Alone and Not Alone Read online

but I’m glad he did, because then I could see it

  in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen

  and buy a postcard of it and send it to my wife:

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” She being

  Birgitte Hohlenberg and the painting of her.

  I don’t know which of them I love more.

  Both are bright, calm, and sweet—

  she had a way with beauty. You see it

  in the brown satin dress with fluffy sleeves

  and big white collar edged in lace, the hat

  a light white puff around her head

  and neatly tied beneath the chin,

  her curly chestnut hair an echo

  of the ribbon curling around the brim

  and returning over the shoulders

  to a loose knot at the collarbone,

  her slender neck rising to a face whose high color elevates

  how interested she is to be sitting there

  looking straight at you without the slightest hint of carnality.

  Just being in her presence would be enough

  for me, now, at my age.

  When did I send this card? August 15,

  2001. That long ago. Before the Towers came down—

  before a lot of things came down. But she

  has stayed up, on my wife’s dresser. How

  she died I don’t know, or at what age.

  C. A. Jensen lived to 78, a long life

  back then. Good for him.

  I hope he was as happy

  as he makes me every time I see his picture.

  I hope you see it too.

  Pep Talk

  Dinner is a damned nice thing

  as are breakfast and lunch

  when they’re good and with

  the one you love.

  That’s a kind of dancing

  sitting down and not moving

  but what dances exactly

  we do not know nor

  need to know,

  it is dancing us around

  and nothing is moving

  in the miracle of dinner

  breakfast and lunch

  and all the in-betweens

  that give us pep.

  Preface to Philosophy

  An ugly day it must have been, when the first man stood face to face with the idea of the worthlessness and absurdity of life.

  —W. MACNEILE DIXON

  But it wasn’t such an ugly day when I read Dixon’s remark, at the age of fifteen, because I had already been charmed by the idea of the worthlessness and absurdity of life, which seemed far more sophisticated than the idea that life is meaningful and wonderful.

  Now as I read it again for the first time in fifty-four years, what strikes me is not the truth of his statement, but the image of an early man’s finding himself “face to face” with an idea; that is, with a ghostly being three times his size, wavering before him and communicating without speaking. Of course this is not what Dixon meant to convey; he was using “face to face” metaphorically, as an expressive device. But now I am face to face with his metaphor.

  However, I can escape it by trying to picture the room in which I first read his remark, my bedroom, with its front window and side window. Sitting at my desk, I could have gazed out the front window and across the street to the window of my friend, from whom I had bought the book in which Dixon’s writing appears, but if I was propped up in bed I could not have seen out the window directly behind me, whose curtain I usually kept drawn so that anyone stepping onto our porch would not glance in and see the back of my head. I did not want anyone to look at the back of my head.

  As for its having been an ugly day, who knows? That is, “ugly” meaning what? Stormy? Dark? Probably the latter. Again he is speaking metaphorically, referring here to the psychological weather of the human nearly struck down by an idea, as I am struck, though not down, by the idea of a dark cloud in a protohuman shape fifteen feet high that descended and stood before the man and emanated the idea of the worthlessness and absurdity of life.

  What made the man believe it? And then go on, as I have gone on?

  You Know What

  Every once in a while

  it occurs to me

  that I am a vibration

  as hard as a living creature

  and that that creature is me.

  It occurs when I look out of my eyes

  at it and it skulks away

  into the dark area.

  But you know what?

  Take your philosophy

  and put it in a paper bag

  and carry it to a destination

  and open it and see

  if it looks back at you

  and if it does

  then you are occurring

  because it is occurring too.

  I learned that in my childhood

  and I did have a childhood it was better than most

  but I got nervous

  when my mother got nervous

  and my father was always quietly nervous.

  We were a bundle of secret nerves sometimes

  and at others we had quite a good time

  especially my mother and me.

  We would sing duets in the car

  in harmony.

  Sometimes she’d take the alto sometimes I would.

  It was oddly satisfying

  to come to a stop sign

  and stop.

  Lithuania

  wasn’t something I had heard of

  and Stalin was I thought a cartoon character

  because he had only one name and a mustache.

  No one in America had a mustache

  because Hitler had had one and he

  wasn’t funny he was shouting

  and shaking his face around a tight nervous fit.

  Our family was a little nervous but not like that.

  He had a real problem we had a slight one.

  One day someone told me to relax.

  I didn’t know what they meant,

  I thought we were just the way we were.

  We had names and identities and we knew

  who each other was and what to say.

  So what is “relaxing”? It is turning

  into someone else in your own body

  which is what is happening every moment anyway

  but so slowly we can’t see it—

  in effect it isn’t occurring

  though really it is.

  A Bit about Bishop Berkeley

  Bishop Berkeley

  is fond of saying,

  in the middle of making a point,

  “This is obvious

  to anyone who takes a moment

  to examine it with an attentive mind.”

  Then he says

  “Abstract ideas do not exist,”

  which sounds odd

  until you see what he means

  by abstract

  and remember that he says

  that language makes everything unclear,

  though we need it

  to get what we want.

  He convinced investors

  to give him a tidy sum

  to open a school for colonial

  and Native American children,

  but the final funding fell through

  so he bought Rhode Island

  or a chunk of it

  and went back to England

  and told his investors,

  “Abstract ideas do not exist.”

  This is obvious.

  And oh, his name was George.

  The Step Theory

  An idea went by like a bird

  and a bird went by like a cloud

  and a cloud went by like a moment:

  this is the Step Theory of Reality

  and its by-product the Ziggurat Configuration.

  Then a bird went by like an idea—

  the idea of the Step Theory itself,

  for no one thinks of it anymore,

  because
its pieces lock together seamlessly,

  the way a play on words

  is just words and not just words

  at the same time, for a moment.

  It can’t come back

  because it never went anywhere,

  unlike a cloud that can’t come back

  because it went everywhere.

  And so we jump around and sputter,

  to the great amusement

  of our higher selves,

  the ones we can’t find,

  their laughter echoing forever

  in the few moments we have.

  That’s step 1.

  Now sweep idea, bird, and cloud

  into a little pile and put them in a box.

  (They will come in handy later.)

  For step 2 you must forget

  who you aren’t, that is,

  everyone else, even though you

  are part everyone else.

  This in itself is not difficult:

  you do it all the time

  when you’re not looking.

  What is difficult is what follows:

  you must make yourself

  as flat as a pancake

  and try to avoid having syrup

  poured onto you.

  Most people will not

  pour syrup onto a human pancake,

  but there are a few who would.

  Once you are flat, just lie there

  for a while. Look at those clouds

  and the bird that flew into the idea of them.

  Eventually the Ziggurat Configuration

  comes into play. The weather is hot and humid

  but the ziggurat keeps climbing itself

  until it gets to the top, then

  it comes back down, only to climb back up,

  and so on. I once had an aunt like this

  —there was no stopping her—

  her face in profile formed a ziggurat.

  We children put glasses of water

  on the steps, thus representing the soul

  without knowing that it takes a while

  to learn that we have one, but

  by that time the soul had vanished

  into the process of being itself,

  like the idea, the bird, and the cloud:

  song, song, and song.

  Step 3 is for later,

  but I can tell you now

  that it involves rolling green pastureland

  you step into but not onto

  and follow your nose,

  no cloud, no bird, no idea.

  My ’75 Chevy

  Out in the yard

  sits my 1975 Chevy pickup truck,

  repainted red with a white roof,

  body smooth, carburetor rebuilt, new tires,

  new dashboard, black leather seat covers,

  new floorboards, and two new side mirrors.

  In a timeless yard—

  it creates its own time zone. 1975.

  I can’t drive simultaneously in 1975 and 2012,

  but I do

  because when the truck goes forward

  I enter the sliding zone known

  as Miles Per Hour

  and I’m just someone in something red.

  For A.

  The little blue heron’s back again

  Was he here when

  Joe was here too

  with Bill and me and you

  when we were all just fifty?

  If the three of us add twenty

  we’ll get something unreal

  unlike what we are and feel

  which is what Joe

  couldn’t imagine and ever know:

  how my grandma said now and then

  “I’m in good shape for the shape I’m in.”

  Art Lessons

  Narrative Painting

  The Madonna never walks.

  The Portrait

  Bronzino did for the portrait what the portrait did for the sitter.

  Still Life

  The best still lifes have emptiness.

  The Self-Portrait

  The self-portrait did for the self what the self did for the portrait.

  Landscape

  Landscape is a window through which you see what you thought.

  Sculpture

  Don’t move.

  A Few Ideas about Rabbits

  It’s hard to understand what

  a rabbit is

  It lifts a paw

  and hesitates

  For a moment its nose

  and mouth are all cat

  and those eyes, so worried

  so harmless

  but it might scratch you

  accidentally

  and that camel back

  and tiger crouch

  ears of lemur

  perked up

  Mouse-kangaroo

  The rabbit runs around

  eating and doing arithmetic

  There is the story of the grateful king

  who offered his subject anything

  he wanted, and the subject said

  Take this chessboard and put

  a coin on the first square

  then double that amount for the second

  and so on, to which the king

  readily consented

  and when they counted

  it turned out to be

  a billion trillion coins

  (or something like that)

  more than the richest king

  could afford

  Imagine if the man had asked

  for rabbits

  Well that’s what Nature asked for.

  In Australia I think

  there’s an area that has

  ten rabbits per square yard

  Ah, we must shoot them

  cry certain Australians

  and others say No

  ship them to a place

  that has no rabbits

  But there’s a reason

  there are no rabbits there

  like at the North Pole

  or in the Gobi Desert

  or on Park Avenue

  Anyway I do not trust a rabbit

  because I have no idea

  what it is thinking

  I trust a worm because it isn’t thinking

  If rabbits could say

  “I will hop into this garden

  and eat the lettuce”

  I would like them more

  The Value of Discipline

  I am very disappointed in you, Myron.

  You are a very smart boy,

  and we had high hopes for you.

  But now this.

  I don’t know.

  Go to your room.

  Myron heads toward his room,

  but does his head hang low?

  No way!

  He is looking straight ahead

  and feeling a hot black liquid

  trickle through his heart.

  Great galleons

  bound through the rough seas

  and on them bearded men

  are shouting sailor things

  as if to the wind.

  Back in his room

  the objects look older.

  What joy to make them

  walk the plank!

  Avast! Avaunt! Splash! Garrrr!

  Pea Jacket

  Years ago I had an old pea jacket

  Slightly scruffy but not unclean

  was my overall look and I lacked

  the easy assurance that comes with money

  because I had very little

  It was okay, not having money

  I wasn’t starving or lacking anything I needed

  though by contemporary standards

  I should have been envious or angry

  I wasn’t

  All I cared about was my wife and friends and family

  Books writing perception great art and gigantic metaphysical questions floating in on good humor

  Society could take care of itself more
or less

  (It turned out less)

  and I was happy enough and eager

  I think what I mean is I was young

  so that no matter what anyone might think of my jacket

  I liked it it fit well and was warm in the New York winter

  collar turned up and hands snug in pockets

  It came from a secondhand clothing store

  at the corner of Bowery and Bleecker maybe it

  had belonged to a drunken sailor

  What do you do with a drunken sailor early in the morning?

  Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter!

  There was a label inside with his name and serial number scrawled on it

  It felt odd wearing his name I snipped it out

  I don’t have anything monumental or metaphoric to say about my jacket

  It’s just a pleasure to remember it and how good it felt on me

  Then one day I started wearing something else

  and a few years later I gave the jacket to someone I liked I don’t recall who

  The Ukrainian Museum

  Just walking into the new and beautifully designed Ukrainian Museum was a pleasure: varnished hardwood floors, white walls, clean lines, understated lighting, and the luxury of newness. An older Ukrainian Museum had been located in a second-floor apartment in a tenement building on Second Avenue, without even a sign outside, several rooms of dismal paintings in drab light; the one time I ventured in, there was not a single soul in the place, not even a guard. Twenty years later the museum moved a few blocks up the street to a space protected by two security checkpoints. I was greeted, if that is the word, by a woman who coldly asked me what I wanted. The two exhibition rooms were slightly larger than closets. Now, walking into this third incarnation made me feel so light and carefree that I had to be reminded to buy a ticket.