seeing ghosts on the staircases of the upper west side.

hello - so this is not really a blog post, per se, but a couple of guilty moments grasping at pleasure. you know how that goes, readers. have to let the sap trickle into your mouth when you can.

so, i was recently at a halloween party, and i stayed out until roughly 3:30 am and took the A train home (how duke ellingtonian of me), to my friend's apartment, where i've been sleeping on the couch while doing some research in harlem. the apartment is very nice and swanky, full of delicate and expensive (and highly breakable) objets d'art. i feel as though i am a giant troll with rheumatoid arthritis while in this place, and so i've been happy to leave for my other friend's couch in the dust-filled crevasses of brooklyn. anyhow, though, so i was returning to this apartment, which is as far as i can tell full of israelis and ortho-jews, my kinsmen up and down the ivories of diaspora, such that the other night while staying there i heard the strains of "hinei ma tovu ma naaaaaim," as childlike voices rose up through the airshaft. it brought back memories, strangely poignant ones, which have lately fueled my weird fixation with the history (and historicity) of jewish music - or 'jew tunes,' as i've been calling them. you know, the greatest hits of the high holy days, sung by perry como and barbara streisand - songs so melancholic and good that they're allowed into the domain of goyische vegas crooners! amazing. kol nidre and its sort of "floating world" milieu, avinu malkeinu with its choir evoking some sort of cowering mass standing in fear before a column of fire; the good stuff like that. none of this new-agey, acoustic guitar, sitting on the bima crap. sorry, debbie whatever your name is, but your reinterpretations of jew tunes, and their emphasis on crescendoing major chords, are terrible. if i ever saw you at a bar mitzvah, i'd be tempted to throw a latke at your head.

but where was i? hm, oh yes. so there are a lot of jews around this building. and in new york in general - it's mindboggling for me to be around all of these different iterations of jews. i can't say why, exactly, but there's a visceral quality, something massy and epic and abysmal (in every sense) pervading this feeling. the other day i was speaking with some friends, and one of them mentioned that she'd had this "vagina dentata" moment while contemplating the ineffable hugeness of the marianas trench. the other said that his moment of incomprehension came when he contemplated the unbreachable gap between sensations and the language that we use to express them. mine, i must say, comes in the company of domesticated animals and orthodox jews. something about looking into the eyes of the other and reading a blank stare...something about ideology. something about the strange plumage of ritual, particularly regarding the hair, and the fervid looks in orthodox jews' eyes, along with their pale cheeks with points of pink in their centers, as they read magazines and check out dvds in the "adult video" (wow, that really confused me at first) section of the williamsburg(h) branch of the new york public library, where i've gone during the days to attempt futile and flaccid but occasionally pellucid stabs at my fellowship applications.

keep this in mind, people: i am a jew. so i can say these things...?

also, i recently learned that my grandmother used to take part in the ritual where you swing a live chicken over your head, and over the heads of your loved ones, during the high holy days. you see, she grew up orthodox, and up until the point that she married my grandfather, she never questioned this ceremony. sort of the vodun of judaism, i guess - but circusy, with all those flying feathers and grim-faced, dark-suited (is)raelians.

aaaanyway, back to't. so i was walking into the building (inside the elevator of which i actually got hit on by this large musician who asked me if i was 'a thespian,' to which i applied in the negatory and then countered by asking him if he was an israeli - clever with my parries and thrusts, eh?), and at about 4 in the morning i was going up the back stairs (for some reason - maybe i wanted to try them out, because i always enjoy seeing old stairwells and the ways in which people take care to design newels and banisters and things like that, even if they're never meant to be seen - herein lies the antiquarian/steam punk in me), and as i reached the fourth floor, i was stalled by a soft noise like someone riffling through papers. it was something like the noise that a mouse would make with its tail. i should mention that all the residents place their recycling on landings in the back stairwell, which i didn't know, and which was sort of a letdown, all these piles of garbage gumming up the institutionally elegant passageway - and anyhow, i saw this old, old lady, hunched over with major scoliosis, emaciated like anita webster (see previous posts on impoverished prodigal pianists in panama), and with dusty clothes and two-tone hair (red and white, the red seemingly layered on top of the white, wiglike). this lady looked up at me with an air of banal skepticism spiked with an almost imperceptible bit of fear/surprise, and she simply kept going through the garbage, though i don't know if she was putting things in or taking them out, because she was moving very slowly. stupidly, i said "hello" in an automatic and cheerful voice (good proof that i am finally ready to work in the service sector). she did not reply. my face was half-covered with an intricate and lumpy-textured fake blood pattern, i should note, but that's beside the point. for some reason, i briefly entertained the possibility that this lady was a ghost, some kind of yearning apparition, which i decided was probably preferable (the idea especially congenial to my hostess in the building) to the possibility of her being a homeless person. then i tried to silently and seamlessly shift my body past hers without interrupting her "flow," as she did not seem to enjoy my being there with her. i wondered how she'd got into the building in the first place, whether she was a resident, and what she was doing up at this hour. the whole thing was odd but not necessarily off-putting. she seemed a friendly and timid ghost, if anything, even one incapable of speech. there was definitely a mute quality about her, and she moved as if in a trance.

anyhow, the weird thing is that after i got into the apartment, i repeated to myself about ten times that i would definitely tell the apartment's owner and my friend about this incident, because it had struck me so definitively, and yet when i fell asleep, i completely forgot about it until about four days later, when i was pondering the stairwell. strange to completely forget about such an encounter, especially one whose details impressed themselves on my mind with such intensity, and which left many dangling questions that i'd have liked to answer. another example of the mind's endless little sinkholes, into which important things disappear, leaving us with the comforting oil-slick of idiotic arcana to lap up on long commutes and in those blank vestibular spaces that we all know so well.

related to all this, i've been thinking a lot about writing a story about my grandmother, because i think that she represents an almost allegorical force, some embodiment of all the ways in which a person can tend toward extremes of bitterness and grasping need. clearly my grandmother is not all bad - in fact, i love her dearly for her punchy attitude and her eternal ennui - and my hope would be to portray this person both as an emotional parasite/black hole and as a supremely sympathetic character. you know what i'm talking about. perhaps this is hackneyed, but i feel like it needs to be exorcised. also, my grandmother is one of the most compelling characters i know, for the way that she speaks extremely mean truths and is at the same time under major delusions of grandeur. she's also one of those very lucid and intelligent people who have been frustrated in their attempts to produce something of this (in her case, housewifery took the reins, as four children emerged and world war II started), and her sense of regret and pungent dissatisfaction is evident in nearly everything that she does. anyhow, a cautionary tale.

on another note, i'd like to write a story about a mother who accidentally poisons her child and the various ways that this has wrought havoc with her sense of maternal goodwill. this story would be a comic-macabre sort of satire, something sort of darkly funny. that's what i'm envisioning.

i should also mention, before i go (i've snatched enough gratification from this particular session, i think) that my recent research has been totally fascinating, the sort of thing that's sucked me in for hours at a time, as though i'm disappearing down some tunnel into fantasy. these days, time flies by, because there's so much to do. and yet i'm not deliriously happy, and i'm really glad about that. delirious happiness is a major drain on the faculties, you know. much better is the ability to sustain attention, display continuity, and surprise yourself with levels of commitment as yet unseen in this quavery little wet noodle of a resolve. i think that bravery is a good thing to have, but the modest kind, of course - and altruism is stupid. anyhow, i've been interviewing people and reading letters and unearthing multigenerational networks of an amazing afro-caribbean diaspora in the US. it's really something, and hopefully i will be able to accommodate all this in my dissertation...not to mention live up to all these expectations - this time put forth by real people, not bureaucratic juggernauts, star ac(k)ademics, or institutional review boards. (sorry, irb. but you know i hate you.)