Amelia, Manhattan, etc

I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

(hi, my love.)

Earlier this week I saw one of my favorite humans alive, my darling Ellen.

Ellen is a walking ray of sunlight. A bohemian treasure trove of a human who lives on Horatio Street and brightens everything she touches. We went to La Bonbonniere, a truly legendary NYC greasy spoon that miraculously (and through a heartwarming Gofundme), survived the pandemic.

We ate eggs and bacon.
Had a lot to talk about.
Ellen gave me the gift of a real listen.

She also filled me with the radiance of a human being so clear in her purpose that she reflects it back to you and then some. I took a photo of her on a disposable but you know the deal with disposables, you gotta wait till that roll is up before developing.

(So you’re just going to have to imagine the magnificence that is Ellen.)

The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons if it gets through to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Of picture post card charms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

Left Ellen wondering how I could ever leave New York.

(Lots of those sorts of moments this week.)

A similar one the other night: Stopped in Washington Heights to visit Savta, dropped off one of my extra weekly challahs. She told me she listens to my version of Kol Haolam Kulo daily, sings along loud enough for the doorman to hear. Apparently she once told the cantor of an iconic Manhattan synagogue, “You don’t sing it as well as my granddaughter.”

(oh, to be a fly on that theater of the absurd wall!)

People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Others just come to harm
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

Left Savta’s to meet Harry and Aaron in Harlem. Though I don’t see them often, Harry and Aaron are two of my most treasured humans. Searingly intelligent, talented, humble. I happened to see Harry while he was visiting New York ten years ago when he and Aaron fatefully met … They’re getting married next week in the Catskills. Legitimate real life soulmates who bathe you in a love so pure it heals you.

We dined under stars and apartment windows, an outdoor garden filled with laughs and Stevie Wonder “Happy Birthday” choruses.

Their friend Nat, a brilliant musician and human, stopped by. He’s currently working to help his friend escape the Taliban and study in the US (please give if you have the means).

We dined, discussed, laughed late into the night. The restaurant owner was a Brazilian man with a massive Jewish star necklace nestled in his chest hair. He noticed the chamsa in my keychain and, after a long and magnificent conversation, brought homemade desserts and a bottle of comped champagne for the soon to be newlyweds.

I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia it was just a false alarm

(How do you leave a city like this?)

The other day I dropped off a disposable at Pro Image Photo on 96th Street and they were blasting the original cast recording of “West Side Story” so loud you had to scream over it to get anything done. Two perfection bubbes were getting their passport photos done, their voices raised to high heaven over Maria’s.

A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

(How do you leave a city like this?)

I walked out of Pro Image thinking, “This is the city I want to live in.” Los Angeles could never.”

A deliciously sad feeling, one I let linger.

Because it’s also not the right city for us right now.
Not with our entire community on the other coast.
Not with all the trauma we’ve accrued from 2020.

Maybe I've never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitudes
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

So we are house hunting.
Packing.
Getting ready.

There has been quite a bit of chaos as we do so. In one such moment a huge piece of my childhood quite literally shattered into pieces.

I’ve written to you about Jules before, one of my many elderly friends from when I was a kid. Jules, my elderly flesh and blood, prickly and distanced from everyone in the family, somehow best friends with little baby t, roughly 80 years his junior. A Holocaust survivor who showed up in Manhattan with nothing and became spectacularly wealthy through his ingenious patents.

(I found one of them online somehow, it made me weep salty tears.)

Jules had a floor through penthouse on 90th and Riverside full of midcentury modern elegance and class. He was the epitome of my vision of Manhattan charm: Fancy and also Jewish and in a tweed suit.

(He bought me dresses and donated his entire estate to the Metropolitan Museum and socialist charities when he died)

Jules and I used to have tea parties. He’d brew rose tea in a perfection vintage glass teapot and we’d talk about art, his childhood, mine. I remember it vividly and return to it often when I’m feeling unsteady: The safety, the connection, the fascination. Seeds planted in the garden of a human who would live to relive moments like that.

(At Bonbonniere, Pro Image Photo, a Harlem restaurant’s garden)

Jules’ teapot came crashing off a shelf while we were packing to leave. Shattered into one large piece and many tiny shards.

I didn’t have words.
Got in my car, called Dylan, wept like a little baby.

I call it: Self portrait with broken childhood

Dylan was the perfect comfort, per üje. Talked me down, held space for my feelings, secretly venmoed me $200 to buy a new teapot to house Jules.

And I suppose that’s what I’ll do, eventually.

House Jules, house 15 years of this city, maybe even house the future in there.

After the Ellen hang I went to pick José up from a session at Big Yuki’s apartment in Harlem. The drive took me up 10th Avenue, which eventually becomes Amsterdam.

The avenue full, but not packed. A perfect opportunity to enjoy 10th Avenue/Amsterdam at its absolute best: A never ending wave of green lights.

But there’s an art to a green light wave: You have to stay at just slightly above the speed limit. 26 miles per hour, my love. Go to 30 and you’ll have the infuriating experience of a stop and start dance. Stay at the speed limit and you’ll be carried in one uninterrupted swell all the way way up to Yuki and Celia’s light drenched fifth floor walkup.

So I sailed, thinking on how much I want to go 30 or faster in life right now, how much better it is when I stay at a cool 26.

Watched three wizard musicians spin gold in this convoluted city.

I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams Amelia, dreams and false alarms

I leave the little shards behind, hope the new teapot houses new memories.

(Dreams and false alarms, after all)
(Dreams and false alarms.)

More next week.

Love,
t