor for myself. Saying no when I mean no. And yes when I mean yes. And not appeasing or pleasing for the mere sake of keeping a farcical and fraught sense of peace.

Gaia is new age. There is a lot on their website. I will never watch all of it. But if you click around for a while and watch a few of the videos there, you’ll come across strategies and tips for experiencing healing and empowerment, as well as entry-points for learning to embody and hold the frequency of, of course, unconditional love.

Recently, I was reading Notes of a Native Son, and came across a powerful paragraph regarding the realities of the power of unconditional love. And two weeks ago, I read a piece from The New Yorker’s July 27th, 2020 archival issue “Voices of American Dissent,” which features an important quote from Dr. King.

I will present a passage from Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (“Everybody’s Protest Novel”), and then I will leave you with a quotation from The New Yorker piece, which originally appeared in the magazine’s August 29th, 1964 issue, and was written by Calvin Trillin: “Letter from Jackson - Plane to Mississippi: An encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr.” With my entire heart, until next time.  

- Isaac Myers III

_______________________

“But unless one’s ideal of society is a race of neatly analyzed, hard-working ciphers, one can hardly claim for the protest novels the lofty purpose they claim for themselves or share the present optimism concerning them. They emerge for what they are: a mirror of our confusion, dishonesty, panic, trapped and immobilized in the sunlit prison of the American dream. They are fantasies, connecting nowhere with reality, sentimental; in exactly the same sense that such movies as The Best Years of Our Lives or the works of Mr. James M. Cain are fantasies. Beneath the dazzling pyrotechnics of these current operas one may still discern, as the controlling force, the intense theological preoccupations of Mrs. Stowe, the sick vacuities of The Rover Boys. Finally, the aim of the protest novel becomes something very closely resembling the zeal of those alabaster missionaries to Africa to cover the nakedness of the natives, to hurry them into the pallid arms of Jesus and thence into slavery. The aim has now become to reduce all Americans to the compulsive, bloodless dimensions of a guy named joe.”

- James Baldwin.

_______________________

“Across the aisle from King, there happened to be sitting a stocky, nice-looking young white man with a short haircut and wearing Ivy League clothes. He looked as if he might have been a responsible member of a highly regarded college fraternity six or eight years ago and was now an equally responsible member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce of a Southern city that prided itself on its progress. About halfway between Atlanta and Montgomery, the plane’s first stop, he leaned across the aisle and politely said to King, in a thick drawl, “Excuse me. I heard them calling you Dr. King. Are you Martin Luther King?”

“Yes, I am,” said King politely.

“I wonder if I could ask you two questions,” the young man said, and Young, Vivian, and Less, all of whom were seated behind King, leaned forward to hear the conversation. “I happen to be a Southerner, but I also happen to consider myself a Christian. I wonder, do you feel you’re teaching Christian love?

“Yes, that’s my basic approach,” King said. “I think love is the most durable element in the world, and my whole approach is based on that.”

“Do you think the people you preach to have a feeling of love?” the young man asked.

“Well, I’m not talking about weak love,” King explained. “I’m talking about love with justice. Weak love can be sentimental and empty. I’m talking about the love that is strong, so that you love your fellow-men enough to lead them to justice.”

. . .

“Well, I think you are causing violence,” the young man said.

“Would you condemn the robbed man for possessing the money to be robbed?” asked King. “Would you condemn Christ for having a commitment to truth that drove men to crucify him? Would you condemn Socrates for having the views that forced the hemlock on him? Society must condemn the robber, not the man he robs.”

Friday, August 7, 2020 - Postcards from New York. by Jordan Myers

Hi! The theaters are closed (emphasis mine) but that doesn’t stop people from walking around as though everything is open all the same.

It’s not a lot of people, but during the days it feels almost like it could be a lot of people. Please send Covid-19 vaccine right away. New York is sleeping and greatly missing its nights and days of insomnia.

Everyone is eating outside. It’s funny: when you walk down the sidewalk now you walk right by everyone’s brunch, or lunch, or dinner.

Everyone says this is safer than dining inside (because of the virus). It must be true, but this part of our city’s new set-up does seem unsafe: to have forks and knives (and spoons) and asparagus and steak and eggplants and escargot so close to accelerating and decelerating engines ––– also cyclists and pedestrians (who are on their phones and not really keeping an eye out in front of them).

I am doing my best to not sleep and stay awake for our city, but I have to rest my eyes as well. Going to bed now. Visit anytime. Now is the time to buy theater tickets (if you can).

Thursday, August 6, 2020 - “What is a voice? A voice is a sound.” by Jordan Myers

What is a voice? A voice is a sound.

Once a voice becomes a memory,
it’s heard across Fourteenth Street

at dusk. Once dusk falls across

Fourteenth Street the voice becomes

an illusion. The illusion becomes

the voice, which finds its way home.

Home is a memory. It’s also a sound.

A memory fills the room; it also

fills a voice. The voice carries outdoors;

it echoes through the wilderness. June

or December ––– the voice carries

through the space in between the pines

all the same. The voice can spill into tears.

Tears evolve; they become weeping. Weeping

gets swept across West 73rd Street. Street sweepers

push the weeping away from 8:00am to 9:30am.

This happens every Monday and Thursday.

The weeping swept away in the morning light

creates a prayer. The prayer feels like a silence,

but also sounds like a voice: Yours –––– maybe.