5.5 Days in New York

A Novel in Point-Form With No Names

Despite many blizzard-related delays, I arrive in New York more or less on time for dinner. My Poor Host listens patiently to the long version of the Greyhound Prisoner Release Programme (see previous post). I tell him the story three times. Trying to nail down the dialogue, I explain. Then I sleep, a turning point in the plot, after all those sleepless weeks at Yaddo.

I spend the morning writing out my Escape From Yaddo adventure. In the afternoon I have coffee with a French Painter friend from Yaddo at the apartment of a Turkish Fibre Artist friend from Ucross. They know each other from before. Setting (important for a later scene): a sunny tenement turned charming studio on Spring Street at Bowery.

At 5PM I meet a Russian Novelist friend at Penguin. He introduces me to his coworkers as his cousin. There’s an office party going on. Though we behave like cousins – interrupting and making fun of each other whilst stealing copious amounts of books and wine and cheese – no one believes we are actually cousins. Perhaps we have too much fun to be family. We head to Astoria for dinner.

Two Jews walk into a Czech Bar during Pork Festival Week. Our vegetarian waitress fights the kitchen staff and wins a plain dumpling for us. It’s hard for us during Pork Fest Week, she says. The Russian Novelist says: I did a smart thing - I didn’t fall in love with you. Yes, very clever of you, I agree. Because now we’re good friends. We buy some Bavarian Pilsner and head to his sub-basement apartment where we spend the rest of the evening reading comics. The Russian Novelist also draws, he reminds me, and is a big fan of Thurber. And a gentleman. He sleeps on the couch and I get the bed.

Breakfast is ready, the Russian Novelist says. Turkish coffee in Moldavian glasses. There’ll be a war! I say. But breakfast proceeds peaceably.

We’re late to meet our Croatian Novelist friend for coffee the East Village, his own fault for changing our date to a time too early for us. The Croatian Novelist, having been cast in the father role, offers up this sage advice: You should sell some good books and then come and teach in Saint Petersburg. Oh, such good advice. Thank you, thank you, really, we had not known but yes, now that you mention it, what a good idea, that’s just what we’ll do. He’s good-natured, our Croatian Novelist friend. So we tease him.

A Russian Novelist, a Croatian Novelist and a very short story writer walk into Odessa. The Pirogues are prefabricated. The ceiling is red. The banquette pleather rent. We reminisce about how we met two years ago in Montreal. We drank free beer together in the hospitality suite at a literary conference in a hotel. And look at us now, I say.

The Croatian Novelist heads off into the day. The Russian Novelist and I go used book shopping. He’s still carrying the books he gave me yesterday. They’re heavy but he doesn’t complain. He is a good boy, the Russian Novelist. We buy more books.

New York is so big. The Russian Novelist lives in Astoria. He’s meeting someone in Manhattan at 6:30 and doesn’t have time to go home in between. So our date goes on about four hours too long. Maybe a good editor will know what to do about this.

There’s a hole in the plot here, where I take a nap.

Late that night I have dinner in Chinatown with an old friend from Art School in Montreal, his wife and some friends of theirs. Art School Friend and his wife are late because their babysitter was late. Their friends are late because Pell Street is very hard to find, especially if you’re not from New York. Better late than never. We are all happy to see each other and we have a wonderful meal. The occasion: it’s Art School Friend’s wife’s birthday. It’s also Chinese New Year. Happy Birthday and Happy Year of the Pig.

Sunday I meet a Biographer for brunch in the West Village. She’s not my biographer! We’re just friends. We have an abstract and expressionistic conversation. I tell the Biographer how to set up a blog. She tells me how to buy a house in the country. I tell her Yaddo stories. She says: You seem exhilarated and sleepless at the same time, a neat trick.

I’ve accumulated so many books I have to buy a new bag. I shop in between appointments.

At 5PM I meet my Favourite Short Fiction Writer Friend from Ucross for an early dinner in the East Village. Is this too geriatric an hour to be eating, she asks? She brings me a book. I bring her a photo album. We pore over pictures of Wyoming and tell each other stories non-stop until it’s time to meet her boyfriend for drinks. An audience! We repeat our stories for him. And laugh so hard we cry. We can’t help it. We’re Short Fiction Writer Friends; even we know short stories are better the second time around.

Bag shopping isn’t going very well so Monday I combine it with shoe shopping. I don’t find a bag, but I do find a pair of shoes. I meet Favourite Short Fiction Writer Friend at the Strand. I buy more books. We go for a drink. We cannot understand why we don’t live in the same city. We go to Trader Joe’s. We cannot understand why the line-up circles the store. Favourite Short Fiction Writer Friend says it will move quickly. I almost but don’t quite lose my mind. Somehow we endure this ordeal.

Free at last we hike our wine, bread, blueberries and cheese down to Spring and Bowery for a Ucross reunion at afore mentioned sunny tenement turned charming studio. Only it’s not sunny now because it’s night. More specifically, it’s Ucross Reunion Night! We are: our host the Turkish Fibre Artist, Favourite Short Fiction Writer Friend (who is actually working on a novel now), Canadian Novelist (who has been living in NYC for nine years), Very Tall Composer (originally from Milwaukee?) and me. We agree: we all look the same. We dine on lentil soup, blood orange salad, wine and cheese, and delicious conversation.

And then suddenly time’s almost up. I run around Tuesday, buy a bag, and pack it. Then out again in the evening for a brief visit with another Painter Friend from Yaddo. We meet at the Frick. I don’t recognize her at first, not in her painting clothes. She has free passes. The collection is so familiar to both of us that we talk our way through it, pausing for our very favourites, until there we are out on the street saying: so good to see you again, saying goodbye. On the way home I buy another book.

Somehow I manage to pack thirty or so new books into what bags I have. More the miracle, in the morning I manage to drag them dead weight the eight blocks up to Port Authority. And I have a mercifully uneventful bus ride home.



I'm home now. And my bookshelves are at capacity.
. . . . .

life on the outside

No trains were running yesterday, but Greyhound said I could get on the 2:40 bus bound for New York City. The Saratoga bus depot is a one-room skank hole. A three-foot high-gloss ceramic statue of a seated greyhound graces one window, a frightening fake tree the other. Man. And you can imagine the cast of characters in there. The key players: An older backwoods looking guy in a tan work jacket. A younger shaved bald kinda lost looking guy, also in a tan work jacket. A large woman in a red jacket, turquoise toque and purple pants. A father and young son duo on their way to Tampa, boor bastards. Two kids waiting out in the car with their mom. And me, fresh out of Yaddo not quite ready for life on the outside.

At 2:40 we learn that the bus will be an hour late. At 3:40, 40 more minutes. We pace around like animals until finally Albany sends up a bus to get The Saratoga Seven, as I now like to think of us. Once on the emergency bus the lost looking tan work coat guy asks me if Port Authority is walking distance to Penn Station. He’s clutching a small sack of books, no other luggage, and I’m thinking: What, did this guy just get out of prison? But I’m thinking it in a fiction writer way, like that would be a good way to describe what this guy looks like. Like he is unused to this world, sent out in brand new ill-fitting clothing and now having a hard time getting to where he wants to go. He wants to go to Long Island. My cousin lives next door to Penn Station. I don’t tell him this, but I do say: You find me at Port Authority; I’ll walk you down to Penn.

So we get to Albany and they’ve got a bus waiting for us, full but for seven seats. We, the Saratoga Seven, board. I’m walking up the isle looking for an empty seat and I’m seeing a lot of big black and brown bald men all wearing new clothes and all holding the same black folder and I’m thinking first America’s draconian drug laws fill up the prisons, and now the Greyhounds. I find a seat in the rear with a skinny girl. Praise the Lord for a skinny girl next to an empty seat. I say: These guys were just released. She says: If they were released they must be fine. She just got into Columbia Law, and that’s her assessment. Christ. I say: Well, they must be in a good mood.

Indeed, it was a very cheerful bus ride. Somewhere in NJ there was smoke break. I saw my boy Saratoga get up to go out with the others. He blended in so well. Of course he just got out of prison. For once my literary imagination was right on the money. But fashion-wise, it was safe to say; he’d been in some other pen. The white boy pen.

We get into Port Authority at 8PM. I find my suitcase and there’s Saratoga waiting for me. Walk down to Penn Station. It’s good to walk, we agreed. Out on the street. Free at last, as it were. He said: Everything’s moving so fast. He’d been sent up for fifteen months on drug charges. Got out yesterday. Out into the post-snowstorm apocalypse. Spent six hours at the Saratoga Springs Greyhound station. Finally got on a homebound bus and finds it full of guys from the inside. I said: They make you? Oh yeah, he said. They give you clothes when you get out, but they don’t fit. Anyone wearing this jacket, he said. I said: I know a lotta guys wear outfits like that, trying to look like they just got out. He said: Longest fifteen months of my life. I bet. Kinda puts my six weeks of insomnia at Yaddo and my one-day snow delay into perspective. So, do you feel reformed? I asked him. Well I’m never doing that again, he said. Meaning drugs I guess. At 8th and 33rd I pointed out Penn Station and sent him on his way.

There are so many morals to this story I don’t know where to begin. Don’t do drugs. Things could be worse. Better late than never. Always talk to strangers. Well, only if you’re a fiction writer. If you can make it TO New York you can make it anywhere. What a way to leave Yaddo. It’s hard, making a new life on the outside. Stay strong kids. Stay in school.
. . . . .

Leaving Blues

Last night was supposed to be my last night at Yaddo. I arrived at my last supper only to discover what the whole rest of the table already knew: big storm headed Saratoga way. How big? Two feet of snow, someone said. I heard anywhere between two and four feet, someone else. Fourteen feet? someone just looking for trouble.

Some guests, once they get here, they never want to leave. Maybe they’re just saying that. Me, after six weeks anywhere I’m good and ready to go. On to the next thing. On to New York City, in this case. I had lunch date I didn’t want to miss. I had plans. But clearly, given the forecast, the next noon Greyhound was not going to happen. The table discussed the options: You could cross-country ski to New York. Or ski-do. Or dog sled! Just stay. They won’t throw you out on the street. Good to know.

I said: Note how I'm valiantly trying to stay calm here.
The table: Did you say Valium-ly?
I wish.

After dinner a painter played barrelhouse piano in West House for a while, which cheered me right up. Then I went back to Pine Garde to pack my leaving trunk. Just in case. Because:

The blues are mushed up into three different ways
One said go the other two said stay
I woke up this mornin with the blues three different ways
You know one say go "baby I want to hang up", the other two said stay.
Taj Mahal, Leaving Trunk

Anybody that woke up on the American eastern seaboard this morning knows how this story ends. With the whiteout blues. A full on blizzard. But I went to breakfast anyway, because I said I would. To check in with my friend the table.

I’d never been to breakfast at Yaddo before. It turns out that a) you don’t have to get there right at eight, as I had previously thought, and b) they’ll make eggs for you – any kind you want. I had no idea! I love eggs. Each new person who came in for breakfast, I said: Did you know there’re eggs for breakfast here? Everyone knew. I ran into Dan the Snowplough Man in the hallway. He said: I guess you’ll be here another day. I went down to the office. They said: We’ll tell housekeeping, we’ll tell the kitchen.

So here I am. Watching it come down. The leaving blues aren’t so bad.
. . . . .

pieces came together

This is my last night at Yaddo. It’s too soon for elegies. It’s bloody cold here at the moment, but these lines from Jane Mayhall’s poem “Balland of Playing Tennis With Theodore Roethke at Yaddo” and this photo I took of a Yaddo backwoods radiator graveyard are somehow emblematic of my contradictory thoughts on leaving. Am I sad to go? No. Am I glad to have been here? Absolutely. Did I get a lot done? How should I know? Things have accumulated. I’ll look at them later.

… And pieces came together
in the unifying decree of
the holt melting
Yaddo sun.

. . . . .

Roads Out of Rome

Roads Out of Rome appears in Geist #63, on newsstands now.

All roads lead to Rome. It stands to reason that they lead out of Rome as well. It’s helpful to know someone who has a car. And isn’t afraid to use it. When in Rome, one thing to do not as the Romans do, is to drive. In Roads Out of Rome, my Roman friend Barbara drives me around and I live to tell the tale.

Here's an excerpt:

"So now I trust Barbara: to not kill us, even when she’s shout-talking in Roman dialect on her mobile phone; to know where we’re going, even if not how to get there; and to always be late, unless I’m late, in which case she will be early. Today I was early and she was very late."

J. R. Carpenter, Roads Out of Rome

See also: How I Loved the Broken Things of Rome
. . . . .

Is this place haunted or am I just tired?

No way Yaddo is as haunted as Wyoming, but still, some strange stuff has been going on around here. For one thing, none of us can sleep. That’s the good news. For the longest time I thought I was the only one showing up at the dinner table out of sorts. For a month now I’ve been stumbling through surreal somnolent conversations feeling like the odd-man-out but now I see that none of us are quite ourselves.

One guy here reminds me of a much calmer version of a friend in Montreal. He says, if he appears calm it’s only because he subdued from not having slept in five nights. I was envious of the composer for having the composer’s cabin all to himself, with no neighbours to walk on his ceiling, but then he gave quite a convincing impersonation of the heating system that wakes him up every two hours and I did my best rendition of the acetylene torch sound the pipes in the wall by my bed make every time the guy in the room above mine opens his faucet. Now the composer and I are pals. Until one of us gets some sleep anyway. The guy in the room above mine says he was out walking in the woods late one night last week and an animal bigger than a fox and smaller than a German Shepard ran across his path. Then the PA system the Saratoga Race Track come on and played some off-to-the-races type music. In summer Race Track fanfare comes though the Yaddo woods loud and clear, but the stands and stables are all empty in winter and no matter how fantastic a sentence one finishes, one never hears the roar of the crowds.

I have heard screams on three late night occasions, a woman screaming in the woods back behind Pine Garde. The screams do not sound like they’re from pleasure. One hears about all the illicit sex that goes on at artists’ colonies. I imagine that during the summer season the bat-infested mansion is a carnival fun house of screams and moans. In this small cold season of close quarters and hot dry rooms, whatever sexual indiscretions may or many not be transpiring, they are most discreet. Some guests live nearby enough to arrange for conjugal visits. Others drink. Ping-pong is fun for a few minutes. Generally, most are too insomnia-exhausted to think up more imaginative uses for excess night hours. That’s where the ghosts come in. They see their opening and they go for it. My friend Daniel C. wrote in an email yesterday:

"I have a theory about sleeplessness in castles: that is the way that the ghosts insure their reality - keeping us awake to wonder at their presence."

All four Trask children died young, but none appear to haunt Yaddo. Their mother, Katrina, took to wearing shapeless white dresses after, attempting, perhaps, to get a head start on her haunting of the place while she was still alive. Many guests have claimed to hear other guests claim to see Katrina’s ghost. Mostly it’s past guests themselves who haunt Yaddo. When my friend Camilo was here he said:

"I believe that I got Sylvia Plath's room, I kept on thinking about her cold dead body when lying in that cold, cozy bed and hoping to have an extraordinary encounter with her mythological phantasm."

Just when I thought I’d tried everything to shake my insomnia, yesterday afternoon I hit upon my new favourite miracle-cure: really loud punk rock music. I made a play-list of songs so aggressive they compelled me out into the freezing afternoon and propelled me around the lakes very fast twice. This tuckered me right out. Then I went to bed with drunken dead old Truman Capote. In his 1948 novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, the lakes and mansions are so much more haunted that Yaddo’s… but maybe he caught his haunt as a guest here. This is the last passage I read before drifting off to sleep last night:

“Drowning Pond. That was the name colored folks gave it. Slowly old creek-slime, filtering through the limestone springs, had dyed the water an evil color; the lawns, the road, the paths all turned wild; the wide veranda caved in; the chimneys sank low in the swampy earth; storm-uprooted trees leaned against the porch; and water-snakes slithering across the strings made night-songs on the ballroom’s decaying piano. It was a terrible, strange-looking hotel. But Little Sunshine stayed on: it was his rightful home, he said, for if he went away, as he had once upon a time, other voices, other rooms, voices lost and clouded, strummed his dreams.” Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms

Despite this haunt-ridden reading material, I slept quite well. No water-snakes strummed my dreams and, I went and checked, the Yaddo mansion’s wide veranda has not caved in.

. . . . .

privacy being of the utmost importance

I wonder if Jonathan Ames is any relation to Elizabeth Ames, first Executive Director of Yaddo, who’s house I’m living in at the moment. Jonathan Ames’s novel, Wake Up, Sir! is set at an artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. He calls his not even thinly disguised Yaddo The Rose Colony. Katrina Trask loved roses, as manifest in rose colours, carvings, windows and sconces all over the mansion, and, of course, Yaddo’s famous rose gardens, open to the public in season.

"The track and the colony were on Union Avenue, and separating the two was a stretch of dense forest, and in the middle of these woods was the rather secretive entrance to the Rose, privacy being of the utmost importance for artists, since you don’t want the tax-paying public to know about the creative process – how much napping and procrastinating are involved – because otherwise what little funding there is would be cut immediately." Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

Apparently the entrance to Yaddo was originally just south of the track on Nelson Ave. It’s now east of the track on Union. Opps! Pay no attention, tax-paying public. You didn’t hear that from me.


. . . . .