Sickness and Memory on the M104

False Truths That I Have Come to Hold Very Dear:


“The highest passion is spent on what is absolutely suspect.”
-Thomas Mann


"We begin to live when we have conceived life as a tragedy."
–William Butler Yeats


I've been sick all day today. Sick yesterday too. Sick since Sunday night. Maybe I should count it from Sunday afternoon when I was still sick with alcohol; or from Saturday night when I was sick enough to text Narc. Or from Thursday night when I was sick enough to get wasted the night before teaching and text Narc. The bottom line is that I'm sick and that I'm stuck going through my week like this.

Nevertheless, I spent over four hours today in the Performing Arts library trying to sketch out a paper topic. My presentation is tomorrow but I hardly feel any further along. I left the library at dusk. Three overstuffed bags weighed heavy on my shoulders as I exited onto Lincoln Plaza. The red neon light from the Vivian Beaumont seemed strange to me. Everything else was gray. Looking down, even my hands were gray; all gray except the tips of my fingers, which were pink from the cold (and the stale nailpolish that I desperately wanted to remove).

I walked across the plaza passing flattened silenced ponds and stone benches. On my head, Montserrat Caballe sang Donde lieta. I felt a slow drip in the back of my throat and a swelling behind my ears.

I crossed in front of the opera house. The last time I had been there was desperately waiting for Narc. I choked with sadness for all of it again.

Again.

Again aestheticizing myself and everything around me.

(I thought of Walter Pater and the "quickened life." Was I burning? Was I burning like a "hard gem-like flame?" Hardly...(although I was trying!))

("senza rancor?" yeah, right...)

I listened to the music, drowned in violins and soprano and the grayness of the evening (and the fantasy of drowning). But cynical reason was triumphant, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes at my own ridiculousness. Thank God for rational consciousness. I mean, c'mon... Boheme is hardly that profound. No more being a mermaid! And no more thinking of Narc, either!

I shifted my gaze to the left of the fountain and away from my waiting for Narc.

(Waiting...waiting...warten...Erwartung...(anticipation, right?))

I found another memory--A column against which I had been kissed in the snowfall of the winter of '98. Warm kisses, before a security guard asked us to move along. That was a magical night. (Not a magical man though).

Not worth dwelling on for more than a flash, so I walked past the fountain. Jets of water hung like glass suspended in air.

Forward.

Over the steps onto the street.

I moved towards the island on the edge of Broadway to wait for the bus. Where was I? "10-20-50" as B and I like to call it. I thought of that October afternoon (with the sweet dead taste of autumn) when we sat on that bench and together promised that no matter what happened, nor where our lives led, that we would meet each other in that very place, on that very day, on October 20th of 2050. We even promised that should one of us pass away, that we would be sure to leave explicit instructions for a close friend or relative to show up in our sted. God, that was only five years ago! It seems like a lifetime has passed. What a slow crawl fifty years can be!

Enough of that. That happiness is on the wind. I needed the bus. Turning my face to squint up Broadway brought back similarly cold mornings on the corner of 71st street, scanning Broadway to the north, while shifting my weight, uncomfortably heeled on the way to work at that music company. Glad that's over. No bus though.

Taxis were everywhere. Taxis. Taxis wove in and out and lurched towards me menacingly, like electric eels. Their yellow eyes slithered down inky streets as the grayness of dusk turned to blue.

The new condos across the street stood colorless. Cold and bleached and blank. A Bed, Bath & Beyond stands where there used to be Orloffs. How many mornings did my mom and I go for muffins before our Saturday operas? Not very many... We were usually running late. More often, we landed at Orloffs in the evenings. There we enjoyed overpriced salads, programs in hand, before picking up the car from an overpriced garage.

By then, "Mimi" had finished and the ensuing Quartet had begun. That was definitely Domingo...and Sherrill Milnes. (Ah! Both favorites!) But I couldn't guess the "Musetta." I remembered when that quartet was on our Opera Ensemble program. I think it was spring of my junior year. I wasn't a part of that number (still singing Mezzo then), but I'll never forget the "Musetta." She was overwhelming. I've heard that she's working as a cantor now and sings at a small Brooklyn Opera company.

Is that the 104? No...not yet. It's just the M7. Or is it the M10?

Oh yes! Remember the time I rode the M10 home from work? I thought it went further north, but it turns out that its final stop is just in front of Lincoln Plaza. That evening, for some reason, I was the only one on the bus. I moved to the front and made small talk with the bus driver for most of the ride. It turns out that we were both smokers and so we decided to light up on the bus. I felt like such an outlaw. It was delicious!

Glancing across the street and just to the south, I eyed Fiorello and Josephina. One sticky summer afternoon, B and I had gone to the movies at 63rd street but I felt really sick when we were leaving. I was so woozy that I thought I might faint. (When was that? The summer of 2001, maybe.) Anyway, he went into Fiorello and asked them for a glass of water and a washcloth for me. It was so sweet how he took care of me that day.

Josephina stands where there used to be a Hoolihans. VJ and I had dinner there on our very first social outing as roomates in September of 1997. We dressed up strange in costumes and did ourselves up in dramatic makeup (a la Hyde). (That would turn out to be a favorite pastime!) After dinner we returned to campus and sat in the open air at the edge of the Alma Mater. I swigged from a bottle of sparkling cider until a security guard asked what was in the bottle. I laughed. I wasn't a drinker back then, and wouldn't have dared to break the rules so flagrantly. I don't laugh about those things anymore though.

Still the 104 hadn't arrived. The opera house glowed against the cold sky. Its chandeliers became a thousand fireflies transformed into ringing bells. But as beautiful as it was tonight, its most essential form in my memory is from the first time I saw it. I was on a school trip to see The Tales of Hoffman. At only 10 or 11, I was enchanted by Olympia's aria. Life was different then. In many ways, it was the hour of my breaking.

I had never noticed the annoying black lines etched across its windows though. Yet, there they were--black bars tracing Mondrian-like squares abstracting and dividing a space that shouldn't have been divided, obscuring the blurred glowing warmth of the Chagall hangings just behind the glass.

The quartet ended. "Schaunard" was now saying goodbye to his old coat. I know (for you connoisseurs) it seems oddly out of chronolgy (Donde Lieta is from Act III and Vecchia zimarra, senti is from Act IV). However, the CD is a hyper-romantic compilation called "Addio: Opera's Greatest Farewells."

I thought about that old coat and remembered B's favorite corduroy. We bought that coat together at Canal Jeans (which has since been replaced by downtown Bloomingdales). That was long before we ever got together as a couple. Weird... After we bought the jacket, we trekked the long path down Broadway to Trinity Church to see a friend performing in the choir there. B wore that jacket far beyond its rightful death.

At last! The bus arrived. Rush hour buses seem to go nowhere. It slowly chugged through the crowds at Columbus Circle, dragged me past BigSis' building, and reluctantly arrived in Times Square. By now, Waltraud Meier was singing the Liebestod. I guess that counts as a "goodbye," but it strikes me as a strange choice to include on the CD. It doesn't seem entirely human, in the way that "goodbye" should be. I don't know... maybe I had just been reading too much Wagner all afternoon to bear his ideological weight.

The ultimate irony came when the bus crawled to a halt in the Times Square traffic. "Isolde" reached her ecstatic climax. Outside the window, I saw aliens. Lights flashed but from far away. (I remembered my recurrent nightmare of the bloody emerald stained glass windows). The monitors and the billboards, I was sure, were screaming, but their voices grew muted through the smudged window glass. The botomless emptiness of Times Square. I don't feel energy there anymore like I used to. (ertrinken..... versinken....)


unbewusst--

hochste

LUST