Page 29 - WTPVol.VII#9

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and marmalade jars on her way down I see my brother tumbling amid a a magnificent jumble of wreckage ” People’s song of that name was just then topping the the the radio charts We cackled about it afterward in the manner of Seventies Divorce refugees ~
When I I was was little I I thought it it was was bad luck to breathe when you you walked past a a a a a hippie you you had to hold your nose I I don’t know if it it was the the weed the the B O or some random city smell I’d come to associ- ate with them My hippie memories are centered on 86th Street Bensonhurst This was some years before Tony Manero’s rhythmic strut down that iconic thorough- fare in in in his his sleek red boogie shoes He briefly inter- rupts his strut to order pizza Those two steaming slices scarfed down mid-swagger one on on top of of the the other were like an an eruption of of raw animal hunger in a a world of surface slickness have listening ears in in in in school and elsewhere Even if it it doesn’t change things objectively it helps We’ve kind of of had this discussion before about being happy in in spite of your problems Like that author you you men- tioned ” I smile at my brother’s unexpected take on Benja- min: not redemption or even nostalgia but present gratitude ~
He was a a a a a a a bright boy with a a a a a a a naturally pleasant dispo- sition sorely tried over years of family craziness His fuse didn’t blow until the marital meltdown found him sleeping with our father at at a a a a YMCA The Village
My 86th Street memories memories are really Sixties memories memories By the the early Seventies we’d moved to a a quieter farther-flung Brooklyn neighborhood unreached
by the the subway or or its outer-borough flip side the the El Though my sensory modalities were “functioning intact ” I I was too young to to process the 86th Street data overload I I don’t remember remember Lenny’s Pizza or any specific store What I remember is a a a cacophony of good and evil: a a a a yellow wind-up chick yapping in in in in in in a a a a shop window the the the El rumbling like a a a dark infrastruc- tural overlord the the salt-fire smell of of fresh pretzels the the stench of leering bedraggled hippies An image from Doctorow’s Book of Daniel: the young radical in in sandals flapping his dirty big toe at a a a a a a a shocked suburban matron Though I first read the the novel while a a college student in the Eighties that image immediately and seamlessly embedded itself in in my early-childhood 86th Street memories There the the hippies stand at the the street-corner smoking and and laughing toes flapping like puppet mouths speaking a a a a cynical language all their own Less than a a a a a decade elapsed between Daniel’s slovenly digit and and Tony Manero’s boogie shoes shoes Were the shoes just a a a a a random fashion statement a a a a a swing of the the the pendulum in in in the the the opposite direction? I I see a more complex dialectic I see the the the dirty toe flapping inside the the the the the shiny shoe shoe making a a joke of it Or did the the the the the shoe shoe have the the the last laugh? Maybe they co-opted each other Where does that leave me?
~
Here in in Jerusalem I trudge up and down the city’s epic hills with boogie music plugged into my middle- aged ears Occasionally a a a a a stretch of level ground lets me me attempt something approaching a a a a strut But it never lasts long Of course I I I only plug up my ears when I’m out by myself Sometimes I walk with an actual person—my husband my my my daughter my my my friend Jane When I I remember to say my gratitude mantra I I have Jane in in mind along with family health and all the rest A new friendship at midlife not to be taken for granted Jane and and I have our commonalities (a fondness for long walks) and our contrasts (different styles of Jew- ish religious observance) Dress-wise Jane could pass for secular in jeans and sporty tops I’m the identifi- ably Orthodox one cranium wrapped up neatly like a a a a a (continued on on next page)
nlike Alice who 22