Curlew Quarterly - Issue No. 3 - Winter 2017-18 by curlewquarterly

CURLEW QUARTERLY.

$19.95

A literary and photo journal of New York City neighborhoods. Issue No. 3 - Winter 2017-18. Alexandra Bildsoe . Tess Congo . Tom Davidson . Emily Fishman Ashley Glass . Adrian Moens . Isaac Myers III . Diana Poon

â&#x20AC;&#x153;When the snow changed to fog again and the sun pierced it feebly in a faint yellow glow, they took off and spiraled upwards into the flat cloud layer that hid the peaks above.â&#x20AC;? Fred Bosworth - Last of the Curlews.

CURLEW QUARTERLY. Issue No. 3 – Winter 2017-18.

Dumbo Market Report ............................................................................................................8. “Prospectus - Issue No. 3 - Winter 2017-18” - Isaac Myers III ................................................13. “On the last Saturday afternoon of March I left my office on Jay Street between Water and Front, and walked over to my car which was parked on Plymouth Street, between Gold and Bridge, which was a ten minutes walk away from the office. I knew I’d drive up to Marble Hill, leave my car up there, take the train back to Brooklyn, then walk all the way back up to the Bronx the next morning.”

“In The Shadow of an Immovable Object” - Adrian Moens.........................................................30. “I started photographing the BQE shortly after finding its convenient access desirable as a means of getting myself where I needed to go –– not while driving over it, or across it, but by walking beneath it, and within and around its shadows.”

“A Bell Goes Off - What I Got out of Getting into the Ring at Gleason’s - Ashley Glass ....48. “On Saturdays Gleason’s is its own planet colored in red and black. The same colors of a boxelder bug, pests that congregate in your home but never do any actual damage. The stark colors of damage on human skin, blood and bruises. The branded colors of a huge open space in Brooklyn many may perceive as a training grounds for the makings of damage, but in the deepest of realities, a healing center and haven from the damage that’s been done to us all.”

Fiction – Tess Congo - “Winter in Persephone.”....................................................................110. “Andrea wished herself a bear. Black, brown—any kind but polar. To steal a whole season for slumber and recuperation without consequence, to linger in sleep without shame. What would it be like to silence a season and resume life fresh with the first buds of spring? To feel awake as soon as—Andrea’s alarm beeped for the third time that morning. She hit snooze.”

Poetry – Diana Poon - “vs. Gravity” & “How to be a Native New Yorker” ...........................156. Poetry – Tom Davidson – “Bobby Wiley” & “Darius Azmeh-Volpato”................................190. Interviews. Ashley Glass and Raul Frank...................................................................................................94. Tess Congo ............................................................................................................................126. Diana Poon.............................................................................................................................164. Tom Davidson.........................................................................................................................196. Photography. Adrian Moens.................................................................................................. Cover-47;110-151. Emily Fishman..................................................................................................................48-109. Alexandra Bildsoe..........................................................................................................152-End.. 5

CURLEW QUARTERLY www.CurlewQuarterly.com Issue No. 3 - Winter 2017-18 Published 2018. Editor: Isaac Myers III, Esq. Contributors: Alexandra Bildsoe Tess Congo Tom Davidson Emily Fishman Ashley Glass Adrian Moens Diana Poon Cover Image: Adrian Moens Printed by: Instant Publisher P.O. Box 340 410 Highway 72 W Collerville, TN 38027 Curlew New York 68 Jay Street, Suite 503 Brooklyn, NY 11201 212 - 804 - 8655 www.CurlewNewYork.com Info@CurlewNewYork.com

Curlew Quarterly is available for purchase at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop, New York City’s only all poetry bookstore, located at 141 Front Street (take the F train to York Street). For a complete list of bookstores and venues where Curlew Quarterly can be purchased, please visit our website at www.CurlewQuarterly.com. Submissions and inquiries may be mailed to 68 Jay Street, Suite 503, Brooklyn, NY 11201, or e-mailed to Info@ CurlewQuarterly.com. All rights reserved. 6

DOWN UNDER THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE OVERPASS - SALES. Total Number of Apartments for Sale Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, as of April Twentieth, 2018*: 23. STUDIOS: 1. Average Price of Studio: $725,000 ONE BEDROOMS: 2. Average Price of One Bedroom: $897,500 Average Price Per Square Foot for One Bedrooms: $1,347 TWO BEDROOMS: 7. Average Price of Two Bedrooms: $2,450,714 Average Price Per Square Foot for Two Bedrooms: $1,386 THREE BEDROOMS: 10. Average Price of Three Bedrooms: $3,287,599 Average Price Per Square Foot for Three Bedrooms: $1,537 FOUR BEDROOMS: 3. Average Price of Four Bedrooms: $4,661,667 Average Price Per Square Foot for Four Bedrooms: $1,665

*Brownstoner as of April Twentieth, 2018.

PROSPECTUS - ISSUE NO. 3 - WINTER 2017-18. ISAAC MYERS III

On the last Saturday afternoon of March I left my office on Jay Street between Water

and Front, and walked over to my car, which was parked on Plymouth Street, between Gold and Bridge. It was only about a ten minute walk. I knew I’d drive up to Marble Hill, leave my car up there, take the train back to Brooklyn that evening, then walk all the way back up to the Bronx the next morning. I didn’t have an exact route in mind, though I knew I would walk through Washington Square Park, that I’d drop by Jane Jacobs’ old house on Hudson Street, and that I’d move north along the Upper West Side. Jane Jacobs, in spirit, would walk with me. I had read her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), watched Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary Citizen Jane (2017), and had revisited Episode 7 of Ric Burns’ New York: A Documentary Film (1999) in which Burns describes her battle royal with Robert Moses over the building of the Lower Manhattan Expressway (she won).

I had first watched Burns’ documentary in 2012, and remember with clarity how

Episode 7, “The City and the World (1945-2000),” portrays Moses as the villain who wants to build an expressway across Canal Street connecting the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges. Jacobs is the hero who steps in and stops him. I remember watching Burns’ nine part documentary on the history of New York City the week of Super Storm Sandy. During Episode 7, a narrator reads from a passage that, six years later, I would read again in Jacobs’ book: Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed to movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance ––– not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. 16

When I first heard, and then years later, read, this passage, my mind drifted toward

the way that a city dances, and the way individuals on a street dance ––– how people find their way around the city, and each other. Episode 1 of Burns’ documentary, “The Country and the City (1609-1825),” focuses in on this idea of people moving about and around the city, and among each other. It begins with a shot of the streets of Manhattan in the late 1990s as E.L. Doctorow speaks: If you imagine an ordinary moment at an intersection in New York City. And there’s a pause because there’s a streetlight, and some people and others are in motion. Some cars stopped, and others in motion. If you were to put that in a freeze frame and hold everything for a second, you would realize that there’s a universe there of totally disparate intentions. Everybody going about his or her business in the silence of their own mind with everybody else and the street and the time of day and the architecture and the quality of the light and the nature of the weather as a kind of background or field for the individual consciousness and the drama that it is making of itself at that moment. And you think about that ––– that’s what happens in a city, and somehow the city can embrace and accept and accommodate all that disparate intention at one and the same time, not only in that corner, but in thousands of corners.

“Thank god the Lower Manhattan Expressway isn’t a thing,” I remember thinking

after watching Burns’ documentary, then switching back to Sandy coverage, and then a few days later when the subways were up and running again, returning to work.

I was working at a civil rights law firm at the time. It was my first job out of law

school. It was myself and three partners. I was the only associate, so I was making court appearances and drafting complaints and discovery demands and assisting with motions early on, and as a result, learning a lot, and quickly. I had moved to New York to begin an MFA in poetry at the New School and to also look for work as an attorney in August of 2011, around the same time that Occupy Wall Street had its first general assembly meeting in Zuccotti Park. I attended class at the New School on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and worked for the law firm during the day.

We were bringing excessive force and unlawful arrest civil suits against the New

York City Police Department, by way of filing claims against the City of New York under the Federal Statute numbered 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, which codifies the Civil Rights Act of 1871. Half of our clients were people who had been arrested or assaulted or both while participat17

ing in Occupy Wall Street. The other half were mostly young African-American men who had been roped into the misery that was the former NYPD Commissioner, Raymond Kelly’s illegal answer to reducing crime, the so-called “stop and frisk” policy.

So one half of the complaints that I wrote, in essence, would state, “You can’t stop

people just because they’re black,” and the other half would state, “You can’t arrest people just because you don’t like what they’re saying about the country and the government, or how they’re saying it.” A few months before I left the firm, we settled a lawsuit for one of the largest amounts arising out Occupy Wall Street related litigation. The suit concerned the unlawful arrest of fourteen individuals who were participating in an Occupy event on New Year’s Eve of 2011.

Without an admission that any illegal arrests were made, the City of New York

settled, and each of our clients were paid $20,000. When you look at these numbers at first glance, and the fact that the City settled, without actually admitting that the arrests were illegal, it’s easy to ask whether settling was the right thing to do, and also, whether $20,000, or any amount of money is just compensation for the violation of someone’s Constitutional Rights. However, if you ask those questions first, or at all, then it’s possible that you’ll overlook all that had to happen between December 31, 2011, when the arrests were made, and the first week of June 2014, when the case was settled. You’d possibly overlook all of the decision that were made, and all of the disparate intentions of our clients; the disparate intentions of myself and the attorneys who I was working with; the disparate intentions of the attorneys for the City of New York; and the disparate intentions of their clients, the dozens of police officers who made the arrests, and were present the evening of the Occupy gathering. If you focus on the numbers, and the end result, without considering all that it took to get there, you miss the inner workings of what happened.

Years later, after I heard Jason Koo read “Morning, Motherfucker” at Berl’s Poetry

in October of 2016, and had the idea for this journal, I came across an interview that Jacobs gave in 2000, which was taken by Jim Kunstler of Metropolis Magazine. In the interview, after 18

describing her initial impressions of moving to New York City, Jacobs described how she liked going to a railroad station in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and watching trains. I got a big bang out of seeing how those pistons moved the wheels, and then the connection of that with the steam inside. In the meantime, along came these locomotives that had skirts on them. Suddenly you couldn’t see how the wheels moved, and that disturbed me. It was supposed to be for some aerodynamic reason, but that didn’t make sense. And I began to notice how everything was being covered up, and I thought that was kind of sick. So I remember very well what was in my mind when I wrote, “We have become so feckless.” It was those skirts on the locomotives I was thinking about and how this had extended to “we didn’t care how our cities worked anymore.”

The Death and Life of Great American Cities begins with the following epigraph:

“The scenes that illustrate this book are all about us. For illustrations, please look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.” Jacobs grasped that urban renewal was a way for those who had the power to shape the landscape of cities to ostensibly repair cities; however, their actions and the implementations of their plans were actually destroying cities. In the Metropolis Magazine interview, Jacobs describes the zeitgeist of the late fifties surrounding urban renewal. She uses Boston’s West End an example of the lengths that city planners would go to in order to assure that a city block be designated as a slum, and as a result, slated for urban renewal. I talked to two architects in ’58 who helped justify the destruction of the West End. And one of them told me that he had had to go on his hands and knees with a photographer through utility crawl spaces so that they could get pictures of sufficient dark and noisome spaces to justify that this was a slum — how horrendous it was. Now that was real dishonesty. And they were documenting stuff for it. The other was one who was just greatly respected, a well-known architect who could give his opinion that this area should go. And he told me that on the whole those buildings were so well constructed that they were undoubtedly better than anything that would ever be erected in their place. Now, he also said that some of the buildings were just so beautifully detailed that it was heartbreaking that they must be wrecked. And yet both of these architects knew better, but supported the destruction of that area.

I can’t remember how, exactly, the want to revisit Jane Jacobs first formed in my mind.

Maybe it was when Adrian Moens told me he was working on a photo essay of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and I decided it would be good to pair his essay with this piece. Or 19

maybe I was already planning on reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities when Adrian mentioned his plan. All I know for certain is that the idea came to me at some point after the launch of Curlew Quarterly’s second issue in December.

Although after watching the portion of Burns’ documentary that describes Jacobs’

work, I first thought of the “Complex order that could be likened to a dance,” after actually reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs’ distinction between life and art far more thoroughly caught my attention, and interest. She draws this distinction in Chapter 19 “Visual Order: Its Limitations and Possibilities”: When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Because this is so, there is a basic aesthetic limitation on what can be done with cities: A city cannot be a work of art. We need art, in the arrangements of cities as well as in the other realms of life, to help explain life to us, to show us meanings, to illuminate the relationship between the life that each of us embodies and the life outside us. We need art most, perhaps, to reassure us of our own humanity. However, although art and life are interwoven, they are not the same things. Confusion between them is, in part, why efforts at city design are so disappointing. It is important, in arriving at better design strategies and tactics, to clear up this confusion. To approach a city, or even a neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The result of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy. In its place, taxidermy can be a useful and decent craft. However, it goes too far when the specimens put on display are exhibitions of dead, stuffed cities. Like all attempts at art which get away from the truth and which lose respect for what they deal with, this craft of city taxidermy becomes, in the hands of its master practitioners, continually more picky and precious. This is the only form of advance possible to it. All this is a life-killing (and art-killing) misuse of art. The results impoverish life instead of enriching it.

I latched onto this chapter and these passages because they speak so forcefully and

eloquently concerning the makings of not just cities but of humanity, and how art, when approached and created with respect and an open heart and mind, can enhance both cities as well as humanity. Yet when art, as Jacobs puts it, becomes taxidermy, not only the art but also 20

the artist, the viewer and the space within and circumstances around in which they all operate, become dulled.

At first glance, Jacobs’ work and her arguments against the practices of urban

renewal that were popular at the time when The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published, make it easy to think that from the start she had no interest or enjoyment in traditional city planning. However, as the featured writer for a WNYC Books and Authors Luncheon from 1962, Jacobs spoke candidly about how the modernistic glow of city planning initially drew her into its light. From 1952 to 1962, Jacobs worked as an editor for Architectural Forum, which premiered in January of 1892 and printed its final issue in March of 1974. It was in the mid 1950s, when Jacobs was working for the magazine, that she first had a chance to observe and write about urban planning, and the theories and applications that underpinned it at the time. I would have loved to have been at the Books and Authors Luncheon on that afternoon in 1962, when she spoke. I was working for Architectural Forum magazine, writing articles about buildings and so on. And one fine day they put me on an assignment about some city planning. And some urban renewal projects that were being done ––– in Philadelphia as a matter of fact. So I went there and found out what they had in mind and what they were planning to do and how it was going to look according to the drawings and what great things it was going to accomplish, and I thought this was just great!

In the introduction of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs provides

readers with more of a background on the conventional thoughts of the city planners and designers who began implementing their urban renewal and slum clearance plans in the 1930s and 1940s. “The look of things and the way they work are inextricably bound together, and in no place more so than cities. But people who are interested only in how a city ‘ought’ to look and uninterested in how it works will be disappointed by this book. It is futile to plan a city’s appearance, or speculate on how to endow it with a pleasing appearance of order, without knowing what sort of innate, functioning order it has.” Jacobs was interested in the way that cities actually worked, while those who backed urban renewal were more interested in their 21

plans for the city, and how the city ‘ought’ to look.

Jacobs’ book reflects the culmination of her years spent observing the ill effects and

failures of city planning; it invites her readers and people who live in cities to think differently about city planning. By the time she spoke at the Books and Authors Luncheon, she was able to look back on her experiences over the last ten to fifteen years and describe how she began formulating her ideas for the book. Anyhow, time passed and some of these things were actually built, that I had written about. And this was a great shock to me because they didn’t look at all the way that they should have looked. They didn’t work at all the way they should have looked. People didn’t use them the way presumably people were supposed to use them. And the city around them didn’t react, theoretically, the way the people around them should have reacted. Well this struck me as, of course a disappointment, but also as very interesting. Well I would bring these questions up with the people who had been responsible for the planning and building of these places, and I couldn’t get them very interested in these questions. I got instead a lot of alibis mainly boiling down to, “People are stupid. They don’t do what they’re supposed to do!” There was plenty of bafflement, and this is where curiosity came in. That didn’t seem like a sufficient answer.

Water seeks at its level. Like attracts like. And as Jacobs started asking questions, seek-

ing answers, and allowing her curiosity regarding the pitfalls and failures of urban planning to grow, a gentleman named William Kirk, an Episcopal minister in East Harlem, stopped in at the Architectural Forum office. [Mr. Kirk] came in because he was very much worried about East Harlem. Here in a rather small area about three-hundred million dollars worth of city rebuilding money had been put to work. There were no ends of housing projects. There was a new large park. It had all been refurbished. All manner of things had been done. And his distress was this: that as a settlement house head worker, he could see that their problems were growing greater than they had ever been in the past. Well of course this was exactly in tune with what had been troubling me. So when he came into the office and my editor and I sat around a desk with him and he showed us a map and he told us some of these things, I evinced a great deal of interest. Eventually he would begin taking me on walks through East Harlem. And since he was a public character, we would stop everyone once in a while, or someone would stop him. And I would eavesdrop on the conversation. We would stop in at stores. We would stop in at housing projects. He would point out local landmarks, which a local landmark may be a candy store. No one else would notice it, and he would tell me a little bit about its history and what went on there. 22

And at first I couldn’t understand what he was getting at, why exactly he was telling me these things, except they were all very interesting. But it was a bit like a big basket of dry leaves being thrown up in the air, and what do you make of that? But gradually it began to make sense to me. I began to see that just out of the accumulation of all of this, I was beginning to understand how things worked in that area ––– many little details of cause and effect. Actually these same things, in slightly different detail, but the same principles, were at work in the area where I lived, and in many other places.

One idea leads to another. The more questions Jacobs asked the more answers she

received; the more pieces of thread she was able to weave together, all of which she eventually wove into The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It’s interesting to look at the introduction of the book, which includes descriptions of her walks through East Harlem, many of which she must have taken with Mr. Kirk. In New York’s East Harlem there is a housing project with a conspicuous rectangular lawn which became an object of hatred to the project tenants. A social worker frequently at the project was astonished by how often the subject of the lawn came up, usually gratuitously as far as she could see, and how much the tenants despised it and urged that it be done away with. When she asked why, the usual answer was, ‘What good is it?’ or ‘Who wants it?’ Finally one day a tenant more articulate than the others made this pronouncement: ‘Nobody cared what we wanted when they built this place. They threw our houses down and pushed us here and pushed our friends somewhere else. We don’t have a place to get a cup of coffee or a newspaper even, or borrow fifty cents. Nobody cared what we need. But the big men come and look at that grass and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful! Now the poor have everything!’’ This tenant was saying what moralists have said for thousands of years: Handsome is as handsome does. All that glitters is not gold. She was saying more: There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and be served.

So what do you do, after you’ve asked the questions, and after you start receiving an-

swers? You look at the answers; you shake them down, suss them out, evaluate them, compare them with other answers, test them, and look for evidence of their validity in other places; and if they’re viable, when possible, you build theories around them. For Jacobs, after the walks around East Harlem with Kirk, which lead to her observation of “many little details of cause and effect,” she started forming her theory. What I was seeing in fact was what makes the very intricate order of the city. This has to do with a quality that’s called, rather vaguely, Urbanism. And I think has been mostly thought of in the past as a kind of atmosphere, and a rather mysterious thing. Like someone having

personality or they don’t have personality and how do you explain it? It’s an intangible sort of thing. Well I think it is not an intangible sort of thing and that it’s very explainable indeed. Cities are extremely physical places. People in cities are not just masses of people. They are people with certain relationships to each other. It’s a very intricate place, a city. It’s not an inert mass. It’s enterprises and people reacting in certain ways to each other, and mutually supporting each other.

The evening that I heard Jason Koo read “Morning, Motherfucker” I wasn’t sure

whether I wanted to keep working as a real estate broker. I could work on my poetry and work as an attorney, and leave residential real estate sales to the forces that may be. And then that night and for the next few days, as I considered this city, all I could think was that it doesn’t have to be this way. That poets and writers don’t have to be priced out, and that the top down structure that starts with profit as its main goal and bottom line doesn’t have to reign supreme. So with these ideas in mind, I thought of creating Curlew Quarterly.

After Jacobs started thinking about urbanism, and the way it is created and main-

tained, she shared her findings with the planners who she went on assignment with for Architectural Forum. These were the same planners who relied upon wishful thinking that their ideas for how a city ought to look should determine how people actually use the city, rather than the other way around. At this point I might have been guilty of some wishful thinking myself. Specifically, that if you work something out and you explain why things that have been tried are failing, and everybody can see they’re failing ––– you explain why they’re failing, and then go on to explain what should be done instead and try to make it as clear as possible, well then the people responsible for these things will change their ways, won’t they? And start doing it the right way. I had a little experience that saved me from that wishful thinking, and it was precisely the articles that I had been writing for Architectural Forum shortly before I began my book. I had been writing there for architects and planners and saying a few of these things, and I would get a big hand from them: ‘What good ideas! How right you are! Yes, indeed!’ And then nothing would happen, everything would still be done as always. And so I decided that really if anything was ever going to get changed it was going to have to be changed by citizens resisting what was done to them and by citizens understanding cities and insisting that the right things be done in their areas. 24

On the first day of April, I went on an eight hour walk from Bedford-Stuyvesant to

Marble Hill, from Brooklyn to the Bronx, because I had an idea that I would write about viewing and experiencing the neighborhoods of New York City from the ground up, rather than from the top down, as the planners of Jacobs’ time and the developers and those responsible for implementing zoning laws today might experience the city. First I would read The Death and Life of Great American Cities and write this essay for Issue No. 3. Then I would read Robert Caro’s The Power Broker and write an essay about how Robert Moses understood, viewed, and shaped New York City for Issue No. 4. Then Issue No. 5 would be neatly tied up with a bow and string by an essay that blended together Jacobs’ and Moses’ visions and ideas. And while these three essays, at first glance, seemed reasonable enough, I now realize that, like Jacobs, I might have been guilty of some wishful thinking.

New York is inexhaustible. Throughout my eight hour walk I saw and experienced a

book’s worth of pieces about the city and the vestiges of the ideas that Jacobs writes about in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I realized it was neither realistic nor desirable to try to cram the walk into one essay, nor to try to fit the purpose for Curlew Quarterly into three essays. Looking back to that evening in October of 2016 at Berl’s, I realize that the decision to organize and to resist, was the decision that I made then, which lead to the creation of Curlew Quarterly. So in time and in upcoming issues, I’ll write about my walk and I’ll write more about The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I’ll read The Power Broker and write about Robert Moses’ vision, and I’ll weave a thread between the two of them, and I will also carve out Curlew Quarterly’s place within the New York City that we currently find ourselves living in. A city where the homeless population is higher than it’s ever been, and at the same time when there’s more empty residential apartments and storefronts than ever before. A city where zoning has taken the place of planning as a tool to displace, segregate, and tear apart communities. A city of hyper-gentrification where homogeneity and corporate empires gradually make every neighborhood look uncomfortably similar.

When it’s clear that a major expressway will be built through your neighborhood, you 25

organize around a clear and direct goal: to stop the expressway from being built. You rally around that idea, and you organize to stop the highway. But where do you start, and what do you do, and how do you describe the purpose for a literary journal when there’s no one specific force that presents the same type of clear, exact, and traceable change to a neighborhood.

I liken these difficulties to the difficulties of describing, exactly, what the Occupy

Wall Street movement wanted, and still wants. You can’t sum it up in a mission statement, or a list of demands. It requires close and constant examination, and adjusting, not from the top down, but by and for the people who make up the city. In Jacobs’ case, when she decided to organize and resist, she faced an imminent and traceable danger. I finally finished The Death and Life of Great American Cities and I thought, ah, now I can think about something else. And for three weeks I did think about other things. Then I opened The New York Times and found that our own area of The West Village was going to have an Urban Renewal Project, and so I suddenly had to put into practice my own premises, that if anything was going to happen to reverse the way things way things were being done, then the citizens had to take some initiative, and the citizens had to frustrate the planners. I thereupon began to devote myself to frustrating planners, and so did the whole neighborhood. I couldn’t possibly do it myself. We have a great neighborhood. And we finally won. Just about a year later we won, and we’re now embarked upon the next stage, which is to try to get the things done right, the next stage of what’s missing. What should go in here. I don’t know what success we will have on that.

When I walked from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Marble Hill, I carried an audio recorder

with me, and whenever I saw or heard something interesting, or something that I thought I’d be able to use for this essay, or for Curlew Quarterly in general, I spoke into the recorder, and made an audio note of my mental note. And for the last six hours, and for three hours last Sunday, and for two hours the Sunday before, and including the fifteen to twenty hours that it must have taken me to read and transcribe passages from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, I’ve been alone, sitting at my desk, or at the dining room table of my house, or near the window at end of my bedroom ––– thinking, writing, reading, coming up with ideas, organizing thoughts, moving sentences and paragraphs around, and connecting the dots as best as I could. So when I reached the end of Jacobs’ talk at the Books and Authors Luncheon, it made sense when she described her reaction to those who said she cooked up 26

The Death and Life of Great American Cities as a document to use in the fight against urban renewal plans for the West Village. During the West Village fight, I don’t know whether to be amazed . . . I suppose I should be flattered that word got around that I had somehow whipped up this book during the fight, as a campaign document. I would love to be able to carry on a job and a fight against the city and whip up a book at the same time, but as a matter of fact, I guess for most writers, and certainly for me, writing a book is a very long and lonely process. You feel as if you are talking to yourself interminably. It’s an act of faith. You wonder whether you’ll ever really be talking to anybody else beside yourself. So I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here after two years of talking to myself and find that I’m talking to somebody else and to such nice people too. I don’t fear the silence, the sound of my own voice inside my head, or speaking into an audio recorder. Curlew Quarterly, if nothing else, is an act of faith. I first met Diana Poon and Ashley Glass in 2015. Three years later, I’m thankful to call them friends, to be able to publish their work, and allow them to share their stories in this journal. I think of all of the disparate intentions that had to happen, between 2015 and this afternoon, in order to get to this point. I met Tess Congo at one of Brooklyn Poets’ YAWP events in 2017, an event that I wouldn’t have known about had I not heard Jason Koo read in 2016. So, of course, I’m honored to publish “Winter in Persephone” in these pages. I was walking with Tom Davidson the afternoon after the evening in which I heard Jason Koo read. We were walking up Old Fulton Street, toward Henry Street, when “Morning, Motherfucker” and the idea for this journal fully cemented in my mind. Four times a year we’ll create this journal without any certainty that anyone will pick it up, buy it, read it, be inspired, or comforted by what appears within its pages. But I don’t know what the opposite would bring. At times, I think, what if I had walked away from Berl’s that evening and shrugged my shoulders ––– what an interesting poem by Jason Koo ––– and never felt compelled to create Curlew Quarterly. But when you’re called, you act. And when I think about the city out there, the same city that I walked through for eight hours a few weekends ago, and the same city that drew me from Des Moines, Iowa, seven years ago, and has kept me within its grasp, no matter how precariously, since I was just twenty-five, I think of a city worth caring for, and a city

worth writing for, and about. As best I can, I try not to think abstractly about the city, or think of it as a map or architectural model that needs to be designed and have order imposed upon it, but instead, again and again, I refer back to and rely upon the vision I discovered within the pages of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The various tactics for capturing city visual order are concerned with bits and pieces in the city ––– bits and pieces which are, to be sure, knit into a city fabric of use that is as continuous and little cut apart as possible. But emphasis on bits and pieces is of the essence: that is what a city is, bits and pieces that supplement each other and support each other. Perhaps this all seems very commonplace compared with the sweep and swoop of highways, but what we have to express in expressing our cities is not to be scorned. Their intricate order ––– a manifestation of the freedom of countless number of people to make and carry out countless plans ––– is in many ways a great wonder. We ought not to be reluctant to make this living collection of interdependent uses, this freedom, this life, more understandable for what it is, nor so unaware that we do not know what it is.

IN THE SHADOW OF AN IMMOVABLE OBJECT. Adrian Moens

I started photographing the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) shortly after find-

ing its convenience as a means of getting myself where I needed to go â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not while driving over it, or across it, but by walking beneath it, and within and around its shadows. As I looked through my viewfinder at the BQE, I often found insight into the structure, by contextualizing it, and by isolating parts and pieces of it within its frame.

The more time I spent under the BQE, the more curious and enamored I became of

it. The seemingly infinite lengths of concrete trusses became like the ribs of a massive creature. The intervals of car and truck tires running across the seams in the roadway reverberated in rhythmic pulses, like a voice plucking the strings of a massive throat, speaking the garbled language of a city on the move.

Every object in its interior belly, even the recently discarded, is encased in a thick dust

that I imagine will one day be its own, completely visible geological layer. Abandoned cars are appropriated for the transient sleeper, ramshackle and temporary cardboard windbreaks shelter the homeless, and abandoned mattresses seem to float and drift down the river of asphalt like filthy, corroding rafts.

As I continued to walk to work, I started to question how the BQE had shaped other

city lives. Surely this massive object, whose trajectory clambers through so many Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods, has made a very literal impact on the lives of those in its path. An expanded vision of this project emerged, and I realized that this new vision would require research and a recontextualization of the BQE as I had originally seen it.

The BQE has civic, political, and urban geographic implications that would take more

than twenty-two images to explore. I see this photo essay, which seeks to objectify the BQE as a physical structure, and to explore the landscape beneath it, as the first chapter of a much greater project. 30

- Adrian Moens.

A BELL GOES OFF.

What I got out of getting into the ring at Gleasonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. Story: Ashley Glass Photography: Emily Fishman

I. LOOK INTO THE BLACK PUNCHING BAG. On Saturdays Gleason’s is its own planet colored in red and black. The same colors of a boxelder bug, pests that congregate in your home but never do any actual damage. The stark colors of damage on human skin: blood and bruises. The branded colors of a huge open space in Brooklyn many may perceive as a training grounds for the makings of damage, but in the deepest of realities, a healing center and haven from the damage that’s been done to us all. Look into the black punching bag and you’ll find the darkness you discovered under your bed at five years old, the long road ahead on an empty highway in the middle of the night, the back wall of your eyelids when you close them to sleep or just for a short break from the day. You’ll find a still color of black that leads you always and completely back to yourself.

At Gleason’s you can rid yourself of the life traumas that have quietly hiked their way

into your subconscious by simply balling them up in your fist and flying it into the air with a graceful and sincere fuck you flare that comets everything that has ever hurt you into a black punching bag.

I started training to learn how to fight, my own internal combate de mujeres. A battle

between myself and my past for the promise of the most prestigious prize any one of us can win: a future. A future where I am guaranteed to feel stronger than my previous self, where I’m armored for unexpected battles and where I feel confident enough mentally and physically to overcome failure. No big deal.

I grew up as a kid oftentimes feeling like I was on the outside of the ring looking in.

I knew deep down that if I was ever going to make it anywhere worthwhile I’d have to scrap. Boxing is a way to counter my own unworthiness. It’s inevitable that I will face pain, obstacles, failures, and even death. I just want to live inside the skin of a fighter when I do. If I can keep swinging in the ring, I can keep swinging in my head and in my heart.

I also believe that if I can train my myself to push through pain and to wield pain, I

can get so close to understanding it that I can beat it. Every day. For the rest of my life. For myself. And for the ones I love.

A Milky Way of life swirls around us. The rings are filled with people sparring and

some participating in real fights that count. These fights count because the winner is fighting 54

their way to another level. Or they just count because everyone is watching. The faces along-

side the ring animate with oohs and aahs. Instead of numbers, people’s reactions become the scoreboard. If people’s eyes are covered you’re winning big or losing bad, depending on what side of the gloves you’re behind.

A line of small kids in training run past me, all smiling in my direction. A little girl

wearing a pink tutu swerves in and out of tall, sweaty, muscular men emitting a century’s worth of testosterone. People are running on treadmills looking outside the window, jumping rope in front of the mirror, doing push-ups or grabbing a snack from the store in the back. Even if you’re not boxing, you just want to be there ––– in the center of a billowing rotation of beautiful souls aspiring for something. The walls are covered with photos of legendary fighters who have trained at Gleason’s and still visit today. It’s also covered with names of local fighters and marquees boasting their success.

Some days the gym will smell like a gamy fat man has you in a headlock. It’s a scent

and energy you may initially be thrown off by, but you’ll eventually crave it inside of your office midday or during a conversation with someone who’s showing off their fidget spinner. In a sedentary world of cubicles, drab conversations, Facebook, Seamless, and “Netflix and chill,” it’s a soothing oasis of high adrenaline and grit.

I chose Gleason’s because it’s Gleason’s. It’s the place. The only place. The Cathedral

of Boxing. Ali trained there for Allah’s sake. I didn’t want to train at one of the trendy boxing gyms that just popped up in SoHo, selling hip, designed t-shirts to models who go there to lose a few pounds and look cool wearing hand wraps. I wanted to learn how to fight, for real. And maybe even grow a seventh ab. After I grow six. I wanted to be around the brave who stepped into the real ring under the real bright lights. I wasn’t going to a trainer who learned about boxing out of a book while drinking a macchiato at Stumptown Coffee.

Everyone at Gleason’s is from all over the world, including the European tourists

who come by just to walk through the world famous gym. When they walk by me sparring with my trainer Raul, I feel like a George Bellows painting on display at the Met. Suddenly I find myself performing for them, and my arms become a stream of colored paint splashing into the sweaty air.

___________________ Week One and Two of Training. One mile run. Jump rope. Left jab. Right cross. Combinations.

After I finish jump roping, my trainer Raul puts on my hand wraps. As I breathe in

and out, I watch him thread the wrap in-between my fingers. It’s a peaceful act and calms me down. I wonder if this is what it feels like to knit. But in this case, Raul is knitting me. After that he straps on my gloves and straps on his mitts. This is the first time I punch into mitts Raul is wearing on his hands. I’m shocked at how quickly my arms get tired but I love the feeling of making contact. ___________________ II. DAVID LAWRENCE: “COME ON FUCK FACE, LET’S FIGHT.”

“Boxing is poetic. What’s poetic is the pain. If you get hurt, that’s poetic. It puts you

in touch with your inner core sadness and unhappiness with the world. It makes you content in some sort of way. Tennis is not poetic but it’s a great sport. Skiing may be a little because you’re flying down hills. But boxing makes you squeeze up yourself into a little ball. It’s kind’ve nice I think,” says David Lawrence, a seventy-year-old trainer at Gleason’s Gym.

David hasn’t been a trainer his whole life. Before this, he described himself as a

“white Jewish finance guy.” He’s still white and Jewish, but he’s no longer a finance guy. Years ago, he was a multimillionaire living on Seventy-Second Street and Madison Ave and a ranked tennis player and skier in the thirty-five and over division who started getting bored with both sports. “No white collar people were boxing in those days but I heard of someone getting started so I said maybe I’ll try this. I went to Gleason’s Gym, which was in Manhattan at that time, tried it and never left. And that was thirty-five years ago,” David says.

As I sit in David’s office, he sifts through copies of books he’s written, including po-

etry books and a memoir, The King of White-Collar Boxing, which also includes a few of his poems.

David started White Collar Boxing, a division of the sport for professionals over

thirty who want to box. The amateur commission licensed it and now they have it as an official category. As we chat in his office, his walls covered with all things David, he points to

a magazine cover clipping that says, “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Dentist.” It’s a Time Out Magazine article about him fighting a dentist.

David started fighting in his early thirties and turned pro at forty-four, which is com-

pletely unheard of. He was the oldest guy in history to go pro. He had six pro fights and used to bus in friends from New York City to sit ringside and watch him fight in Atlantic City. People wanted to fight him because he was a novelty. Even world champions were on his cards.

Then “Mama said Knock You Out,” and he took her advice. David became a rapper

in his forties. When he entered the ring, they would play his songs “I’ve Got a Hard On Attitude” and “Master Plan” under his rapper name A.D. He was the number one rapper on the Billboard Top 100 for one month in the Midwest, against Old Dirty Bastard, Cypress Hill, and Fat Joe.

“I was pretty bad ass considering I was a fortyish, Jewish, white, PhD in literature,”

he says. Then after his ascension in rap and boxing, David went to jail for tax evasion. “I should’ve gone in for murder. That would’ve been more exciting. I wouldn’t be a little fucking tax evader.”

When David was in jail, no one wanted to fight him. Not only because it would add

years to their sentence but also because they loved him. “I walked into jail. Ten black guys came over to me and said, ‘The “Renegade Jew” is in the house.’ They knew my raps and half the guys had seen me knock someone out on TV. I was very popular. Here I am, this white dude, rich and literate and I’m this big hit in jail. I was glad I had done all those other things so no one wanted to beat me up.”

After David got out of jail he tried fighting pro again but he was too old so he started

training while doing some modeling gigs and acting. Somehow, he wasn’t too old for that. I asked him what he liked about boxing and what he thought it did for the mind. “I think it adds a feeling of confidence. You can take care of yourself. You can get away from this wimpy, feminized world where men are walking around offices in their suits and everything. You can say ‘Come on fuck face, let’s fight.’ So you revert to the primitive. It’s kind of nice to be able to feel like a brutal Neanderthal type of man. Boxing changed my life because it made me feel stronger. More self-confident. More of a man. Ever since feminism in the sixties, it felt like you have to be ashamed to be a man, but with boxing, it’s not like that. I feel good to be a man.” 60

___________________ Week Three and Four of Training. Left and right hook. Left and right uppercut. Combinations of each.

I get into the ring for the first time with Raul. I last only two rounds and end up

hanging over the rope, out of breath, done for, cooked. It feels like heaven. ___________________

I asked David what he thought about women boxing. “When I first started there were

no women in boxing. At first when one or two came in, I thought it was a little strange. I like women boxing. Now they’ve become a fixture. I think forty percent of the gym is women boxing now. It’s good.” A lot of men don’t like watching women fight. It makes them cringe. When I hear men say that, I immediately feel protected and cared for. But when I think about it more, I get confused and almost angry. I start thinking about the age-old question, why can’t we do what they do? I’ve heard men say women’s basketball is boring. Women don’t belong playing football. And a women’s hockey team is only cool when it’s on the Winter Olympics. But then, on a random day, I walked past two women sparring in one of the rings at Gleason’s and I cringed for a second.

And this happened on the same day that I, a woman, was in the ring sparring with my

trainer. As I stand and watch, I slowly grow to cheer them on, slowly adapting, slowly changing my view from seeing them as delicate precious flowers to seeing them as strong warriors whose faces will heal after this, whose feet will walk more confidently on the way home, whose hearts have seen and sought a different life experience than most women, and whose fists have danced in an admirable act of exquisite athleticism. III. ROBERT GAGLIARDI: THE FIGHTING IRISH.

Gleason’s is the oldest boxing gym in the United States. It opened in 1937. The orig-

inal owner, Robert Gagliardi, started the gym in an Irish section of the Bronx. At that time, the Irish and the Italians didn’t get along, despite the fact they both had Catholicism in common. So instead of calling it Gagliardi’s, Robert called it Gleason’s so it would sound Irish. Very soon after the gym opened, Robert legally changed his name to Bobby Gleason, and it 64

became Bobby Gleason’s Gym.

Sometimes your parents name you. Other times a wave of migration from an Emerald

Isle across the sea does. The term “Fighting Irish” was not coined at Gleason’s but you could say the name of Gleason’s was coined because of them.

The gym was in the Bronx at 434 Westchester Avenue near 149th Street and Third

Avenue from 1937 to 1974 until the building was torn down for a housing project. It moved to Thirtieth Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan from 1974-85. In 1985, Gleason’s moved to Dumbo where it’s been for thirty-two years. First it was located at 77 Front Street and now it is located at 130 Water Street. ___________________ Week Five and Six of Training. Leg lifts. Squats. Planks. Sparring in the ring. Footwork. Defense. Blocking. Rolling. Slipping.

Slipping is considered one of the four basic defensive strategies in boxing along

with holding, blocking, and clinching. Slipping allows you to avoid a punch without having to sacrifice an arm for defense. It looks slick as hell when you pull it off and, more importantly, it saves you from getting socked. ___________________ IV. BRUCE SILVERGLADE: UNCONDITIONAL GLOVE.

“We were the center of attention on Thirtieth Street and the center of security. Back

then people relied on the stability and the people of Gleason’s to keep the neighborhood safe,” says Gleason’s owner Bruce Silverglade. After Bobby Gleason passed away, Ira Becker bought the gym. Bruce Silverglade partnered up with Ira as co-owner in 1984.

“When we relocated to DUMBO, it wasn’t called that back then. There weren’t any

streets. No sidewalks, no businesses, nobody living here. That’s why we came here because the rent was very affordable. The neighborhood has built up in this area. Now DUMBO is one of the wealthiest neighborhood in New York City, and Gleason’s is the main part of it. We were centrally located here for a number of years. When Hurricane Sandy came and this area was flooded, but because Gleason’s is on the second floor, it wasn’t, so we invited neighbors to come to get warm and use electricity. We had lights and heat when most places in the area did not,” says Silverglade.

“Boxing is a popular sport,” he continues. “People love watching fights. When you’re

growing up there’s a fight in the schoolyard, everybody is circled around, screaming, having a good time. When there’s a Mayweather fight or Pacquiao, people watch it. However, it’s not for the masses to train and to compete. We have a little over twelve hundred members, seventeen or eighteen million people living in this metropolitan area. Miniscule compared to the major population.”

As I sit in Silverglade’s office he tells me more about what Gleason’s does for people.

He’s had people come in with stage four cancer. Through their mental ability and the type of training they’ve had at Gleason’s, their cancer has gone into remission. I believe him because of what training has done for me and the positive energy I always feel in the place. I start to realize I’ve discovered a special world that I’ve needed for so long. A world everyone may need. And it’s right here, underneath a bridge in Brooklyn, hiding in plain sight. ___________________ Week Seven and Eight of Training. One mile run. Left and right uppercut. Arm cables.

In the ring again. Asked for it. Made it more rounds. Stamina is improving. Punches

are hitting harder. I’m starting to believe I can knock someone into next week. ___________________

Even if you don’t make it to Gleason’s as an adult seeking spirituality, great arms, and

unmatched stamina, your mom can always call in a session for you. Often times they call Gleason’s about their kids being bullied to see if they can help them learn how to fight. I asked Silverglade how he responds to these calls. “We can help,” he says, “without teaching them how to be fighters. We don’t teach them to go and punch the bully. We teach them to have self-confidence. And once they have that, bullies leave them alone. Boxing training is more mental than it is physical. We teach kids to overcome fear, to be focused and concentrated, so in school they can use their concentration and focus to do much better. Even when adults train, they become much better lawyers, doctors, or whatever profession they’re in, they get better, stronger. Housewives are better able to control their home environment. They feel better about themselves too.” 66

I realized at this moment, no matter who you are, what you’re going through, or

where you are in your life, boxing can help you, in a way no other sport like golf or basketball can. It teaches you to wield power from your heart and pump it straight into your hands. It teaches you to grab ahold of your life and love yourself. If I could name this feeling, it would have to be “unconditional glove.”

“The sport attracts certain individuals and the individuals are very unique. It’s a sport

of a single person. When you compete it’s only you, you’re there all by yourself. You have to have a certain character. A certain makeup. It’s a very unique person,” says Silverglade. “They’re leaders. And these individuals like to compete. So people like to come to the gym to pal around and train with these people. They’re the type of characters certain people are interested in being around.”

V. RAUL FRANK: “I REMEMBER SEEING THE LOOK ON MY MOTHER’S FACE BEFORE AND AFTER THE FIGHT.”

My trainer is Raul Frank, originally from Guyana, South America. He started fighting

at seven years old. He trained every day after school. His gym bag would be packed and ready to go five days a week. “My pops is a boxer. One day I went to one of his fights and he lost the fight. And as I was looking at the disappointment in my mom and brother’s faces, I decided I wanted to fight then and put joy on their face and make them happy,” says Frank.

You don’t have to get knocked out at Gleason’s to see stars. Frank was number one in

the world for a year and a half. He won the United States Boxing Association (USBA) Championship and the Latin American title as a welterweight at 147 lbs. After that, his dream was to become a world champion in a different weight class. The most exciting time in his career was preparing for the 1984 Olympics. He trained with his brother in Guyana, and they won the Olympic trials. At eighteen years old, Frank’s brother, Steve Frank, made it to the Olympics. At thirteen, Raul Frank qualified but they told him he was too young to go.

Frank grew up with six brothers and two sisters. His dad put him, his brother Steve,

and his brother Ronson together to box. “That’s what helped me to get better as an amateur and professional boxer, the four of us boxing together.”

Frank says his youngest sister sparred with them occasionally but for the most part

his sisters didn’t box because at that time boxing wasn’t so popular for women. He believes his 70

younger sister would’ve been an amazing fighter. The fight he was most nervous about during his career was against Vernon Forrest for the International Boxing Federation (IBF) Championship in 2000.

“What made me nervous was the training that I got wasn’t up to where I wanted to

be. I wasn’t satisfied with the techniques my trainers were teaching me to beat a person like Vernon Forrest and the kind of fighter he is. The first fight we had a head butt during the third round. No contest. Second fight we went twelve rounds. But of course, Vernon had the best trainers in the game at that time. And I had the trainers that were trying to make a name for themselves. So it was the trainers who won the fight, not Forrest beating me. And God rest his soul because he died not too long ago.”

Raul had his first fight at nine years old. “My mother and everyone showed up. My

mother was so scared. It was an exciting event. I knocked the guy out in the first round. I remember seeing the look on my mother’s face before and after the fight. She was amazed by the strength that I showed and the coordination and my technique.”

In Guyana, boxing is one of the leading sports besides cricket and soccer. “Boxing

kept me out of trouble,” says Frank. “I’m always dedicated. I take that with me in life after boxing. I’m always focused on what I have to do. Due to boxing, I was able to put my son through college and now he’s a Fulbright grad.”

Raul has been training at Gleason’s since 1989. And I’ve been lucky enough to train

with him for about six months. Frank says, “I went from training here to being a trainer. I love boxing and that’s the reason I’m still in the game today. I love the sport. I want to try to help some kid who has the potential and doesn’t have anyone to back him up. I have a few kids I train now that have so much potential but it’s up to them to train and to become a professional fighter and champion.” Raul knows I’m not looking to fight a world champion but he is encouraging me to fight a worldwide enemy: cancer. There’s a company called Haymakers for Hope that invites ordinary people to fight cancer every year by fighting in the ring. Each person will train like a real fighter up until the big match while raising money for the cause from sponsors. I haven’t made a decision yet but it could be an exciting goal to train for. 72

“My main thing was during my career, after I had my son, was to put him through a

private school, make a better life for him. I grew up rough, not the poor side of Guyana but I lived at a certain level. My father struggled to keep us at a certain level. I wanted to do well for my son, and I’m proud of myself because he made it through school. He’s very gifted. I’m proud of myself because I put a lot of time into him. He was always an above-level student.”

Since Raul’s been at Gleason’s he’s seen all of the World’s Champions visit at one

point or another: Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Frederick Bo, Mayweather, and even wrestlers like John Cena. But the ultimate visitor was Muhammad Ali. Frank said people lined up when Ali walked into Gleason’s. It was an act of respect and admiration he had never seen for any other visitor before. I imagine that’s how Ali was received everywhere he went, especially in his later years. While Ali is the greatest, Raul’s favorite boxer is Roberto Duran.

“He was one of the leading World Title Champions. Number one in the world when

it comes to being the most precise. The technique to knock someone out. And everything he’s done in and outside of the ring.” Raul says. “The best fighters are from the hood because they’re hungry. It’s completely different training in the gym versus being on stage. When the lights come on, it really shows you who they are.”

Boxing used to draw people in because it would give them a better life when they had

no other options. Now you’ve got these different white collar people coming in. You’ve got women. You’ve got all walks of life searching for an alternative to spin class, crossFit, and trampoline yoga or whatever else the workout trends are these days.

It reminds me of the beginning of the gentrification of Brooklyn or a kid from the

Upper East Side buying a Coogi sweater on Amazon after seeing Biggie wear one. But the sport isn’t that infiltrated yet ––– at least at Gleason’s. Like Bruce said, compared to the population of the city, his membership number is not overwhelmingly high. Gleason’s still remains a little hidden from everyone. Except European tourists, but those guys find everything.

Frank also believes there’s nothing that beats a good boxing workout. “A lot of peo-

ple I see, with different mental issues, work out and stay for years and I’m totally surprised. It cures issues like depression and everything.”

Raul has taught me a lot as a trainer and as a friend, including how to punch and slip

pretty well. But the thing I appreciate him teaching me most is how to keep going. 74

VI. JOHN DOUGLAS: “PEOPLE SAY THE FIRST FACE THEY SEE WHEN THEY GO TO BED AT NIGHT IS ME.”

When I first saw John Douglas, he came walking towards me with a wide, friendly

smile, some of his teeth glittering with gold. He asked me how I was doing and I liked him immediately. All these guys are so incredibly cool, with an energy and a wisdom that’s hard to slip.

John was drawn to boxing when he was watching the 1992 Summer Olympics in

Barcelona. He was eighteen years old, living in Guyana, and thought to himself, “Wow, I’d love to go.” He had never boxed a day in his life.

That Sunday, he went to church, and told his priest that he was going to the Olym-

pics. He remembers his priest telling him that he had what it takes to make it happen, so he went and joined a boxing gym and told all the national champions training alongside him, “I’m going to the Olympics!” And they said, “You ever box before?” He said no and they looked at him and said he was crazy. So he dedicated himself for four years. “My country picked eleven of us and sent us to the Olympic Box Off in Argentina. Ten lost and I won. Nobody believed me. Nobody. It was faith. I believed. My priest said I was going and I never doubted it,” says Douglas.

“I liked the people cheering. The opening ceremony when you come out with your

country’s flag. I was an ambassador walking with the flag of Guyana at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. My dream came true in only four years. I started at nineteen. People said that’s late for boxing but it wasn’t late for me.”

John is also an amazing artist who designed his own business card with a cartoon car-

icature of himself. On some days he wears furry pink high tops that look like bunny slippers from afar. I like those days.

“People come to me depressed. In five weeks, they’re smiling. They say the first face

they see when they go to bed at night is me. People come here when their wife has died. I say the creator made you meet me for a reason. There’s someone out there special for you. And they find them. They also say, ‘I trained with you for one day and now I go to work smiling.’”

___________________ Week Eleven and Twelve of Training. Uphill walk on treadmill. Side running on treadmill. Backwards running on treadmill. Sparring.

Raul has me doing intense cardio these days. The backwards running on a treadmill

can scare you initially because you feel like one wrong move and you’ll fall backwards. Once I paced myself, got the rhythm down and stayed balanced. ___________________ VII. DARYL PIERRE: “IF YOU RELAX EVERYTHING WILL COME TO YOU, JUST LIKE IT’S SUPPOSED TO, AND YOU’LL GET IT.”

“Everybody should know how to box because it helps with self defense,” says trainer

Daryl Pierre, who has been training boxers for thirty years. “Not that everybody who gets in the ring is going to be a boxer. But no one should be a victim out in the street. When you know how to defend yourself and handle yourself, you feel better about yourself. You don’t have to give up your money just because someone says give me all your money. I think everybody should learn how to box. And I’ve always thought that I could teach anybody how to box. And I’ve done a good job.”

Daryl says when Bruce Silverglade started amateur boxing, it went big. Especially

with the help of other organizations that kept kids in the game. “It helped people stay out of trouble, off the streets, a way to make money, a way out of the ghetto. Take people like Mike Tyson who came out of Brooklyn. He was a hoodlum who became a boxer. And those stories inspire other people to do that, who don’t have anything in their life. They want to do something, they can’t play basketball or baseball to make money. It influenced a lot of kids in other burroughs too. They all came to Brooklyn to box because Gleason’s was the biggest gym. All the boxers that have ever boxed come here. People just want to see it. Gleason’s is known all around the world. Tyson was at Gleason’s. Ali was at Gleason’s. It’s just an inspiring place.”

Daryl told me boxing taught him how to deal with his emotions. How to calm down,

relax, and not let people get the best of you. “When you blow it, you lose it,” he says. “Once you learn how to box, you learn how not to box. You learn how to control your temper and emotions. You can talk things out instead of fighting things out. That’s what I get my clients to do. Work on their emotions and make better decisions in life. I get people to think. Not just 80

use their hands or use their feet. I get them to use their head. Boxing is a lot like life. You have to make decisions in that ring just like you have to make in the world. And you want to make the right ones. If you relax then everything will come to you, just like itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s supposed to, and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get it.â&#x20AC;?

I first met Ashley Glass in December of 2015, when she was looking for an apart-

ment. Over the course of a Sunday afternoon and early evening in December, we saw a few places in the Upper East Side, then made plans to pick up the search again after the holidays.

Then one afternoon in April of 2016, she called me with a deadline: her landlord

needed to move her mother (her landlord’s) into the place that Glass was staying, so Glass had two weeks to find a place, and the search was on again ––– but for real this time.

I still remember how much fun it was to work with Glass, jumping from open house

to open house on a Saturday morning and early afternoon, as well as over few evenings during the week, rhyming and reciting lines of improve slam-a-jam poetry as we walked from one place to the next around Manhattan: Chelsea, Chinatown, South of Houston. We were on a mission. Ultimately, she settled into a place a few streets away from where she was already living, in Astoria, her most familiar native neighborhood in New York since moving here from Florida almost eight years ago.

Life comes at you fast. You only have so much time, and as I worked with Glass, with

finding an apartment, and then three years later, with her essay “A Bell Goes Off,” I realized what we have in common: an internal knowing that if you’re going to talk about doing something, then that’s great, but at some point, the talking has to end, and the doing has to begin.

So with this idea in mind, there couldn’t have been a better place to spend a Saturday

afternoon with Glass and her trainer, Raul Frank. When I asked Frank about the reaction on Glass’ face after she took a punch for the first time, he said she looked shocked. And when I asked Glass the same question, she offered a response that almost anyone could relate with: “It felt like reality struck me in the face.”

When you have a friendship with Ashley Glass, you know that you have someone to

talk with whenever life delivers a “Big Sudden Blow,” as she at one point considered entitling this piece. You’ll talk, and she’ll listen with concern and compassion, but only for so long, as at some point, she might say, a break must be taken from the talking, and you have to step into the ring.

Once inside the ring, in order to avoid the hits, you can slip, or you can bob and

weave, but if you’re in there for long enough, eventually you’ll get it. “With ‘A Bell Goes Off,’ that’s what happens when a life lesson is learned inside of Gleason’s,” she told me. “A bell goes off in your head. And they also have bells going off in the gym, so sometimes you just mix them up ––– was that the bell in the gym, or was that the idea in my head?” - PHOTOGRAPHY: EMILY FISHMAN - Pg. 48-109 94

-Isaac Myers III.

Ashley Glass: Isaac, you left your recorder recording so I’m talking into it. It’s sitting on the ring next to a few people sparring. ______________ [I move around the boxing ring in which Glass is sparring and punching with her trainer, Raul Frank. I walk around with a sheet of paper that’s pressed against the outside of my notebook and take notes, both written and mental. Glass is wearing boxing gloves, so in between the punching and the sparring and the leg lifts, push-ups, and sit-ups, she will pause so Frank can pour bottled water into her mouth. After a few more minutes of punching, sparring, and leg lifting, Glass takes a quick break. She takes off her gloves, steps through the ropes, and hops down onto the floor so I can ask her a few questions.] ______________ Isaac: So how are you feeling? Glass: I’m feeling rough, actually. This cold is brutal. And it’s still lingering. So I just did a light workout. I don’t really know if I should have done that. Isaac: But when you woke up this morning, what did you say to yourself ? Glass: Oh, I was like, “We’re gonna do this!” I’m feeling so much better than last weekend. There’s no way I could have even left my apartment last weekend. Isaac: That would have been rough. Glass: How do you like the gym? Isaac: I’m glad that I read your article first. It’s a fun place to sit and write too, and you can feed off of the energy of the place.

Glass: Yeah. Isaac: And it feels like, whatever I’ve been doing out there, it’s not quite enough. And you come in here, and you want to be more powerful out there. Glass: Yeah, that’s an awesome discovery. Isaac: But that’s what you were writing about? Glass: Yeah, that’s a cool way to put it. Whatever I’m doing out there isn’t good enough. That’s cool. Isaac: So do you have a favorite punching bag in here? Glass: Raul has me on that black and red one. But if these photos are black and white, it will probably come out gray or black, right? Isaac: I’m just asking because I’m curious. Glass: Oh. No, I don’t. I don’t have a favorite. I guess it would actually be the one where Emily was photographing me the most [pointing toward the specific punching bag]. Isaac: What do you like about it? Glass: Those are kind of intimidating [pointing at specific punching bags]. They’re like a three hundred pound man. That one’s like a hundred and seventy-five pound man. And he’s a short man! That’s a tall three hundred pound man, that’s a short hundred and seventy pound man. Isaac: Which one is the blonde, and which one is the brunette? Glass: That’s funny. I’m definitely punching the blonde. ______________ [Glass goes back to finish up her workout, which includes a few more push-ups and sitsup. A few steps away from where I’m standing now, Raul Frank has paused so Emily

Fishman can photograph him.

Isaac: And then you won your last one?

I ask him a few questions and then I sit down with Glass and Frank together at the same time.]

Frank: Yeah, I won my last one. I went back [to Guyana] to show the people that I still have it. It was one hell of an experience though.

______________ Isaac: How are you, how’s your day been? Frank: Good, good. Busy, but good. Isaac: How many people are you training today? Frank: Today, between twelve and fifteen. Isaac: Wow. Frank: Yeah, but I start at six in the morning. And then weekdays it’s usually at around four thirty in the morning that I have to get up, and I get here around five or five thirty. Isaac: I’m really honored to meet you. Frank: It’s a pleasure. Working with Ashley is fun. She comes in. She brightens the place. But I like working with a mix of people. I trained a lawyer this morning, and then I trained a surgeon. Different types of people come in. Some people come for their health. Different walks of life benefit from it. Isaac: I read that your first fight was in 1986, is that right? Frank: Yeah. Isaac: Do you remember that one at all? Frank: Yeah, I won by a first round knockout. Isaac: Where was that? Frank: In Guyana. The place where they find all of the oil now. Isaac: And your first fight in the States was in 1991? Frank: Yeah, I think so. It was a little while back. The first fight you always remember. 98

Isaac: How so? Frank: Well I got sick around the time that the fight was scheduled. [New York] was cold, and I went into the heat down there in Georgetown, Guyana. And I got sick overnight. By the time I hit the airport I started sneezing. And I really got sick. But I was like a thoroughbred, and then once I was heading toward the arena, and I saw the people, all of a sudden my body started coming alive. And then I felt better . . . And that was how I was able to fight. But leading up to the fight, and the day before, I felt so sick that I wanted to cancel. Isaac: How long was the fight, do you remember? Frank: The fight was ten rounds. Isaac: Were you feeling stronger as it went on? Frank: No, but it was the competitive spirit that I have. I was feeling sick right through the fight, but I just competed. I didn’t want to let down my family. I had family that hadn’t seen me in years that night, and I didn’t want to get my ass kicked. Isaac: Or cancel. Frank: Yeah, it would have been so embarrassing. I hope you guys have fun here. Anytime you want to come back and do a workout just let me know. I’ll give you a complimentary workout and you’ll see how it feels. That’s how Ashley got started. … She loves this sport. This is for when you get a tough time at work, you come in here. This is kind of a way to let out a release.

[ The three of us move into Frank’s office to continue the interview, Emily joins us a few minutes later.] Isaac: How’s Ashley doing with the training? Frank: She’s great. From the time Ashley walked into the gym for her complimentary workout she stuck with it. Being here, mixing with different types of people, it’s amazing. And having Ashley here, it’s good for boxing, good for us, good for business. Isaac: What was she like when she first started training, compared to now? Frank: Actually, she wanted to know more about the sport. She wanted to be more physically fit. She wanted to learn techniques. So we’ve been working on those things, and I think she’s making progress. Isaac [to Glass]: How would you sum up the difference between then and now? Glass: When I came here I was just afraid to get into the ring, period. So there’s a huge difference. I was even afraid to be next to someone who was boxing. Isaac: Next to someone?

to do with all of this knowledge and training that you’re acquiring? Glass: I want to get better. Frank: Actually, we were talking about it . . . about you doing a fight, for charity. Glass: Well, that was suggested. I don’t know if I’m going to. Frank: I think she’s getting there. Another few months of coming to the gym, she’s going to get there. Isaac: What was it like, the first time you took a punch? Glass [to Frank]: The only punch I’ve taken would be your punch, or from sparring. Frank: Yes. And I saw the surprise on her face. Isaac: What was that like? Frank: She looked shocked! Like, oh! Glass: I didn’t think he was really going to hit me. Frank: And I hit her in the face ––– as long as you put on the headgear and the gloves, right?

Glass: Yeah, I was afraid they were going to hit me in the face on accident. And so now, I’m in the ring. We spar together. I feel like my coordination is better. My concentration is better. And my stamina is way better than when I started, because it was not spectacular when I started.

Isaac: Isn’t there a phrase, something like, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”?

Isaac: What’s up with the backwards running?

Isaac: What did that feel like?

Frank: The backwards running is more for toning and rhythm. Boxers use that to build their coordination between hands and legs. So that’s why we’ve been working on that. Isaac: So do you know what you’re going

Frank: I avoid the mouth. I hit her in the top of the head. But she was shocked, sort of like, is this what it is, being hit like this?

Glass: I kind of had a one-sided perspective, I thought that I would just come in and train, and I didn’t really think about getting hit. But it felt like reality struck me in the face. Like yeah, this is what it takes. You don’t just learn how to hit, you also have to learn how to get hit ––– or not get hit. Which I’m still working on too.

Isaac: What’s your favorite move to not get hit? Glass: I like slipping.

Frank: Slipping the punch is slipping to the side to avoid it. You slip to the left to avoid the right hand, and you slip to the right to avoid the left.

Frank: When I won the USBA Championship, and was the USBA Champion of the Year. It was a really tough fight. The guy was undefeated, Purcell Miller, and we fought in Minnesota, and the place was so cold. And I had to break off weight in order to fight. And it was a really good fight. The guy was very strong. And I managed to pull off the win.

Isaac: And bobbing and weaving . . .

Isaac: What year was that?

Frank: Bobbing and weaving is ducking under the punches. We practice that by ducking under the rope, the old-fashioned way, and moving from the hooks, the left hook and the right hook, so you duck under the punch.

Frank: It was 1997.

Frank: Yeah, slipping punches, bobbing and weaving, and blocking. Isaac: So what’s slipping?

Isaac: So what was it like the first time you landed a punch? Glass: Awesome. It feels great. It’s really therapeutic. Isaac: How far along in your training were you? Glass: I think it was the first day. It was on the pad that Raul and I train with. I don’t think I land many punches while sparring. No, I do. But not on your face. Frank: You did, but you were so tired afterwards. Isaac: So do you remember how you got the idea for trying this? Glass: Yeah, I lived down the street, and I walked by. But also my dad watched boxing a lot while I was growing up, and he’s a huge fan, and he took me to some fights as a kid, so I kind of always had it in my mind. It’s big in Florida, and there’s a big boxing community where I grew up. So when I walked by one day, I just wanted to try it for exercise ––– I wanted to learn how to do it. 100

Isaac [to Frank]: What’s your favorite boxing memory, or moment, from your career?

Isaac: So what did you do after the fight? Frank: I was in so much pain after the fight. Usually you hang out, have a party, but no, I was in bed. But it was a sweet victory. It was a sweet pain. Winning the championship and being ranked in the top five in the world. Isaac: So when you get to that point, what’s next? Frank: Well at that point, usually your manager would decide to talk with the promoters, who would try to match you up, either for the world championship, so that you can stay ranked in the top five, and then if you stay ranked in the top five for long enough, then eventually you could get a chance to fight for the world championship. If you look behind you, that was one of the belts that I won. Emily: “The Dangerous Raul Frank”? Frank: Right. That was when I won fighter of the year. Isaac: What about boxing names for Ashley, what goes between Ashley and Glass? Glass: No boxing names for me.

Isaac: Have you thought of one? Glass: No, I haven’t even thought of one. Isaac: Well, I guess it’s up to other people to give you a name. Frank: Yeah, it’s up to the trainer.

______________ [Frank leaves. We break, for photos of Bruce Silverglade, Darryl Pierre, David Lawrence, and John Douglas. About twenty minutes later we reconvene]. ______________

Glass: I’ve got to earn it.

Emily: What do you do, what’s your day job?

Frank: Yeah. You’ve got to earn it. And up to now you’re halfway there.

Glass: I work in advertising, on the creative side, as a writer, a copywriter.

Glass: Halfway is good!

Emily: What agency are you at?

Frank: Yeah, I’ll have to think about it, and then give out a name ––– “Too Quick”! Something like that.

Glass: At McCann.

Isaac: Ashley “Too Quick” Glass.

Isaac: How do you think boxing is like copywriting, and vice versa?

Glass: Oh man, now I want to work towards that. Isaac: So, Saturday morning, take us through your first thought when you know you’re going to Gleason’s. Glass: I’m excited! I’m excited to see Raul’s smiling face, to have him train me. He makes my day, sometimes makes my week. I feel great afterwards. It’s something to look forward to. Isaac: What separates the good from the great boxers? Frank: Hard work. You have to train. You have to put in the time. Whenever you want to be sleeping, you have to get up. You have to be focused, and thinking about getting that crown, that title. It’s not all about money. It’s about achieving the goal which is the championship, the world championship. But we’ll have to do a follow-up, when Ashley is in a fight. Isaac: That sounds great. Nice to meet you, and thanks for taking the time. Frank: Not a problem, anytime.

Emily: Fabulous. That’s great.

Glass: That’s actually another reason that I got into boxing, my profession, because you get a lot of your work killed on a daily basis, so it’s a ton of rejection over and over, a ton of hits that you have to get back up from on a daily basis. So you’ll come up with creative ideas, and submit them to your creative directors or your clients, and they’ll either die, or they’ll live. So you’ve got to build a thick skin. And it’s also a very challenging environment and industry. So I guess I can see this as another way to deal with taking the hits. Isaac: So you’ve been training for about six months? Glass: I think it’s almost eight by now. Isaac: So have you noticed a difference in your mental state, and how many of your ideas are accepted or rejected? Glass: In my mental state? Yes. In terms of how many of my ideas are accepted, that hasn’t changed. The copywriting and the advertising is a small percentage of why I came, but while I was here, I realized that my profession is very tied to this. It’s a similar 101

kind of world. It’s almost like I’m training in here for out there. For out there in life, in my personal life, taking the hits there, and then also taking the hits in the office, and taking the hits anywhere else. And being able to give the hits too. Isaac: So you like that more? Glass: Giving the hits? Isaac: Yes. Glass: I actually like learning how to take the hits ––– or rather, slipping the hits, or dodging the hits. But it’s competitive, in New York City, it’s competitive in my industry, it’s just a city where everybody is clawing their way to get somewhere. Isaac: Well you have a pretty interesting New York City story too right? Because you had the business cards, and the leaving, and the coming back. How does that story go again? Glass: Yeah. It’s a lengthy story, but I can say that coming to New York, when I first moved here, I was trying to break into the advertising industry, and I was couch hopping and staying at friends’ apartments and serving tables, and working odd jobs, and doing some freelance, and it was really hard to break in. It was so hard that with the portfolio that I had at the time, I couldn’t break in. And I could barely manage to stay afloat in New York. So I actually had to take a job at an advertising agency in south Florida, in order to get back up here. Isaac: But then eventually . . . Glass: Eventually I clawed my way back. Isaac: But what was on the business card? Glass: My business card at the time said “Miss Glass Half-full.” Isaac: Right, and there was someone who remembered you because of the card, or not just because of the card, but . . . 102

Glass: Right. When I was here, and I was trying to break in, I would go to all of these advertising events and hand out my homemade business card. And this guy, who is a fabulous man, loved my business card, and he kept it on his bathroom mirror. Bless his heart, because when a recruiter contacted him for a job ––– because he was a copywriter in New York at the time ––– he didn’t need one. But he had my card on his bathroom mirror, and he immediately thought, I know someone who does need a job as a copywriter, and he referred me to that headhunter, and that headhunter reached out to me and asked me for my portfolio, then flew me back to New York from Florida for an interview, and I nailed it and got the job. Isaac: How soon did you start? Glass: I started . . . probably three or four weeks after the interview. And I was scared to come back. Isaac: Why? Glass: I was scared to get back into the ring of New York City, because I was afraid that I would fail again. Isaac: Well you haven’t. Glass: I haven’t. I’m here to stay. Isaac: What was your first place like when you moved back? Glass: The agency, or where I lived? Isaac: Where you lived. Glass: When I came back it was in Astoria, Queens. With two roommates. A humble apartment! In Astoria. But cozy, and I was on a phone call with my dad one afternoon, and I remember that when I was living in south Florida, I was living a block away from the ocean, and it was April, actually around this time, and it was so cold in New York, and my dad called

me, and he said, “How does it feel to be back in New York?” And I said, “Well, I’m no longer a block away from the ocean, I’m in Queens, and I’ve got bars on my windows. And I’m freezing. And I couldn’t be happier.” I was so happy. Isaac: Well did you have fun, working on this piece? Glass: I had so much fun. I was just sitting here today while this was all going on, and soaking it in. It’s just been a special day. If this is the only thing that I create all year, then I’m happy. I love the people here. I love the vibe. I love the fact that we’re doing this. I love the fact that you guys are here, and you’re into it. Emily is running around and grabbing shots. I hope you’re into it. Isaac: Definitely. I appreciate you doing the orchestrating, and the introductions. ______________ [We leave Frank’s office and chat with Lawrence and Pierre for a while as we’re making our way out. We leave Gleason’s and linger outside the gym on Water Street for a few moments, then right and walk up Adams Street, toward Front, and decide to close the interview at a coffee shop around the corner.] ______________ Glass: Thanks for doing this. I’m really happy to do it. It’s been a really good experience for me, and I’m really proud of it. It’s just nice to be able to write without a client. I think this is going to make a bigger impact on me then me just saying, “This has been a really great experience.” It’s inspiring me to write more, outside of work, which I’ve been wanting to do. Isaac: What have you been writing? Have you been journaling?

Glass: I’ve been just letting stuff out when the inspiration strikes. But I’ve also been reading more. Isaac: What are you reading? Glass: I got this book, just last night, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace. It’s about this guy who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and went to an Ivy League school. And he was violently killed after he graduated from Yale. Isaac: What happened? Glass: I don’t know yet. I just started reading it on the subway last night. I’m also reading Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. Isaac: And you’re enjoying it? Glass: Definitely. Do you know about it? Isaac: I don’t. Glass: He writes for The New Yorker and he won a Pulitzer for this book. It’s about surfing. Well, it’s about more than surfing. It’s about boyhood, travel, friendship, life. But writing this piece . . . it’s been creative in a way that I haven’t been in a while. I like the freedom of being able to write about things that I care about. I’m free to be myself. Isaac: How would you describe your writing style? Glass: How would I describe it? Under construction. For the rest of my life. I’m a bit of a chameleon and I can change my tone of voice. I can adapt to different styles. I think because I’ve been working in advertising I’ve had to adapt to different styles and adapt to different voices ––– whether it’s a financial client, or a technology client, or a healthcare client, or motor oil, or beauty. You have to be able to adapt to the voice of that brand, in the same way that you would write for different characters in a movie. Each client is a different character to write for. Isaac: So a chameleon . . .

103

Glass: So a chameleon. But when I wrote this piece I felt like I didn’t have to be that way. It’s my own voice. Isaac: Well it’s a good voice. “Look into the black punching bag.” Glass: Well, thank you. Yeah, “Look into the black punching bag.” And so I want to explore more of that voice. Isaac: It’s infinite. Glass: Yeah, it’s infinite. And now I’m literally sucking all of the creative juices out of myself for my job on a daily basis. And so I want to repurpose some of those juices. Isaac: So when you have all of those creative juices sufficiently sucked out of you, what do you do? Go to sleep? Glass: Hmm. After the juices are sucked out of me . . . I’ll go workout, or I’ll go hang out with friends, or I’ll just rest. But also sometimes I try to get inspired, whether it’s films or going to a museum, or just walking down the sidewalk in New York City for a breath of fresh air. It all works. Isaac: So we settled on “A Bell Goes Off ” for the title of your piece. Glass: Yeah, “A Bell Goes Off.” Isaac: Do you want to take us through some of the other titles, or the deleted scenes? Glass: Oh, about what else we were working with? Isaac: Well, initially you were thinking . . . Glass: Initially I was thinking “On Boxing.” At some point I was also thinking “Ring Sides,” and “Big Sudden Blows,” and the subhead was always “What I got out of getting into the ring at Gleason’s.” Isaac: That’s always been there. Glass: But you laughed at me the other day, 104

for being so serious about my title, which I thought was interesting. But I am. I think the title is a big deal. And actually, even when I go to bookstores, I really look at the titles. I’m intrigued by them. But I was just trying to figure out a way to say what this piece is about. I started training at Gleason’s to learn how to box, and to get a different sort of workout in, and I discovered something totally unexpected. I learned lessons about life. And so I was trying to fit that into a headline. And with “A Bell Goes Off,” that’s what happens when a life lesson is learned inside of Gleason’s. A bell goes off in your head. And they also have bells going off in the gym, so sometimes you just mix them up ––– was that the bell in the gym, or was that the idea in my head? Isaac: Well it seems like it’s just the beginning. Glass: The beginning of boxing? Isaac: Well, maybe for both of us, and I don’t want to speak too much to your experience, because it’s your experience, but the city has a way of challenging you ––– it puts you through a lot of things, and eventually, if you really want to be here, and you’re lucky, then you reach this point where you sort of cross over a bridge, and you get to decide, okay, I’m going to be here for a while. And once you get there, it’s sort of the beginning. Because now that you’ve decided that you’re going to be here for a while, and have made enough connections and had enough success that you know that you can actually look back and know that it has actually happened, then things actually start again. So in some ways, this feels like the beginning of something. Glass: It is. When you asked how I’d get a boxing name, or a nickname, and Raul said “She has to earn it, and she’s halfway there,” I’ve earned my place in New York

105

City ––– close to eight years now. And so, yeah, you do have to earn your way here. New York and I have had a grand love affair full of struggle and persistence and devastation and glory and love and hate. I’m lucky to be here for so long that I’m getting to write about one of the most historic New York establishments and one of the most historic establishments in the history of the country, so that’s really awesome. Now I’m speaking on behalf of the city. Isaac: Now you’re calling the shots. Glass: What’s up, New York? Now I’m reppin’ you! Isaac: I have no further questions. Glass: We’re hand-in-hand now, New York and I.

106

107

108

109

110

111

WINTER IN PERSEPHONE. Tess Congo

112

Andrea wished herself a bear. Black, brown—any kind but polar. To steal a whole season for slumber and recuperation without consequence, to linger in sleep without shame. What would it be like to silence a season and resume life fresh with the first buds of spring? To feel awake as soon as—Andrea’s alarm beeped for the third time that morning. She hit snooze. A text sounded at the top of her phone screen: Cynthia: How’s the draft coming? Andrea dropped her phone on the bedspread. Light seeped beneath the curtains outlining the features of the room: the shelf with the dying cacti, the tufted settee beneath, the bookshelf of self-help, sex, and poetry books, the mid-century lowboy dresser and its matching mirror, and James’ recent bedroom display of affection: the photos. On Valentine’s Day, James had spun her around three times as if they were in the midst of pin-the-tail on the donkey, and when he told her to open her eyes, Andrea felt like the donkey. She wanted to say What the fuck? Instead she had said “Wow.” James had taped twenty photos on the wall: “I LOVE YOU” carved into sand at Hampton Beach; champagne glasses cheers’ing over chicken pineapple kabobs from his family’s annual Independence Day barbecue; Andrea’s first Instagram post, a photo of James playing chess with the stuffed duck Andrea had won him on their first date; Andrea and James on that first date sharing a stick of pink cotton candy; James piggybacking Andrea across a puddle; James proposing to her in the snow (not shown: him saying Please say something. My knees are getting cold); their first wedding dance with James’ brother reaching mistletoe over their heads; Andrea preparing to throw soaked socks off a rainy Mount Major (Don’t, James said after he took the picture. The blisters will be worse.); pink shoes resting on Andrea’s hilled stomach; Becca in Andrea’s arms at the hospital; Andrea’s mom and Becca building an Angelina Ballerina puzzle; Andrea and James kissing over a candle marking their third wedding anniversary; James tickling Becca on a picnic blanket; Andrea and Becca bouncing hand in hand on a trampoline; Becca in a field of flowers in her bumblebee costume; Andrea and James snuggling next to a campfire; Becca biting into her uncut fifth birthday cake; a photo of Becca’s drawings of them as a marshmallow family with James and Andrea holding cell phones in their marshmallow hands; Becca dancing with her feet on James’s loafers next to a photo of Andrea as a little girl dancing on her father’s feet. At “Wow,” James’s smile seemed to collapse into his chin. Andrea tried to perk him up with kisses, but he looked so wilted, the damage done. Why couldn’t she have just kissed him without the “Wow”? She cringed at the memory. It wasn’t even the worst Valentine’s Day gift he had ever given her. Who could forget the wrestling tickets back in college? The photos were actually thoughtful. He had chosen some of her favorites, but in the moment after he spun her, when she opened her eyes, Andrea felt a tightness in her chest. What the fuck was followed by another thought: You’ll never be 113

that happy again. Surely, the display had to have a closing date, and yet two weeks had gone by, and here she was once again waking up to marshmallow versions of herself. Maybe James expected her to take the photos down. No matter the years, he didn’t seem to understand the cost of movements, the feeling of depletion before she even lifted her head from the pillow. Her alarm beeped again. She turned it off and tapped open Instagram. The heart at the bottom revealed her latest notifications: _y3ti_ started following you. Radicalsabbatical_ commented: “Such a gorgeous family <3!” Catherinelecomtephoto and 401 others liked your post. She clicked the third notification down. It was for one of her highest hearted posts: “My daughter finds marigolds in the grass and holds them to her eyes, and says ‘Mommy, what time are my eyes?’ And, I want to hold her still to this moment as I tell her ‘Five o’clock” Where were the marigolds now? Long dead, under snow. Andrea tried to listen for the ones without roots, the ones she could discover in her daughter, but it was hard to hear anything outside her thoughts. It’s always going to feel like this. It will never be what it was. It could be that she’d been living marigold moments all winter without realizing that they were occurring, but she knew moments only lasted so long as your awareness of them. If you didn’t commit them to photos, or words, or memories they were lost like they’d never occurred. Slipping her hand into her pillow case, Andrea found her gratitude list. Every morning and evening, she tried to read it to herself with a smile on her face. Sometimes if she imagined or pretended to imagine feeling joy, then she felt her head lift a little higher, her spine rise a little straighter. It made her feel like a kid again, with her dad penciling her growth on the pantry door: Another inch! Part of the gratitude list was intertwining truths with desires. She had to imagine her gratitude at receiving the things she hadn’t yet received. Sitting up, Andrea began: “I’m so grateful that I am loved by my wonderful, adoring, handsome, kind, generous, funny, intelligent husband, that we have such a fulfilling, exciting marriage, that we have a beautiful, healthy daughter who is spirited, and curious, and smart. I am so happy that I am healed completely, that I’m healthy and strong and have more than two-hundred thousand followers on 114

Instagram. I’m so grateful that I have a book agent, that I have energy to—” “Mom, where’s the cereal?” Becca hung from the doorknob. “Hold on, Becca.” Andrea dropped her eyes back to the list. “Mom, I’m hungry.” “Honey, five more minutes.” Becca plopped her knees to the carpet, putting her remaining weight on the doorknob. In her other hand was a headless Barbie. “Becca, I told you, you’ll break the knob if you do that.” “Cheerios! Cheerios! Cheerios!” Becca began to chant moving the door back and forth. “Five more—” Outside, a car door slammed. “Daddy! Is that Daddy?” Becca ran to the window and pulled back the silk curtain. Andrea flinched at the expanded light. “Daddy’s home!” Becca thundered down the stairs, leaving the curtain still parted. Andrea continued down the list at the sound of the key in the front door; … “book agent, that I have energy to” — the front door opened — “Daddy!” “to do everything” — the thud of a carry-on on the carpet — “that I want and need” — “And, how are you doing, Miss Becca Bell?” — “to do. I am so grateful” — “I’m hungry.” “Where’s your mother?” “that I am happy, content, and at peace with my” — “She’s sleeping.” Andrea tore her eyes from the list and called down, “I’m not sleeping!” “Well, where are you? I want to see your beautiful face,” James called in return. I’m so grateful … at peace with … “Dree,” he called. She could hear him coming up the stairs now. “Dree.” Andrea sighed and folded the list back under the pillow. Maybe after coffee. She made it to the door just as James entered with Becca on his hip. “You’re too old to be carried,” she said to Becca. “Daddy doesn’t say so,” said Becca, and she stuck out her tongue. Andrea kissed James. “Did you have a cigarette?” “Just one or two while waiting for the taxi,” he said. “Cheerios! Cheerios!” chanted Becca. “Enough,” said Andrea, taking Becca from James’s hip. She set her on the floor. “Go get dressed.” “Only if we can go to the park later,” said Becca, like a threat. “We’ll see.” “Yay! Park! Park! Park! And, Cheerios!” said Becca, running toward her room. “And matching socks!” Andrea called after her. “Thought we agreed you weren’t gonna smoke anymore. You know my dad.” “Smoker all his life, died at 43. How’s your head?” 115

“Still migraine-y. I don’t mean to sound naggy,” said Andrea. “You don’t. You sound tired,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here this week. I just thought a sale might be easier in person” “We were fine. How’d the sale go?” Footsteps scrambled back to them through the hall. “I’m ready!” Becca jumped in the air still wearing her nightgown, one foot covered in a spotted sock, the other in stripes. “That’s not dressed, and didn’t I tell you to wear matching socks?” said Andrea. “Do you know what it’s like to do your laundry? I never know which ones are missing when you mix them up.” “I’m tired of mean mommy,” said Becca. James swiped Becca up into his arms. “Be nice.” Becca laughed as he squeezed her ribs. “I’m so glad to be back with my girls,” he said. “Who’s hungry?” “Me! Me! Me!” James stopped in the doorway and looked back at Andrea. “You coming?” Andrea made eye contact with herself in the mirror before looking back at her husband. “I’ll shower first.” “Don’t take too long,” he said, kissing Becca’s ear. Becca squealed through the hall, down the stairs. “That tickles!” _____________ In the shower, Andrea held onto the walls. If she laid in bed too long the walls tipped into each other. She could hear her doctor’s voice in her head: Low blood pressure. It helped if she held out her hands to keep the walls from falling. Sometimes it felt like she was ice skating on the frozen pond behind her childhood home. She had to hold out her hands then too, for balance. She closed her eyes. I’m so grateful that I’m alive. I’m so grateful that I am healed completely. I’m so grateful … How did the rest of it go? Andrea brought her fingers to her shorn hair. She had recently cut it a la pixie to donate ten inches to Locks of Love. Her hairdresser had taken a video for Andrea to post on Instagram, and it was one of her top performing posts. It even made one of the top nine posts for the hashtag Locksoflove with over two hundred views. New followers were still messaging her about it: I love your page. Your family is so precious. Discovered you through #LocksofLove. I can’t wait to donate my hair some day. Not bothering to lather her lack of hair, Andrea sat on the shower floor. Part of it was that it was something she had always wanted to do since a teenager—donate her hair (she thought of all the admirable heroines of literature who sacrificed their locks in the name of love; namely Fantine from Les Mis and Jo from Little Women). The other truth: she thought maybe shorter hair would make the morning routine slightly easier. A tentative knock on the bathroom door preceded her husband’s voice. He tried the 116

knob, but it was locked. “Dree . . . breakfast is ready. “Okay,” she called through the shower curtain. She could feel the energy of his hesitation before he spoke again. “Everything okay? You’ve been in there for awhile.” She slammed her hand on the tub diverter and water gushed from the faucet. “Yes. I’ll be right out.” She twisted the faucet off, and the water stopped. _____________ Sometimes Andrea dreamed she was dead, and she was returning home for her own funeral. James and Becca and her mom and Joan and Philip and Casey and all her nieces and nephews were there and some aunts and uncles and cousins and her friends from her fitness circle (her Instagram followers were too busy hearting her posts and boohooing in the comments to actually show face). She walked up to the casket, which was a light blue like her father’s had been. She looked down expecting to see herself, but the casket was empty, and that was when she noticed everyone was looking at her, and she realized she was supposed to climb into the casket now. They were waiting to bury her, but they couldn’t do it until she admitted she was dead. “You’re quiet,” said James across the table. “Just tired,” she said. He nodded. “I noticed that you haven’t been posting on Instagram as frequently lately. Been losing some followers.” “I know,” said Andrea. “I just don’t have anything to say.” “It doesn’t have to be words or a new poem,” James continued. “It can just be a picture with a few hashtags. You could post the Valentine’s Day collage I put together for you. You haven’t shared that yet.” “Yeah, but Valentine’s Day is over.” “I think your followers expected something day of.” Andrea shrugged, stirring her eggs. “I just didn’t feel like it.” James had laid a cauliflower and broccoli on top of her eggs in the shape of a heart. She ate them first. “Well, you could’ve posted the breakfast I made today. Did you notice I shaped the broccoli and cauliflower —” “Yes, very cute. Thank you,” said Andrea. “Want the last piece of bacon?” James asked. Andrea shook her head. “It’s yours.” Becca was beneath the table talking to her Barbies. “Do you want more bacon?” asked Ken. 117

“It’s yours,” said Barbie. Andrea lifted the tablecloth and frowned at her. “What?” asked Becca. “Still mean about my socks?” “No,” said Andrea. “Carry on.” Her eyes flitted to James as he lifted a coffee mug to his lips. The open window swept sunshine over his head, which had begun to bald. She didn’t know what he would do when his hair was completely gone. Maybe he’d wear hats or would become like one of her uncles, the one who wore a toupee that he would put on his knee to brush every night. Andrea and her sister used to giggle, peeking behind the sofa, watching him. “What are you thinking about?” “Maybe cute-happy poetry is losing its glimmer. In the age of MeToo, maybe people want something darker or deeper.” “Maybe you should wait until spring and see how you feel,” said James “You think my desire to write something different is seasonal?” “I didn’t say that necessarily,” said James, standing up. “Just maybe you should stick with what you know your followers like. You have a book deal, Dree. Do you really want to gamble with our mortgage?” She watched him collect the used dishes and silverware from the table. He took her plate away without asking, scraping the dregs of her eggs into the trash. In past winters, he’d taken note of her change in weight with comments like “Maybe less coconut bliss this week,” or “Hey, cookie monster, want to go for a run?” The comments brought her back to her teenager years when her mom would measure her waist. As James started washing the dishes she said, “What about your job?” “What about my job?” he said over the water. “When is that going to actually start contributing to our household?” “Dree, I explained the challenges going into this position.” He bent lower to scrub the skillet pan but continued talking. “It’s new software that’s a million dollars a pop that no one has ever bought, so other companies are wary to purchase it, but once I get just one sale, think of the commission, and I can go back to all of the other companies I’ve connected with and say ‘Hey guys, hey guys, this guy bought it,’ and like that, they’ll trust me, and it will all be worth it.” “But it’s been like eight months. How long will you try to keep selling this thing where you can justify living without a salary?” “I don’t know.” He flipped the pan into the plastic dish rack and laid his hands on the sink, his back still to her. “Maybe two years.” “Two years?” She choked on her coffee. He turned around to face her with crossed arms. “With your book sales, I think we can carry on until I make my first sale.” “I haven’t even finished the book yet, James. You’re putting a lot of pressure on me 118

that I don’t appreciate.” “Dree,” he said, walking toward her. “It’s like that poem you posted: ‘Your achievements are as bright as the joy you give others.’” “Don’t quote me at me,” she said. Under the table, she could feel Becca’s hand softly patting her leg. She hated when Becca sensed her shift in moods. The mother should be in a position of comforting the child, not the other way around. James sighed. “Dree, I’m sorry. I just thought maybe you’d get some inspiration from the words you use to inspire others.” “Liar, that was some passive aggressive bullshit” she thought of Becca under the table. “Frogs. You come in here like a small tornado with your eggs and broccoli and my poetry and throw it all at me.” “Yes, I made you breakfast and support your art. I’m a terrible husband,” he said, pressing his hand on her shoulder before leaving the kitchen. Becca raised her head, and the tablecloth draped over her like a hood. “Do chickens ever eat eggs?” Andrea scooted her chair back to let her out and picked her up. “No.” “I thought you said I was too heavy.” “You are,” said Andrea, carrying her into the living room. _____________ Andrea settled Becca in front of Fuller House on the iPad with a glass of apple juice and slipped up the stairs. The coffee added a spring to her step. Who says darker poetry couldn’t be marketable? Maybe she could actually finish the first draft of her manuscript if she felt all her thoughts had value, not just the ones that made her followers smile. James was in the shower when she walked into the bedroom. She started taking the photos down as she thought about which hashtags she could test: #sadpoetry #emopoetry #sylviaplath #SADpo (that last one couldn’t exist). She looked at the three photos she had taken down: the wedding dance beneath mistletoe, the piggyback over puddle, and Becca dancing on James’s shoes. They felt heavy in her hands, even heavier than they’d felt on the wall. Maybe James could get the rest of them down. She laid the photos on the top of the dresser she’d had since college. When she and James started dating, they flipped the mirror over one night and practiced logic proofs on the back while smoking pot and listening to Elliott Smith. Figure eight is double four Figure four is half of eight If you skate you would be great If you could make a figure of eight 119

Andrea could never make a figure eight, but sometimes, she swore she could feel her father’s hand in hers, how they used to ice skate together before he’d let her go, saying Now, you’re on your own. When he died, she’d wanted to grab his hand again. I don’t want to be on my own. He’d been the one she always counted on, to get her out of her “Garfield moods” as he called them. Once, after one of her high school breakups, her father bought her a chocolate bar called “Boyfriend Replacement.” The chocolate was terrible, but she laughed into tears opening it. She traced her hand along the top edge of the mirror. She knew that lingering in the past was pointless. She knew it when she’d think back to the funeral and the way her mother pushed that woman on the porch, the shouting of it. Andrea closed her eyes to shut out the noise. She wouldn’t go that way. The day had not been so bad. James was home, he’d made a nice breakfast, her daughter was spirited, and curious, and smart. It was Andrea who needed to adjust. She searched for her phone in the blankets. Had she brought it downstairs? James had left his phone on the side table. His passcode was easy, one of those slide lines from circle to circle ones. She unlocked it in seconds and went to his Instagram and typed in #depressivepoetry in the search bar. Only 289 posts. #sylviaplath: 128,217 posts versus #rupikaur: 318,412. Was it the current political climate, or did people just naturally gravitate toward “Here Comes the Sun” over “Gloomy Sunday”? What about Daria? Clearly, there was a market for a dreary voice of wisdom. Andrea returned to the Instagram home page and noticed she had new messages. She clicked the number six and when she came to all the messages she remembered: This isn’t my phone. This is James’s account. She had never looked through his messages during the years they’d been together (though now and then she’d been tempted), but she wanted to be a woman so secure in herself that she’d never doubt her partner. Now, she looked at all the globed icon photos of woman after woman and the previews of their messages: Hahaha you seem full of … I bet your wife wouldn’t … And, how does a handsome … Hey follow me Hey Gorgeous! Got a … Will you be in Florida … Message after message, her mouth got drier. She felt nauseous and hot like she had a candle burning in her stomach, and the flame was rising higher in her body. She held three fingers over her mouth, maybe to keep the vomit down or to keep herself from screaming. _____________ The bathroom door opened. “I think you should post one thing today. It doesn’t have 120

to be — is that my phone?” “Some of them sent you naked photos,” Andrea said, dropping the phone on the bed. “You didn’t think to print and hang up one of those. They would’ve fit with the motif. In the ones that showed their faces, most of them are smiling.” He stood with a towel wrapped around his waist. She could see warring thoughts cross his face. Was he going to play angry? Victim? Villain? What was he? What was she? “I love you,” he said. “Don’t say that.” “I love you,” he said again, and he fell on his knees in front of her. If there was snow, if they were younger, my knee’s getting cold. “You once said to me that you knew you were a lot —” “Stop,” said Andrea, but he didn’t. “I said you weren’t, but — Dree. Sometimes, I don’t even know if you like me. They — they just made me feel so good.” “And I didn’t?” “Not all the time.” She laughed. “No one makes anyone feel good all the time. That’s life. I wasn’t designed to be your round the clock cheerleader.” “Andrea, please, we have so much.” He pulled her knees into his face. “James.” She resisted the urge to run her fingers through the feathery spot on top of his head where he was balding. It was a gesture she had done some nights when he was tired from the road, when he didn’t want to be the one with energy, and they traded roles; she the caretaker to his lethargy. Now, there was no recovery for either of them in the gesture. “Let go of me.” “Please,” he said into her knees. She thought of it as a picture, him on his knees in a towel. No filter. My husband dresses our walls with smiles, while my followers send hearts to his inbox. #FuckAllofYou “I don’t want this,” she said. “I just don’t want it.” “What does that mean?” he said, gripping her legs tighter. “Andrea, Dree, good men make mistakes. Look at your dad.” “Shut up.” “Why are you yelling?” asked a voice from the doorway. Becca held the iPad out. “It died.” Andrea stepped out of James’s arms and took the iPad from Becca. “How would you like to go to Grandma’s for a few days?” “Dree,” said James. 121

Andrea’s mother’s voice reeled through her head: Have you gained weight? You don’t look healthy. How’s the book coming? Your sister just ran another marathon. What’s your editor’s name again? Well, start writing, missy. I told my friends about your big book deal. They didn’t know what Instagram was … “Don’t go,” he said to her feet. “I want to stay with Daddy,” said Becca. Andrea held a hand to her forehead. Was this how her mother felt — all those years, watching Andrea reach for her dad over her? She sat in the settee, staring at Becca smoothing her hand over James’s face. “And you too, Mommy” said Becca, turning toward her, reaching for her knees. Andrea wanted to cry into Becca’s hair as she pulled her into her arms. James wiped his forehead sweat on the towel around his waist. “I’ll make it up to you, Dree. Whatever you want. I’ll never talk to any of them again. I’ll go to therapy. We can go together. I’ll quit the sales job, or … I’ll stay local. Please don’t go to your mom’s.” Andrea looked over his head at the mirror where once they had written proofs, smoking and kissing, and leaning their legs into each other, and above that, all the photos still on the wall; all the different days Andrea had pulled herself out of bed — to go to the carnival, to go hiking, to get married, to have a baby (albeit in a bed), and all the smiles, the ways they become what so many people wanted, what she herself had wanted. She could feel James’s eyes on her, waiting for her, and when she spoke her voice sounded loud to herself. “I don’t want you to talk to me. I want you to leave me alone. I don’t want to hear about your ideas for Instagram or anything else.” “So, you’re… not going to your mom’s?” James said. He sighed, relieved. “Andrea, I promise—” She held up her hand to his words. To Becca she said, “You want to go to the park?” “Park! Park! Park” Becca pumped her arms victoriously. “Daddy’s gonna take you,” Andrea said, and handed her daughter to her husband. _____________ When she heard the car out of the driveway, Andrea opened her laptop. She had the lines already in her head. She pulled open her manuscript in progress and wrote: In a towel on the floor, my husband begs me to forget, weeks after he taped memories on our wall. Now, he begs “Please,” and “I promise” and “Never again.” 122

I can’t forget what my father said when I was a girl, heartbroken— “You’re better off without him.” Andrea closed her laptop and pulled her overnight bag out from under the bed. Meditatively, she folded jeans and T-shirts and socks into the bag. Tomorrow, she’d pack some of Becca’s clothes. It wouldn’t be immediate. James would skip some trips, but eventually, there’d be one he’d beg to go on, the one with the sure sale. She could already hear him. Please, Andrea. Until then, she’d finish the poems.

123

124

125

Warm April light bows around the window curtains, slides across a kitchen table, glanc-

es off a stovetop where kettles have rattled and steamed through the now receding winter; then it bounces through bookshelves that line an exposed brick wall, and evaporates into a living room framed by couches. The light, now less broken with the turn of spring, seems to have finally found its place in the world, and that place seems to be exactly where we are: on the top floor of a Lower East Side apartment building, on the warmest day of the still burgeoning year.

Tess Congo sits at her kitchen table, facing the window’s light. Her red, flower-adorned

headband matches the interior glaze of the teacup she’s cradling in her palms. An expression of honesty and earnestness glows in her smile as she relates the strange coincidence of the Velveteen Rabbit being spoken of twice the previous day. It was her favorite story as a child, and its mention has provided her cause for reflection. What does it mean to be, or become, real? Certainly, her newest short story, “Winter in Persephone,” is peppered with insights to this question, which it explores through the lens of disrupted domesticity, the challenges of living with mental illness, and the role social media plays in our contemporary reality. Tess writes from the perspective of the lives she hasn’t lived, things she thinks she might not know, and decisions that would not be her own. She seeks to enter a space, create a reality for the characters, and see what happens.

We spoke for the next hour, the light from the window like a movie projector, unravel-

ing the wistful, adventurous, and engaging story of how Tess got to New York, and how she’s managed since arriving, illuminating what now seems less a coincidence and more a doorway through which to enter into her world. This is the story of Tess Congo, becoming real.

After awhile, we decided to go for a meander through the Lower East Side, into SoHo,

toward Elizabeth Street Garden, one of Tess’ favorite places in the city. Leaving our sweaters and jackets behind us, and letting the late afternoon sun warm our bare arms, we waded through the Saturday sun gazers and street vendors, stopping occasionally to snap a few photos and comment on the passersby.

When we arrived at Elizabeth Street Garden, nestled between buildings on a narrow

city block, it was in full bloom. Tulip-lined flower beds breathed colorful bursts beneath an eruption of misty pink tree blossoms. Picturesque groups of city dwellers, newly emboldened by the warm weather, loitered aimlessly, the sun settling around their peaceful words and ges126

tures. Tess posed for a few photographs around the garden. We were mostly silent, taking in the atmosphere of the brilliant late afternoon.

As we were leaving we passed a folding table set up with a spread of literature and

a glass jar for donations. Tess informed me that the garden was to be demolished to make way for a new affordable housing development and that the collected donations were meant to contribute to the ongoing fight to keep the garden from quite literally sinking beneath the weight of gentrification. I think both our hearts sank a little as we stepped out onto the sidewalk. The approaching evening seemed a little closer and the air a touch more cool on our arms.

Upon returning to the apartment Tess and I decided to climb her rickety, narrow fire

escape to the roof of the adjacent building. I shot a few more photos and we spoke candidly about the day and the coming summer. The cool, pink light from the western horizon washed across the Lower East Side buildings, and we watched as windows shut and curtains closed on the waning day. We wondered if anyone had been watching us, if anyone else wondered who we were, what we were doing, where we were going, or what we would say next.

-Adrian Moens.

PHOTOGRAPHY: ADRIAN MOENS - Pg. 110-151 127

128

Tess: I was in yoga yesterday, and it was just about the end of the class. We were in Shavasana (Corpse pose), and the instructor says something like, “What does it mean to be ‘real’ to the rabbit?” And I knew the quote before she read the rest of it because I had it on my Tumblr page in college. The Velveteen Rabbit was one of my favorite stories as a kid. Adrian: It’s a beautiful story. Tess: Yeah, right? And then last night at my friend Helen Huettner’s play, Honey Dipped Apocalypse Girls, one of the characters mentioned “the rabbit,” and I thought, what’s with the rabbit today? Adrian: How do you fit that into the narrative of the day? Tess: In the context of the day? Well, the quote is about being real. And so that was kind of interesting to think about, authenticity and realness, and what it means to be real. Adrian: What does it mean to be real? Tess: Well, according to the Rabbit and the Skin Horse, being real is when you’re worn, or worn down, and your eyes are falling out, your fur is coming out. It’s well loved and well worn. Adrian: “Well loved and well worn.” I like that, as a mark of reality. Tess: Yeah. Adrian: It’s as if we’re not real until we’ve matured, and found this place in the world that has accepted us until our end. Tess: Yeah, a world that ruins us in certain ways, or scars us, but that’s the process of being real, that at the end you’re not perfect. Adrian: I bet you want to know about these questions?

Tess: Yeah, give me some questions. Adrian: Well, we’ll probably start with the basics. Tess: “What is a story?” Adrian: When was your first experience with New York City? Tess: New York. My first experience was going to a Broadway show in high school. My U.S. History teacher, Mr. Mitchell, would orchestrate these trips every year, and people could opt in and go see shows as a group. And my first show in New York . . . it was either The Little Mermaid or How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Adrian: So then you came a couple times then, while you were in high school? Tess: Yeah, I went three times. One of the trips was in Connecticut, we saw Jersey Boys. I didn’t really think much about New York until I was in high school or college. I think because my mom moved us to Amsterdam when I was a kid, I had European cities more in my head, rather than U.S. cities. But yeah, I think I liked New York. It was exciting, there was art stuff. Adrian: Let’s actually back up for a second, because your past is kind of interesting also, because you lived in Europe. So, you were born in the United States? Tess: Yes. In New Hampshire. Adrian: And then when you moved to Europe, where did you move to? Tess: When I was eleven and then turned twelve, we lived in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Adrian: Why? Tess: It was kind of just a whim of my Mom’s. It was after my Grandmother died. So I think it may have been in response to that. I think she did the thing that you’re not really

129

supposed to do, she made a big change after a loss. She just wanted something new. Adrian: Tell me a little bit about your time in Amsterdam, and what you remember. Was there something that really sticks out while you were living there? Tess: I think Amsterdam was really pivotal for my writing and my reading. I was loosely home schooled, so I was extremely bored and lonely. I met some kids over there, but they don’t start learning English until a couple of years older than I was at that time, so most of them I couldn’t really communicate with. I spent a lot of time reading in my room, and writing when I ran out of English books. Adrian: Were you writing your own stories at that point? Tess: Yeah, I kind of just started doing everything at that point. I started journaling right before we left. Adrian: So this was when you were twelve and thirteen years old? Tess: Eleven, and twelve in Amsterdam. So I started journaling and when we got there I started writing poetry. And then the first morning that we were there, in a suburb of Amsterdam, I woke up in the middle of the night with a story idea. So I made some notes and then I continued writing the story the whole time I was there. Adrian: Do you remember what the story was about? Tess: Yes. It’s still one that I want to go back to. It’s a story about this princess, of course, because I was eleven. It was this story about this princess with a really large family, and two of her sisters are kidnapped, and it turns out that one of the sisters orchestrated the kidnapping. Adrian: Oh, wow. That’s a dark plot for an eleven-year-old.

Tess: I think because my mom split custody with my little sisters’ father, I always had this fear of losing them. I think that was something that came up when I was sleeping, and then I woke up with an idea! Adrian: Was that the first story that you wrote? Tess: Well the first story that I probably wrote was when I was in third grade. I think it took place in Ireland because I liked this movie about leprechauns. I think the movie was called Leaping Leprechauns. I didn’t even finish the story. It was twenty-three pages, which was really long for this assignment. I went way beyond what the teacher wanted. Adrian: Wait, how old were you? Tess: I was in third grade. Adrian: So your teacher was like, “Write a paragraph or two.” Tess: But I didn’t finish it! Because I got so involved and was taking it way too far, and I didn’t even remember much of the plot, but I remember that I illustrated the last page, and it was this banshee floating in the air and screaming. Adrian: How dramatic. Tess: She was wearing a silver dress. Adrian: Amazing. Did you start writing poetry around the same time, in third grade? Tess: Whether or not we moved to Amsterdam, I think writing would have come out. I can remember being five and writing silly rhymes. I had one, “Tony the Tiger, sat on a wire, and along came a spider.” Just silly stuff. My mom writes poetry, and my great-grandmother wrote poetry. Adrian: You come from a lineage of poets. Amazing. Tess: Yeah, and there’s a lot of really clever

130

and witty people in my family. My sister, Jenny, comes up with the best puns on the spot. My brother, Christopher, comes up with the most hilarious things, and my mom will always come up with ditties, so a lot of creativity in language. Adrian: How many brothers and sisters do you have? Tess: I have two older sisters, one older brother, two younger sisters through my mom, and then through my father I have a younger brother and a younger sister. Adrian: Are all of them, or any of them, also writers? Tess: I think my little sisters write. I know Lara draws a lot, but Lexie sometimes writes poems, and I think Lara might sometimes as well. I always thought that my sister Kate ––– in her school essays, had a very endearing writer voice, but she doesn’t enjoy writing. Adrian: Just to go back, how long was it that you were living in Amsterdam before you moved back to the United States? Tess: Half a year. Adrian: Not even a year. Tess: Yeah, but I feel like even though it was such a short time, I feel like I really grew there. Because that was where I was writing so much. I had written a bit in elementary school, but in Amsterdam I was writing all day long. Adrian: I can identify with that. It’s not necessarily the amount of time that you spend in a place, but the move and the change itself can be a catalyst for changes and growth. I can definitely identify with that. Adrian: So after graduating from high school in New Hampshire, you decided to go to college for writing?

Tess: It didn’t really feel like a decision. I knew that I was going to write for the rest of my life, no matter where I was. So after high school I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I figured people go to college, that’s what they do, so I guess I’d go to college. But I just wanted to write, I didn’t care where. A degree didn’t really matter, but it mattered in the context of taking classes and becoming a better writer. Adrian: So where did you go? Tess: I went to the University of New Hampshire, started in 2010 and graduated in 2014. Adrian: What did you study? Tess: English. Adrian: So literature? Tess: No, actually, so UNH didn’t have a creative writing degree, so basically I majored in English so that I could take as many writing classes as possible. All the poetry classes. All the fiction. All of the nonfiction. Adrian: How important was school for your writing? Tess: It was really important. Adrian: How so? Tess: For a few different reasons. I didn’t like New Hampshire, but I had awesome professors who made my time there worthwhile. I studied with David Rivard, Mekeel McBride and Meredith Hall. They were just incredible and invested in their students. They cared. So in terms of writing, I think the classes really helped with my growth. I was reading works that made my work stronger, and responding to it with my own writing. I also took a couple Harvard classes during the summer, one with Paul Harding, which changed my writing forever, and another with Nina de Gramont Education is important because it opens you up to things that you might not discover on your own, so I’m very grateful for mine. 131

Adrian: So you studied writing, you graduated college, and at that point you decided that you were destined to come to New York? What brought you to the city after that? Tess: Well, what made my college time a little more complicated was that I tried to transfer to NYU. I got in, and once I got to the city I found out that my loans fell through. Adrian: Devastating. Tess: So I was sixteen thousand dollars short. And I asked the financial aid office, “What can I do? I don’t have sixteen thousand dollars.” I was nineteen. And the woman at the office said, “There’s nothing we can do for you.” I had been in New York for a week and a half, and I left the city, crying in my stepfather’s car, looking back at all the buildings. When we got back to New Hampshire, it was too late to go to UNH for that semester, so I spent a few weeks being really upset and sad. And my stepfather said a few different things that were really important, and that stuck with me, and one of them was, “New Hampshire doesn’t have to be forever. It can just be a stop on the road.” And that’s what I needed to hear, because that’s what I was afraid of. We lived in a lot of places when I was a kid. I think that lack of consistency made it so that I don’t really like consistency. I don’t like staying in one place, and I don’t really know how to stay in one place for long and still be satisfied. I feel like I inherited restlessness. After NYU, going back to New Hampshire felt like a life sentence. And it felt horrible. I didn’t want to be there for a second longer. So for my stepfather to emphasize that I had the ability to someday leave felt really important. So I picked myself up, I got a job working a front desk at the Sleep Inn for a couple months before I quit and visited a friend in Savannah, and the next fall I went back to UNH. I think I had three big disappointments in my life that have really shaped how I respond to things. And one of them was the absence of my little sisters, the other was a relation132

ship that I really wanted to work out that didn’t, and then there was New York, and I felt like of the three of those, I could do something about one of them. So for me, moving back to New York really felt like the reclamation of a dream that I didn’t get to live, and the reclamation maybe of, if I can live this dream, maybe the others will come too. Adrian: That’s beautiful. That’s a good story, how you got here. So how many places have you lived in New York City, since you moved here for the first time, which was in . . . Tess: I moved here in July of 2015. And I made the decision, lickety-split. I had a friend here who said that I could stay with him. I had been in New Hampshire for a couple of months after New Orleans. Adrian: So New Orleans was in between New Hampshire and New York? Tess: Yes. Adrian: We’re probably going to have to talk about New Orleans in just a second. When did you move to New Orleans? Tess: I lived in New Orleans twice. I did an exchange semester. After NYU didn’t work out I was at UNH for a year, and then the next year I thought, hey, I could stay at UNH and get my degree here, or I could leave and experience a different city. I had gone to New Orleans as a kid, but I didn’t really remember it. I saw New Orleans featured on a poster in the hallway and I thought, alright, I’ll try New Orleans. Of the places for the exchange, I think, two of the places that I wanted to go were in New York, but they weren’t available. The only one that I listed that was available was New Orleans. So I did a semester at the University of New Orleans, and then after I graduated from UNH I lived in Boston for a summer, working down there, and then come

133

134

the fall, I was back in New Hampshire, and I thought, “Oh no, how do I get out?” So I started working at a pastry shop that I would walk to from my sister’s apartment. It was about a forty-five minute walk one way. So I’d do the walk before and after work most days. While I was working there I chatted with a woman who was picking up lunch, and during our conversation it came up that she and her husband owned a digital marketing company. I told her that during my last semester of college I applied to a digital marketing agency, but it didn’t work out. I didn’t get an interview. Later on she came back and she gave me her card, and she said, “Send me your writing.” And so I sent her an e-mail and within two or three weeks, I had a job, and it was a job that I could do anywhere. And so I bought a ticket to Costa Rica, where I had a friend. And my return ticket, I made to New Orleans, where I still had friends from the last time that I had been living there. And so I lived in New Orleans for seven months, working with a jewelry designer and making jewelry and also writing for this digital marketing agency, and it was great until it was getting toward summer, and I didn’t want to be in the hot weather. And so I went back to New Hampshire for two months. ______________________________ Adrian: So we established that you were in New Hampshire, you visited New Orleans, you went back to New Hampshire, you went to Costa Rica, you went back to New Orleans, and all of this was within a period of a year or two, right? Tess: Yeah, well I was in New Hampshire, Boston, Costa Rica, and New Orleans in the span of a year, 2014. Adrian: What happened in Costa Rica? Tess: Well, the relationship that I wanted to work out . . . Adrian: Well first, what brought you to

Costa Rica, why did you go? Tess: Well, I never would have thought of going to Costa Rica at that time. I have food allergies, and I was worried about going outside of the States with them, so I wasn’t really even thinking of international travel. But I knew this person in high school and he visited me from Costa Rica in the spring of my senior year at UNH, and it was one of the times where it aligned for both of us. We weren’t dating other people and we were open to exploring something more for whatever period of time. But he went back to Costa Rica, and I had to finish school. I ended up visiting him during my spring break, and then in the fall, once I got that job with the digital marketing agency, I visited him for three weeks. I never told him that I was in love with him or anything. I assumed that he knew, just by virtue of how I was around him, and maybe that’s not a fair thing to say. I think sometimes I live in my head so much that I forget that no one else has access to my thoughts. I told him, “I want to travel with you” And as someone who doesn’t really believe in forever, that’s as much as forever as I could really give. You can only ever give someone your time, that’s the highest gift you can really give them, so I was saying I love you in a different way. I was saying, “I care about you so much that I want to explore new places with you. I want to spend this time that I have with you. That’s what I want.” And he said he didn’t want to travel with me. Adrian: Boo. Tess: I think he just wanted to continue doing his own thing, and I ended up visiting him even after he said that he didn’t want to travel with me. I think that he did care about me a lot, but ultimately, as he said to me before the second visit, “I love you, but not to the exclusion of everyone else.” Which is true for everyone. Hopefully you have people who care about you and they also care about other people. So I went to Costa Rica and I

135

was kind of having a hard time over there, as there were some other things that happened in New Hampshire before I left that were causing me to lose my footing. When I went back to New Orleans I was trying to rebuild myself, for reasons outside of even the relationship with the man in Costa Rica, but also regarding him and everything else that I hadn’t ever really resolved. I felt like New Orleans was a really good place to do that, in the winter, because it’s sunny and nice and fun and there’s always a party. Adrian: That sounds like an amazing place to go and rebuild yourself. How did those experiences shape you as a writer, and were you writing at the time that all of that was going on? I know, from my own experience, that when you’re having those kinds of experiences you’re not necessarily writing about them at the same time, and a lot of that writing comes later. What were you writing at that time, if you were writing at all? Tess: I had periods of being separated from my family. A lot of early poems that I wrote in Amsterdam were poems about missing loved ones back home. There’s a Jonathan Safran Foer quote, “The origin of a story is always an absence.” Right? Adrian: It’s so good though. Tess: Yeah, and it’s true. It’s the absence of something that the character wants, whether it’s a person or a place, or anything. Adrian: The quest to fill the absence, or the story of the absence itself.

136

Tess: For sure. So I think throughout my childhood and adolescence and adulthood, I had always written about things that hurt, and when I went to Costa Rica and when I went to New Orleans, I had had an experience that was so hard to consider, or even think about, that I didn’t want to write. And that was the first time, I was twenty-three, and that was the first time in my life that I couldn’t write about something. And that was terrifying, but to write the thing that I didn’t want to write

was also terrifying, so in New Orleans, I spent a lot of time in avoidance of feeling, of writing about how I was feeling regarding what had happened. After college I was focusing mostly on poetry, because poetry is usually a condensed form. If you’re uprooting yourself a lot, poetry is easier to write than a story, because you don’t need that consistency. Adrian: So to fast-forward forward for a minute, because we started going back to those experiences in Costa Rica and New Orleans and New Hampshire, and now you’re in New York, and your friend has invited you here. And so from that point on, how many places have you lived in the city? Tess: Over the last two and a half years, I’ve lived in fourteen different places. Adrian: That’s incredible. Tess: And some of them I went back and forward to. So I’ve probably moved about twenty times. Adrian What’s the shortest stay? Tess: A few weeks. Adrian: And why have you been moving around so much? Tess: It kind of reminds me of NYU . . . In New York, funny thing, it’s really hard to get a long-term place, if you don’t have the best credit in the world, forty times the rent, or a co-signer. And a lot of places require all three. And so I have fairly fine credit, I pay my student loans on time and all that jazz, but during the whole time in New York I wasn’t always working consistent jobs, so at one point, I finally had forty times the rent, but a lot of places won’t even allow you to get an apartment if you don’t have a co-signer, even having that income. I spoke to one real estate broker, and he told me that even if a person makes half a million dollars, they would still need

a co-signer to get one of the apartments his agency lists, which is insane. So in the absence of a co-signer I’ve had to just keep moving, and most of the places that I’ve lived have been sublets, or people who I knew. If they were traveling for a month then I’d stay at their place for a month.

thing. So it doesn’t feel like moving has really helped my writing, because it made things really hard for me. And I didn’t feel like I could work on the lengthier projects, which is why I’ve written a lot of poetry. But I do think that there was something . . . horribly satisfying about leaving places.

Adrian: Is there any consistency in terms of the people you’ve been staying with? Are they other writers or artists, or has it just kind of been whoever you find that needs a roommate?

Adrian: Tell me more.

Tess: I used Gypsy Housing a lot. Adrian: What’s Gypsy Housing? Tess: Gypsy Housing is a Facebook group, people post apartments, and a lot of them are short term, and don’t require guarantors and so on. So a lot of people from there. And then a lot from all of the wonderful people who I’ve met in New York. I would hear from a friend of a friend that someone was subletting a place while they were traveling. That’s how I’ve landed a few of the places, just from people who I meet. Adrian: Using social media, using word of mouth. Tess: Just keeping my ears open! Adrian: How has moving around so much affected you as a writer, and do you find that it’s easier or more difficult to practice as a writer, without having a consistent place to live, or are you finding that the movement has continued to stir things for you, and has allowed you to open up a little bit? Tess: Moving is exhausting and time-consuming. I think during times when I’ve had to find a place ––– I would be moving, and I would have to have somewhere to live in two days ––– I would spend so many hours trying to find places. Especially in New York, where there’s competition for every-

Tess: Well, we moved a lot when I was a kid, and we also traveled a lot. My mom took us on a series of road trips when I was four and five, across the United States, and we’d stay in all of these different hotels. We would drive from Florida, and all the way through the West, through California and through Canada and then back down. And we did a couple of those. And I think it just . . . You know how there’s certain things that remind you of your childhood that give you comfort, if it’s hot chocolate with marshmallows in it, or a scent that reminds you of your grandmother, or something else like that? So I think in a way that isn’t conducive to really building a life or stability, I’ve found comfort in leaving people and places. And I think there’s a certain sense of power in being the one to leave too. You convince yourself that you’re the less vulnerable one because you’re the one moving on. But in terms of all of my moves in New York, there have been times when I’ve been in very vulnerable positions, and I didn’t always feel safe, and there wasn’t security. I didn’t always know where I was going to be next. Adrian: Have you ever felt like you’ve had a sense of place, even before you moved to New York? Tess: I have. One of the longest places that we lived was for seven years, in Derry, New Hampshire –– where Robert Frost once lived. I felt really at home there. There were special places in the house where I would read, or be playing with my paper dolls, and then my Grandmother died, and we moved to Amsterdam. And then when we moved back from Amsterdam, New Hampshire looked so

137

138

139

different. It didn’t feel like my home anymore. It looked ugly. The buildings were angular, and they didn’t have the ornate architecture of Europe. My perspective had changed. I had seen a different place, and I couldn’t go back to the same places without seeing it in a different way. So after that, in terms of home, there have been a couple of places. Chinatown felt like home. That was one of the first places that I lived in New York. I was living with my cousin, and it just felt right, but then he moved to D.C. There was another place on Cornelia Street, in Bushwick, that I really wanted, and I couldn’t find other roommates, and I couldn’t find a co-signer, so I had to leave that behind. Adrian: Can you list all of the neighborhoods where you’ve lived? Tess: Bushwick. Williamsburg. Chinatown. Bedstuy. Bay Ridge. Greenpoint. Astoria. The Lower East Side now. Ditmas Park. Adrian: That’s a lot of neighborhoods. Tess: About eight neighborhoods, but that’s a rough estimate. Adrian: Do you have a favorite neighborhood, or a favorite interaction, in all of those places that you’ve lived? Tess: I had a soft spot for Williamsburg for a long time. I was working there. It’s such a yuppie place, but I felt comfortable in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. I used to hang out in McCarren Park eating sandwiches, and just chilling on a bench. That sounds homeless. Adrian: That does sound a little bit homeless. Tess: And Chinatown. I loved Chinatown. It was by far my favorite. I used to go to the Elizabeth Street Garden. Which is a great community that has outdoor yoga, and meridian tapping, and movie nights. And it just felt so comfortable sitting there amongst the flowers and lion statues. 140

Adrian: So can we talk a little bit about what was formerly called “The Hedged Wife,” and now renamed “Winter in Persephone”? Tell me a little bit about your process in writing this story. Tess: For my honors thesis in college I wrote thirty-two poems revolving around domestic drama, [such as] relationships going wrong, and at that same time I started exploring that theme in short stories as well. So when I started writing this story, I was still thinking of something going wrong in the domestic realm. And I think I like to explore things that I don’t know about. I like to think of people I know and the decisions they’ve made that I haven’t necessarily understood and wouldn’t make myself, and kind of explore them as characters. And then one of the other things that I like to do is to think about scary things, and write about those. So in the context of this story, cheating comes out, and I’ve never had a relationship where that’s happened, on either side, but I know people who have. So I wanted to kind of enter that space and see what happens. How do people feel about that, and what do they do, and what do they decide upon? In the first draft, the end revolves more around an issue of custody. I took that out because it just didn’t fit. But initially going into it, things revolving around custody are very scary for me. Adrian: How do you usually get into writing a short story? Tess: I always try to sort of find an entry point. I don’t always know what I’m going to write, but I always get little bits of ideas, and then I think, “Alright! Well let’s see where these go!” This one was hard. I tried reading a few different things, a few old New Yorker stories, etcetera, but there wasn’t really a spark of anything, and so I thought, whatever, I just have to start in some way. One of the pieces that helped me was An-

141

drea’s gratitude list, so that was where I started initially. I’ve done this with a few other short stories--listing things to get in. The first full draft had the list of photos that were on the wall. In the final draft, I expanded it to get inside her head sooner.

Adrian: So this story is framed in a very domestic situation. You touched on that a little before, with previous work, and the thirty-two poems that you had written. I guess it seems like you always have the story with you, but you’re just not sure of who the characters are, or what the exact context of the situation is. Would you consider this to be a part of a body of on-going work that you started years ago? Tess: Definitely. There were a few other stories that I was working on that were in the domestic realm, but they just weren’t going where I wanted. I had another story that was exploring cheating. In that one it was the woman who was cheating on the man, and actually in this story, it was going to be that way too, but it didn’t go there. At some point I’d like to publish a book of short stories, and I’d like for them all to revolve around this theme, home and its deterioration, and the like. Adrian: Could you talk a bit about the challenges of writing that relationship, or the challenges in writing this story, and how many drafts you took it through? Tess: I took it through twelve drafts. And the challenges . . . I think in terms of any kind of writing you always want it to come off as authentic. And I wanted to make sure that I was fair to all of the characters, and I don’t judge any of them. I don’t hate James. I don’t hate Andrea.

142

Adrian: I felt that too. I felt that you weren’t ever being unfair to James, which I kind of wanted you to be unfair to him though, but I also empathized with him, in that it’s challenging to have a relationship with someone with a mental illness. And the patience that that requires, and the empathy that

that requires as a spouse, sometimes it’s insurmountable. But I felt like it was well written in that way, and I definitely identified with all of the characters. Tess: I feel like all of the characters were doing their best with all of the challenges, and trying to get through the day, and what’s not seen on the page is that it’s been years of this, for James and Andrea. So he shouldn’t have cheated, but at the same time, there’s a lot behind what he did. Adrian: There’s a lot of disappointment in this story. It’s just disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. And I like that you mention that the entrance to the story is through the gratitude list. Because when she’s reading the gratitude list, and remembering it, it seems very forced and empty. There’s a difference between saying what you’re grateful for, and actually feeling gratitude. So she’s trying to bring herself up, but falling short. I feel like there’s a lot of falling short in this story. Tess: I think the gratitude list really intertwines with the idea of social media, the idea of being this perfect person who has it all together and who is always smiling, like “Hey, look how great my life is.” When the reality of that is that no one’s life is great all the time, and it’s absurd to even try to purport that your life is. But for Andrea and James it’s marketable for them at the time, and their household relies on that income. So the tension is can Andrea feel the things that she feels, and share those feelings, without drawing away from their resources for survival. Adrian: So their domestic life would be compromised by the reality of their situation. Tess: That’s what she’s wondering. #SadPo. Adrian: Did you look at those hashtags on Instagram? Tess: Yeah! A few of them I did.

Adrian: In the last draft, in the very beginning, I was wondering, of course I always wonder, how much of this is autobiographical, and where did those recipes come from, and did you write yourself into this at all? Tess: I want to say no. I think whenever someone’s writing, they take parts from their life, but I wouldn’t say that Andrea is me. Adrian: I didn’t think so. What about Becca? Tess: Becca is definitely me, no. I have a lot of nieces, and I grew up with a lot of siblings. I babysat a lot too in high school, so I’ve been around a lot of children. Adrian: It felt familiar. It brought up a lot memories of me and my sister, and it’s been a while since I’ve been around a child for any extended period of time. Tess: Me too. Adrian: But it was immediately recognizable. And an interesting dynamic between her and her daughter, where she almost just doesn’t want to take care of her. Tess: Almost like an older sister and a younger sister. Adrian: And the way she described how she felt when Becca was comforting her, rather than the other way around. I felt like that was an interesting twist, and an insightful emotional response, for Andrea as a character –– that’s not supposed to be happening this way, my child isn’t supposed to be comforting me, it’s supposed to be the other way around. Tess: And the frustration. That frustration that she can put out this facade that everything is great online, and people believe in it, but that she can’t do it at home. And one of the most vulnerable people in the home, her daughter, is accessing things that

she wouldn’t share with anyone outside of the house. Adrian: Was there an intention to shed light on how social media deals with mental illness, and how it tends to hide it? You mentioned that there’s a tendency to show everything being okay, and as a result, us not being able to be honest and truthful about our feelings, at the expense of our social identities. Tess: Social media is wild. You have people who can’t help but exhibit their mental illnesses. I think of President Trump. Adrian: Called out by name. Tess: Years ago, Amanda Bynes. Adrian: Wow, I haven’t thought about her in a while. Tess: I didn’t even think of her until now, but I think she has bipolar disorder [Editor: Bynes has publicly denied that she suffers from bipolar disorder]. And it kept coming out in tweets she would post, or whatever else. And I think you get that with Kanye too, and you get it with people who exhibit symptoms of mental illness, and they’re unable to contain themselves, or restrain themselves from showing that side of themselves online. There are also people who use mental illness in really productive ways on-line. There’s one woman on Instagram, [@so_bipolar], and she talks about all of the sides of bipolar disorder. So I think there are definitely ways to use social media where people can be themselves, and that vulnerability can open up the door for others, but it’s a double-edged sword. Adrian: And with Andrea, she’s someone who has created this life that look blissful, and that has taken priority in her life because her means of living, her family’s means of living are linked to it ––– and she’s the sole provider, by perpetuating a lie, though that sounds dramatic. Tess: It’s not that her life is without bliss. 143

144

People with mental illness still have happiness or have happy moments, but it’s the sense that . . . her financial value is linked to her social value and her maintenance of her mood. In the end, it’s ironically James

who lends her a semblance of the authenticity she craves. By his actions, she can offer a greater vulnerability to her readers than she believed was acceptable before. It’s not quite what she intended. It’s not really sharing her struggle with seasonal depression. For Andrea the position of being a wife cheated on feels more socially acceptable and permissible than being a wife who’s depressed, but it’s a start.

Adrian: Seasonal affective disorder. Is that something that you suffer from? Tess: I would say I do. New Orleans was helpful, in not having that. As I said, I’m not Andrea, I don’t sleep that late, I think I maintain a little better than her, and I also wouldn’t have made the decisions that she’s made, or does make. But I know how the seasons affect me. I grew up in New Hampshire. And I know how dark it can get, how cold and dreary and uninspiring. So I did pull from myself for that experience. Adrian: As you’re writing a story, how do you know if it’s working? You said you wrote twelve drafts. You must have just been constantly working on it.

formation about bears, which ones hibernate and for how long. And listing is fun because you can build a world that way. Adrian: And the photos on the wall. Tess: Right. The photos on the wall. Adrian: Do you want to take a walk? Tess: That sounds good. [After our walk to the Elizabeth Street Garden, we return to Tess’ place, and consider a climb up the fire escape, and a chat on the roof with the sun.] Adrian: Say that again? Tess: We spend time capturing our moments, and then we spend moments seeing how other people respond to our moments. Isn’t that ridiculous? It’s so true. We could try going out on the fire escape. Adrian: Where’s the fire escape? Tess: Just go down and climb up. The fire escape is part of the home’s front too. Adrian: Do you use it a lot? Tess: No, because it’s been shitty weather. But I plan to. Adrian: But it’s pretty accessible?

Tess: That’s just how I am with most of my writing. There are poems that I’ve had thirty drafts of.

Tess: It is.

Adrian: So how do you determine what’s working and what’s not?

Tess: Right?

Tess: I focus on language, and sound. And so I like to read things aloud, as long as there aren’t other people around. I think if I’m interested in what I’m writing, then that’s a good sign. Then other people might be interested in it. So when I re-entered the story, for this final draft, where it begins with the bear, I thought bears are cool, so I looked up some background in-

Adrian: Strawberries on the fire escape?

Adrian: What does the future hold for Tess Congo? Tess: The future? Adrian: Do you see yourself staying in New York City, for the foreseeable future? Tess: I don’t know. I think I want to try going somewhere for the winter. 145

146

147

Adrian: The West Coast? Tess: Not the West Coast. Maybe Key West, or Cuba. And then kind of hopping around, maybe southern Europe. Adrian: This sense of restlessness that you’ve normalized, is that a desirable way of life, or do you desire to have a stable home, and a place where you can settle? Is there a vision for one thing or the other? Tess: Well, I really thought that’s what New York was going to be for me. I thought that New York was going to be stable. I didn’t realize the challenges that I was going to face, in terms of trying to find stability. Because that was what I wanted, even though it didn’t turn out that way. So I’ve had a couple of longer bouts at certain apartments, I’ve been here on the Lower East Side for a few months, and I was in Bushwick for seven months, and I find that they’re satisfying to an extent, I’m safe, and everything is calm. But I don’t know, I want more. I want to see new places. New York has been wonderful. There’s so much to do, and so many people to meet, and on and on, but while you’re here there’s still plenty of things that are going on in other places. I don’t necessarily regret my restlessness, it led me to the people and places that I’ve had the fortune to know, but I think maybe I should give into it even more for a time, and see where that can take me.

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

VS. GRAVITY. Diana Poon / Two slopes dip between 108th St and the illustrious Queens Boulevard, a merge-converging-on the curved Yellowstone road. You don’t need red shoes to find your path home, there at the top of the next hill. \ \ down is what’s natural. It’s what the flesh \wants: to tumble graceless, unworryingly, and to its own faults, true. Down is instinctual \ a baby’s closed fist fastened to wads of wet hair \ the swung-feel goodtime of a drink every now and again \ a black-hearted stare erupt with the gush of hot intent \ the pull of time against aged skin this thin—silken and trembling. Down hits us steadily: with What’s Always Been:

We Are Things.

irresistant\ compliant\

156

dwarfed.

by Forces beyond our own intentions.

/ Unnaturally, redemption inclines towards the climb. An order for Order. A 9 for a 5. A wit for a wail. A head for a heart. A distance to measure in time spent apart. With every Push backward, every Pull takes its toll. It’s a breathless excursion— converting chaos to art. \ Two slopes dip between 108th St and the illustrious Queens Boulevard, a merge-converging-on the curved Yellowstone road. You don’t need red shoes to walk it but you must see it through. \

157

HOW TO BE A NATIVE NEW YORKER. Diana Poon You don’t gotta be born here. But you gotta respect that You don’t gotta be born here. At the local Hot Bagels & Bialys (& heroes & lox & blintzes & pizza & potato knishes), a genial Columbian cashier calls out amid the amiable yammering of Polish-American retirees. Miss Nowicki! You look beautiful today! She answers with silence and a smile, demure and self-respecting. The owner and manager, a grandfatherly Russo-Orthodox Jew with an iconic monobrow just shakes his head and continues to wipe the icebox stocked with yoohoos and fraps. Don’t listen to him! yells Edna, thoroughly envious. “He says that to everyone!” (he said it to her, earlier). “Doesn’t matter who or where or even if you look like a gutter rat after Sandy! He says we’re all beautiful!”

158

159

160

161

162

163

“Nothing is good save the new. If a thing have novelty it stands intrinsically beside every other work of artistic excellence.” Kora in Hell: Improvisations -William Carlos Williams

Diana Poon doesn’t like old things. Her poems make this clear. She writes with inten-

tion. She has an idea and a place in her mind, and she sets her pen and paper in motion and toward that place. Except there is no pen. And there is no paper. When people give her a print out, she asks why. Send her an e-mail. She works as a copywriter, and spends her days using language to get the point ––– quickly: “Act now,” she said, “Try it today,” she offered, as she described the ad announcer’s voice that runs through her head as she works.

Originally from College Point, she’s been reppin’ Queens since day one. And back

when I first met her in July of 2015, after exchanging a few e-mails, a few of which included a semicolon or two that I had written in order to break up two related clauses that I felt need not be separated by a period, she decided that she’d hire me to help her with buying her first apartment.

We started looking in Astoria, then saw a few places in Jackson Heights ––– one of

which she fell in love with, save that the windows within its living room looked the tracks of the 7 train dead in the eye. She said she was a light sleeper, and even though she had tried to talk herself out of that truth, we kept looking.

As I was helping her find a place we bonded over our mutual adoration and appre-

ciation for William Carlos Williams. The doctor who wrote poems, quickly and efficiently –– between visits with patients, or early in the morning before work, or late in the evenings, just before rest.

Like Diana’s, Williams’ work is practical: “If a thing have not [newness], no loveliness

or heroic or grand manner will save it,” he writes in Kora in Hell: Improvisations. If a thing must have newness, then that newness must not come from abstract concepts and vague ideas that have no connection to reality. “Say it, no idea but in things –––” Williams so famously wrote in Patterson.

So when Diana turns off the ad announcer’s voice, and dives into the process of

writing poems, the idea that she most often works with is one that Williams must have agreed with. “Everything people do is about putting things into patterns and not letting it all destruct. We’re constantly in a cycle of resisting destruction.” - Isaac Myers III.

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEXANDRA BILDSOE - Pg. 152-185. 164

Alex: What do you usually do on Saturdays? Diana: I usually clean, which I did this morning. Or I go out and see people. Alex: Brunch? Diana: Sometimes. Sometimes I just stay in and play video games. Alex: That sounds great. Diana: It’s pretty relaxing. Alex: Well, you mentioned that you love this apartment, and since you have it . . . Diana: Exactly. I want to spend as much time as I can in here. Alex: Exactly. What’s that, near the plant? [Points at a plant in the hallway in Diana’s apartment, between the living room and kitchen] Diana: It’s a plant care tip. My last roommate left it for me because she used to take care of our plants, and I had no idea what to do with them. But they’re still alive, so it’s a good guide.

here a lot, or does she live nearby? Diana: She lives about fifteen minutes away by car. She doesn’t come to hang out, but I do visit them every weekend just because they’re so close by. My mom actually wouldn’t let me move out unless it was because I married someone, or if I bought my own apartment. Alex: Wow. Well, that’s a stability conscious parent right there. Diana: It’s true. Even though I feel like people in our generation aren’t really buying property anymore. Alex: No, that’s a good point. Diana: But I don’t know. I feel like there’s an appeal to being able to just up and move whenever. Alex: That’s true. Isaac: Right, it’s nice to just say, “I’m out.” Alex: Yeah. Isaac: It’s been good, you know. Diana: It’s been good, yeah.

Alex: Yeah, these Koala crackers are great. Isaac, have you have one of these before?

Diana: Change it up.

Isaac: I’ve never heard of them.

[We move into the living room.]

Alex: They’re crazy.

Isaac: What’s the name of that couch again, is that the Joke Couch?

Diana: They’re amazing. Alex: Have you had strawberry milk? Think of strawberry milk.

Diana: Right. That one at the end of the room is called the Joke Couch. Alex: Why?

Diana: Koalas are the best. I like to show them to my mom while I’m eating them. I always show her every single one. Look at this Koala, mom. This one is playing the trombone! And people think this is a story about me that happened when I was a kid. But really it was last week.

Diana: Because my old roommates sent [an online link of it] to me, as a joke. And I thought, wow, this is a beautiful couch, I’m going to buy it. And then I did, and she was like, “I sent you that couch as a joke. It’s a pink suede couch!” And I was like, “I like it!”

Alex: Does your mom come and hang out

Alex: That’s hilarious. Because it’s great! 165

Diana: Right! Alex: Best joke ever. Diana: Yeah! So even with your joke, you were helpful, so the joke’s on you, Mel. Alex: [Referring to a desk in the corner of the living room] Do you do work over here, or is it just your holding area for things? Diana: That’s funny. My roommate usually works there. Diana: I’m usually not home enough to work from home, and when I do, I do work in my favorite chair, which is in my bedroom. [We move from the living room to Diana’s bedroom, where her favorite chair sits near the window at the back of the room, which looks out over a courtyard between the nearby buildings within the block.] Isaac: Would you want to start by reading one of your poems? Diana: I didn’t know I’d be reading one of these. Isaac: I can read it, if you’d like. Diana: Okay, we’ll watch you read it. Isaac: This one is titled “vs. Gravity” by Diana Poon. Diana: Wooooo!

to its own faults. Down is instinctual \ a baby’s closed fist fastened to wads of wet hair \ the swungfeel goodtime of a drink every now and now again \ a black-hearted stare erupt with the gush of hot intent \ the pull of time against aged skin this thin—silken and trembling. It is Down that hits us steadily: with the Law of What’s Always Been: We Are Things. irresistant\ compliant\ dwarfed. by Forces beyond our own Good or Evil. / Unnaturally, redemption inclines towards the climb. An order for Order. A poem for a rhyme. A wit for a wail, a head for a heart, a platitude for experience, in time spent apart. With every Push backward, every Pull takes its toll. You practice in pain to attain lofty goals. \ Two slopes dip between 108th St and the illustrious Queens Boulevard, a mergeconverging-on the curved Yellowstone road. You don’t need red shoes to walk it but you must see it through. \

vs. gravity / Two slopes dip between 108th St and the illustrious Queens Boulevard, a mergeconverging-on the curved Yellowstone road. You don’t need red shoes to find your path home, there at the top of the next hill. \ and \ down is what’s natural. It’s what the flesh \wants: to tumble graceless, unworryingly, and true 166

Isaac: How did you get into that one, do you remember? Diana: I know that when I write, I like to come up with a concept first. So with that one, I knew that I would be writing something for your magazine, and it’s all about a sense of place, and I wanted to do something very personal, but also something very specific about Forrest Hills. So I thought about that, and then about those two slopes outside of my building. Did you guys go up them?

Alex: We saw them.

Isaac: Really?

Diana: I feel like I see them every morning, and every night, and they’re a major part of my daily trek to work and back home again. And I thought about how meaningful that was, and how it could resonate with a lot of people. So I felt like I just wanted to capture that in a poem. So it’s a lot about the ups and downs of life, and also about balancing your desires versus the things that you want to make, as a creator. The universe tends naturally towards entropy, but as humans our duty is to make order from all of that. So that’s kind of what I had in mind for this poem.

Diana: Yes, actually.

Isaac: Duty is an interesting word, right? Diana: We have an obligation to humanity, I think.

Alex: Is that not a life metaphor right there? Diana: Isn’t it though? These hills are tough, but I know the other ones are tougher. Alex: Exactly. Diana: But it’s interesting, if you want to take the express train, you just walk straight down to Austin Street, which is a very level way, and there are no hills whatsoever. But I don’t take that way because it’s farther, and I like the metaphor of going up and down the hills better. Isaac: I hear that. So which one is the local stop then?

Alex: As artists or as people?

Diana: The 67th Avenue stop. Did you guys take that one to get here?

Diana: As artists, I think, and as people. I think morality would be the non-artist interpretation of that idea.

Isaac: No, we got off at 71st Avenue. We got to look at the hills, but we didn’t actually take them on.

Isaac: The non-artist interpretation of . . . Diana: The idea of creating order from chaos. If you’re not an artist, there’s morality. If you’re a scientist, then there’s the pursuit of new knowledge. I feel like everything people do is about putting things into patterns and not letting it all destruct. We’re constantly in a cycle of resisting destruction. And that’s the downhill part of the poem. But also that part of life is necessary to experience those things. There has to be room for fun, you can’t be creating order all of the time. Isaac: Do you always take the hills down and then up, or do you ever walk around them? Diana: I do take that route, because if you walk around them, then you come upon bigger, steeper hills.

Diana: That’s cool. That’s a nice walk too. Alex: It was great. We got to walk by all of the regally-named apartment buildings. Diana: Yeah! The Grover Cleveland . . . Isaac: The George Washington. Alex: I never knew our forefathers had such taste in apartment buildings. Diana: They definitely had a huge hand in constructing these. Alex: They did. Exactly. Diana: That’s funny. There’s actually a building next door called The Grover Cleveland that looks exactly like the George Washington. And a lot of people who try to

167

168

169

come here end up there instead. I’m like, it’s the better president!

story.

Isaac: So what color is this wall?

Diana: Yeah, apparently!

Diana: That’s Piano Concerto. That’s the name of it. It’s like a pale, purplish lavender. I wanted something soothing and calm for my room. Isaac: Was this one of many contenders, or you just sort of knew? Diana: I kind of knew I kind of wanted a pale-ish lilac-ish color, and purple is my favorite, so it fit.

Isaac: Dave Thomas used to actually appear in the commercials, do you remember? Diana: Is he still alive? Isaac: No, he passed. He’s no longer with us. Alex: R.I.P.

Isaac: Well, it’s royalty, right?

Diana: R.I.P. He made excellent burgers.

Diana: My mom named me after Princess Diana, thinking I would be charitable and kind.

Isaac: So should we hear the other poem?

Alex: Oh my god. Diana: But I only got the princess part! Alex: That’s so sweet of her. Isaac: When did she tell you that, do you remember? Diana: When I was a kid. She would tell me, “I used to just love Princess Diana, because she’s such a sweet person.” And I would just say, “Yeah, cool.” But she would say, “Now your sister, she was named after Wendy’s, the restaurant.” Alex: What!? Diana: She would say, “That girl was just cute.” The mascot, the redhead. Isaac: What’s her name, Wendy, right? Diana: Wendy, right. Isaac: Wendy Thomas. I think that’s Dave Thomas’ daughter, right? I think that’s the 170

Alex: Really, wow.

Diana: I can read this one actually. I like it. I feel self-conscious when I have to read flowery poetry. And I know that “vs. Gravity” wasn’t flowery, but it was kind of more highfalutin. Isaac: This one’s more like, “Listen up, y’all! I got something to say!” Diana: Yeah, it starts with “You don’t gotta be born here, but you gotta respect that!” _____________ “How To Be A Native New Yorker” You don’t gotta be born here. But you gotta respect that You don’t gotta be born here. At the local Hot Bagels & Bialys (& heroes & lox & blintzes & pizza & potato knishes), a boombox chants A genial Columbian cashier calls out amid the amiable yammering of Polish-American retirees.

Miss Nowicki! You look beautiful today! She answers with silence and a smile, demure and self-respecting. The owner and manager, a grandfatherly Russo-Orthodox Jew with an iconic monobrow just shakes his head and continues to wipe the icebox stocked with yoohoos and fraps. Don’t listen to him! yells Edna, thoroughly envious. “He says that to everyone!” (he said it to her, earlier). “Doesn’t matter who or where or even if you look like a gutter rat after Sandy! He says we’re all beautiful!” ______________ Isaac: And when was that, do you remember? Diana: It was a few weekends ago. Isaac: I didn’t realize it was that recently. Diana: Or maybe it was longer. Time passes so quickly these days. Alex: I know, right? The older we get. Diana: The older we get.

Diana: I always say Queens. Reppin’ Queens. Isaac: Got it. Diana: Right. So I’m from Flushing, well, I’m technically from this neighborhood called College Point, which is adjacent to Flushing, but no one has heard of it, so I just say Flushing. And I was born there and I grew up there. And I went to high school in the city, which was my first exposure to New York at large. But from the ages of five through around fourteen, I was like, Queens is my world! Isaac: So what was it like, growing up in Queens, what happened? Diana: It was an interesting neighborhood. It was very working class. And most of the school district I was in was made up of Colombian immigrants, and there were definitely Latinos and Caucasians, and also Indians and Asians. It was just a very diverse group of people to grow up with. And I think it influenced my world view a lot, coming from a background where I was exposed to so many different cultures. But growing up in Queens, it was alright. Sometimes it was scary. I think my old neighborhood used to be a hot spot for where the Crips used to do some gang activity. Isaac: You think that?

Alex: You absolutely look like a princess while sitting in your chair by the window. Diana: Oh, thank you. That was the vision. Alex: The reindeer fur is the perfect touch. Diana: My mom actually got this for me. She was like, “You like dead animals.” Alex: Really? Diana: I guess I do like faux fur things. Isaac: So when people ask where you’re from, what do you tell them?

Diana: Actually I read it on Wikipedia. And so I thought, that explains a lot. At times it was like that, but all in all, it was pretty nice to grow up in the suburbs. I went outside and rode bikes with my friends. And did all of the things you do in suburbia. Went to 7/11, ate Koala crackers. Isaac: And then Amherst, right? Diana: Yeah. Well, before Amherst there was Stuyvesant High School, which I think influenced me more. That was in Tribeca, and the school was about seventy percent Asian, which was kind of crazy. But I loved 171

Stuyvesant so much. I remember being a poor high school student and hanging around Tribeca, which was impossible. My friends and I would just be at Barnes & Noble or Taco Bell all the time, as broke ass high school students. But Stuyvesant was really awesome. All of my friends are still from high school. My roommate is a friend from high school. My roommate before her was also a friend from high school. We all know each other from Stuyvesant. They called us “That multicultural group of hipsters who thought they were too cool for school.”

just tired of commuting from my parents’ house, which is about an hour commute to Manhattan, a full hour. You have to take a bus and a train, and so I was sick of that. But I wasn’t dead set on Astoria, as you know. Isaac: I recall. Diana: We looked at a few neighborhoods. Mostly along the train lines, and we settled here, and got lucky because this is a sponsor unit. Otherwise, I don’t think I would have met the criteria to buy here.

Isaac: Who called you that? Alex: Is there an acronym for that?

Isaac: The debt-to-income ratio. The ratios.

Diana: I wish. The student body president actually called us that.

Diana: Yeah, the ratios.

Diana: But hanging out with a diverse group of friends at high school definitely reinforced and influenced my love and pride for Queens, and how different everyone is, and how awesome. Isaac: They say it’s the most diverse county in the United States. Alex: Really? Diana: Yeah, it’s pretty dope. If you go further down Queens boulevard toward Jackson Heights, you really start seeing the diversity there, because there are Pakistani restaurants, Thai restaurants, Chinese restaurants ––– it’s just a whole jumble of things, it’s great. Queens is great for food. Isaac: So I think when we first met, when you were first looking for an apartment, you were looking in Astoria, right? Diana: Right. Isaac: Did you always know that you wanted to start by looking in Astoria, or had you thought of a few other places as well? Diana: I was mostly looking at Astoria because it was so close to the city, and I was 172

Isaac: Whose ratios? Alex: Who says? _____________ [We pause, then move back into the living room.] _____________ Isaac: I listened to episode 1 of Podcast DESU. Diana: We record that right here. Isaac: Is that right? When is the next one out? Diana: Dan [co-host] is supposed to be editing it. He hasn’t done that yet. It will come out soon though. Isaac: Nice. Well, there were a few things that I noticed, a few choice quotes that I wrote down as I was listening. Diana: Wow, you took notes, Isaac? Isaac: Just a few choice quotes. And stop me if anything appeals to you. I won’t read

all of them. “I don’t like old things.” “It just feels like they’re extorting anime fans.”

you’re able to keep up with your thoughts, or do you feel constrained by the process at all?

Diana: What did I say that about?

Diana: When I’m writing, I feel like there are so many thoughts, and it’s more about distilling the ones that I want to go with. So it’s a different process. Sometimes the words just come to you, but sometimes it feels like it could be this, or it could be this, or maybe it’s this, and you’re trying everything out until it feels right.

Isaac: You were talking about Amazon. What was it that they were doing? Diana: Right. They had a streaming service. Isaac: Right, and they had two pay walls. Diana: Right. One for Amazon Prime and one for their Anime streaming service. Isaac: And I think that’s when you said, “It just feels like they’re extorting anime fans,” and maybe they were. Diana: Maybe they were. Anime fans can drop cash, which is why it’s still an industry. If you watch anime, you probably have expendable income, and I guess, if I were Amazon, I’d probably try the same thing. Isaac: But it didn’t work. Diana: It didn’t work. I do still pay for a streaming service though. I pay for Crunchyroll. This is probably a future podcast episode though. Dan and I were going to talk about streaming versus “torrenting.” Isaac: At one point, and I think we’ve talked about this before, but in the podcast you mention, “I would secretly like to be a badass.” Diana: Yeah. I would like to be more athletic. Isaac: What would you play? Diana: I would just want to be more naturally in tune with my body. I feel like my thoughts always run so much faster than what I can keep up with, and so I feel like I’m such a cognitive person. I would really like to have quick reflexes. Isaac: When you’re writing, do you feel like

Isaac: I hear that. Diana: But I love writing because it’s the one form of communication ––– even more than conversation or verbal dictation ––– where I feel like I can truly communicate. I’ve always been a texting person versus chatting live, because I feel like with writing I can carefully put out my thoughts because there isn’t a set time limit. Isaac: Did you ever get into letter writing? Diana: I haven’t, actually. I’m still quite digital. As you wrote down, “I don’t like old things,” and I’ve never gotten too old school about writing. But I really appreciate it when people are, which is why I hired you ––– thorough e-mails and you knew how to use a semicolon, and so I thought, “I trust this guy.” Isaac: Sometimes you just have to throw a semicolon in there. Diana: You just do it when it feels right! Grammar. Isaac: How did you choose Amherst, and what did you major in? Diana: I majored in English. But Amherst . . . I think I was a little rebellious in high school, and I know everybody wanted me to go to an Ivy, but I didn’t want to do what everyone thought that I was going to do, and so I decided to go to a liberal arts college instead. Isaac: I see.

173

174

175

Diana: So that’s basically how it happened. I was choosing between Williams and Amherst, and Amherst won out because it had cell phone reception. Isaac: Where is Williams? Diana: I think it’s a bit northwest of Amherst. It’s not far. It’s in an area with more trees and less power lines. But I think with Amherst, I thought it was going to be great because I thought, oh, small school, closeknit community, but there wasn’t as much of that as I thought. College wasn’t that great for me, to be honest. It was an environment that I wasn’t used to. When you grow up in New York, you’re just exposed to so many different people. And there are so many cultures and there’s so much clashing that eventually you deal with it by making fun of yourselves. And when I went to Amherst, there was just a vibe about it . . . where it felt too . . . “wholesome,” I guess would be the word for it. Now I can appreciate how positive the Amherst students were, but at the time, I felt alienated by that, because I never felt happy enough to burst out into song. Amherst was an experience. It was a very beautiful and quaint town though, just not for me. Too quiet. Too storybook. I like things that are kind of gross. Isaac: The grit? Diana: Yeah, the grit. Isaac: Princess grit. Diana: Princess grit, right. That’s my aesthetic. Isaac: So when did you know that you wanted to get into copywriting? Diana: I was pre-med in college, and mostly because I didn’t know what I was going to do . . . I thought, I guess I’ll be a doctor, or something, but I wasn’t really passionate about it. I was majoring in English and creative writing, and I was more into that. I’ve known since high school that I wanted 176

to major in English. After I got out of college I thought, “Do I really want to help people for the rest of my life by being a doctor, or do I just want to do creative work?” And so I chose the creative work, and my thoughts haven’t changed. Then eventually, I thought, maybe I can get into a field that utilizes my science side and my creative side. So now I write ads for pharmaceutical companies. Isaac: And you dig it? Diana: Yeah, I dig it. Isaac: How do know when an ad is working? Diana: When it’s as straightforward as possible, that’s the general rule. Isaac: Can you give an example, or something that you “unclouded,” and made clear? Diana: Well, we’re encouraged to always write in as few words as possible. It’s hard to explain, but there’s this voice that you have in copywriting. It’s a bit like the ad announcers voice that you’re probably aware of: “Now available!” or “Try it today!”,So one of the first things I learned in copywriting was to throw out my creative voice, which was unfortunate because I thought that was one of the stronger aspects of my writing. But you kind of have to strip everything out in order to get the core message across, and to get that announcer’s voice, because it’s only when you do that that you can reach the most people. So conciseness is a huge thing. Isaac: Do you find yourself evaluating billboards? Obviously we see a lot, just walking through the subway and through the city every day. Diana: Totally. MTA ads especially need some help sometimes.

Isaac: What have you noticed? Diana: Sometimes the grammar is weird, and you have to read the sign several times before you can determine what it means. Isaac: What do you think of, “If you see something, say something”? Would you change that one at all? Diana: I think that one is iconic, so I wouldn’t. I think that’s a pretty good one. Because people quote it now. Isaac: I guess it’s one of those . . . twenty years from now, or even thirty years from now. Diana: People will remember “If you see something, say something.” And that’s part of copywriting too, coming up with alliterations and quick and cheesy lines that people will remember. Personally, when I think of “If you see something, say something,” I think, that’s not clever, but I know that it works. It sticks in people’s heads. But as an artist, and as a poet, I wouldn’t write something like that, but for copywriting it’s perfect. You’re just trimming down all of the fat. Isaac: In terms of trimming the fat, as you’ve said, you can still use some of those same tools when editing down and revising poems. Diana: It is like that in some ways. I do try to incorporate the opposite of that, and incorporate my voice into copywriting sometimes, but it never works out.

Diana: Yeah! The internal rhyme patterns. But if I try to bring that into advertising, people would think “What is this, a tongue twister? Stop getting fancy with it.” But writing ads has helped my poetry, I think. Because poetry is kind of working in miniature almost, as a form of writing. Because it’s all about the details, because poems are usually so short, so it’s usually about picking out all the unnecessary parts, trimming the fat. Copywriting has definitely helped me in that respect with my poetry. Isaac: Right. I guess it can go both ways. They both can help each other. Diana: Synergize. [We pause for tea.] Alex: Do you have any cues that you use, something that gets you tapped into working creatively? Diana: You mean to get into the zone? Alex: Exactly. And I was thinking, when you were talking about copywriting, more specifically, how does what you do to get into the zone differ from when you’re writing creatively? Diana: That’s a really interesting question. Alex: Right.

Diana: Somebody just kills it. Because I think as a poet I really love sounds and complex slant rhymes.

Diana: For copywriting, when I start I have to get into that man’s voice, as I was saying before, the very copywriting voice: “Act now!” So that has to slip in, before I start writing. I have to embody this other voice almost. For my creative work, it’s very much as I described it before, it’s all about concepts for me.

Isaac: “A merge-converging-on the curved / Yellowstone road.”

Alex: It’s like you have a mission at the onset of your work.

Isaac: What happens?

177

Diana: Exactly.

Alex: Oh yeah, your chair.

Alex: So when you start, you’re thinking, I’m going to do this, for this purpose.

Diana: I know some people do like pen and paper, which can feel pretty awesome, but I almost always type it up, straight into the computer.

Diana: Exactly. And sometimes it evolves. Sometimes it changes. But to answer your question about cues, I guess I have to feel like the words are tumbling around in my head almost. Alex: Like they have to be there already. Diana: Exactly. Waiting go be . . birthed. Alex: I know that feeling, and you can’t really re-create that. Diana: Totally. Alex: Although . . . Diana: Or can you? Alex: Right. I think that’s one thing that can make the difference between people who can make art their career, or they do it every single day –– it’s not about being in a mood, but about discipline. You wake up and you just start writing. Diana: No matter what. Alex: Or you start painting, and it’s not about whether you feel like doing it, you just do it. And then something comes out of it. Diana: I also feel like you get more product when you discipline yourself to work in that way. And not everything can be perfect, but you have more to work with in the end. Alex: Where do you do the most of your writing, your creative writing? Diana: Usually in my chair. 178

Alex: Really? Diana: Mostly because I can’t read my own handwriting, but also because I am just not a paper using person. When people give me printouts, I’m like why? Just send it to me. Just e-mail it. Alex: Do you ever write while you’re commuting, on the train, or public transportation? Diana: No, I usually read while on the train. Because every good writer is a good reader. Isaac: What are you reading now? Diana: I’m reading this nerdy sci-fi series by Brandon Sanderson, The Stormlight Archive. He recently dropped the newest book. It’s pretty dope. It’s sort of high fantasy war. Kind of like Game of Thrones if Game of Thrones had not so great characters but better magic systems. Just some nerdy shit, you know. But that’s about fifteen hundred pages, so I’ve been reading that for a while. On deck, I have this book my friend lent me called To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is this comedy of manners book. I haven’t read a comedy of manners book in a long time. Alex: What’s that mean, a “comedy of manners”? Diana: It’s like Pride and Prejudice, where most of the action takes place in conversation. Alex: I get it. It’s very subtle. Diana: Exactly. It’s about wit.

Alex: English style. Diana: It’s very English, so I’m looking forward to that. I have an actual paperback book of it, which is a format that I haven’t read from in a while, because I’ve just been using my iPad. Alex: I was going to ask if you use a kindle or you use an iPad. Diana: I used to think I would always be one of those people ––– “I would never abandon print books,” but once I got an iPad . . . that changed. Isaac: What do you think of when you hear the word “minimalist”? Diana: I think of my friend Liz, whose aesthetic is very bohemian, but she’s always saying, “I’m a minimalist.” But I think it’s pretty trendy right now. I also think of the Japanese, because it kind of feels like their culture is within that aesthetic. Would you identify yourself as a minimalist or as a maximalist? Isaac: Are you asking me? Diana: Yeah. Isaac: What is a maximalist? Alex: Would that be a hoarder? Diana: I guess that would be it. Isaac: I just want all of it. Diana: I guess so. You could never throw it out. Isaac: Do you have a favorite ad? Diana: I really like that ad for Gold’s Gym. It’s a famous ad. It’s using the silhouettes of two people. It’s the word “fit,” and the person is a skinny dude, so he looks like the letter “I” and then below, it’s the word “fat” and the person is bigger, so he looks like the letter “A.” So it’s showing “fat to

fit.” I just love when typography and words combine with visual art, which I think is why my poems are kind of E.E. Cummings style. I think of words as visual art also. Alex: Like concrete poetry? Diana: Yeah, like concrete poetry. So that’s why it’s my favorite ad. Isaac: Sounds cool. How do you create ads that make people feel like they’re not being sold to, or how much do you try to do that in your work? Diana: We do. People don’t want to feel like they’re being advertised towards. It’s actually difficult because we try to do things that are cool, and that aren’t expected for pharmaceuticals. So typically, you think of a pharmaceutical ad and you think of a woman and her husband on the beach running and holding hands, and it’s like, “Is this you with the diabetes? You can, you can get control of your diabetes,” or something. But I think what our agency tries to do is to take that outside of healthcare, and make it more tangential, and make people think about something else. So instead of a couple walking on the beach, it might be an old person waving a finger, like, “Fuck walks on the beach, I’m old! It’s time to you live your life!” So kind of subversive in that way. Isaac: What do you say to people who say things like all advertising is manipulation? Diana: I would say that’s kind of true. It’s an art form definitely, but it’s an art form that was designed to sell things. But when people are saying manipulation, of course, it’s a very negative term, but I think there’s some kind of integrity in being able to influence people, and being able to influence people’s thinking, and crafting culture, which I think advertising very much does. Because it’s so visible, and it’s everywhere. I think advertising does a huge job in crafting culture, and whether that’s manipulation . . . 179

Isaac: “Crafting culture” is an interesting phrase. I’ve never really heard it referred to in that way, but culture, it must be crafted in some way, at least pop culture. Diana: Yeah, it must come from somewhere, right? Isaac: And then the other thing would be, I guess manipulation could just as easily be substituted with persuasion. If you persuade someone, then you’re smart, but if you manipulate them, you’re evil. Diana: That’s true. Persuasion is the other side of it. So that’s what advertising is to advertisers, the art of persuasion. Isaac: If you could ask William Carlos Williams a question, what would you ask him? Diana: Probably where did he find the time to write poetry while being a doctor? Isaac: I would love to hear the sound of his voice. Diana: Was he pre-recording? Isaac: I’ve heard a few recordings, but when you go so far back, you can only hear so much. Diana: What do you think he sounded like? I could imagine him with a really high-pitched voice. Isaac: A little nasally. When did you find his work, or when were you first introduced to him? Diana: Back in college, when I was pre-med, and also majoring in English. I just thought, “I connect with this guy,” because his poems are so short, and almost . . . practical, very down-to-earth, and so I immediately gravitated towards that.

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

BOBBY WILEY. Tom Davidson The baseball junkie next door stinks like grease. Looks like he’s about to croak. He ain’t clean. I AM. Been spick and span for six years. Back then I said goodbye to hocking junk & bombing liquor. Goodbye to stealing azaleas and axles, to stockpiling turpentine, to stewing in the gutter, to holy beaters, and the street demon peddlers. I said goodbye to bad shit happening. That’s when I was transferred to this building, took one of the only single units left. From my window I can see robins jerking around on the branches. I’d probably kill myself if I was a robin. Turning up leaves all day to find nothing. Free as a bird they say, but that’s not any kind of freedom I want to partake in. Freedom is a CLEAN mind, a CLEAN body. And it takes mental focus. It takes all you’ve got.

190

DARIUS AZMEH-VOLPATO. Tom Davidson Mama, you are beautiful as a wraith. Every morning the world shoots Out of your corpse under the wan light of winter near where the children in the playground dismantle daisies and hum sweet tunes to the scarred ants and squelchy pond critters, out of you gushes the plain windows, knee-high fences, succulent lawns, all your astonishing pages unbound, whispered with intention on down pillows late at night when the ashes of our sleeping turn back to body to fern to ocean jelly again, and from the crevices in your bones seedlings hover one hundred fold over children and beleaguered school administrators who long to retreat to your painted summer shacks and attend to the drift of dandelions, to stand before the coming season and wait in luxury for the puffed-up owls, slippery foxes, and the mama wolf, while city life motors on happy in its nature walloping with clubs the treasured stories, coughing up a lung defending the drone from the podium, too skittish to pause for breath, not dwelling on the white sheet an orderly once placed over your body, Mama â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the one woman who is unseen but heard whose words alight even on steel girders, with so much love to give I want to be as open as your body is with its bulbous sockets out of which grow blazing lilies, as open as we all want to be when weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not snarling in time with the beating heart of the beast scratching the ages on tombstones.

191

192

193

194

195

You overhear your housemates. You’ve just started writing poetry about a month ago

and have been working on a few new poems, and earlier in the week you gave your housemates a few of them to read. They don’t know you’re home, and they’re gathered around the dining room table, trashing your work. “Toilet paper,” they say, “Wild horses running incoherently across the page ––– absolutely awful.” What do you do?

If you’re Tom Davidson, you work to get your mind into a calm and meditative state;

appreciate and accept their criticism with loving kindness; then embrace the challenge that their words have brought forth. “I’ve never abandoned that feeling,” Davidson said while Alex and I sat and spoke with him in his living room on a Sunday in March, “that my work actually isn’t good enough right now, but I’d like to work to make it better.”

Davidson and his wife, Julia, live in a cozy flat in Prospect Heights; the type of apart-

ment where the living room can be used as the bedroom throughout the winter, and then as the leaves find their way onto the branches of the trees again, the furniture can be reversed once more. And when I say “flat,” I do mean flat.

Davidson graduated from the University of Exeter and moved from England to the

United States in July of 2014. He works as an event manager at Grand Central Station, and perhaps as an outgrowth of the planning that’s required in event management, he’s strategic with using his evenings and weekends to make time for poetry: “Generally Sundays are writing my morning. I try to catch up reading some poetry throughout the week, I research different books that I want to borrow from the library, and then I go and get them, and I just have a day at home. Saturdays I try and go out, try and see people, and then Sunday is the day of rest, and writing.”

If you were to ask Davidson how meditation informs his poetry, and vice versa, he’d

likely say they’re not separate, but one and the same. And on the sunny Sunday afternoon that we spent with him, he offered an expression that I’d never heard before, and one that I’ll remember for awhile: “Meditation for me is an integral piece of the puzzle. I find that if I don’t get myself into a meditative state, and if I don’t let passing thoughts and emotions pass me by, or run through me, then I cannot write the poem that I’m meant to write.”

196

-Isaac Myers III.

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEXANDRA BILDSOE - Pg. 186-End.

Tom: So, when we moved here, I guess . . . there were several competing ideas in my head. There’s this idea of Brooklyn and the kind of apartment that we’d want to have ––– we want something that’s a decent size that we would maybe grow into and maybe start a family in. And then we were confronted with these matchboxes, just these tiny little places and we thought, “How could we ever really live in this place, let alone have a family?” Then we found some really awful photographs of this place where the bed wasn’t far from the kitchen and there was a really long and awkward bedroom and it was really dark. We live here now, but it didn’t really look great in the photographs and no one had seemed to pay much attention to this ad. Granted, it was the middle of December, so maybe people weren’t that interested in moving. So, at that point we just came to see it and we said we liked it. And at that point the whole place was completely empty and we just took it and almost immediately moved in. We had been commuting from Julia, my wife’s, parents’ place in the Palisades. She was working sometimes in south Brooklyn and I was working in Midtown, so it was great that we finally made it here. And it was great that we moved into a house. For some reason I had it in my head that I really wanted to live in a brownstone, or some kind of house with three or four other apartments and no more. So that’s the story of moving in here. Isaac: Do you remember the first evening that you moved in? Tom: I don’t remember the first evening but I do remember walking around the block and going down Vanderbilt Avenue and going all the way down Park Place and over onto Washington Avenue and seeing the contrasts. Not so much between the architecture of the buildings, but if you look at the stores you can see the changes, you could maybe call it gentrification, hap-

pening, as you’re physically moving around the space. So, these stores that have been there, old delis that, judging by the signage, had probably been there since the eighties, and then on Vanderbilt I started to see all of these restaurants that were definitely geared toward a totally different kind of clientele that recently just arrived here. I thought, “Wow, I wonder how all of these things interact, if at all?” Because in England where I was living in Bath, and Bath is a historic UNESCO World Heritage Site, most famous for Jane Austen, and other period pieces made by the BBC. There it was one neighborhood, and you’d probably have to travel quite far in order to get to another radically different type of neighborhood with different stores, or maybe more working class or upper class or whatever differences there may be. But here, it’s quite sudden, and people have commented on that, not only in Brooklyn but in other areas of the city as well. That’s interesting to me, how these kinds of lives can live, quite literally, side-byside. Sometimes there can be no interaction between them and sometimes there can be. So, I’m quite conscious of that when I’m walking around and seeing how people are talking to each other and poking into stores and seeing whether there are, at least on the surface, people who look kind of different from each other, and are they interacting? And I try to go out of my way, probably because I’m a little bit nosy, to find out how people are living, and a little bit about them. So as a simple example, I used to go and get my hair cut on Vanderbilt Avenue and it was this place that was pretty expensive and it also seemed to only attract a certain kind of clientele and all of the men were getting the same kind of haircut. In fact, when I went there, I had to stop them and say, “No, I don’t want my side shaved off. I don’t want a small quiff thing going on, I just want a regular haircut. I don’t want to look like this guy. ‘No offense,’” Isaac: That’s funny. I picture you saying, “You look good with that haircut.” to the other

197

person who was sitting in the chair, and getting his hair cut. Tom: Right. “You look really good, no offense!” But I thought, I wonder where else I could get my hair cut? And I was walking down Seventh Avenue and I remember that a friend had recommended this place near the Park Slope Food Co-op and it looked like it had been there for years and years and years and years. He told me that it’s run by these Russian Jews and that they’re very friendly. I thought, “Wow, I don’t meet very many people from Russia, maybe I could go in and get a haircut and hear some great stories. And I went in and there was a wonderful person there named Natalie and she told me a bit about her work and her kids and she asked me about my life. We had this whole interaction and it was nice. I think it’s healthy sometimes, to go a little bit out of your way and you don’t even have to get something done like a haircut but just to get a little taste of somebody else’s existence. Alex: I also think showing support in a capitalist system means giving your money and your attention to a certain store ––– so you’re supporting them, by getting your haircut there.

Alex: Is someone a potter in your family? Tom: No . . . all of this stuff here is from one of Julia’s parents’ neighbors, who is a potter in Palisades. I really like all of her stuff. And we have a bunch of plates and bowls from our wedding. We like to try and support other makers where we can. [We move from the kitchen to the living room. Tom sets out a tea bag plate, with a simple and plain inscription “Tea bags,” and mentions his interest in plain language.]

Tom: Exactly. That’s one of the benefits.

Tom: So, I’m really interested in plain language, in poetry, and also just plain language, in other contexts as well. This is just a tea bag, plate and in case you’re unclear about that, someone wrote the words “Tea Bags” on there, so I like that.

Isaac: And how did you like your haircut?

Isaac: Not a coaster?

Tom: It’s pretty good. It’s gone a bit downhill since then. I find that my hair is naturally scruffy when I wake up, so she kind of tempered it, in the moment, but I don’t live with any illusions that it’s going to stay perfect, as Natalie cut it.

Tom: Not a coaster, it’s far too large, unless you were a troll or something.

Isaac: How long ago was it?

Isaac: Well, I guess that’s a good enough segue into getting started. You mentioned plain language . . . what does that mean, for you?

Tom: About two weeks ago. Isaac: So fairly recent. So, what’s your favorite part about this kitchen? Tom: Now that’s the question, isn’t it? Favorite part about the kitchen. I’d say the cast-iron 198

pot. Making anything in the cast-iron is very enjoyable. I even like the cleaning up process afterwards. Oiling it again, preparing it for the next meal. It has a kind of meditative quality about it. I like it as a physical object; it’s very beautiful. Every time I come in here I think, “Yeah, I really like it.” After that, I probably say our teapot, which we bought in Woodstock, New York this past December.

Isaac: Thank you. Where’d you get this? Tom: I think it’s from the Village Pottery Shop, or something like that.

Tom: I think it’s language that’s written in the everyday fashion, everyday lingo. It’s simple in its tone and it’s authentic. And I

199

200

realize that all of those things seem pretty subjective ––– people speak in really different ways, but it has a simplicity at heart and a directness, and so I like that. When I first got into poetry, I initially read Raymond Carver, who is more well-known for his stories than for his poetry, but I really liked how direct and simple he was with his language. It was quite disarming sometimes how much he wore his heart on his sleeve. I would just think, okay Raymond, I get it, you’re suffering right now, you’re recovering from alcoholism, or you’ve left your wife. And I like that. He really let you in. There were no tricks, or filters, or gimmicks of any kind. Isaac: How did you come across his work? Tom: It was in 2003, in Bologna, in Italy, and I was studying there for a year. I was mainly studying cinema but I went to the local library and started to get interested in works in translation. So, UK or American authors being translated into Italian and then seeing how they did it. And then I found a book of Raymond Carver’s poetry and I had never heard of him before but I just stared reading it. And I really just thought, wow, I didn’t know this could also be poetry too. He just writes how I think sometimes. And I’m sure there’s a million and one other poets who you could have started with, right? But that’s just the person who I found. Isaac: So, you were reading poetry at first then; do you remember when you first started writing it, or wanting to write it? Tom: It was about a year after that when I started to put pen to paper and decided, hmmm, I wonder what I could do here. And each time I wrote I was excited by the actual act of writing itself but really disappointed with what I was able to produce but I knew that it was possible to get better. In fact, I remember writing something and showing it to friends and family and I overhead a conversation where

someone ––– it must have been my housemate ––– was really tearing apart the poetry, “This is absolutely awful. This is toilet paper basically. It’s just wild horses running through his mind. It’s not coherent.” Alex: This is what someone was saying about your poetry? Tom: Yes. I overheard it. And I should have been really offended, right? Or at least hurt, but for some reason it kind of made me think, one, actually, “They’re not very articulate, but they’re right. It isn’t very good.” I liked the challenge of trying to make it better in some way. And I’ve never abandoned that feeling, that it’s actually not good enough right now, but I’d like to work to make it better. Isaac: Do they know that you know? Tom: No, I didn’t really feel like I needed to say anything. I didn’t want to just burst into the room and say, “I heard what you said, and you’re absolutely right! I’m going back to my desk right now and I’ll make this stanza much better!” Isaac: They were writers as well. How did they come across your work, had you left it out? Tom: I showed them. I was at a stage in my work where I really wanted to show people, “Hey, look, I’ve been doing this thing, come and take a look at it.” So that was their reaction. Isaac: They didn’t know you were home? Tom: They knew I was home, but they might have been just a bit oblivious to their surroundings. I recently re-read some of the stuff and some of it has a certain charm. But a lot of it is grammatically incorrect, and I hadn’t really learned how to write properly then, but it was fine, it was a good learning experience. Isaac: I like that word, “charm,” where you 201

can see what’s in there and what it could be doing, even though it’s not actually doing that thing. Tom: Exactly. In fact, when I’m writing now, I’m trying to re-capture the spirit of ignorance. In Buddhism –– because I meditate, I didn’t just randomly bring up Buddhism ––– I’m very familiar with this concept of the “beginner’s mind,” where you’re starting out from a position of ignorance. And I’m trying to recapture that spirit now and when I’m writing now, I’m thinking about craft and about other poets. I’m thinking about how this is going to make sense and maybe I’m thinking about theme and subject matter and a whole lot of other things. And all of those things are actually getting in the way of actually writing anything. So, I’m trying to remember what it was like just to write and not have any clue in terms of whether it’s good, bad, or otherwise. Isaac: That’s really smart. So how do you actually do that, how do you get to beginner’s mind when you’re no longer beginner? Tom: That’s a good question. I don’t know why I do this and it may be a totally wrong way of doing it, but I start by getting a pile of books, mainly poetry, and I leaf through them and I pause when I feel like it. I write a couple of sentences down, maybe an image, or some description of some kind. Then I kind of go through that and I start writing some of these words out and I try to put them together. So, I kind of make a collage of different words and sentences and it kind of forms this big monster of a poem and it’s a Frankenstein poem, basically, and then somewhere within that there’s an image or something that makes sense to me and resonates with me on a primal level, and that’s usually the beginning of a poem. Then the rest of it I delete and then from that one image - it’s always an image, it’s never any other kind of technique - I can create a poem. So that’s one way that I’m able to capture it. Sometimes I’ve had an idea for a poem but 202

it doesn’t work if it’s too conscious in my mind, or if it’s something that my ego generated. For instance, “I want to write about x,” and then I just try to write it. Then, either I can’t write it, or if I do, it’s just a really bad poem. So, I’ve stopped doing that. I’m working on re-capturing that child-like spirit. Isaac: So how do you differentiate that from the persona poems, “Bobby Wiley,” or “Darius Azmeh-Volpato,” because with them, you know that you’ll be writing about a certain person whom you’ve met, so you’re intentionally in that way. Do you know how that’s done? Tom: No, but I’ll get back to you in threeto-five business days. Alex: How do you think the concept of wonder plays into your process of writing poems? And by wonder, I mean this idea of unselfconscious wonder with the world, or with anything. Tom: Wonderment. I think this is where I’ll have to bring up meditation, because meditation for me is an integral piece of the puzzle. I find that if I don’t get myself into a meditative state and if I don’t let passing thoughts and emotions pass me by, or run through me, then I cannot write the poem that I’m meant to write. The only way that I can describe it is that I have to . . . almost empty myself of any fixed point of focus or anything concrete, everything has to kind of flow. And once I’m in that flow state, I can usually write the poem that I’m meant to write. It’s a practice that I try to bring to other situations as well. For instance, when I’m meeting someone for the first time, whether I’m going to write about them or not, I consciously try to let the perceptions or the impressions, or the feelings and thoughts that I have about the other person just wash over me. Some of them are prejudices that come from God knows where, judgments that come from God knows where, or it could

even be a joyful thought. But whatever it is, whether it comes from inherited judgments of people, I let it wash over me and then I can connect with that person’s essence. Usually I write down a couple of sentences about that person in a more documentary type fashion: what they were wearing and what they said to me. Then, if I can access that space of openness, when I didn’t see them in any particular way, then I can write these persona poems, but only when I’ve accessed that kind of place. Which for me is this kind of all-embracing place of compassion, where you’re completely compassionate toward the person, wherever they’ve been or whatever they’ve done and whatever they tell you, you can hold that space for that person. This makes it seem like we’re talking about therapy in some way, I’m not. It’s about what’s going on in my mind and in my body. I’m not letting myself go to a place where I feel as though I’ve understood someone. I try to be that way with people that I write about, even when they’re imagined people. Isaac: Would you like to read “Bobby Wiley” for us? Tom: Sure. Alex: I think that totally comes across in your poems. I was reading a few this morning, and I felt like, whoa, I really just got sucked into another person’s world. Tom: That’s what I try and do. It feels satisfying when you can . . . I don’t want to say sum up someone’s personality and encapsulate them, and I don’t even want to say that I’ve captured the essence of that person, necessarily. That’s probably too grand of a statement. But there’s just this moment I know that it’s entirely physiological or primal, where I feel like, yes, I’ve think I’ve gotten something about you, a little bit, in our small encounter. I think I’ve understood something, and I’m going to do the best that I can to put it on the page. But it doesn’t work out all the time.

So, this one is called “Bobby Wiley,” and this is how it goes. _______________ Bobby Wiley The baseball junkie next door stinks like grease. Looks like he’s about to croak. He ain’t clean. I AM. Been spick and span for six years. Back then I said goodbye to hocking junk & bombing liquor. Goodbye to stealing azaleas and axles, to stockpiling turpentine, to stewing in the gutter, to holy beaters, and the street demon peddlers. I said goodbye to bad shit happening. That’s when I was transferred to this building, took one of the only single units left. From my window I can see robins jerking around on the branches. I’d probably kill myself if I was a robin. Turning up leaves all day to find nothing. Free as a bird they say, but that’s not any kind of freedom I want to partake in. Freedom is a CLEAN mind, a CLEAN body. And it takes mental focus. It takes all you’ve got. _______________ Tom: So that’s Bobby. Isaac: He’s right. Tom: I think he’s right in many ways. Alex: You never hear about robins jerking around. I love that line. Tom: Those moments, that’s kind of just his language, this person who I met. And I just

203

thought, wow, that’s a really interesting way of describing the way birds operate. Isaac: Maybe this is a silly question, but when you finish something like that, do you feel as though you’re closer to yourself ? Tom: I’m closer in my relationship to them. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m closer to myself. But I guess, if we’re not a sociopath, then we want to connect with people, we want to get closer with people and understand them as best as we can. Even, maybe we want to love them, in some way. For me writing poetry, I guess all art can partly be summed up in this way, as an act of bearing witness to somebody. So, I want to try and witness what they’re like and what they’re about and what they think about. So, I would say that I definitely feel closer to them. Isaac: Do you remember the first film that you saw? Tom: I think it would probably be a Disney film, nothing to write home about really. After that, a little bit more juicy, maybe one of the James Bond films, Thunderball, or one of the early Sean Connery movies that I would watch with my dad. But things really heated up when I was twelve or thirteen. Isaac: What did you see?

204

Tom: Oh boy! I discovered this late-night TV program where they had this academic who was just an all-around great person, and he would introduce these American independent movies and I had never heard of any of them before. He introduced me to Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, and a bunch of other filmmakers. And I had never been exposed to any independent America cinema. My diet at that point was mainly action movies or things that were readily accessible to a teenager. I don’t know why I decided to stay up until midnight, until about two in the morning on a school night, and watch Clockers, but I did. And then I watched a Tim Burton movie, Beetlejuice, and then Taxi Driver and then I watched Dead Man, a Jim Jarmusch film

with Johnny Depp, and it was great, probably one of Depp’s only good movies. Then when I was in college, I started watching more independent films from around the world: Indian, Iranian, Chinese. I still try to do that as much as I can today. Alex: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is an amazing movie. It’s a Johnny Depp movie. Tom: Okay, I think maybe he’s made two then. And wait, maybe he’s made a third good one, Ed Wood. Alex: I didn’t see that one. So, he has a couple. Tom: I think he just went down hill with the Pirates of the Caribbean series and that was a while ago. But each to their own. Isaac: What did you major in? Tom: I did Italian Language, and a lot of film classes as well. Isaac: And where was that? Tom: That was at Exeter University in southwest of England not far from where I grew up. Then I took a year and went to Bologna, and so I studied cinema, and I took a lot of cinema classes in Bologna. But I haven’t really done much with cinema or Italian since then. When I graduated I worked mainly in education and recruitment and events and fundraising. I’ve done everything but used language skills, so it just goes to show you that you can do a degree in anything and end up with all kinds of jobs. Isaac: So, could you take us through your typical Sunday at home? Tom: It’s fairly mundane, to be honest. I’m not going to be telling you anything too exciting. But Sunday morning is usually my writing morning. I write for an hour or two hours every week, maximum, usually on a Sunday morning and I try to get myself

205

into that meditate state, as I was describing earlier. My writing goal for 2018 has been to try and write a poem a week. So far so good. This week things have been a bit slower; I’ve come across a poem that needs a lot of work, so I was only able to write half of it today. But generally, Sundays are my writing morning. I try to catch up reading some poetry throughout the week, I research different books that I want to borrow from the library and then I go and get them and I just have a day at home usually. Saturday, I try and go out, try and see people, and then Sunday is the day of rest and chilling out and writing.

lives not far from here, and I think he’s lived around here for sometime, and he’s a dad, and we’re slowly building up to having a conversation. I’m excited for when we’ll have a conversation. It will be nice.

Isaac: And Saturday is the haircut day.

Tom: No idea.

Tom: Saturday is the haircut day and shopping and seeing people. That kind of thing.

Isaac: It’s sort of neat, the way a stranger becomes an acquaintance, and then an acquaintance becomes a friend. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does . . .

Isaac: When you hear the name, “Prospect Heights,” what do you think of ? Tom: Well, it has a particularly strong resonance with me now as I live in the neighborhood and have been calling it home for around three or four years, but apart from that, I don’t really have any strong feelings or associations with it. I will say that I wish I knew the area better. I do feel like I only know it superficially. It’s the place where I live. It’s the place where I shop. And there’s a library. But I wish I knew more, or had the time, or even the inclination to get to know more people in the area. I do miss that. I remember when I was in college I felt like I was more in touch with my immediate surroundings and the people who live next door. I think it might have been part of not having a full-time job and having the energy to go out and meet a ton of people, but now usually in the evening I just want to stay at home. But I do wish that I would make a point to branch out a bit more. Occasionally, usually in the spring or summer, when I spend bit more time outside, I kind of stroll down the sidewalks and go to the park certainly, and I do occasionally bump into people that I’ve said hi to over the last couple of months, over the winter. In fact, there’s someone who 206

Isaac: How often do you see him? Tom: Once every week. I haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks, but usually once a week we’ll just pass each other at the same time, he’s usually out walking his dog while I’m coming back from work. Isaac: Do you know his name?

Tom: It is, and I do miss that. I remember, again going back to college, particularly during my year when I was living in Bologna. I do remember spending a lot of time just walking around the city and just taking it in. And perhaps it had something to do with Italian culture, but everyone sat out in the squares in the summer time and in early fall, just chatting away, and it was just a nice experience just getting to know strangers basically every week. I liked that. I do miss that. And then of course there’s the subway. Probably about once a month I have a good conversation with someone on the subway. Isaac: Which train? Tom: The 2 or 3 train. Isaac: How do those start? Tom: Usually, someone makes a comment about something that I’m reading and then we end up talking about other things, but usually it starts with a book. It’s fun. I’ve met all kinds of people. I like meeting other readers, especially other writers. I’ve

met a couple of writers on the train too, it makes me feel less alone. For instance, I was reading this book by Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. Isaac: Wow. Tom: Yeah, you’ve got to live up to that. It’s not a lightweight book. But it definitely lives up to the title. It’s kind of about the moment that we find ourselves in now with the social and ecological crisis that we face and how do we create a better world than the one that we’re living in. It’s a political kind of book. It reads in parts like a memoir, and his honesty and sometimes his grief about the state of the world was so apparent and so nakedly told, which I found to be really moving. And so, somebody, when I was reading this on the train, said to me, “Oh, I read that book. It changed my life.” And I said, “Wow, so how did it change your life?” And she said, “It made me feel that life is finite and I want to take care of myself and I want to take care of the planet and I want to feel really connected.” She said something like that, just to paraphrase. Then she got off of the train on the next stop, but it was quite a profound moment. Isaac: Of course. Tom: So, books can do that sometimes. They can be a gateway into conversation and exchange, especially on public transportation. Isaac: Right, and it sounds like it confirmed and re-affirmed what you already felt, by reading the book. Tom: Exactly. Have you ever had a moment like that with a stranger? Isaac: Based on a book that I was reading? Tom: Any kind of encounter like that. Isaac: Maybe. I’ve definitely had moments

when I’ve been walking in the same general direction with someone, and if you go for enough blocks, then there’s sometimes a natural inclination to look over and say, “How’s your day going?” or something like that. And it doesn’t always happen but I know there was one specific time where it was late at night, but not too late, but I was walking around Midtown, and there was this guy who started talking to me and he was saying, “Man, tonight I’m gonna start drinking again. I gotta do it!” And I don’t remember how we got into it –– he was a young guy, maybe he was in his early or mid-twenties, and he sort of had this intention to do something reckless, whether it was with an old girlfriend, or with alcohol, or both, but I remember saying, “You don’t have to, man. You don’t have to.” And I gave him my card, if something ever happened. Of course, I never heard from him. But I think it can sometimes be nice to meet a stranger and realize that if they’re letting their guard down, then you sort of have permission to do the same thing. It’s easier that way, sometimes, to let your guard down in those moments, because you know how unlikely it is that you’ll ever see that person again. Tom: Yeah, it’s nice. I don’t know why I was thinking about this, but when I was nineteen I was living in St. Louis, Missouri, and I was on a train and I had been warned about homeless people where I was working and people would say, “Watch out, there’s going to be people there who are going to try to mug you.” And I thought, okay, I’ll be careful. And so, I remember this guy gets on the train and at the time I was going out with a few friends and he looked like he was in a bad way. He didn’t look like he was doing too well and he smelled of alcohol, so these are clearly the people who I need to be careful about, right? He sits down next to me and he was like, “How are you doing, you having a good day?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m having a good day, I’m going out with my friends . . .” and my voice was breaking because I was really nervous. Then he says, “Oh, you’re 207

208

209

from Eng-a-land.” And I said, “Yeah, I’ve from Eng-a-land.” And he goes, “You know what?” And I go, “What?” And he says, “I love the TV show Fawlty Towers.” Do you know what Fawlty Towers is? Alex: No. Tom: It’s this TV show, I think it was made in the eighties, and my dad and I used to watch it. It stars John Cleese, who was in Monty Python, but it’s situation comedy that’s set in a hotel in Torquay in Devon. It’s really funny and really silly. And there’s no reason why anyone should be watching that in St. Louis, Missouri. But obviously they are, and here’s a man who starts doing impressions. He could remember entire lines of dialogue and he was very animated and he could remember pitch and pace, timing, everything. Everything that you would want in a comedian, he had it all. He was very articulate, and he knew exactly what good comedy was for him, and he did wonderful impressions. And it was just a moment. Sometimes when you think something is going to go one way, then it takes you off in a completely different direction and you forge a new connection with someone over something that you felt no one else around you ––– at least in the context of Missouri –– no one else would get weird slapstick British comedy, or anything like that, but he got it. Isaac: So what have you been thinking about a lot, recently? Tom: Well, I’ve been working a lot, so I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that I’m not thinking that much, or that deeply and I felt uncomfortable about that, and sad in some way that I haven’t been able to really go into depth. But with regards to writing, I’ve still had the time to get into a more meditative state and so I’m very grateful that even if I may have had a very crazy week I can still get into that peaceful and calm state and write. But I do miss . . . well, I graduated from university a long time ago, but I distinctly remember times, particularly in Bologna, when I would just walk around the city with a 210

friend and we would just talk about movies in real depth, and so I miss that, that period when you really go somewhere and you really talk about something intellectual. Isaac: It sounds like you’re making some changes in your career that would allow a bit more time for that though, just based on what you mentioned when we were talking a few weeks ago. Tom: I’m trying to make some changes, we’ll see. Maybe this will be the last year where I work where I’m working now, at Grand Central, and I’m able to transition into something that’s more freelance in nature and would enable me to write a lot more and to re-inhabit the more intellectual part of my mind, which is languishing right now. Isaac: I’ve never thought of it like that. I definitely have friends who live in other parts of the country or I’d like to visit more often, and places in other parts of the world that I’d like to go back to, but I’ve never thought of having places within my own mind that I’d like to inhabit more often. Tom: Exactly. You could move right in. There’s plenty of room in there. But when I’m not thinking about that, I’ve been doing a class outside of work in which I’ve been training as a celebrant. I actually had a conversation with someone recently and it was at a bar, at KGB, and I said, “I’m training to be a celebrant,” and he said, “Why would you train not to have sex?” And I said, “No, a celebrant! Not celibate.” So, it’s been interesting to describe to people what that is, and what a celebrant does. I still haven’t come up with a very good definition, because I’m still somewhere in the midst of learning about it myself, but it’s an interesting journey to be on, a dramatically different kind of role than what I’ve ever done before and certainly different than what I’m doing now at Grand Central, as an events man-

ager. There’s definitely a lot in common with writing, in the sense that a celebrant is someone who helps people navigate difficult life transitions through ritual. So, it could even be getting married ––– the whole process could be fraught with fear, and anxiety, and expectation, so I would be the person who would help two people ease their way through that transition through crafting a ceremonial script and a ceremony that could hold their experience together. I think so many people nowadays go through major life transitions ––– not just rights of passage, marrying, dying, giving birth ––– but there are loads of other things that happen to us, which are really major, but we often don’t have any kind of way of being helped through these things, even someone just to talk to. I’ve just been learning about what it means to reinvent and reimagine ritual for the twenty-first century and to think about what that actually looks like. We’ve abandoned so many of our rituals from the past. We don’t have much of a traditional culture around us, so we can’t borrow from our ancestors, so how do we come up with new ways to ritualize our experience, and to help us through difficult times in our lives. Isaac: So, you were equating that with writing . . . Tom: To a certain extent. When the celebrant works with a client, or clients, if the celebrant is officiating a wedding, then it would be the bride and the groom, so you’d have more than one client at a time, you have to enter into their world and their understanding. I’ve looked at some questionnaires that celebrants have sent to brides and grooms and some of the questions in there ask things like, “Why do you love this person?” “What does love mean to you?” And these are kind of big questions that I try to, in some ways, ask myself while I’m writing about someone else, in these persona poems for example. What is the essence of this person? And how can I get out of my own way, and get

out of their way, in terms of my ideas about what love is or what love should be, so that I can allow them to tell their story. I haven’t done the job yet, but that’s the process. You get out of the way and you listen. Or if it’s a funeral, then “What did your dad mean to you, what did he do with his life, what did he love, what didn’t he love, why did he get up in the morning?” Big questions. Fundamental questions, the same which I try to write from when I’m writing poetry, and when I try to write from the perspective of other people. I like trying to answer these questions. That’s usually a starting point. Isaac: Nice. Tom: What usually comes out is something very specific. Recently I allowed my mind to wander in this meditative state a couple weekends ago. For some reason, I started thinking about these women who I used to know, who I didn’t date, but I knew them. They’re all in their forties and they’re all single and they were very depressed about it. And I remember thinking, “Wow, I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, in my forties, single, and really wanting to meet someone. I have no idea what that’s like.” And at the time I was with Julia, and obviously, I’m a man, and I was younger and so I started thinking about it. I let my mind wander and I stared writing a poem about one of these women and I asked myself these really big questions . . . What’s it like to exist, to get up in the morning with this weight on your shoulders. And boy was it a weight, in terms of some of the things that they used to tell me about. They would say, “How do I feel happy?” And for some reason, and this may seem a bit inappropriate, but I imagined them in the bathtub while thinking about these questions. I wrote a poem about this one woman in a bath tub thinking about her lover who had just left for Europe and how sad she felt, and how alone. And so, I was able to touch that experience again and to feel a little closer to them. 211

I don’t know where it came from, and I hadn’t started thinking about them in a long time, since I’ve lived with them, but there it was ––– it came back. And I like the kind of surprising nature of writing. You think, oh, I’m going to write this poem . .. for instance, when I first came here, I had all of these ideas, that I was going to write all of these poems about Brooklyn, and about the history of Brooklyn, and also the history of cinema, but I didn’t write any of those things, I just wrote about whatever happened on a Sunday morning, and it made the experience much more interesting. So much of my life, particularly during the work week, is so programed, and so routine like, and everything is planned. I’m in event management, right? So every minute of the day there’s a deadline, and it’s pretty specific: “Go get this done!” And there’s no shades of grey. This is the action, and you have to complete it, otherwise there’s going to be these specific consequences. So I like when I can just sit down on a Sunday morning and write, and just allow my mind to just roam.

My calendar will be full to bursting. But my entire crew and passengers…

Isaac: Do you have that poem handy? Would you like to read it?

Tom: Well, exactly. I’m going to talk to them at some point. One of them is very open minded, so I would easily be able to share it with her. But I haven’t talked with them in such a long time, so there would have to be a bit of build up, and context. I can’t just send it to them cold.

Tom: I’d be happy to. ________________ Linda Eriksen

________________ Tom: So, in this piece, she’s not only in the bathtub but she’s imagining herself on a tiny rubber ship in the bathtub. She’s made herself so small that she’s a minuscule version of herself, a rubber toy. So that’s what I was thinking about, and that’s what came out. It’s kind of odd and strange, but the weirdness, and the oddity to me, kind of captured the depth of this despair. Isaac: Have you shared it with them? Tom: I will be doing that, soon. Alex: How are you going to do it?

Where is my lover? Probably halfway to France, while I’m in the tub on my steamship, unhooking her pig-tail hairs from my mast. I am a naked sea captain wandering to her crow’s nest.

Isaac: So, you haven’t spoken with them since you lived with them?

There’s a cloud, I think it’s a storm brewing, I find a nook in the boiler room from Where I eavesdrop the ladies’ idle chatter: uncharitable comments on my mental fitness.

Isaac: How would you define mindfulness, or can you, or should one?

I stand bolt upright. I am Linda Poseidon! My boat capsizes. I must establish a routine; 212

I’m a giantess in the ocean. Death trails me. How to go on? I’m forty-three years old. I still play maritime. I am naked.

Tom: Right. I’ve just been thinking about them. That was in 2008-09. So that was a while ago.

Tom: Well, there’s something to the moment to moment awareness of your thoughts and your feelings, and I would also say your surroundings, that you focus on without judgment and without holding onto it, so you let it kind of wash over you.

How that’s done . . . it could be done in so many different ways. A lot of people just focus on the breath, so I guess the breath is the anchor in all of that ––– the one thing that we all share and we all possess and it helps to focus on that task. It’s a really hard thing to do, but it’s definitely worth it. I try to do it at least once a day, mainly on the subway, at least for now, I kind of close my eyes . . . And I do a lot of reading on the subway. But as some point, around Fourteenth Street, between Fourteenth Street and Forty-Second Street, I just try to focus. I do a lot of visualizations on the subway too. I don’t know why, but I’ve been doing a lot of death and loss visualizations while on the subway, imagining everyone as a skeleton, or imagining everyone dead, or imagining civilization just laid to waste. Alex: Do you prepare an exit out of that mental space, when you’re doing a visualization? Because I imagine, if you were just mindfully imagining the entire human race laid to waste, and then suddenly someone is like, “Hey, could you get up?” You would just get jolted out of that, and that sounds like it could be damaging. Tom: It does sound like that, exactly. I kind of exit by a more compassionate meditation toward people, so it gets grounded and back into reality. Otherwise, like you mentioned, I would go a little bit crazy, potentially. Alex: That’s interesting. Tom: I do different types of meditation, so it’s not just a mindful meditation. I like to imagine things. If I’m having a difficult day or I’m not getting on with someone at work, or someone is constantly irritating me, I’ve taken to visualizing them as a child; sometimes as a baby, sometimes as a four or five year old, and it helps me connect with something we all share. We were all once children, and we were all once vulnerable in that way, and it eases some of the tension sometimes, which is nice.

Isaac: Do you still take on the walking meditations? Tom: I do. I sometimes get off at Bergen Street and then walk back home that way and I treat that as a kind of walking meditation, which is good. So, it’s a big challenge in the city, to do it, but I set the intention at least. Isaac: How did you get into event management? Tom: So, when I arrived here, I had no idea how to get a job in the States. It was a different kind of system. The whole networking piece was a bit new to me as I hadn’t really done a lot of that before. I tried to get a job similar to what I used to do, which was working in student affairs in universities, but I found that I was lacking the qualifications that are required here, so I started re-working my resume. I went through it and I realized, wow, I’ve planned around one-hundred and fifty events in the last three or four years, so why don’t I just call myself an event manager. It’s not really lying, it’s just putting an emphasis on something. And then I stared networking, and meeting people, and I connected with someone at Carnegie Hall, and she put me in touch with someone at Grand Central and then within a couple of weeks I had a job, but the entire process took about five months. So, once I got a swing of the whole networking thing and meeting people, things moved a lot more quickly than they did in England, which was all paper-based applications. Isaac: What do you enjoy about it? Tom: I don’t enjoy a lot about the job itself, but I guess because it’s Grand Central, I get to meet some interesting characters. There’s a real cross-section of society. So that’s fun for me. People who attend the events come from all around the world and some of the people I work with are people who I’ve never worked with before ––– I’ve worked with a lot of police officers and the fire department, so it’s definitely a job that allows me to find 213

ways to meet people who I wouldn’t usually meet. Isaac: How many persona poems do you have now? Tom: I probably have seven or eight. Isaac: Is the idea to have a book of them? Tom: I might do a chapbook and then I’ll see where I want to go with that. I may want to continue it, expand it, we’ll just see how it goes. But it’s very enjoyable for now. I’m finding that I tend to dwell in different voices as I write and that I don’t have a consistent style, so I’m trying to make use of that natural tendency to skip around and try on different voices and experiment with different forms. Isaac: What was it like reading at KGB? Tom: It was a fairly good experience. It was the first time I had ever read in public and it was a good crowd of people who were pretty respectful. There was a whole range of different people there. Initially I felt that once I started to speak and read in public, my accent might get in the way of people being able to fully-appreciate the poems because I do write in different voices, but there was nothing I could do. I didn’t want to do any impersonations, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself, as well as everyone who was with me, so I just read in my normal voice. Isaac: Are you saying we wouldn’t want to hear your Bobby Wiley voice? Tom: It’s awful. So, I just read them and a couple of people came up to me at the end and said they really appreciated my work. One guy invited me to his reading series, so that was nice. It’s definitely something that I want to do more of, to get out there. Isaac: And step up to the mic. Tom: Step up to the mic, right. I think next time I’d like to go to Brooklyn Poets’ YAWP. I look forward to doing that. I’m working 214

on a piece right now that’s one of the hardest one that I’ve attempted to write. I’ve worked on a first draft but am going to go at it again. This character has many different sides to him, so I’m going to have to try again to find my way in. Isaac: I bet you can do it. Tom: I can do it, it will take a lot of work, but I can do it. Isaac: A while ago you put together a documentary about trees in Brooklyn? Tom: Right. Isaac: What was the name of that? Tom: Tree Identification. Isaac: What was it like, putting that together? Tom: Well, I really liked working with Lisa Nett, who was the tree expert. She runs these great workshops at the Brooklyn Brainery, she still does them now and they’re really great. It was great working with her and it was a good learning experience, in terms of learning how to use the camera. Isaac: What draws you toward trees, or studying them? Tom: I think . . . originally, I was really interested in trees because I didn’t know anything about them and they were everywhere. I would walk down the street and I would think, I don’t know what that tree is called, who planted it, and why they chose that particular species of tree. I had recently read a few books on the environmental crisis, about deforestation, but there was never really an explanation as to why trees are important to the ecological balance of the planet. So, I kind of wanted to know, more from a scientific view, why trees were important. Most of my questions were thankfully answered by a book

by a German arborist, Peter Wohlleben, who wrote a book called the The Hidden Life of Trees. It’s a very down to earth and accessible book where he describes a tree’s life, how it procreates, how it defends itself, how it grows, and it was a really illuminating study and it made me appreciate something in my immediate studies that I didn’t know much about. So that was one reason why I was interested in trees. You take them for granted, right? You look outside of the house now and you can see a tree and so you think, okay, there’s a tree. It has a trunk, branches, no leaves, maybe it will be a pretty color in the spring, and that’s about the extent of it. But no one thinks, I wonder what it would be like to be a solitary tree on a street, where your roots are surrounded by concrete. Maybe you would be happier if you were around other types of trees, maybe your root system would be better that way, and these are things that I’ve learned ––– that trees are inherently social beings, and that their root systems are all connected to the forest so they communicate through their root systems. These were the types of questions that I was asking: how does a tree get its sustenance, how does it communicate with other trees, or does it communicate with other trees? How does it perceive or deal with any kind of threat to its livelihood? So, it was fascinating to learn a bit about the answers. I loved it. Isaac: We were reading “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Plane Tree in New York City” earlier today. The Plane Tree, is that a specific type of tree? Tom: Right. So, it is a particular type of tree, the London Plane Tree. It’s ubiquitous in New York, and a lot of cities have Plane Trees. They’re very resilient trees, they can handle pollution and dog urine and the like. They’re very durable, and so they’re planted all over the place. Isaac: Where would you see them here?

Tom: If we go outside I could probably point out several along our block. There’s quite a few big ones in Prospect Park as well. They’re everywhere, really. Isaac: Would you like to read the poem? Tom: I’ll definitely read that one. Isaac: And this is partially-inspired by Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”? Tom: Correct. Isaac Would you call it a riff, an adaptation, an extension? Tom: It’s not even an imitation. There are parts that sound like the original poem, but I just liked the idea of looking at something thirteen times, from a different point of view. When I wrote the poem, I remember that I tried to write a very serious poem about a tree but then I got this nature anthology that had very serious poems about trees, and so I thought, I can’t really do that, so I’ll just write whatever comes into my head. Isaac: Why couldn’t you do that? Tom: Because it would, in a sense, just be repeating what they were doing, and when I wrote something out, it just seemed like, oh, that’s just a pale imitation of Mary Oliver poem, and so it was a good exercise to play around with her writing style, but I decided to do something different. _______________ 13 Ways of Looking at a Plane Tree in New York City 1. Robert Moses trains his eye on the leaf ’s long central lobe: O unbending, beautiful parkway. 2. I was in three places at once: Fort Tryon Park,

215

Central Park, Staten Island Cemetery, And in each a London Plane, waiting to be catalogued. 3. Sex in the soil, summer of 1638: Oriental plain Jane cross pollinates with American Joe Sycamore, and a mongrel is born. 4. The common plane tree whistles in the squally wind. To dance to its tune, to dance, but who might spot me? 5. Under the Manhattan bridge overpass, I warm my hands by firelight. I size up my collection: three-thousand fruit heads with their fuzzy tufts intact. All mine, and mine alone. 6. Crisscrossing Chinatown, the wise man owns it all: Confucius Dental, Confucius Florists, Confucius People’s Bank. My tree owns nothing for it is silent yet inside it moves in unfathomable ways. 7. Columbus Day weekend in McCarren Park. The hipsters have fled to Phoenicia. No longer will they comb their magnificent plumage at the base of an old tree. 8. At one time or other I possessed several advanced degrees and primal fragments of Vedic script. But underneath this erudite veneer, I am, like you, flaky on the outside. 216

9. Stuffing my face with gyros in Astoria. Regurgitation brings up the past, my boyhood: tenderly watching buds unfurl in Cadman Plaza. Lord knows my patience was a rare thing. 10. I wander across to Brooklyn Heights. Countless times a sadness pierced me for I mistook a mixed-use development for my beloved plane. 11. The Hudson is moving. Therefore, a plane tree must be growing. Somewhere. 12. When the descendants of Moses, in winter’s claw, offer me the last of the great American coal, I will wonder, could it be you? From the glory of London’s streets to this Lignite see-sawing in my stubby paw? 13. Caressed by tentacles of light and gaseous wonders. All time has passed in the garden where I sit and wait for Plato to hobble over and tell me yet again: for you, dear poet, I will plant a real tree. and you’ll never need write again. _______________ Tom: So that was it. Thirteen ways. Have you ever done something like that, where you take a famous poem and then you write your own version of it? Isaac: Yes, at one point. Alex: It’s kind of nice to start with a structure, and to know where you’re going to go

with it. Isaac: What makes you, or allows you, to keep going with your writing? Tom: That’s the fundamental question. I think it’s this desire to try to find a way to understand, a way to be in the world, a way to get closer and to love the world . . . and to be more myself in the world. Writing kind of gives me that opportunity. And reading it aloud, I realized when I read at KGB last week, is another way to offer yourself to the world in some way and trying to touch someone else in some way. I’m motivated by that. I’m also motivated by failure, as we talked about earlier, just getting it wrong most of the time and still trying to keep it going. __________________________ [We walk for a while around Prospect Heights ––– pausing from time to time to observe the London plane tree at work; we pass by The Brooklyn Public Library, then return to the Davidson residence.] __________________________ Isaac: So, what do you want to do with your time? Tom: Well, in terms of poetry, I want to continue studying the craft of poetry and continue to engage with other people outside of the poetry and literary world and to allow different kinds of influences into my creative life. It’s not just me reading at home on my own, or talking about books, or meeting other writers ––– it’s good to mix it up. Non-poetry stuff, well, with work I definitely want to transition out of full-time work with one job, into possibly having two or three different jobs that will enable me to move between different worlds and have hopefully more time to write. I’d like to get back home more often and spent more time with my family. Those are all the things I can think of for now, I’m sure the list could probably go on quite

a bit longer, as there are so many things that I would like to do. Alex: I was talking with a friend the other week, and we were talking about human consciousness and our ability to reflect on our own experiences. We also have this ability to create culture and traditions and all of these things that are so rich with individuality, and serve all of these purposes ––– and you can perhaps say that the sum of all these things makes up society. And the question would be, what do you think the purpose of society is, or should be? We have this incredible superpower that’s unique, well maybe unique to the entire universe . . . Tom: That’s another question, are we alone? Alex: That’s funny. But I guess the question is, “What’s the purpose of society?”, and you can interpret the question however you’d like. Tom: It’s a big question and a big topic and I don’t know if it’s one that I can answer very well. As you mentioned, we have this capacity for technological and scientific advancement that is unmatched by any other species but there are considerable drawbacks to having those abilities, and that focus on progress. And I think the losses mount up, in terms of our mental well-being and the knocks that we take against our own psychological well-being. And how we treat our bodies, and the relationship that we have with other species. It’s one thing to be focused on progress and technological advancement and to want to see the world developed for the better in that regard, but it’s quite another when you look at the systematic effects, on a global scale, and what results from that technological mindset. It’s not by accident that if we continue to extract tons of materials and resources from the planet, then it’s going to have some kind of effect, be it global warming or otherwise. So I think the purpose of society is to understand the ramifications of our actions, and to understand the planet as an ecosystem and to understand people in a much more 217

holistic fashion. We are emotional beings, and we have a physiological part to us. There’s a genetic part to us and we have certain wants, and wishes, and needs, and a lot of these different pieces of the whole equation get neglected in favor of a very narrow outcome, which is commercial enrichment, and material enrichment. But what about our psychic well being? What about the trees? How are we affecting trees? Are they happy? And can we talk about the happiness of trees, or is that just ludicrous? I think we can. I think we live on a sentient planet that feels everything that we do and we’re all interconnected in that way and so I think at a base level, when you ask the purpose of society, I think the purpose, fundamentally, is to try to understand the holistic and interconnected nature of absolutely everything, and from that point understanding that our actions have multiple and myriad consequences, upon every single living thing on the planet, and maybe even beyond, of which we can’t even be aware of. It goes back to our original question about meditation and an awareness, I think we need to be aware, and I think if we were more aware of the totality of sentient experience ––– that absolutely everything that goes on within the planet, within our bodies, and without, then we would be able to create systems and structures that take into account all of life and all of its permutations. That’s the first thing that comes into my head. What do you think, Isaac? Isaac: I think if you do the things that you’ve described, then what you’re doing is paving a way to make joy more accessible for more people. Real joy, not being able to use faster or better technology, but real enrichment, and if you’re making that pathway, and if you’re making joy easier to access, and easier to feel, then you’re onto something. Tom: Right. For example, I was reading an essay in Ritual, a book by Malidoma Some, this morning and there was a reference to how, I 218

can’t remember where it was from, but it was an African tribe, and it said essentially that in that specific society, when someone would transgress, or do something wrong ––– commit a crime or whatever it may be, that person is brought into a circle and everyone goes around the circle and says something positive about that person, to kind of bring them back into re-alignment with themselves and also with the society around them. That’s an example of a society that has viewed humans in their totality. People go wrong for reasons and they’re not inherently evil and we can bring them back into a closer relationship with themselves and each other. We’ve even engineered a way to do that, which is through loving kindness, and by giving a person compliments. So that’s an enlightened society, which really embraces the human being and doesn’t just let them go and live in isolation. So, there are a lot of examples, I think, in looking at societies all throughout the world, where people think, “Actually, you know what, we’re going to take into account the emotional make-up of a human being and we’re going to take into account that this person is feeling sad and this person sometimes feels depressed.” As a result, these societies create groups and systems, and rituals, and institutions which can cater for these very unique situations, and support people as a result. But we’re also going to be aware, going into it, that we have to create this system of support, and that we can’t just let the free market decide, we can’t just let the military take over, or the economy, or we can’t just hope that these abstract concepts are going to engender trust and love in society.

219

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

Issue No. 3 - $19.95. 227