newspaper

when I call from my window

to the low street,

rippling with wet snow

and necessity

a zing

he stops in the dark, tosses the plastic

package

the story has arrived, the boy who brought it to

my door is here, open

I don’t move if I can help it

not to pull my nose or touch my hair

I want this visit, unwarranted, uncounted

the place they can’t put their finger

under the cold blanket of night

But I see reporters

in flaccid

florescent offices

nothing like Rosalind Russell. Although

the thing she called production for use

is the same.

If he sees me here?

behind the glass and the glare,

forever borrowing a moment

fuck the clock, I am unrepentant

yet nobody's been paid

for this work

Come on, boy of stories,

bringer of messages

envoy of industry, harbinger of ink,

fool, herald, witness, carrier

his bike slides forward

we are trying to read minds

but something slips

off the tracks

If it was murder

it didn’t look like one

when I put my body in front of your body

and said

I know this man.

From South Buffalo, looking west (2010)

My city, to the west

In smoke in ash in haze

Paper box specialist, Samson

Crumpling beside

my going bike gears.

Wild mustard greens and trees working up.

We buckle

We ease down,

the earth below us, does not.

 

The Boarding House restaurant

all boarded up—but maybe not

A lot that is not dead in this town

appears to be.

I was asked to write about my journey.

There was nothing to do everyday, but pedal. My quads got bigger and bigger. There was nothing left to think about, I exhausted every subject. I sang about everything--to myself, to the weeds and trees that lined the canal, to the mosquitoes and flies, which couldn't stay on my skin in the wind. I ate food I never eat. I ate sugary pastries for breakfast and diner omelettes with hash browns for dinner. I had coffee with my dinner and still slept like a baby. Nothing happened, everything happened, which is the way of the road, which is why writing about travel is so difficult to do well, to do honestly. It is why good travel writers are also good liars--because to tell the truth about journeys in retrospect, it is important to embellish and eliminate--and also the reason why many people find it impossible to write at all. I've been asked to write about my trip. I don't know what to tell you. I know what, and not how. I know neither what nor how, but I know why, which is always enough.

The smell of manure suddenly (outside Lockport), and I am nostalgic. Fields of rolled hay, orchards. It is not me--there is a breeze in the shade that whispers, "Don't stop, don't stop." It has never mattered where I am going, or how long it takes. It matters that I'm going, following a path. Watch--the bees know their business. Do they ask how many flowers in how many minutes? I don't think so. It is not that time is not important, just not quite as important as everyone thinks.

I find mystery in small towns, knowing there is no mystery there. I know that for the teenagers sitting on the canal, life is bland, marked only by crushes, stolen cigarettes, and the hope of growing up faster. Jazz clubs and restaurants sit along the canal in a line. Laughter, music, clinking of glasses. I want to be sweatless, in a sundress, sparkling on the water, clinking glasses. I am riding towards nothing, I am riding towards my next meal, I'm riding out unanswered questions, I'm riding to friends.

Peaches, oh summer, don't end. Blueberries, summer, don't end. Raw sweet corn from a roadside stand. Morning, don't end. As with walking, everything is closer when cycling. My mortality is closer to me. I pass roadkill--this solicits a prayer. The first few times, I put the body in the weeds to disintegrate, lay it to rest. On the roads, in the hills and valleys of the Finger Lakes, I cannot stop every time, or I'll be roadkill.

The weather turns warm, wet, dark, hazy--like pussy. New York state is beautiful, struggling, smells like dead fish and ragweed. Smells like milk thistle burning, like clean, cold water, and lakeweed, like sweat and sunscreen and chemical greens, everything rotting in re-burgeoning wetlands, everything going under and everything coming up. New York state is belligerent, inappropriate, impatient, Italian, stuck and drunk, overheated, understimulated, anxious and bored, and finally, very kind to travelers.

I ride parallel to I90, which looks silly from my curvy, sensuous country road. I see billboards from the back, and their shape is foreign in expansive corn. Hills! Exhilarating doesn't come close to covering it. I stop at an intersection to check my map, and a policeman stops his car to warn me of rain. It rains. Something is baking on the horizon, and after the storm, wind carries it to me. Delicious hunger, delicious hills. I am riding towards friends. When I get very tired, I think, What am I doing? I should be at home writing children's books! I will do that too, later.

Until electricity came, the canal was lit by 31 hour kerosene lamps. Most canal jobs have been lost, but there are still some maintenance jobs. Canal-watchers walk up to 7 miles a day, up and down, looking for leaks. What is going on now? What is the industry of New York? A very mild amount of tourism. But mostly, prisons and landfills. In and out of prisons, nothing comes or goes, except sounds. Birds, voices, trucks: hum and whir, rattle. I am doing a thing of ultimate privilege and freedom. To set out on a bicycle everyday, with nothing to do but move forward. I ride by fences as tall as the trees that surround me, with barbed wire on top instead of leaves. When I camp alone, a grove of towering pines protects me from rowdy voices nearby, children's voices, adult's voices, and from the wind.

Everyday I am on the road, I come closer and closer to my own mortality. I develop a relationship with everything. I get slammed by thunderstorms, heat, and mosquitoes. I eat a lot ice cream. I make new friends--not life friends, but friends of the moment. Cyclists everywhere see my panniers, and ask me how far I am going, and if I need anything (water, granola, a place to spend the night). One night, after a roller-coaster of a day, I end up wearing my rainjacket as pajama bottoms because everything else is wet. Whenever I get myself into situations, I like to think about Mark Twain. At the thought of him, my discomfort becomes amusing, and that is how I know I'm okay. I sleep, I dream, I ride, I dream. And then I arrive.

When I see the skyline of Albany, I tear up a little. I don't know why--I've never loved Albany, it's just something about the finality of my arrival. I have reached my goal and I'm a little sad. I'm also exhausted and incredible. I'm relieved, but without my lovely, simple purpose, I feel empty and lonely. Riding a bike all day makes it easy to be in the moment. I eat a bunch of salty, crunchy things at my dear, old friend's house, and then go home to my parents' house and eat more + wine. Then I sleep, I dream, I ride.

1 Minute Old

Eveningless

Summer night

The day just runs into

The wind

And do you care

Where you were

When it rained

No

Because in summer,

Everything is an element—

Not just the weather,

But your skin,

Your lover’s skin,

Your lover.

You can’t get caught in the rain,

You can only be in it.

 

Run, run it

Clap hands

Big sounds

What are you

going to do now?

Dauphin Island

The rigs hum at night, mechanical giraffes
Ghost crabs scatter at the sound of our feet,
their eyes on tender stalks
Wary.
I would give 50 years of my life to be there again
The way it used to be
Imperfect and sediment-heavy
Already there was phenol in the water and
Mercury in the blood of the pelicans.
The marshes keep their secrets
They smell of old love affairs
Sulfur.
A blue heron waits
His back curved what an old man disappointed with life
And the live oaks stand witness
They scare us at night as we pass them on bicycles
Their moss hangs down whispering  You don’t know what I have seen.
I want you still god help me
Or if not you then a more vivid memory
I want to taste your salt air again your warm water
Forgive us, mother, for the mistakes that we are bound to make and the
million ways in which we have wounded you
I will find forgiveness when I die
Walking out past the children with the clam guns
(a crabber looks on)
Into the breaking waves
The oyster beds kiss my tender feet/

by Eleni Petrou, May 2010. Bob the house.

The Rules of Picnics

Lydia and I have been planning a picnic. Lydia is one of my littler friends in life and recently she learned how to ride her bike without training wheels. She said that riding fast is the closest she has ever come to flying. This is true for me also. She also had some very wise things to say about fear--about her fear of falling. It's not the end of the world if I fall off my bike, but I think it is. But if I don't take risks I'll never get to go faster or ride in the road. I have to remind myself of this almost every time I go rock climbing. If I don't risk falling, I will never get to the top. 

Last Friday we rode our bikes, looping around and around her block. It was getting close to bedtime, but we decided that next-time we would have to go somewhere. And that it would probably be a good idea to pack a picnic. Lydia said, "We should talk about a few things." I didn't know picnics had rules, but once she outlined them for me, it made a lot of sense.

The rules of picnics:

1) You cannot drive to a picnic. It is only real if you ride your bike or walk.

2) You cannot have a picnic on a table, or with chairs.

3) There must be surprises.

4) You have to bring something to share.

5) You have to bring a surprise.

6) No training wheels.

Which waterfront are you talking about?

On Sunday, Sara Gordon and I went on a hike, walking along the river from Mass Ave to LaSalle Park, and on to the Marina, where we spent some time with the fish. Then we wandered through some weird condo communities--although that is probably not the right word for what they are--singing Woody Guthrie, and into downtown where we walked through a fence, cut under the overpass, and headed north and west, to home.

There's been a lot of fuss about the waterfront lately. Some people want this thing, some people want the other thing. Bass Pro wants in and that's its own kettle of fish. The word revitalization gets thrown around a lot (gets thrown around on Grant St. too). I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement. There are a few gravely spots that could be greener, and I'd never say no to a few more trees--but revitalization? Revitalization? Come on! There were easily five hundred people at the waterfront around 6 pm on Sunday. Easily 500, but probably more. Laughing, shouting, playing, running, walking, playing tag, grilling. Doing people-at-the-waterfront activities. It's a river. We live on a drained swamp. Of course people are going to go there.

We do need to protect what is already ours from Bass Pro and from any further condo-ization. We need to hold what is rightfully ours away from any of the greedies upstairs. But we do not need to revitalize. We already are. And this argument reaches right into the core of urban planning itself. Do we need to protect what is ours from that corrupt mascot, money? Yes. Beyond that, nothing needs to be done. People will put what they need where they need it, and they invest where they are. Academics, posturers, politicians: take a walk (not a drive) around the west side. There are countless churches, temples, and other sanctuaries...in houses. The west side says, "Everything can go in a house!" Nobody is going to build their church or garden across town. They are going to get together and put it where they live. I have walked on rainy nights, and heard, from the yellow glow of houses, voices rising up in languages I don't know, and tambourines, and guitars, and instruments I don't know--voices that laugh and sing and sway the night, and people like me stop in the street to listen. They're thanking god--in whatever version of that story--and I'm thanking them. A little help is good, but usually there is too much meddling.

It's an odd process--the one by which a simple thing is made complicated. The river is the calmest, loveliest place of the city. It is my medicine. I go to the river to remember what I am doing, and to forget (I make sure to go there at least once a week). But the waterfront is already segregated. Along the path Sara and I took, it was like this: quiet, private (hidden boat docks), then public (kids jumping into the water), then private again (gated 'communities' without gates), mostly quiet--a murmur of AC units and ceiling fans. Then noisy: there was a condo party going on. At the Marina it is public and private. How? Shanghai Reds versus picnic tables.

When I was trekking through Belfast this past March, I kept finding myself walking along a mesh fence. At points it was as tall as a short building. It is an old fence that remains, but it is  anything but symbolic for the people who still live, and cry, and somehow manage to sing and play behind it. There were playgrounds behind it, on the other side of where I was walking, and the shouts of the children were not ordinary shouts; they were cries of war. As they should be: what does it do to anyone's mind--child or adult--to live behind a fence? For any human or animal to be put in a cage creates daily pain, and that stuff gets inside bodies. The message is: You cannot go where I am; stay. The trauma of that lives in our muscles, in our cells. Take Belfast, take Palestine, take domestic abuse. There is claustrophobia first, then terrorism--terrorism directed outward or inward. In Belfast, I was amazed at how difficult it was to find an entrance/exit to the fence. I walked along it for at least a half an hour, but maybe longer, before I found a place to slip through--and that was all it was--not a gate, just a place to slip through.

I thought of this as we passed through Buffalo's hidden monastery of wealth. There was no fence or physical barrier keeping us from entering or exiting, yet we were walking straight into a secret. A tar path led us straight from LaSalle Park into an enclave of suburbia in downtown Buffalo. But there were signs that read Private. A cop car drove by us, slowly. That's a loaded image in Buffalo. A cop car. Who sees one, and doesn't get a tick inside? Who even lives here, we asked each other? Are these summer-in-the-city condos? Who are these strange people, and what is inside their bodies? (The answer is a sort of ultimate kind of fear). And then, although their wall, their fence, their keep the outside-outside partition was semi-fluid and self-imposed, I felt so sorry for them. How horrible for anyone to be so stuck. And how sad it must be to live on the edge of a beautiful river, and be afraid to share it.

These were my Sunday reflections in a nutshell. I'll say this: if you always pass through your city in a car, you don't see it. Not all the way. It's not all your fault. It's actually impossible because you are going so fast, and you are inside walls, and you have other important things to concentrate on (like not hitting that jerk)! A bike ride is good, and sometimes a walk is even better, but either way, go visit your city. Take a vacation day and gift yourself a cultural education.

While "Rude boy" blared above, from an air conditioned apartment in the sky, this is what Sara and I sang, as we walked away:

"As I was walkin'--I saw a sign there
And that sign said, 'No tresspassin'
But on the other side, it didn't say nothin'
Now that side was made for you and me!"