Down to Earth Dave’s Post of the Day–May 1

Salutations, Gentle Reader,

You may have gathered yesterday that I face a bit of a dilemma.  It’s actually a bit of a dilemma that I’ve been dealing with for some time.  Gentle Reader, I’m torn between two loves:  the love I have for my daughter and the love I have for NYC.  To be perfectly candid, the thought of possibly leaving Gotham is depressing to me.  I’ve carved out a life here, and I love that life.  Just as Anne Frank found strength in the sky and the sun and nature, (DTEDave’s Post–April 30) I find that strength in the energy and beat of New York.  I feel more at home here than any other place I’ve ever lived.  At the same time, I miss my daughter, and there’s a growing sense of filial obligation towards my mom.

Oh, Gentle Reader, I know life isn’t easy, but does it have to be this difficult?

First, there’s the prevalent political climate in NC.  Okay, I’ll avoid political discussion and just leave it to you to figure out from these facts:  I chose to leave the South to relocate to NYC.  I don’t own nor want to own a firearm.  I’m an out and proud member of the LGBTQ community.  I was once a public school educator.  I do a mean Bill Clinton impersonation.  I am an environmentalist.  I’m a Vegan.

When I left NC in 2006, I was happy to be moving to the Northeast.  I still love the Northeast.  But is it enough?  Although I communicate with her almost daily, I’m not seeing my child grow up.  If I return to NC, I’ll be closer to her.  I’ll see her more often.  I’ll be more than a FaceTime chat and the occasional visit.

But if I leave New York, will I be miserable in other areas?  Will I be so lonely for the City that the Big Black Dog of Depression becomes an even more prevalent element of life than he already is?  I’ll have to start driving regularly again.  I’ll have to leave St. Luke’s Lutheran.  I’ll be leaving Sommerlyn, just as we’ve moved to our new headquarters–that tripled our space and gave us two professional conference rooms and moved us to Midtown, one block from the Empire State Building.  

Gentle Reader, I’m torn.

Ninety-Fifth Street

BY JOHN KOETHE

Words can bang around in your head

Forever, if you let them and you give them room.

I used to love poetry, and mostly I still do,

Though sometimes “I, too, dislike it.” There must be

Something real beyond the fiddle and perfunctory

Consolations and the quarrels—as of course

There is, though what it is is difficult to say.

The salt is on the briar rose, the fog is in the fir trees.

I didn’t know what it was, and I don’t know now,

But it was what I started out to do, and now, a lifetime later,    

All I’ve really done. The Opening of the Field,

Roots and Branches, Rivers and Mountains: I sat in my room

Alone, their fragments shored against the ruin or revelation

That was sure to come, breathing in their secret atmosphere,

Repeating them until they almost seemed my own.

We like to think our lives are what they study to become,

And yet so much of life is waiting, waiting on a whim.

So much of what we are is sheer coincidence,

Like a sentence whose significance is retrospective,

Made up out of elementary particles that are in some sense

Simply sounds, like syllables that finally settle into place.

You probably think that this is a poem about poetry

(And obviously it is), yet its real subject is time,

For that’s what poetry is—a way to live through time

And sometimes, just for a while, to bring it back.

*     *     *

A paneled dining room in Holder Hall. Stage right, enter twit:

“Mr. Ashbery, I’m your biggest campus fan.” We hit it off

And talked about “The Skaters” and my preference for “Clepsydra”

Vs. “Fragment.” Later on that night John asked me to a party in New York,

And Saturday, after dinner and a panel on the artist’s role as something

(And a party), driving Lewis’s Austin-Healey through the rain

I sealed our friendship with an accident. The party was on Broadway,

An apartment (white of course, with paintings) just downstairs

From Frank O’Hara’s, who finally wandered down. I talked to him

A little about Love Poems (Tentative Title), which pleased him,

And quoted a line from “Poem” about the rain, which seemed to please him too.

The party ended, John and I went off to Max’s, ordered steaks

And talked about our mothers. All that talking!—poems and paintings,

Parents, all those parties, and the age of manifestos still to come!

I started coming to New York for lunch. We’d meet at Art News,

Walk to Fifty-sixth Street to Larre’s, a restaurant filled with French expatriates,

Have martinis and the prix fixe for $2.50 (!), drink rose de Provence

And talk (of course) about Genet and James and words like “Coca-Cola.”

It was an afternoon in May when John brought up a play

That he and Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara—Holy Trinity!

(Batman was in vogue)—had started years ago and never finished.

There was a dictator named Edgar and some penicillin,

But that’s all I remember. They hadn’t actually been together

In years, but planned to finish it that night at John’s new apartment

On Ninety-fifth Street, and he said to come by for a drink

Before they ate and got to work. It was a New York dream

Come true: a brownstone floor-through, white and full of paintings

(Naturally), “with a good library and record collection.”

John had procured a huge steak, and as I helped him set the table

The doorbell rang and Frank O’Hara, fresh from the museum

And svelte in a hound’s tooth sports coat entered, followed shortly

By “excitement-prone Kenneth Koch” in somber gray,

And I was one with my immortals. In the small mythologies

We make up out of memories and the flow of time

A few moments remain frozen, though the feel of them is lost,

The feel of talk. It ranged from puns to gossip, always coming back

To poems and poets. Frank was fiercely loyal to young poets

(Joe Ceravolo’s name came up I think), and when I mentioned Lewis

In a way that must have sounded catty, he leapt to his defense,

Leaving me to backtrack in embarrassment and have another drink,

Which is what everyone had. I think you see where it was going:

Conversation drifting into dinner, then I stayed for dinner

And everyone forgot about the play, which was never finished

(Though I think I’ve seen a fragment of it somewhere). I see a table

In a cone of light, but there’s no sound except for Kenneth’s

Deadpan “Love to see a boy eat” as I speared a piece of steak;

And then the only voice I’m sure I hear is mine,

As those moments that had once seemed singular and clear

Dissolve into a “general mess of imprecision of feeling”

And images, augmented by line breaks. There were phone calls,

Other people arrived, the narrative of the night dissolved

And finally everyone went home. School and spring wound down.

The semester ended, then the weekend that I wrote about in “Sally’s Hair”

Arrived and went, and then a late-night cruise around Manhattan for a rich friend’s

Parents’ anniversary bash, followed by an Upper East Side preppie bar

That left me looking for a place to crash, and so I rang John’s bell at 2 AM

And failed (thank God) to rouse him, caught a plane to San Diego

The next day, worked at my summer job and worked on poems

And started reading Proust, and got a card one afternoon

From Peter Schjeldahl telling me that Frank O’Hara had been killed.

Ninety-fifth Street soldiered on for several years.

I remember a cocktail party (the symposium of those days),

Followed by dinner just around the corner at Elaine’s,

Pre-Woody Allen. It was there I learned of R.F.K.’s assassination

When I woke up on the daybed in the living room, and where

John told me getting married would ruin me as a poet

(I don’t know why—most of his friends were married), a judgment

He revised when he met Susan and inscribed The Double Dream of Spring

“If this is all we need fear from spinach, then I don’t mind so much”

(Which was probably premature—watering his plants one day

She soaked his landlord, Giorgio Cavallon, dozing in the garden below).

It was where Peter Delacorte late one night recited an entire side

Of a Firesign Theatre album from memory, and set John on that path,

To his friends’ subsequent dismay, and where he blessed me with his extra copy

Of The Poems, and next day had second thoughts (though I kept it anyway).

Sometimes a vague, amorphous stretch of years assumes a shape,

And then becomes an age, and then a golden age alive with possibilities,

When change was in the air and you could wander through its streets

As though through Florence and the Renaissance. I know it sounds ridiculous,

But that’s the way life flows: in stages that take form in retrospect,

When all the momentary things that occupy the mind from day to day

Have vanished into time, and something takes their place that wasn’t there,

A sense of freedom—one which gradually slipped away. The center

Of the conversation moved downtown, the Renaissance gave way to mannerism

As the junior faculty took charge, leaving the emeriti alone and out of it

Of course, lying on the fringes, happily awake; but for the rest

The laws proscribing what you couldn’t do were clear. I got so tired

Of writing all those New York poems (though by then I’d moved to Boston—

To Siena, you might say) that led to nowhere but the next one,

So I started writing poems about whatever moved me: what it’s like

To be alive within a world that holds no place for you, yet seems so beautiful;

The feeling of the future, and its disappointments; the trajectory of a life,

That always brought me back to time and memory (I’d finished Proust by then),

And brings me back to this. John finally moved downtown himself,

Into a two-story apartment at Twenty-fifth and Tenth, with a spiral staircase

Leading to a library, the locus of the incident of Susan, Alydar and John

And the pitcher of water (I’ll draw a veil over it), and Jimmy Schuyler sighing

“It’s so beautiful,” as Bernadette Peters sang “Raining in My Heart” from Dames at Sea.

The poetry still continued—mine and everyone’s. I’d added Jimmy

To my pantheon (as you’ve probably noticed), but the night in nineteen sixty-six

Seemed more and more remote: I never saw Kenneth anymore,

And there were new epicenters, with new casts of characters, like Madoo,

Bob Dash’s garden in Sagaponack, and Bill and Willy’s loft in Soho.

John moved again, to Twenty-second Street, and Susan and I moved to Milwaukee,

Where our son was born. I stopped coming to New York, and writing poems,

For several years, while I tried to dream enough philosophy for tenure.

One afternoon in May I found myself at Ninth and Twenty-second,

And as though on cue two people whom I hadn’t seen in years—David Kalstone,

Darragh Park—just happened by, and then I took a taxi down to Soho

To the loft, and then a gallery to hear Joe Brainard read from I Remember,

Back to John’s and out to dinner—as though I’d never been away,

Though it was all too clear I had. Poems were in the air, but theory too,

And members of the thought police department (who must have also gotten tenure)

Turned up everywhere, with arguments that poetry was called upon to prove.

It mattered, but in a different way, as though it floated free from poems

And wasn’t quite the point. I kept on coming back, as I still do.

Half my life was still to come, and yet the rest was mostly personal:

I got divorced, and Willy killed himself, and here I am now, ready to retire.

There was an obituary in the Times last week for Michael Goldberg,

A painter you’ll recall from Frank O’Hara’s poems (“Why I Am Not a Painter,”

“Ode to Michael Goldberg (’s Birth and Other Births)”). I didn’t know him,

But a few months after the soiree on Ninety-fifth Street I was at a party

In his studio on the Bowery, which was still his studio when he died.

The New York art world demimonde was there, including nearly everyone

Who’s turned up in this poem. I remember staring at a guy who

Looked like something from the Black Lagoon, dancing with a gorgeous

Woman half his age. That’s my New York: an island dream

Of personalities and evenings, nights where poetry was second nature

And their lives flowed through it and around it as it gave them life.

O brave new world (now old) that had such people in’t!

*     *     *

“The tiresome old man is telling us his life story.”

I guess I am, but that’s what poets do—not always

Quite as obviously as this, and usually more by indirection

And omission, but beneath the poetry lies the singular reality

And unreality of an individual life. I see it as a long,

Illuminated tunnel, lined with windows giving on the scenes outside—

On Ninety-fifth Street forty years ago. As life goes on

You start to get increasingly distracted by your own reflection

And the darkness gradually becoming visible at the end.

I try not to look too far ahead, but just to stay here—

Quick now, here, now, always—only something pulls me

Back (as they say) to the day, when poems were more like secrets,

With their own vernacular, and you could tell your friends

By who and what they read. And now John’s practically become

A national treasure, and whenever I look up I think I see him

Floating in the sky like the Cheshire Cat. I don’t know

What to make of it, but it makes me happy—like seeing Kenneth

Just before he died (“I’m going west John, I’m going west”)

In his apartment on a side street near Columbia, or remembering

Once again that warm spring night in nineteen sixty-six.

I like to think of them together once again, at the cocktail party

At the end of the mind, where I could blunder in and ruin it one last time.

Meanwhile, on a hillside in the driftless region to the west,

A few miles from the small town where The Straight Story ends,

I’m building a house on a meadow, if I’m permitted to return,

Behind a screen of trees above a lower meadow, with some apple trees

In which the fog collects on autumn afternoons, and a vista

Of an upland pasture without heaviness. I see myself

Sitting on the deck and sipping a martini, as I used to at Larre’s,

In a future that feels almost like a past I’m positive is there—

But where? I think my life is still all conversation,

Only now it’s with myself. I can see it continuing forever,

Even in my absence, as I close the windows and turn off the lights

And it begins to rain. And then we’re there together

In the house on the meadow, waiting for whatever’s left to come

In what’s become the near future—two versions of myself

And of the people that we knew, each one an other

To the other, yet both indelibly there: the twit of twenty

And the aging child of sixty-two, still separate

And searching in the night, listening through the night

To the noise of the rain and memories of rain

And evenings when we’d wander out into the Renaissance,

When I could see you and talk to you and it could still change;

And still there in the morning when the rain has stopped,

And the apples are all getting tinted in the cool light.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2009).

Remain calm, and speak well.

Be kind to yourself.  Be kind to the planet and the future.  Cause no suffering.  Go Vegan!

David!

Down to Earth Dave’s Post of the Day–April 7

Salutations, Gentle Reader,

I earnestly hope your weekend was restorative and that today is merely the first day of an excellent, productive week.  My own Saturday labors had me escorting a couple from Chicago who are relocating to NYC through both luxury high rise buildings to charming renovated walk-ups spanning from Midtown West and Clinton through West Village and NoLita/SoHo to Battery Park.  Yesterday, I spent some long overdue catching up with Mike B from St. Luke’s and then continued preparing the text for a business plan for a client in my freelance writing business.  Now, we have arrived at Monday, which for this blog means one thing:  it’s time for our next consideration of “(Il-)Logical Manic Monday”!

One of the informal fallacies on the taxonomy of logical fallacies is ambiguity.  Often seen in real estate ads, I can likely best define this fallacy with an image instead of words:

Do you see the old woman?  Wait, do you see the young woman?  There you have it.  Ambiguity!

Real estate ads are notorious for ambiguity.  You’ve seen the lingo:  “Steps from…”, “Light filled living room…”, “City view…”, and so on.  Think about it.  To say that a home is “steps from ____” can never be wrong.  Confucius noted that a thousand-mile journey begins with a single step.  An Upper East Side studio on York Avenue truly is steps away from Central Park, but it’s a lot of steps.  You must step from York to First to Second to Third to Lexington to Park to Madison to Fifth to get to Central Park.  Walking it takes almost as much time as it did for me to type all of that.

How about that light filled living room?  Does it have floor-to-ceiling windows with a southern exposure?  Or does it come with halogen recessed lights?  Perhaps it has a dazzling crystal chandelier?  Maybe the landlord includes two table lamps.  Any of these creates a “light filled living room.”

I like reading “city view” in real estate ads and have had clients who have been very interested in them.  Just Saturday, from some of those luxury buildings, I saw some panoramic vistas of Manhattan’s skyline.  One corner apartment afforded me an unobstructed view of the Empire State Building, and if I pivoted slightly to my right, there was One World Trade Center.  Another apartment I was in technically had a city view, too.  It was a rear apartment in a low-rise, and the city view was the back of the building behind us.  That building is part of the city.  We had a city view.  It wasn’t a great city view, but it was a city view nonetheless.

Gentle Reader, please don’t think I am attempting to unduly disparage some of my fellow purveyors of property.  Creative writing is an integral part of success in real estate.  If you’ve read my posts long enough, you are aware that intentionally deceptive practices in any profession vex me to the point of anger.  The unscrupulous agent employs ambiguity for deception.  The result?  Clients who have been misled doubt all of us.  My listing that is between Fifth & Madison that really is a few steps from Central Park, has over-sized windows that allow gentle morning light and a balcony that affords you a breathtaking view of the park and the Chrysler Building takes longer to lease because of the distrust that now exists.

Let the buyer beware–some ads really are too good to be true.  Your best first step?  Hire a reputable agent to work for you.

Remain calm, and speak well.

Be kind to yourself.  Be kind to the planet and the future.  Cause no suffering.  Go Vegan!

David!

Down to Earth Dave’s Post of the Day–March 12

Salutations, Gentle Reader,

Yesterday, the brokerage with which I proudly affiliate, Sommerlyn Associates, offered its gratitude to clients and friends, and its cooperation to our colleagues in other brokerages with a champagne reception at a rooftop lounge, Monarch, a mere block from the Empire State Building. The weather was perfect. The turnout, stellar. The mood, mirthful. I had the privilege of not only seeing some of my clients and meeting some new contacts, including the Mayor of Harlem, but the personal satisfaction of being joined by the Captain. He hit it off with everyone and engaged in conversation with J2 and two of my clients who now reside in FiDi. As we were leaving, he pointed out, “You know, New Yorkers aren’t necessarily markedly different from people in other parts of the country. We just have far better scenery and settings.”

I hope to ride this current sense of ebullience to effective transact some business; nevertheless, I most beware of today’s shaft in our collective rhetorical quiver.

Today’s Word:  INDURATIZE

INDURATIZE:  to make one’s own heart hardened or resistant to someone’s pleas or advances, or to the idea of love

REAL ESTATE CONNECTION:  The property search process is not for the faint of heart. It’s stressful.  In a place like NYC, where housing costs are outrageous to begin with, the stress can reach astronomical proportions.  The heart can easily rule the head in real estate matters, a fact that devious practitioners take advantage of.  Some people jump into an application too soon.  Others, jaded by the whole process, induratize and respond too slowly.  Gentle Reader, you know me:  I advocate balance.

CHALLENGE:  In what areas of life have you become induratized?  Why do you think that is so?  Is it something you should be concerned about?  Why or why not?

Remain calm, and speak well.

Be kind to yourself.  Be kind to the planet and the future.  Cause no suffering.  Go Vegan!

David!

 

 

Down to Earth Dave’s Post of the Day–February 27

Salutations, Gentle Reader,

 May I please begin with a hearty “thank you” to all who have left comments, “liked”, and/or have followed these chronicles. I have reached the point where more people who follow the post of the day are people whom I’ve not met in person. I am grateful to all who share their valuable time to read my thoughts, but I sense a stronger bit of humility when I reflect upon the actions of those who have made such an investment despite our relative anonymity.   Again, thank you.

Yesterday, I offered you the word “selcouth”. Unfortunately, I had a workday that was far from selcouth. By evening, after working for just under 11 hours and missing an invitation-only seminar on investment strategy, I shared some time. a cup of tea with a fellow student in the Landmark Seminar I’m currently taking. Fortunately, the international headquarters of Sommerlyn Associates, LLC are a mere three blocks from NYC’s Landmark Education Center. The time allowed me to refocus, center, clear and recommence my work towards creating and living into a dynamic, extraordinary life.   That time added a selcouth ending to the day.

What say? Another bon mot?  Oh, Gentle Reader, have I the strength to resist a really bad pun?  No, I don’t?  Just know that it is, indeed, with love that I am kilig you softly. (Somewhere, Roberta Flack is grimacing.)

 Today’s Word: KILIG

 KILIG:  the rush or inexplicable joy one feels after seeing or experiencing something romantic

Real Estate Connection: Recently. I was with a client a client in an apartment on Roosevelt Island. His girlfriend had left the previous day to go to Seattle, and he quietly stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window gazing across the East River and towards the towering Chrysler and Empire State buildings. Wanting to build on the selcouth elements, I suggested he imagine having finished an exquisite meal of pasta primavera or roasted mushrooms and root vegetables or some similar delicious vegan cuisine. After the meal, he could extinguish the candles and bring her to the sofa. Put on some Cole Porter, offer some fresh berries and dark chocolate, pour a little port and sit back and enjoy the vista. What a kilig idyll! With that image in his mind, I then negotiated on his behalf and regained an owner incentive that had expired.

Another satisfied customer!

CHALLENGE: Recall a moment (or two) of kilig.  Those are the moments that help make life worth living.  Hey, go create some more!

Remain calm, and speak well.

Be kind to yourself.  Be kind to the planet and the future.  Cause no suffering.  Go Vegan!

David!