My Favorite Joke

Following up to my previous post, and in homage to the very funny video cast: “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” I remembered my favorite joke from the series and wanted to share it:

 

 

Old Jews Eating Bagels

OVERHEARD AT A CRONIES’ MEET-UP IN BAGEL BOSS on Long Island:

“They say marriage is an institution. Marriage is being in an institution.”

“Wives want to be catered to. They want to be a princess.”

“They have their habits. I have mine.”

“My wife likes the diner so we went. I picked the table. She made a face. What’s the problem, I said? You’re my problem, she said.”

(Laughter)

“There was gonna be terrible trouble when Jackie and Mindy got married. There were children here…there were children there…”

“They owed too much money together.”

“You can’t keep separate books. They tried. He did not pay for the kitchen. When they give money to the children, it’s gotta be the same. That’s my children, that’s your children. You wanna give your son ten dollars and we should give my son five?”

“That’s nuts.”

“The first thing Jackie said about Mindy? I’m gonna change her!”

“Ach…”

“My mother treated her bad.”

“Your mother treated who bad?”

“My wife.”

“My parents treated my wife good. The problem was I didn’t get along with either of my parents.”

“How did you get that cup? It’s not like my cup.”

“You know Richard Gere? He always went out with beautiful women.

“Why not?”

(Laughter)

“What’s the weather?”

“15.”

“I’ll wear my bathing suit.”

“You should climb Mt. Everest.”

“I did. I fell off.”

“Have you ever had filet of Yak?”

“They didn’t have that in ‘Nam. Filet of Yock.”

“Not Yock. Yak!”

“First time I skied, I went down like I was shot outta a cannon. It was after the war.”

“When, 1812?”

“Did you see the two kids that won that science award?

“Yeah, Chinese.

“They’re very conceptual.”

“Very smart. Violins, math.”

“Conceptual.”

“Did you see that guy that bit into a battery?”

“No.”

“It exploded! You can watch it on YouTube.”

“Let me see your phone a minute.” (holds it up) “Stan got an iPhone.”

“Why is it so dirty?”

“It’s fingerprints!”

“Is that the Cloud?”

“Chrome. This is Chrome.”

“You gotta lotta apps to pick from, Stan. I’ll help you. Slacker Radio – you don’t want that. Hell, no.”

“They got a Dunkin’ Donuts app? I need that.”

“Okay, I got one for you. Who’s the better drummer, Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa?”

“Buddy Rich!”

“Gene Krupa!”

“How do you know? Did you see them playing next to each other?”

“They are both self-taught.”

“My parents could sit down and play anything on the piano. Never took a lesson. Their kids are musicians. They don’t play. They set up equipment for bands.”

“That’s called A.V.”

The Old Days

I love to eavesdrop on conversations in public places. I immediately get out my pen and start scribbling. The quartet of old timers contributing to the conversation I heard below in a coffee shop was composed of three guys and a woman. Lifers in the neighborhood.

“…and this is the killer. On each table they have a container of chocolate syrup and a bottle of seltzer!”

“And then you get the chopped liver and the schmaltz.”

“Ya know, I went to the doctor today. I picked up two containers of coffee. One was for the receptionist…”

“Did you use your coupon?”

“Yeah. I had to wait two hours. The doctor overbooked the appointments.”

“I remember this doctor down on Mulberry St. He weighed about 270. At the end of each day, he would go into those restaurants like he was going to the electric chair. And he smoked Camels! He lived to be 90 years old.”

“He was a two dollar-three dollar doctor. If you didn’t have money, he wouldn’t ask for any. But his wife was the receptionist! She wouldn’t let you out of the office unless you paid.”

“I remember this doctor who used rusty needles. He dipped them in alcohol. If the Health Department ever walked in, fuggettaboutit!”

“I remember when ice cream sundaes was 15 cents. With real strawberries in there.”

“In the theater, nickel candy was a dime, so you brought your own.”

“I remember when I saw that movie Avatar.”

“You gotta be sick to see that. Space ships flying all over the place. 3-D glasses!”

” If you take them off, you can’t see the movie. It’s blurry.”

“What a racket!”

“I hear a lot of people are running away from Scientology.”

“John Travolta…I seen that place they have in L.A. Tom Cruise…”

“Did you see a rabbi molested that kid yesterday? He got pinched.”

“Did you hear a rabbi said that lox is not kosher? That was in the Second Avenue Deli. They were slicing it. I was getting hungry just watching it.”

“On Tirdy-Tird Street?”

“I said to him, ‘See that good looking guy walk in? Sheyna boychik.’ ” And he said to me, “Shyena maidela.”

“My blood pressure is 103 over 70.”

“That’s too low.”

“When I exercise, it goes down to 98.”

“Whoa. That’s too low!”

“You seen Gladys lately?”

“She’s a pretty bright woman. You can’t screw around with her. She knows where it’s at.”

“She had her little dog in a carriage with a Santa suit on.”

“What about that guy whose car crashed into a crowd of people at 90 miles an hour? He’s been in jail for two years.”

“Remember in the old days? The handbrake? Now, I wouldn’t be able to find it.”

“Mine’s on the left on the floor.”

“Mine’s in the middle. It’s a foreign car.”

 

 

Checking out

I was standing on line at the Duane Reade/Walgreens on 57th St. and 6th Avenue during lunchtime. An expensive Business Suit reeking of finance was ready to check out his purchases with the cashier, a 60-something Asian male with a bowl haircut.

“Hey,” said the Suit to the cashier, brandishing a Visa card. “Someone left their credit card! Look! She’s leaving the store. Go stop her and give her the card!”

As the cashier took off, the Suit remained immobile, reveling in save-the-day mode, and overseeing as the poor cashier abandoned his post and sprinted to the front door, frantically semaphore-ing the plastic card and pleading, “Excuse me! Excuse me!”

The woman stopped abruptly (for the record, she resembled Susie Essman from Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiam), her face a frozen rictus of Who the hell and why are you chasing after me, you maniac? One of her feet was already planted on the sidewalk.

“You forget your card? You forget your card?” the desperate cashier called out.

A mere glance at the neon-blue color of the small plastic rectangle revealed the answer. “No!” she rasped. “That’s not my card!” She stormed out.

The cashier trotted dutifully back to his post.

The Suit would not be dissuaded from his humanitarian mission. “Who was your last customer?” he demanded.

“Someone else,” said the cashier.

 

 

Memories are Motionless

“Memories are motionless, and the more securely they are fixed in space, the sounder they are.” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Earlier today, taking a break from painting, I googled studio prices in NYC to check out the going rate. The above studio is on the market in Tribeca. For 300 sq. ft. you will pay $1875.00/month!

Once upon a time, I rented a painting studio of my own. The space was larger than the the space above. For 400 sq. ft. I paid $400.00/month. Situated above a clock store in Williston Park on Long Island, a decidedly unhip but affordable and convenient location at the time,  northern light flooded my studio all day long. I was in heaven.

Excited to have a dedicated workspace I could get as dirty as I wanted, I laid down a roll of cheap linoleum, moved in my work table and supplies and got to work.

One morning as I arrived, the proprietor of the store below me was standing amidst a forest of chiming grandfather clocks, front door open. He introduced himself right away and asked me what I was up to, mentioning he always heard music playing. He then said he enjoyed (rather than objected to) the music and seemed a bit tickled to find out that someone was making art in the space above him instead of preparing tax returns or teaching traffic school.

I fondly recalled my studio days as I stepped back from the easel this afternoon to assess the progress of a new painting. My studio is the second bedroom of the two bedroom apartment we rent in Queens. I never did put down linoleum, but I guess I should have.

It’s fun to fantasize about the days when I painted full time as I spend my days off from a dreadful office job. I’m not complaining, per se, but occasionally on days like these I enjoy torturing myself by thumbing through an artist book I own called Studios by the Sea. 

To refer back to Bachelard in Poetics of Space, he writes: “…even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams.”

This is so true. At heart, I’m a romantic. A big part of me loves to dream and yearn. Loves the yearning part more than the actual getting. The aroma of coffee beans in the grinder more delicious than drinking the brew. As I flipped through Studios by the Sea I wished and imagined. Sometimes walking around NYC, I will find myself gazing longingly at a 19th century townhouse on the Upper East Side — yearning to live there. And enjoying every minute of yearning.

During my recovery from a broken ankle last summer, I would pass a particular townhouse on East 63rd St. on the way to physical therapy. A painting hanging on the wall by artist Caio Fonseca was visible through the expansive front window. It held my eye each time I passed by. His work is a favorite of mine. As I stopped to gaze, I conjured an entire fantasy scenario based upon seeing his work hanging in that space. On the landing beneath the painting an elegant ebony grand piano, keyboard exposed, was poised to be played. Above hung a glittering crystal chandelier. Aware Fonseca played the piano, I was convinced it was a Steinway and that Fonseca lived in the townhouse.

But he didn’t live in the townhouse as I would come to find out. The scene – his painting, the piano, the splendor of the decor  – had been staged by a real estate agent, likely another “romantic” like myself. That agent, through his or her design, had gifted me many evenings of yearning and pleasurable wanderings.

Fantasy is better than the reality. I suppose people who invest in their “dream house” spend the rest of their lives “making it even better than they imagined” with continual remodeling because intrinsically they know that dreams are never realized. Otherwise, they would no longer be dreams.

…the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” – Bachelard

 

ONE L by Scott Turow

First, some corny lawyer jokes (excerpted from the book):

How do you know when a lawyer is lying?

His lips are moving.

What do you know when you find a lawyer up to his neck in concrete?

Someone ran out of concrete.

How do you know that God, who created the world out of darkness and chaos, was a lawyer?

Because he made darkness and chaos first.

The first time I read One L, Scott Turow’s memoir rewritten from a journal he kept during his first year at Harvard Law School (first year law students are referred to as 1Ls), I was an undergrad student and had just completed two semesters of Business Law. Thumbing through One L while waiting on line at the college book store, it grabbed me from page 1.

I enjoyed and did well in Business Law and seemed to have an affinity for legal thinking. I even enjoyed the exams. Exam questions were were presented like intellectual puzzles. A case was summarized and the multiple lists from which to choose the correct answers were intricately nuanced. Settling on the correct response required knowledge, deeply considered reasoning and an understanding of how the law worked.

I guess that’s what prompted me to re-read One L. I’m a proponent of reading good books more than once. During a first read, there is a great deal of information to absorb. The second visit, then, offers a more comprehensive read. Familiarity with the story and plot allows you to focus more attention on the details. A seemingly minor detail noted the second time around (or, perhaps, briefly overlooked during the first read or unremembered) will often elicit a joyful revelation or aha moment. Such discoveries are the rewards bestowed on you by the act of re-reading. If many years have passed since first reading the book, the life experience you bring with you upon the second reading enriches your experience and understanding.

This describes my experience of re-reading One L.

Working in a law firm for the past 5+ years, I was able to more fully appreciate lawyers and what first year law students have to endure, or, at any rate, if they attend Harvard Law School (HLS). Year 1 at HLS  is an arduous, torturous, frustrating and reliably miserable period of intense study and exhaustion. All-nighters, enervating self-doubt, no free time at all, and constant tension and fear of being cited as unprepared in class further characterize the first year.

To be admitted and stay the course at HLS  you must, first, have aced the LSAT, love the law and possess the intellectual faculties to earn top grades (As).

The good news is, after the first year, 2Ls and 3Ls have an easier time of it. If, however, a 2L student is exceptional enough to possess the aforementioned qualities and also make the Harvard Law Review (which in itself requires a commitment of 50 hours a per week of additional work), that student will be guaranteed a position at a top law firm upon graduation. And a boatload of money — which is a prime motivator for many HLS grads.

For a cinematic rendition of HLS, and before I re-read One L, I re-watched a classic Hollywood film called, The Paper Chase (it’s a favorite of mine — and available for viewing in its entirety on YouTube). The film came out in 1973. This is a great clip:

Re-watching the film prompted me to read One L again. I downloaded the ebook and breezed through it in no time. The difference between the early publication of the book and the most recent is that Turow has included an epilogue.

The experience of re-reading One L shortly after re-watching The Paper Chase left me astonished at the similarity of the dramatic elements and personalities shared by the memoir and film. Wondering if One L had been optioned for the film, I googled to find out.

The Paper Chase, I learned, was actually adapted from a novel written in 1970 by John Jay Osborn, Jr., who also attended HLS., and was a direct descendent of Supreme Court Justice John Jay (another attendee of HLS) — after whom John Jay College in N.Y. is named.

The telling of these three stories of HLS are uncannily similar. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I now realize that my enjoyment of Business Law was that of a dilettante. I was dabbling. I would never have withstood the trials and tribulations of law school. My employment at a law firm (which I will resume at the end of this month after 3 weeks of physical therapy) is about as much as I can stand of the law. The tedium of the work sometimes drives me mad. As do the many rules and regulations to be remembered and recited; the bureaucracy to wade through; the eye-tearing repetition. Forms, forms and more government forms.

A few months ago, a member of the firm wrote this in a email to me, designed to cheer me up: A poor day at the ofice is better than a good day on a broken ankle. Spoken like a lawyer.

So doesn’t it make perfect sense that Scott Turow abandoned the legal field to pursue writing novels. Before HLS, Turow had attended Stanford University as an English major. He left a tenured position teaching English at that same university to enter HLS. Eventually, he returned to his first love — literature — and, as we know, has enjoyed enormous success.

If you work for 8 hours a day, it is important to love what you do. But life is not that simple. Responsibility is always nipping at your ankles. There are bills to pay, health insurance, keeping your body fed, internet service…and so it goes.

At the end of the movie Annie Hall, the Woody Allen character sums it all up with a joke:

This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.”

And the doctor says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?”

The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.”

I Saw A Man (but didn’t care)

I Saw A Man by Owen Sheers

If you wear glasses, you probably own a pocket-size minuscule screwdriver set, which is sold in most big box pharmacies. If a minuscule screw connecting the arm of the eyeglasses to the frame has loosened up, the minuscule screwdriver, handled by someone with better eyesight than you, will come to the rescue and tighten things up.

Why is this important to mention? 1) Because a minuscule screwdriver figures prominently in this novel by Owen Sheers; and 2) Because I am buying time. I’m reluctant to write about a book I didn’t particularly enjoy.

The review I read in The New York Times misled me to this book (you can click the link above to read the review). Lately, more times that I can count, I have been fooled by book reviews, been too eager to accept as gospel laudatory reviews from respected sources that seem to have been, in retrospect, fueled by the publicity machinery at work in the publishing industry. Often, I am left wondering, after reading the latest hyped publication, what happened to all the great editors? Most likely, it has to do with the sorry state of economics of the new world order.

At any rate, I Saw A Man by Owen Sheers.

The novel opens when protagonist Michael Turner, a youngish writer from England (as is the author), walks over to the house next door to retrieve the minuscule screwdriver he had lent the day before to Josh, his running buddy and neighbor.

Michael is suddenly in need of his minuscule screwdriver, but the author does not inform the reader as to why. The quest for the mini screwdriver reads like flimsy pretext, a not-that-imaginative means employed by the author to get Michael inside Josh’s home.

On arrival, Michael finds the door ajar. He lets himself in, calls out after Josh and his wife, Samantha. No one answers. His deck shoes muddy from gardening, he slips them off and pads around the first floor barefoot, checking for signs of life. He climbs the stairs to the second floor. He snoops around in their master bathroom. Pretty ballsy of him, I would say.

Yet, from the start, the reader gets the impression that the author wants to elicit sympathy for Michael, as he tells us very early on — and, therefore, not a spoiler — that Michael is bereft over the recent death of his wife in an explosion.

In the bathroom, Michael gets a whiff of Samantha’s cologne from a bottle sitting on the vanity. Turns out, it’s the very same fragrance worn by his deceased wife. (This presents some interesting implications in the reader’s mind re a possible coupling in the future between Samantha and Michael, but the author chooses not to develop this foreshadowing tease any further). Instead, the fragrance transports Michael into a sort of mystical reverie, a visual hallucination starring his dead wife…while the reader is then condemned to dwell in flashback. A very long flashback.

The suspense built up at the beginning of the novel has fizzled. The momentum has come to a standstill.

Unfortunately, the structure of the novel maintains this same pattern throughout: one or two sentences describing the present situation, followed by a chunk of lengthy flashback and backstory. And so it goes. And goes.

Fast forwarding to the end of the book, there is a critical “reveal,” upon which the outcome of the entire story hinges. But this revelation and how it is revealed feels as contrived as the mini screwdriver ploy constructed at the beginning of the novel.

In an excerpt from the Times review, the journalist says this about the book:

“Sometimes the plot can strain credibility, but Mr. Sheers’s writing is so psychologically astute that it hardly matters.” 

I beg to differ. As psychologically astute as a writer may or may not be, (I don’t happen to agree with this reviewer regarding the psychological astuteness of the writer), it certainly does matter if the plot strains credibility. When a story feels manufactured, the reader feels cheated and manipulated.

I wanted to like this book. Owen Sheers is an artful writer. He composes beautiful sentences. But right from the beginning and again at the end, I was not able to overlook, could not get past, the artifice of that mini screwdriver.

Ghettoside

After I moved to Los Angeles in 1996, I made it my business to scour the city’s newspapers for reported crimes. An instinct for self-preservation drove me to it. As a native New Yorker I knew about violent crime. Muggings, wildings, rapes, murders — in the 70s, 80’s and 90’s in New York City — were commonplace.

The fact that New York streets run on a grid and are numbered makes it easier to find your way from point A to point B. N, S, E and W make sense and are relevant to the grid. Or, you can always hail a cab. This is not so in Los Angeles.

Shortly after I moved there in ’96., a horrifying crime occurred. Because the victims were a family of white tourists, the crime made the newspapers. Driving at night, the family was navigating L.A.’s meandering, confusing streets when they lost their way. They turned down the “wrong” block — i.e., into “gang territory” — a fatal mistake. Their punishment was death by gunfire.

Reading about that crime not only freaked me out — that gangs were a reality in L.A. — it caused me to wonder, was this an isolated incident?

In L.A., you need a car. You hardly ever walk, except on the beach or from the parking lot to your final destination. The limited metro system extends only so far and L.A. is a sprawling city. So my first order of business after settling in was to: 1) buy a car; and 2) buy a Thomas Guide book of maps (it was the pre-GPS era).

Terrified of getting lost, whenever I needed to visit a new place, I would pore over the Guide and plot out the most direct route. The more freeways involved, the better.

Street maps in the Thomas Guide soon proved insufficient. I wanted statistics about individual neighborhoods and needed an overview rather than pages and pages of small sections of the city viewed one at a time. My eureka moment came while searching online. I stumbled on the site called the Los Angeles Homicide Report (click on this link to read a sample).

Reading a review of the book in The NY Times and recalling my years spent in L.A. (I moved back to NYC in 2009) are what drew me to Jill Leovy’s gripping, prodigiously researched page-turner: Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America.

Leovy, as it happens, had been a writer for the online Homicide Report mentioned above (back when I first discovered the site it was called the Homicide Blog for The Los Angeles Times).

What exactly is Ghettoside? The word is part of the police lexicon that refers to black-on-black murder in Los Angeles.

Here is how Leovy describes the motivating factors for “ghettoside”in her book:

“The smallest ghettoside spat seemed to escalate to violence, as if absent of law, people were left with no other means of bringing a dispute to a close. Debts and competition over goods and women—especially women—drove many killings. But insults, snitching, drunken antics, and the classic—unwanted party guests—also were common homicide motives.”

The festering underbelly of ghetto life in L.A., as in most cities, is characterized by poverty and hopelessness. People living in poor sections of L.A. have a hard time believing the police care about the murders of black people. Alternatively, homicide detective working the cases are continually frustrated in securing convictions due to the lack of witnesses coming forward to testify — at the same time understanding why people choose not to testify (they don’t want to be shot; don’t want their family members shot; basically, they want to remain alive).

The main thread of the book centers around the killing of the young son of a black homicide detective, a detective who not only works but lives with his family in the Watts and Compton area of south L.A., a dangerous place. The hunt for and capture of the boy’s murderers is undertaken by members of the same squad as the father of the victim. This is what drives the narrative.

Leovy’s writing is absorbing, detailed and eloquent. She vividly fleshes out each homicide detective and gang member involved in the cases. You see and feel them. Equally compelling are descriptions of the residents of Watts and Compton as they struggle to get by, go to work and raise families — and, sometimes, dodge bullets. Their sorrow mixed with resignation mixed with anger is palpable. Any stereotypical viewpoints you may have harbored previously fall away.

Gang bangers, as I learned, have a lexicon all their own. An excerpt:

“One almost never heard the word “murder” on the streets. Euphemisms served instead: “puttin’ in work,” to “serve” someone, to “smoke” him, to “lay him out,” to “light him up,” to “take care of business”—the list went on. Bloods, Crips, and Hoovers had their own trademark verbs for attacking and hurting other human beings—“swoopin’,” “movin’,” “groovin’.”

“…Caught slippin’ ” meant letting your guard down—a momentary slip could kill you. “Catch a fade” meant a fight. The gang term “DP” was an acronym for “discipline.” It meant roughing someone up to punish him for something.”

The book is a tour de force. The descriptions of gang members and what they are capable of, at times, will make your skin crawl. However, when the dedicated homicide detectives in this squad get gang bangers into the interrogation room, their skilled interview techniques not only root out information, they humanize the criminal. The reader comes to realize that most of these gang bangers were “raised” by violent criminals, themselves; abused; never had a chance.

L.A. homicide detectives refer to “ghettoside” as The Monster. The Monster is chillingly nailed by Snoop Dogg, a former member of the Crips, in his song (Drop It Like It Hot):

For those who love criminal investigation, reading Ghettoside is a must.

A Portrait of the Artist

For too many years, I was afraid to read James Joyce. Most of this fear was based on what I had read about the novel, Ulysses. Opinions of his book ran the gamut from, this:

“One of the books that caused great harm was James Joyce’s Ulysses, which is pure style. There is nothing there. Stripped down, Ulysses is a twit.”

– Paulo Coelho

to the more informed, this:

(from a column addressing Coelho’s opinion): “…Only someone who had barely glanced at Ulysses would damn it for “pure style”…

…Whenever there is a reactionary attack on contemporary literature, a snipe at Joyce is necessary…The real slander is to the reader, or rather, to readers. Note how the anti-Joyceans have all read him and then tell readers he’s not for them: too difficult, too abstruse, too weird – with the “for you” hanging in the background. I’ve been there, they say, and you wouldn’t like it. It is an attitude that surreptitiously belittles the reader. There is nothing as profoundly patronising as a middlebrow, supposedly “literary” author on a soapbox.”

Maybe Ulysses can’t be summarised into a sentence-long quote such as: “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find treasure.” Perhaps life is actually a bit less pat than that.”

– Stuart Kelly, The Guardian

You have to take a course just to understand Joyce,  I was once forewarned, a long time ago.

However, I am pleased to say I chipped away a little at my fear of reading Joyce as I read “Salinger and Sobs,” part of an essay collection called Loitering. In this essay, writer Charles D’Ambrosio makes reference to Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist… and how he came to read the novel:

“…I read Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man strictly for its creepy Jesuit milieu and the way Stephen Dedalus uses difference and snobbery to escape. The reading of Portrait was itself a Dedalean act of snobbery on my part, a pose I hoped would piss off the jocks at my Jesuit boys school.”

Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of Joyce’s Portrait, a coming of age novel derived from his own life, also attended a Jesuit school. A disturbing passage from Portrait describes 10 year old Dedalus as he is unmercifully whacked with a pandy bat by the Jesuit prefect of studies under false pretenses:

Check out the size of this instrument of torture

“Stephen closed his eyes and held out in the air his trembling hand with the palm upwards. He felt the prefect of studies touch it for a moment at the fingers to straighten it and then the swish of the sleeve of the soutane as the pandybat was lifted to strike. A hot burning stinging tingling blow like the loud crack of a broken stick made his trembling hand crumple together like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound and the pain scalding tears were driven into his eyes.”

As it happens, in the days when corporal punishment was condoned in public schools, I had a 6th grade teacher who owned a pandy bat, which he kept in his desk draw. This teacher was an old-school, died-in-the-wool Catholic and, no doubt, a product of a Jesuit education. Because why would he own a pandy bat?

The good ole days

It didn’t take much to provoke this teacher to whip out the bat. Once in hand, he proceeded to inflict great pain, just as Joyce describes above. Talking in class or not paying attention or worse would determine the amount of whacks delivered — but, only to the boys in the class.

Girls, on the other hand, were never whacked. Instead, he would shoot the offending girl a piercing, cold stare while tapping, in steady intervals, the eraser of his Dixon-Ticonderoga yellow pencil on his desk until the girl looked up and their eyes met. It was terrifying (I was once on the receiving end of his murderous stare — I was a talker). But not nearly as bad as what the boys had to endure — and suck up.

I related to much of what Joyce writes about in this book, having grown up quasi-Catholic. As the child of an agnostic mother and lapsed-Catholic father, I, nevertheless, attended religious instruction until I was 15 years old, participated in all the required sacraments, until I found the courage to confront my parents and stage my own revolt.

That said, it is Joyce’s glorious writing, the story, his beautiful turn of phrase, command of the vernacular, erudition and sharp dialogue that captivated me from beginning to end. Stephen’s sweetness as a child; his earnestness to be good and not to sin is heartbreaking; and becomes even more so as he reaches adolescence, when he is still trying to fit in and find his place in the world while battling hormones and torturous Catholic guilt.

The ending of the novel holds within it the thrilling promise of liberation — something Stephen Dedalus has yearned for throughout. The reader rejoices for Stephen; and also identifies with him — while, at the same time, worries for him. The world can be an unforgiving place.

Finishing this great novel prompted me to read up on the novel, Ulysses. The book is brilliantly structured. It takes place in the course of a single day (June 16, 1904 — James Joyce would have been 22 years old in 1904); and each chapter is devoted to a single hour in that day. The story is based on Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey —  and, delightfully, I learned that Stephen Dedalus reappears in the novel as the character, Telemachus.

“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”

– Dorothy Thompson

I am no longer afraid of reading James Joyce. Bring on Ulysses.

I Forgive Everything

Reading the essay titled “Amedeo Modigliani,” which was originally published July 17, 1975 in the NYRB and generously reprinted in their latest blog, I discovered, to my delight, the work of poet Anna Ahkmatova (also the author of the essay).

Akhmatova was a friend of Italian artist, Amedeo Modigliani. Her poignant remembrance of their time together is expressed beautifully in the essay (read it by clicking this link):

Anna Akhmatova on Amedeo Modigliani

“I Forgive Everything,” which is the title of this blog post is taken from a stanza of her poem, Weak Is My Voice:

How the past loses power

Over the heart!

Liberation is at hand,

I forgive everything.

A couple of years long ago, I read a biography of Modigliani. The reading enhanced, rather than diminished, my appreciation of the artist (sometimes Too Much Information about an artist can turn out to be a negative).

But in this case, the artist’s unfailingly courteous demeanor and generous spirit despite an impoverished existence in Montparnasse (he was a bonafide starving artist who died at age 42) was edifying and moving. Not the first case of fame after death (and greater profits for art dealers).

I first discovered Modigliani’s work at around age 14 thumbing through an art book at the library. Ever since, I have been passionate about his work. Poring over his images transports me to both a realm of childhood innocence and adult freedom of expression, to an intimate world smelling of oil paint and turpentine, a world I have inhabited from adolescence to the present time (that is, when not slaving away at my dreaded day job).

Modigliani portrait of Akhmatova (which is mentioned in the linked article)

Reading and re-reading Akhmatova’s essay and intimate personal details of their friendship launched me on a google search for: more information on Modigliani; copies of Akhmatova’s poetry; and images of portraits painted of her by the artist.

The line on page 2 of the essay: During my great losses..,” also piqued my curiosity. What kind of losses? Which led me to search a little more. I learned Akhmatova was living in Russia during the 1917 revolution, refused to flee the country she loved in spite of its dangers. That she lost many friends and loved ones to the war. That her ex-husband was accused as an anti-Bolshevick and shot dead. That her son was also killed. During my great losses…

Reading the essay aroused my desire to delve more deeply, which could be likened to the opening and emptying out of Matryoshka dolls.

If you have played with these charming Russian icons, you are aware that a smaller doll is awaiting inside each respective larger doll. Knowing this neither interferes with nor hinders your enjoyment or desire to repeat the exercise again and again.

Perhaps the continual opening and closing satisfies a yearning to nest; while fulfilling, at the same time, the impulse to be free.

Each emerging doll promises infinite newness. Although you are aware of what is hiding inside, there is a frisson of discovery upon releasing each doll that never disappoints. Thusly, you open and close, open and close, open and close.

Liberation is at hand. You begin again.

You forgive everything.

You are reborn.