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Gretchen's memorized poems
Saturday, October 21 2017
This morning I saw the cats Celeste and Charles tormenting a poor chipmunk. But the chipmunk was doing its best, rearing up on its hind legs and threatening the cats as they circled about. To run away would've been suicide. I came over and gave the little guy an opportunity to disappear into a nearby woodpile, which he almost did. Celeste jumped on him just before he could do that, but I tore her away and he escaped, giving the warbly warning that chipmunks do when they're holed up out of reach of a predator. I brought all the cats inside and made the pet-door so it only let critters in, not out. This worked for awhile, but eventually Charles figured out how to get out anyway by pulling the pet-door inward with his claws. (Up until that point, this was a skill I only knew Clarence to have.) By then I had to assume the chipmunk had escaped, at least for now. It's not easy being a chipmunk in our yard.
Months ago, Gretchen had been scheduled to participate in an event today at Symphony Space on the Upper Westside in Manhattan. It was an event called the Compassion Arts Festival hosted by the Culture & Animals Foundation, and it had been hoped that Gretchen would be reading some poetry while a musician performed songs and a visual artist showed slides. But then Gretchen was stricken by that infection in her reproductive system, culmenating with her hysterectomy on Tuesday. A few days it was looking unlikely Gretchen would be able to attend, though as long ago as Thursday things seemed hopeful again. By today Gretchen was nowhere near 100%, but she thought she could go if I did nearly all of the driving and she could just put the seat back all the way and rest.
We set out a little after 3:30pm, nearly running out of gas when I failed to noticed the fuel gauge until south of the New York State service station on the Palisades Parkway. Still, we made it to the New Jersey service station, and from there Gretchen took over, since I don't really have the constitution for driving in America's largest city. Not that I'm completely happy as a passenger, particularly when Gretchen turns from her driving to look at me when she's telling me things. People slam on their brakes all the time, and being aware of such things trumps matters of social protocol.
Crossing the George Washington Bridge, I noticed that there are now so many tall skyscrapers in Midtown that the Empire State Building no longer stands out as dramatic single object. And down at the south end of Manhattan, there's another supertall building being built near the Freedom Tower (the replacement for the World Trade Center).
Near Symphony Space, we went around several blocks for a rotation before parking at a legally-dubious spot directly across 95th Street (there was a yellow curb and a faded no-parking sign, though all the newest yellow paint and no-parking signs referenced a curb cut in front of a loading area, and we weren't blocking that). We'd come early so Gretchen could participate in sound check, though traffic delays on the George Washington Bridge meant we couldn't go together to get a bagel first. So I set out on my own to get the bagels, though of course when I arrived at Tal's Bagels, they'd just closed for the night; it was just past 6:00pm. I called Gretchen and she suggested I try Two Boots, the gourmet pizza microfranchise, though she wasn't sure they had vegan pizza-by-the-slice. I have some experience with Two Boots and was pretty sure they did.
The Two Boots just north of 95th Street on Broadway is smaller from the one I was familiar with in the West Village, but they had slices of "V is for Vegan" as a pizza-by-the-slice option. Three of those cost me about $13.
Back in the backstage area of Symphony Space, I called Gretchen because I had no idea where she was. She popped her head out of a dressing room, where she was getting ready with Jane, the visual artist. Gretchen was disappointed not to have a bagel, but she seemed happy with the pizza I'd found. It was greasy but good. I used the spare grease to oil up my shoes, a non-vegan pair I'd bought many years ago at a thrift store. I'd used a magic marker to re-blacken the scuffed-up toes, though the old leather was thirsty and looked better once I'd fed it some vegan pizza grease. (I'd wanted to wear my Keens with black socks, but Gretchen thinks that look is dorkus and had insisted on me wearing proper shoes, vegan or otherwise.)
Before the performance, Gretchen sent me out on another run, this time to get a small bottle of ibuprofen. Conveniently, there was a Duane Reade directly across Broadway.
Back in Symphony Space, the venue was essentially an old movie theatre, with seating for several hundred. About 100 people showed up as I plinked away on my phone. There's never an excuse for boredom in 2017.
The event began with a half-hour-long commemoration of Tom Regan, the recently-deceased founder of the Culture & Animals Foundation. His wife, who happens to be confusingly named Nancy, was in attendance tonight. Regan had apparently been a foundational philosopher in the American animal rights movement, though the things said about him and his philosophy were a bit unclear, and I could never tell if the scope of what was being said applied to moral philosophy generally or just to animal rights moral philosophy.
Next came the event in which Gretchen participated, which was mostly run by Jane, the visual artist, who commanded a computer that projected a series of slides. These were mostly of her paintings, though occasionally they showed unhappy animals being exploited by industrial farming operations. (I had a place off-screen I would look for those.) Periodically Gretchen would recite a poem or Joy (the musician) would play a song, usually seated at a piano. Gretchen's first poem was "The Absence of Unnecessary Hurting," an animal-rights poem that nevertheless has all the best features of Gretchen's best poems. These features can best be summarized as a tight coil of surprises. As she reads such poems, every word can be a surprise, whether an unexpected metaphor or perhaps a beautiful example of verbal consonance. Today, despite the weakness of recent surgery, Gretchen brought a new weapon to bear on her verbal delivery: she'd memorized all the poems she would be "reading." This left her hands free to move as her eyes stabbed into the crowd. She's a powerful reader even when she is just reading, but her presenting these poems from memory was absolutely stunning.
Gretchen's second poem was "Coxcomb," about a rescued fighting cock. After Gretchen read it, Joy performed a version of the poem that she'd made into a song in the style of bluesy negro spiritual. For this one, Joy used a harmonica and pre-recorded choral loops played from effects pedals. In her version, Joy lingered repeatedly on the poem's closing words: "growing glow." It was amazing; Joy has an incredible voice.
The festival continued after this segment, though Gretchen thought it best (given her condition) that we head home. On the way out, though, there was plenty of hugging and chatting that had to happen.
Gretchen drove us out of Manhattan to the gas station at the south end of the Palisades, and I took over from there, drinking a junky energy drink I'd bought (it's one of those junky pseudo-pleasures that I indulge myself with when I'm on a road trip). Gretchen was hungry again, so I drove us to the Plaza Diner in New Paltz, where we arrived at about 11pm. The place was mobbed with more people than I'd ever seen eating there at once. Evidently Saturday night is its busy night. Service was unusually slow and confused, and we ordered less than usual. We split a spaghetti dinner and an order of fries. Unfortunately there was no vegetable soup, so we had broccoli instead. As for the fries, our portion was smaller and crappier than usual, suggesting the kitchen was stretching the fries to fill all the orders.
Back at the house, I stayed up late to watch yet another episode of Mr. Robot. I wore the 900 MHz headphones so the sound wouldn't disturb Gretchen as she slept in the adjacent bedroom.
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