Swell. On Wheels.

Having achieved the sound stability that comes with sticking to the same career path and limiting my job hopping to just an occasional bounce now and then, I am now finally beginning to benefit from the fruits of my fortitude. At last, aside from the obligation of showing up to work about 49 weeks out of the year, I am generally at will to do and have whatever I want.

I often feel intense gratitude for the freedoms and luxuries I now enjoy—admittedly, sometimes directed toward myself for the choices that have put me on this course. During these moments of satisfaction, I also often think back to what, in my household, are referred to as the ‘bad old days.’ Writing questionable checks at 9:55 p.m. at the grocery store, selling back used CDs at an absurd loss, and driving one beat-up vehicle after another into the ground. Etcetera.

The mid-nineties were, unmistakably, the most unstable. My impractical dreams of becoming a costume designer launched us into a near-beggarly existence, and we were forced to take pretty much anything that was offered—including the mixed blessing of a 1977 banana-colored Cadillac DeVille that my dad had had his fun with and then cast, most philanthropically, in our direction.

This is pretty much it; except ours had a black roof accent.

While it did promise to get us from here to there, it did so in an unwieldy, Godzilla vs. the world sort of way. Its massive yellow build and matching, floor-to-ceiling leather interior assured that incognito was never an option. And its mushy steering and rear-wheeled propulsion meant that safety was occasionally a question. Ungrateful as it sounds, were it not for the fully-functioning 8-track player mounted in the center of the dash, it would have been difficult for us to have any fondness for it at all.

In lean times, thrills have to come cheap, which made scouring thrift and resale shops for musical curiosities one of the more exciting diversions we had going on. Though the demise of the Stereo 8 format prevented anything later than 1980 from ever being found, several priceless discoveries were made that forever changed the panorama of our musical preferences.

Among them, unknown-to-us classics like Joan Baez’s 'Ballad Book,' which introduced us to this: 

And '24 of Hank Williams' Greatest Hits'—a collection of songs that gave Country enough soul to permit it to have a place in our sensibilities.

And then there was the totally weird, but somehow kind of cool 'Cop Show Themes' by Henry Mancini.

Eventually, we did wear out the player, and, after that, the only signal the feeble receiver could tune in was Blue Lake Public Radio, which was primarily classical at the time. Proof that gifts sometimes come in totally unexpected packages.

Transcendental Tourist

In 2009, my sister & I took a weekend trip to New York City for the specific purpose of touring as many museums as week could fit in to our short time. We ventured to the Guggenheim for a Kandinsky retrospective, saw some extraordinary and grotesque artifacts at the Met, and, while at MoMA, we happened on what was my favorite Picasso work at the time: Three Musicians. I loved it because I was in a 1960’s-era jazz phase, and though this painting is not supposed to be of actual musicians, something about it made me create my own story of it, with my favorite performers standing in for Picasso, Apollinaire, and Jacob.

We were scolded by a museum guard after the fact; but we did, in a very slapstick-type move, manage to get a picture of me in front of it:

(Note in the corner a fleshy, overfed arm. That’s me; but I have deliberately cropped myself out because that was also the era that I was about 30 pounds overweight. Nobody needs to see that!)

So, I qualify my favorite with at the time because I really had no idea that there was a much more fascinating side of Picasso’s work that I had yet to discover.

This happened about half a year later when I was back in NYC for business with a few days of pleasure tacked on either side. During one of my free days, I returned to MoMA for a special exhibit of Picasso’s graphic and printmaking years. I wandered among the bulls, minotaurs, and an inspiring sampling of erotic sketches - and when I finished, I was so mesmerized that I took the entire tour again.

Afterward, with my head in dreamland, I drifted over to Bryant Park and sprawled out on the damp grass. I stared up at the nearly cloudless sky and the looming mirrored buildings, then closed my eyes, replacing this vision with images of mythical creatures. Were they peering over me as I slumbered under the warm sun?

It was a few months later that I learned that many of these Picasso illustrations were paired with the work of the passionate and mournful poet, Pablo Neruda, in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. I sought out the book in question: a tiny, rough-edged volume that will fit in the palm of your hand. In the corner of the library, I paged through it until I came upon this: 

We Have Lost Even
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin between my hands.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that is always turned to at twilight
and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.
-Pablo Neruda

And then I forgot myself for a moment. And let these lonely, lovelorn words invite tears to form in both eyes. As they swelled and pushed at the rims of my eyelids, I tilted my head back trying to will the rising pools to absorb back in. But they grew larger and spilled down my cheeks, with a force that pushed them over my chin and along the length of my neck, soaking into the straps of my dress. More and more followed, rushing faster than I could brush them away. And without a tissue to wipe away the ravages, I knelt, tucking myself as closely as I could into the shelves, and turned the page – to this:

Waiting for the composure I would need to make my escape from the public, I considered this wondrous marriage of surreal and sublime. How rare it is to truly be overcome. By fantasy. Or by emotion. Or the two at once.