He said this to me, remember this. It’s all habit, all of it, everything you think you are, it’s just a memory, muscle memory of what you should do, how to be.

And I think he’s right. I think how as I move I am thinking of my mother, how she would sort of the dishes, how she would open a kitchen cabinet while stirring a pot, how she would wipe her brow with her while on her hands and knees scrubbing.

And I think of how he spoke, always a smile on lips that whispered violence. They way he held my hand and graced my cheek with the other. How he lied, staring into my eyes, how I lie staring yours.

So long, so so long.

He holds it close to himself, this idea of himself, this bleeding maw of himself. This thing that once was, the who he had been. And what now? What’s left now? A husk?

Nononononono

So much more than that. It’s all trivial. He’s come to realize it’s all trivial, even the children, the woman, the mother, the father. He walks through the night, empty streets of suburban arrogance, it’s all so trivial. Only the air, the silence that is not silence, that is empty of them and their jostling, only the air matters. Because you need to live. You need it to feel alive. He laughs. He sounds so stupid. He walks through empty streets and relishes every step forward where another living person doesn’t cross his path. It’s so easy to disappear. It calls to him. Like it did to this father before. And perhaps before him as well. Being present doesn’t necessarily guarantee presence. The being there, the being wholly and relentless there.

Nononononono

Being there but nowhere to be found. To  be looked at and not seen because you’re a figment of their imagination. You said it didn’t you? At best, you said, at best we’re an impersonation of ourselves. At best, you said. At fucking best. How have you not lost your mind?

Time again, here again, hipster to be.

Bought myself some glasses, I’m insane. 400 bux? That’s bananas.

But another part of me says, no, do it, you deserve it. Grow up. It’s time.

This could’ve been your life, in another life. This could’ve been you everyday. In coffee shops and a tablet, a laptop, a notebook. You would scribble in a book, mad minute dashes of random thoughts that were brilliant. Or at least you thought they were profound. And they were, because they were you, at that time, trying to catch something, trying to make it mean something by writing it down.

And now, now, years later, were you foolish? Does my desire from then to capture it all, to make it precious, does it come off as futile? Painfully infantile?

I work with this fellow, Aaron Perlstein, graduate of Stuyvesant HS (RIVALS!) who is very very liberal. He reminds me of who I once was. He reminds me of that mad writing, small uppercased scrawls across half a dozen books (and that’s all your writing amounted to isn’t it? Little more than half a dozen, if at that)

She dresses me up in pearls (why pearls? Why the vomit of some mollusk?)

I want to live.

Arent you alive now?

Yes, no, maybe. I wanted more.

But you have everything.

It’s not everything though.

We were talking about this article that we might see immortality in our lifetime. Not invulnerability, I mean you get hit by a bus or fall off a skyscraper, you’re done. But some serious life extension if you keep the machine well oiled. We talked about how cool it would be to dial our ages up and down.

“Think of it, we can go to Asia like twenty year olds with sharp eyes and sturdy backs”

“But what about the kids?”

“O we can scale our ages up to what they expect us to be, for the grandkids at least.”

I then I told her if I had a choice I would want to live forever. “I want to see how it all ends,” my eyes got teary, “You don’t understand I want to see the sun go out.”

And other twisted thoughts like this. Like wanting to bury my children when they grow old and die. Everyone thinks I mean I want them to die young, how can I be so brutal, how could I live through that?

What they don’t get is that no one will ever love my children as much as I will. No one will care for them in death. No one will take care to see that they have a proper burial, they are not taken advantage of. I want to see my children go off into peace.

Who will take care of them when I’m gone?

This little tribe of mine. Perhaps it’s too much, maybe I’m asking too much of myself, expect too much, but I want to be there for all of it. I want to hold their hands when my daughter gives birth to a child. I want to brush the tears off my son’s cheek when his first born first goes off to school. I want to pull her close to me when the last breath leaves her.

I want the pain and madness and horror and joy of it all. I want it to go on and on endlessly. I don’t want it to stop.

She puts me to shame. Io just read the first paragraph to an essay she writing and she’ only 12 but it sounds like something I would’ve written in high school, college even. And this was something she did not want to do. Faced by the challenge of it she wanted to shirk it. To let it go, to let it slide. I told her, this is what I had done, I had become afraid, of being crushed by the possibilities of what I could be. She’s writing an essay for a program that sounds like a cross cultural exchange thing, where a cohort from her school will be a bridge to another in Uniondale. And of course she is afraid, of course she think she can’t.

She told me once while we driving, that she thought my demanding nature instilled a lack of self confidence in her. It still bothers me, but then again, her competitiveness, her yearning to do well, the fact that she also recently said she found middle school a lot easier than she thought it would be, tells me in the end I was right. That I put her on the right path. Yes, she might always be a little shy, might always think she hasn’t done enough, but that has always been the point: a little bit of self doubt goes a long in way in ensuring you are right, that you can always do better.

I listen to David at work, who praises his son but curses his daughter. Rebellious and artistic, his daughter confounds him. I hear him on the phone sometimes with them and the gravitas I have always praised him for attains an edge of harshness that is palpable if not down right smothering. There is only authority in his voice, no compassion. And yet when he speaks of his son, it is almost as if he is baffled by the boy’s temerity, the boy’s lack of spine? That’s not quite right. David is proud of both of them, even his daughter, but it’s almost as if he is worried for his son.

And there we were, Io and I, brain-storming, which she didn’t want to do, “We don’t brain-storm in middle school daddy.” And suddenly, while I was ranting about how privilege we were, how despite her privilege being born a woman gave her a disadvantage, the next thing I knew she was writing, lost in the keyboard. I shut up then, I recognized it. She found the voice of the piece she wanted to write. She found something interesting in that voice and was having a conversation with it. Who was I to interrupt?

[?9/?19/?2016 9:44 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
ya, right? it’s nerve wracking. i ever tell you about the time during the blackout? when mari was pregnant with our first born?
[?9/?19/?2016 9:44 AM] Paul Ponzeka:
oh man, no
that must have been nuts
[?9/?19/?2016 9:45 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
so, i was working for a systems integrator, doing a job for an office on the upper east side
mari was working right across the street from where abacus is now, the chrysler bulding, credti suisse
[?9/?19/?2016 9:46 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
she’s about 4, 5months in her pegnanacy
if you remember the entire eastern seaboard went down
so we had talked about this, since 9/11, antyhingn nuts, get out of the city. just head home
[?9/?19/?2016 9:47 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
so that’s what i do. i walk down 79th to the 59th and across. find a payphone, call the wife
“where you at babe?” still at the chrysler building. “What???”
[?9/?19/?2016 9:49 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
so i start haeading back, sun is setting, every one’s looking at me like i’m an idiot, heading in the wrong direction. by the time i get to the crysler building it’s getting dark and people are whopping and hollering
[?9/?19/?2016 9:49 AM] Paul Ponzeka:
oh god
[?9/?19/?2016 9:50 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
mari’s gone the reception tells me. i try to find a phone, after a dozen calls i get a hold of her: she’s a penn station. where there’s no power. with her coworker who was going to wait it out.
so i head over cross town. by the time i get there there are people literally pissing out in the open. hot, angry and increasingly frustrated
[?9/?19/?2016 9:51 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
so i turn to her and say, we need to bounce, like now. her firend frank says, we should wait it out. i tell him let’s go, stop fucking around
so we haed for the 59th (again) and it’s getting you can see the stars but not 10 feet in front of oyu
and peeps have been drinking and going “boo” for the lulz
[?9/?19/?2016 9:52 AM] Paul Ponzeka:
i can see the rage building
[?9/?19/?2016 9:53 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
o yeah, but keep in mind, i got a preggers wife, so that’s minus modifier, that makes us very vulnerable
so i hail a cab, tell the guy, $200 bucks, long island.
frank says, “wait what?”
i tell him shut up and get in
[?9/?19/?2016 9:54 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
it was crazy. i couldnt believe how she broke the plan. she wouldnt again, i’m sure of it, but that was one sketchy night
[?9/?19/?2016 9:55 AM] Paul Ponzeka:
oh man
i would have lost my mind
[?9/?19/?2016 9:56 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
nah, u wouldnt. u’d lose it the next day when they’re safe
[?9/?19/?2016 9:58 AM] Manny Savopoulos:
i hated that guy frank afterwards. i thought what a pussy. wtf is wrong with you?

i am riddled with fears. just at the edge. how different than ever before, careening into the dark, in to the light.
they’re getting older now. she breaks my heart, she toes out into the age where everything became a disaster for me. where i was ruined. and i want to clutch at her, to yank her back, drag her by her heels. tell her, you don’t want this, all that’s before you is mortality and helplessness. all that awaits you is the relentlessness of time.
and him, the rascal, the one off. his own man, his own beat and drummer. the drummer and the drum, the beat and the skip. o beautiful son, you delight me and vex me. you are impossible to understand already.
when did all this happen?

i look at you, both of you, in my mind’s eye, all you have, the two of us, mz and i, mikey and ioanna, are these the gifts i was never given? father, sibling, sister, brother?
and yet, and yet, listening to rage against the machine, “anger is a gift”
i wouldnt have any of you without this, without the anger of living, of being, of being distraught and confused and in constant pain.
how do i square this? how do i give you the lessons i learned without the pain that i am afflicted with?

my darling daughter, my first born, my frightened little one. since your birth, you’ve surprised me: mommy was convinced you were coming and i laughed at her. we were walking around yiayia and papou’s neighborhood looking at houses and mommy felt you were ready, felt you kicking, making room, looking for an escape hatch. i teased her and told her, “no way, you heard what the doctor said, not for another couple of days. it’s your imagination!” we went home and still you wiggled around and around in her belly, shoving things around and mommy grabbed a clock and pen and paper, writing down the time between each of your knockings until she called her doctor and her doctor said we had to go, we had to hurry.

at the hospital of course there was waiting and waiting and you were squirming, wiggling in her belly and then apparently you got tired, so you rested there, nestled inside her safe and warm. At some point, suddenly, you weren’t going to take it anymore and mommy said you were ready and the doctors said, “oh yeah, she’s ready alright” and the next thing you know, you were there, you were right in front of me, so small, so pretty and screaming and alive and so perfect. you were just a dream I had months ago and now there you were, real, right in front of me, holding you, so light, everything i dreamt of right in the palm of my hand.

of course, the years have passed and here you are, everyday, alive, a piece of me, a piece of mommy, but all you. stubborn and funny and thoughtful and kind and determined and smart. you are everything i imagined you to be and so much more. you are every joy i could not have believed for myself. all my life i wanted to feel proud of something true and real, a deep sense of pride, and here you are suddenly, everyday, making me feel so much of it.

-always, me

the truth is I can do this all the time, I can write this all the time, I can tap this, I can tap that ass, I can type away the voices there, here, my own. on and on it goes, he goes, they go, they go far away but always come back again. a loop. a ferris wheel. up and away but crashing back down again. without the violence of course, without the need for speed. but speed is of utmost necessity, else you miss the jumping off point, or rather the jumping on. I think of you and the urge to fumble about like this.

and it’s all madness and pain and loneliness and fear of the night. i want to strangle it. i want to strangle him. i want to strangle every ounce of hope out of me so there would be no fear, no heart, no memory. i would be gone, i would be dust. i would be the stain that evaporates in the sun, leaving nothing.