51. A Mote of Dust Suspended In A Sunbeam
The Year Of Paying Attention
NOLA Guest Number One has arrived from New York. Peter (the artists’ book publisher) is sitting on the couch. We’re both pooped. Before I’d collected him from Louis Armstrong International to go to lunch, I’d already pedaled to hell and gone this morning. After scarfing down our po-boys at Domilise’s we hoofed it clear around Audubon Park, finally joining dozens of locals sitting on the grass to watch the sun set on the Mississippi. Peter shared his latest thinking about taking psilocybin mushrooms to treat his depression. As the sky grew dark we went to the Winn Dixie for Peter’s latest mania, Kombucha. I’m worried about properly entertaining my friend for the next three days. He leaves on Thursday, and daughter Ellen arrives on Friday. It appears I’ve arranged it so I’m the Big Easy entertainment director for some of my closest friends and family.
***
A friend’s text said she’s hoping I’m “having an incredible time in NOLA.” Another left a voicemail asking how the adventure is going. I’m feeling mounting pressure to have fun. Maybe they picked up on my fear, that I’d wake up soon after I got here and feel lonely, a loser, this trip a big mistake. After a week, I’m settling down.
Last night, Peter and I went to Snug Harbor to hear drummer Stanton Moore’s trio. The rest of the audience appeared to be on a first-name basis with Stanton. Jazz in New Orleans is its own thing, showmanship part of the deal, subordinate to musicianship, but not by much. The members of the trio were relaxed with one another, with the room, with the joy of making music together. At one point Moore snagged his finger on the rivet of a sizzle cymbal, and his finger started bleeding. He noticed it, as did his pianist, but on they played, without missing a beat (sorry). I was reminded of a portrait Annie Leibovitz took of Who guitarist Pete Townsend, his hand bloody from the windmill guitar stroke he employed onstage.
This morning we had breakfast at Toast, delivered by a sweet-faced girl who reminded me of Peter’s daughters. We turned to a favorite topic — what should men like us, in our sixties, be doing with our lives? In the past, Peter talked about slowing or even stopping his art book publishing business, and declining new requests to handle writers’ and poets’ archives. Now, over biscuits and coffee, he said he’d realized that he doesn’t want to change the level of his activity. He really likes what he does — the idea of being happy by doing less was a fantasy.
Men at the end of their careers — who do we talk to? There’s no real interest in this part of the trip among those who haven’t gotten here yet, it seems, perhaps a few books, some seminars at the library, retired executives groups, but mostly it feels like: hey, you still here? Am I complaining? I have nothing to complain about.
I forget, over and over, that I don’t need to accomplish anything. I forget I’m responsible for my own satisfaction, and other people are responsible for theirs. I don’t need to worry whether Peter’s having the best time possible, or if Ellen will regret flying from New York for a weekend with her father, or if my friends back in New York will be disappointed if this month isn’t a dream come true.
***
During a brief lull between visitors, I woke up early, and did what modern Americans do upon awakening — I looked at my phone. In seconds, I was reading a daily poetry email, today offering an Anne Sexton poem about her dead parents, followed by a few paragraphs about astronomer Carl Sagan, who met his wife when they worked together on the Golden Record project in the 70’s. The top minds in space science sent an LP into space for intelligent aliens to listen to, and Sagan and his wife fell in love making a futuristic music mix.
Sagan died at 62, younger than I am now, due to a rare bone marrow disease. He didn’t believe in life after death. I read a passage from his book Pale Blue Dot, describing a photo of the earth taken from a distance of billions of miles:
“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives… every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every revered teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Sagan and Sexton were together in the email because they share a birthday, although there’ll be no cake for either of them today. They joined me in my bed, and after Carl gave me a shot of humanist hope, Anne gave me a different kind of thrill, with this: “Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don’t live by them at all. That’s what writers are like… you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.”
I did a little more Sexton research, learning that she led a rock band, Anne Sexton and Her Kind, and that she’d worked as a model before a therapist suggested she write as part of her self-care. “She’s a dish,” I heard myself murmur when I saw a picture of her in a swimsuit at the beach. Is calling a woman a dish wrong? Most definitely. But what if she’s a dish? Sexist, demeaning, unacceptable. Last night I texted Sarah when I figured it was too late to talk. She replied with a phone call, and we spent an hour face-to-face via cell phone, fiddling around with a postcard she designed for her social justice program. I watched her wander around our New York apartment on a tiny screen Carl Sagan probably imagined but never experienced, and thought: That girl’s a dish.
***
Look at cliché me, a guy on a laptop in a coffee shop. I’m actually in the garden of Cherry Espresso. My daughter’s flight is delayed. After texting back and forth, I went old school and called Ellen’s cell phone. I asked her if she had a book to read while she waited. She said she didn’t, and I heard her voice crack. Was she crying? I reminded her (and myself) that this is not a crisis, not even a problem, just an inconvenience. I realized Ellen and I are more alike than I sometimes realize. She was upset because she knew I’d be disappointed. My first reaction was to mask my own anxiety and try to soothe hers away.
All these unruly emotions, this trying to manage how other people feel — it’s why I go to that second 12-step program. Because human feelings just keep coming, and I’m not ready. Last night, I got to the restaurant a few minutes early, and felt sheepish because it was nearly empty. How uncool am I? My dinner companion Don walked in a few minutes later, and we hugged, because men do that now, and sat down. He ordered a glass of wine. I asked him how his court date had gone the day before. It’s more of the same — a trial date in January, more money to pay his lawyer and his computer expert, a period of fleeting partial relief followed by mounting tension and apprehension.
While this is going on, Don’s doing due diligence for his younger brother, who is considering acquiring a business in Chicago as an investment. “If I don’t go to jail, he might want me to be the CFO,” Don told me. If he doesn’t go to jail. We talked about our old roommate JC, and Don reminisced about his departed son, recalling football games on TV and going to bookstores together, and reading to his boy Ellis, Ellis gone for ten years now.
Next week: It’s A Little Spendy
The Year Of Paying Attention, aka 2017, starts here.
