Obit: Bryant Wollman (1947-2008)

I want to say that I had a queer connection to Bryant, but that is hardly witty. But our relationship was odd, to say the least.

A talk with an old beloved classmate recently revealed that Bryant, as a kid, had had a fantasy of raping me. Now that is simultaneously odd and not odd at all. He tried: upstairs from his maverick father's medical office in Coney Island and in a fancy hotel room procured by his worried dad. We were very young. We were very virginal. He did not succeed, but I guess we were sequestered long enough to please his dad, who drove us home in the wee hours of the morning. (Actually we had been fighting about having/not having sex.)

Bryant was very sad during the time I knew him. His mother had died when he had been very young; his father remarried to attain help for raising the children, or perhaps out of love. Bryant disliked his stepmother and perpetually mourned for his own mother. (When he went off to college, he gave me a beautiful picture of her, presumably for safe-keeping,) Meanwhile. during Bryant's pre-college days. his father had taken a mistress.

Now this is a little odd because his father was not only a physician on Mermaid
Avenue but also a marriage counselor, a hypnotist, and a counselor for folks who were going to have transgender operations. Besides Bryant, the good doctor was one of the saddest people I have ever met. No matter: the four of us double dated, and I enjoyed the experience of being taken to fancy expensive places.

It all fell apart when we four were sitting in a theater in wonderful box seats, and Bryant started (and continued) knitting.  None of us knew what to do, but his father soon sent him off to BU, where he was to study pre-med. I went on to meet men who were certain of their sexuality, and Bryant dropped out of school and disappeared.

Somewhere along the passageway of time, I heard that Bryant had become a mailman in Half Moon Bay, California, where it seems he found a comfortable niche if not contentment.

Unfortunately he died from heart trouble. His heart had been broken so many times - by me too - that that was a logical course of death for him. Today I  am thinking that I love him - or his memory. I certainly loved the times we all spent together.

So.... Bryant, I am a little late to say my final goodbyes to you and your dad.  I hope you had a good enough life. I hope you brought others the happiness you often brought me. I really think you did.

A Nameless Tragedy

It happened on March 13. 2013, while I was still barely alive. I learned about this event, for which there are no appropriate words, from all of the newspaper articles archived in my computer. I had thought my own mourning was finally crawling to an end, but the news of Cynthia Wachenheim's death chilled my heart, mind and soul all over again.

Cynthia's uncle was the love of my life. I remember the day at Columbia, which we both attended, when he told me his sister had just given birth to a baby girl. My friend's native language was Spanish: he pronounced her name Cyntia, then decided Cindy would be a better choice for him. So Cindy it was.

My relationship with my friend had a sad ending that broke my heart and spirit. I was never the same again, but I went on to live a life, and gave little or no thought to Cindy, though her uncle remains indelibly etched into my very soul.

My friend went on to do exceptionally well, and apparently has a lovely successful wife and three brilliant sons. No wonder the newspapers noted that family members could not be contacted to comment upon Cindy's dearth.

On March 13. 2013, at about 3 in the afternoon, Cynthia put her baby in a snuggli-type pouch, strapped it to her chest, and jumped from a window in her 8th story apartment in New York City. At the last moment she flipped over, thereby saving her baby's life. She died instantly on contact with the cold, suicidal pavement.

All the papers wrote that Cindy had once walked out of a room for five minutes, leaving her baby unintended. During this time he fell and hit his head. There was no discernible injury, but Cindy feared baby Keston, named for his deceased grandfather, had sustained a terrible brain injury from that fall, which she blamed on herself. She believed Keston would have an insufferable life, and that she would be forevermore incapable of caring for him. All the doctors had told Cindy her baby's development was fine.

What are we to make of this? The majority of write-ups were mostly objective and even quasi-sympathetic not only to baby Keston but also to Cindy,but nobody found the right words, even though all the writers seemed to be trying to put this event into proper perspective. Maybe we are not such an uncaring community of human beings after all; on the other hand, maybe we are so inured to the reality and prevalence of mental illness that  sometimes manifests itself in unspeakable ways that we take aberrant behavior for granted. But - and this is an important but - Cindy came from a highly successful and stable family; she herself was a lawyer in NY, and most  likely had had no major mental illness previous to her suicide.

The obstetricians used to say that postpartum deprssion, or PPD, was a normal very short-lived non-event, but most of these doctors were men. PPD, as it turns out, is an insidious disorder, probably partially, at least, of hormonal origin. It can occur months after giving birth, after the initial euphoria and excitement of child rearing gives way to lonely hours of tending a newborn day and night. Just for starters, we all know the effects of sleep deprivation. PPD thrives on isolation: Cindy's mother is dead, and one needs an experienced mother to help keep a new mother (of 44) on track, if not sane.

I could go on and on. In summary, however, the real lesson learned from
Cindy's death is that the medical/psychotherapeutic community must learn more about and do a much better job of understanding  PPD  and the countless women who are right at this moment needlessly suffering. No, ssrri's and neuroleptics are not the whole answer for treating PPD.

And now I am more certain of what I believe: Yes, we are still a brutally uncaring civilization if we do not study this universal syndrome more carefully and realistically before more beautiful people like Cindy are driven to take their own lives, ironically, to protect their children. But that is a topic for more thought and more blogs.

Meanwhile may G-d , who understands all, cherish Cindy's soul and help us poor mortals become more compassionate, knowledgeable human beings.. May He heal Cindy's family and friends, particularly the very private. probably inexorably grief-stricken man who still is the love of my life.

Salt, by C.K. Williams

Abashingly eerie that just because I'm here on the long low-tide beach of age with briny time
licking insidious eddies over my toes there'd rise in me those mad weeks a lifetime ago
when I had two lovers, one who soaked herself so in Chanel that before I went to the other
I'd scrub with fistfuls of salt and not only would the stink be vanquished but I'd feel shame-shriven, pure,
which thinking about is a joke: how not acknowledge - obsolete notion or no - that I was a cad.

Luckily though, I've hung onto my Cornell box of pastness with its ten thousand compartments,
so there's a place for these miniature mountains of salt, each with its code-tag of amnesia,
and also for the flock of Donnas and Ednas and Annies, a resplendent feather from each,
and though they're from the times I was not only crass, stupid, and selfish but thoughtless -
art word for shitty - their beaks open now not to berate but stereophonically warble forgiveness.

Such an engrossing contrivance : up near a corner, in tinsel, my memory moon, still glowing,
still cruel, because of the misery it magnified the times I was abandoned - "They flee ... oh they flee ..."
I'd abrade myself then not with salt but anapests, iambs, enjambments, and here they still are,
burned in ink, but here too, dead center, Catherine, with her hand-carved frame in a frame -
like the hero in Westerns who arrives just in time to rescue the town she galloped to save me.

Well, I suppose soon the lid with its unpickable latch will come down, but the top I hope will be glass,
see-through like Cornell's, so I'll watch myself for a while boinging around like a pinball,
still loving this flipper-thing life that so surprisngly cannoned me up from oblivion's ramp,
and to which I learned to sing in my own voice but sometimes thanks be in the voice of others,
which is why I can croon now, "My lute be still ..." and why I can cry, "For I have done."

"What time's my heart? I care." Roethke,WORDS for the Wind

You once wrote, in French, that I was your "first passion."
And why does that not count for something
today? All alone, I hunger for a
word of kindness, affirmation of my
existence. Especially from a
famous wise man like you.
You say the past is gone, then you comment
that Faulkner said all we have is past. Please note
that one second ago is already past;
at least it can be remembered.
The future? Anticipated, at best,
with mounting dread as it hurries on to
become the past. And so I am nothing;
nobody; a living monument that
past, present, future are equally lost.

em

Images (see Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California")

Allen, you shopped for images in your
supermarket in California.
I can imagine avocados,
kiwis, grapes even darker and fatter
than a mother's nipples. Images, Allen.
Were there drugs moving you along from aisle
to aisle, drugs that made you see beauty where
there was none? So today I went to a local
Stop 'n' Shop to see if I could. But I
only saw images of myself as I
used to be: Shopping with Jeff, who always
needed to go up and down every aisle
with the most practical intent; thoughts of
my boy sitting in the baby seat, when
I would lean down and press my cheek against
his. My boy! Where have you gone? My cheek,
where have you gone? You are sunken and
wrinkled and old. Is it a howl I need or kaddish?
O my G-d, where has my own steady self gone?
Where have the years to look forward to gone?

em

M. Sartre ...

... yes, there still are special moments:



An Existential Play

Act I, Scene I

Zach: Nappy!

Nana: Cribby or like a baby?

Zach: Like a baby.


Then come 150 special moments.

The End (or perhaps The Be-
ginning)

You

Tube. Your voice (same voice);
Your smile: I heard it
in your short laughter.
Your brilliance. Ideas
that also were mine
once. Under dripping
cherry blossoms I
looked and saw your soul
even in the lit-
tlest corners of
your face. And tears. Both
of us cried to know
we gazed into the
other's soul, never
a hackneyed notion
in those early days,
when we thought we un-
derstood. We did not.
Today the YouTube
taught me brevity
and how much I miss
your long lost voice.

em

"And hid his face amid a crowd of stars." W.B.Yeats

You, my darling, in the other world you inhabit now
Are safe within walls of ivy that grows
Around you instead of old age. You thought
The line was, "I walked with my head in
A cloud of stars," but that was yours, not Yeats'.

Fare well, my dear friend, first and hearty love!
You are so actually inside your true
self now; no longer the boy who took my hand
and put it to your face to feel the tears
that fell from your eyes after we had kissed;
right before we climbed our mountains and
sought to walk with our heads in their "clouds" of stars.

em

Jingle Bells, for Zach

Jingle bells,
Jingle bells,
Jingle with Zachary!
Oh what fun it is to ride
And sing with Zachary-eee!

Dashing through the snow
On a one-horse open sleigh,
Watching Zachary
Laughing all the way-eeee!

Bells on bobtails ring,
Making spirits bright.
O'er the fields we go
Holding Zachy tight!

O jingle bells,
Jingle bells,
Jingle Zachary!
Oh what fun it is to ride
And sing with Zachary-eee!!!

for Zachary, 2/5/12

You cried tonight:
big swollen tears fell from
your almond eyes.

Did you know
that five years ago today
your Nana almost died
from a brain tumor
that, once removed,
turned her into someone else?

No, you could not
know this because
your supreme goodness,
your premature empathy
and the purest of souls
makes me laugh
and play and comfort you,
although I bleed inside
my tortured heart.

When I am with you,
you make me feel
whole again.

I wanted to take your tears
and add them to my own
until water flowed
from the deep, deep well
that replaced my soul.
Your perfect face
so strained with pain
made me forget
that in a few years
you might not even
remember my name.

Only you, my darling, matter.
You, with your Dora's map of goodness
know how to reach our hearts
and make us praise each day
we can watch you at play.

So I tried to wipe away
those big bubbling tears
and cheer you the way
you clear any cloudy day.

But alas, I could console you
only so much
by patting your back
and counting the piggies
on your perfect feet.

Sleep well tonight;
and tomorrow be well
my sweet, sweet Zach.

em