Marmalade Daydreams

As I lie here sweating in a manger of a motel room, listening to my roommate struggle to breathe, I am silently glad that the junkies in the parking lot stopped breaking windows before they got to ours, and I wonder if things might have turned out differently if we’d never followed that Star of Bethlehem, or if we’d followed it to its final destination, the banana factory.

This evening, a friend from college is getting married at his home in Gettysburg, PA, where he teaches anthropology at the local college. Despite, or perhaps due to, my imminent departure Brooklyn in five weeks, and the consequent acceleration of time’s passing that always precedes such phenomena, I decided to make a real road trip out of the holiday weekend. My roommate McGregor had been eager to take a road trip before I left, and so it was a done deal. Of course, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem to find lodging in the vicinity of our nation’s second most famous National Cemetery for Memorial Day weekend. As it turns out, the real culprits weren’t the suspect seniors, clogging the hotel lobbies with their Civil War re-enactment garb and oxygen masks (one of which I wish I had on hand to clap over my roommate’s snoring muzzle), but hordes of prepubescent girls that proved the proverbial flies in our figurative ointment. You’d think that working in a middle school for four years, I’d have seen that coming.

The local women working the desks at the various hotel chains seemed amused at our attempt to locate a room without a reservation. “Dontcha know? There’s not a vacancy anywhere in Gettysburg this weekend… Girl’s soccer tournament.” While the rest of the country flocks to the beaches, grills meat over lumps of coal, and drunkenly watches the Boy Scouts and VFW parade through town, here in south-central PA the traditional kickoff to summer is the commercial frenzy to service a mass congregation of tween soccerettes and their ever-supportive family units. Somehow, amidst the girls’ squealing and the thunderous clamor of their bare feet running to and from the pool area, Amanda, the greatest employee of the world’s greatest Days Inn (in 2006, by the company’s own estimation) not only managed to make us a reservation at an inexpensive motor inn in Hanover, about a half-hour away, but printed us up door-to-door MapQuest directions. Gettysburg is good people.

We pulled up into the parking lot of the Clearview Motor Inn into what appeared to be a scene from “Cops.” Two young white guys in wife beaters eyed us from the concrete porch in front of a room with an open door, which abruptly closed. A strung out looking dude with a tattooed skull got up from his plastic lawnchair and scurried into the shadows. One of the beefy looking kids asked us if we wanted "to party". The funny thing is, I rarely think twice about these things in Thailand – it’s simply, “Okay, those guys are drug dealers, and that guy’s a junkie, and there are the prostitutes… What should we do for dinner?” But, for whatever reason, here in my homeland, even though I have a cell phone and know how to communicate with the police, it all seems so much sketchier.

Needless to say, we made sure the room had a deadbolt, and we keep our possessions with us at all times -- I’ve certainly stayed in worse accomodation -– however, I think we’re going to be moving on. Why? We were awakened at about five A.M. by the sound of glass breaking and a voice yelling, “F@%k you, Jamie! Come get some!” From what Jamie told the police, I guess her boyfriend found out where she had been sleeping (and if he'd been able to see in, with whom).

But if we’d only spent a little longer enjoying the sights of eastern Pennsylvania – from Easton’s Weyerbacher Brewing Company, where we were feted with samples of their various tasty brews (relax, mom – eight samples at ½ oz. each works out to a quarter of a pint, which is well below the legal limit, even for "Blithering Idiot", Weyerbacher's barleywine), to the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, from whence McGregor’s family left for down South (apparently there wasn’t a lot going on there back in the day either). But we knew we’d found a good place when, searching for the Lost River Caverns, we saw the star. Mystified at first by the signs in heavenly blue (“Follow the star to Bethlehem attractions” and “Let Bethlehem glitter, please don’t litter!”), we became entranced by the obvious scheming of a hyperactive Chamber of Commerce. It drew us right into town, which had a certain charm, something a lot of former industrial towns cannot claim, but we soon shook off the trance of the star and reprioritized. Did we really want to see Bethlehem’s Banana Factory? The Pennsylvania Dutch Miniature Village? Or the wonders of the earth, parceled out in $9.50 portions?

I’m glad we ended up making it to the caverns, but perhaps, if only we’d dallied a little longer in Bethlehem, we might have pulled over for the night during the frightful storm yesterday evening. As it is, unable to find lodging in any of the area’s inns due to an annual pilgrimage, we’ve slept within these unsavory walls, albeit, in two queen-sized beds. Who knows what light morning brings? Are we the wise men from the East? We number but two... In any case, the decision to stay here, perhaps not the wisest.

So, two Saturdays ago, as I was bicycling down to my unfunny joke of a geology course, I got a phone call from a classmate informing me that there was no class this week. I was beside myself with joy – it was as if suddenly a heavy burden had been replaced with a full-body massage. I biked down to the Prospect Park boathouse, a beautiful Victorian-era building beside the Lullwater, a languorous green pond that links the cascades of the ravine to the lake below. I put my bike down on the dock, emptied my pockets, and practiced some yoga amidst the birdsong and the dappled light streaming through the new leaves, a mottled green canopy topping the trees surrounding the pond, thrusting skyward. I felt my body pulsing with life, like those trees, connecting the earth and the heavens, the axis mundi.

I remounted my bicycle, rejuvenated, and took the high path to Mt. Prospect. Around this peak, the borough’s highest, is a Revolutionary War battlefield, where 400 Maryland soldiers laid down their lives to stall the Brits so that Washington and the rest of the troops could make it to the harbor, to cross over to Jersey and safety. That morning, the most strife I observed was the grumbling of teenagers who’d been conscripted into community service, shoveling dirt off of the crumbling pavement leading to the mountaintop, where birders quietly stood transfixed by some tiny feathered soul, singing its heart out to the world. Walking my bike, circumambulating the peak, I came across a man dressed in all black engaged in a curious practice: moving like a cat amidst the trees, he would throw a ring attached to a long rope; as he retracted the ring, he would swing a short wand, which had a hook protruding from its midsection. With his ring and wand, I assumed it was some form of tantric magic, but he told me it was a Japanese martial art practice, that the ring stuns your opponent, the scythe knocks them down, and the rope ties them up. I watched his slow dance for a few more minutes, and rode on.

I ended up at the Brooklyn waterfront, where people were riding to increase awareness about a new park to stretch from Atlantic Avenue all the way up the river to the current park under the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. I met up with a friend, and we sat in the springtime sunlight, watching the tugboats, barges, and sailboats dance between the monumental architecture of the bridges. I convinced her to join me in a pilgrimage to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, where we sat on a dock and shared a banana split for breakfast. We then rendez-vous’d with two other friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in many moons, and strolled through Park Slope, beneath the outstretched arms of the blossoming trees that line every block of brownstones. Again, the sunlight cascaded through the tree branches, highlighting the flowers and the new leaves against the dark wood. Stoop sales were being held throughout the neighborhood, and I picked up a number of wonderful items on the cheap. We sat and had a beer on the stoop of my friend’s old building, where I bought a beautiful hand-thrown vase for my mom’s birthday.

I returned home that afternoon earlier than I would have if I’d been in class, feeling full from the sunlight, the ice cream, the beer, and the love of my friends, and of the spirit of Brooklyn, a remarkably beautiful place to spend springtime. I lay down on the couch, and one of my oldest buddies called. I remember feeling incredibly lucky. “Hey man, I’ve got some really bad news. Arthur Harris hung himself. The funeral’s tomorrow.” Instantly, all of the wonders of my day seemed so inconsequential, shadowed by the untimely death caused by our high school friend’s dark mind.

I have to say, it wasn’t completely unexpected. I hadn’t seen Artie for a few years, but he’d had a dark outlook on life back in high school, which is when he began self-medicating his depression with booze: not a great remedy. The last time I’d seen him, drinking at the bar by the train station in our suburban hometown, he’d been down on everything – his parents, his job, women, politics – but he was completely full of love for his little brother, Robbie. And so really what crossed my mind was, “Artie, how could you do this to Robbie?” Had his self-loathing grown to eclipse the fraternal love he’d so often professed? I began the difficult task of calling our other friends with the news.

The next day I had two memorial services to go to. The first, at my childhood temple, was for another high school friend whose father, a well-known oncologist, had passed away after struggling for years with a brain tumor. His service was full of levity and laughter – it was truly a celebration of life. It was by no means a whitewash job – though I didn’t know the deceased well, his characteristic argumentativeness and cutting wit came out in his tributes – but everyone in attendance had a good laugh. My friend Jonas read his father’s self-penned eulogy, apologizing in advance to the rabbi if it was not kosher. “But,” Jonas quipped, “we’re having him cremated, so what’s one more shanda?” His father’s words began, “Maybe they were right. Maybe I’m being welcomed by 72 virgins right now…” The doctor’s irreverence and good humor until the end were completely evident.

Artie’s service was, understandably, much heavier. Though there were a lot of people from high school there, none of us got up to speak. All of his eulogizers, save the rabbi, were college friends, one of whom read a piece that Artie had written about how he’d been a pretty big screw-up and was contemplating falling into the void. How to balance that with the cherry trees outside the temple, heavy with blossoms, the delicate matrix of their petals capturing the sunlight with complex beauty?

The rabbi had said that Arthur J. Harris died of a disease called depression. I acknowledge that mental illness is all-too-real, and it’s an area that our finest doctors still don’t fully understand, but I’m not ready to say that Artie couldn’t have made choices to help in his treatment, to help relieve his suffering. On the one hand, his suffering is over; on the other, he’s simply managed to pass it along to his mother and Robbie, who have to bear the burden of Artie’s actions for the rest of their days.

I went up that week to sit shiva, the Jewish custom of having friends and family come over to the house of the bereaved to pay their respects and eat pastries. As expected, the place was a madhouse – I could barely get in the front door. After the religious service, the place started clearing out. Robbie, with whom I’d wanted to speak, ran off with his friends, as eighth graders are wont to do, and a couple of friends and I decided to stick around to talk to Artie’s mom.

She was holding up pretty well, considering she’d lost her son a few days earlier, although I think one of the functions of a shiva is to keep you busy with guests so that the reality of your loss creeps in slowly. Her candor with us made evident how much Artie had told her about his personal life – she recalled a story about girls teasing Artie during ballroom dancing in sixth grade – and she basically believes that his frustrations with women was a major source of his depression. It turns out that Arthur was the press secretary for State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and that he was doing an incredible job, keeping Cuomo on the front page of the Times practically every day for a month. She said that his colleagues had told her this was unheard of, that Artie was incredibly good at what he did.

So, Robbie, why did your brother see only the darkness? I’m not sure, but I hope his example inspires you to do the opposite. Sometimes acknowledging the shadow allows us to realize that darkness is a function of light. When something appears to block our perspective, it’s easy to think that it is the end-all-be-all. We forget that all things, in time, shall pass: that this too, as terrible as it may be, shall pass. Wherever there is darkness, it is bordered by light. Once we can see the darkness for what it is, a temporary phenomenon beyond our control, we can begin to control our response to this phenomenon, opening the potential for seeing new things. After our eyes get over the sight of the dark vase, we can relax our gaze and beings of light emerge to comfort us. One of my dearest friends had the same experience at the same age and is now undoubtedly one of the most life-affirming people on the planet – the loss of his brother ultimately aroused his spirit into the desire to suck out every drop of experience this world has to offer. You have eternity to be dead – our days are short, live them well.

Rest in peace, Artie. We miss you.

This semester, I have spent most of my Saturdays attending the gravest waste of time that I’ve experienced since a few years ago when I last took education courses at Brooklyn College. I don’t know why classes for teachers taught by teachers have to be so atrocious in every respect. I feel that the attitude unconsciously expressed by the professor is: “We all have a lot of other, more important stuff going on in our lives, so let’s just show up, kill some time, I’ll give you some joke assignments and you’ll turn something in and everybody gets an A.” I hate this crap.

The course was supposed to be 6 credits in geology at the graduate level. The problems with the course are twofold. First, the student population is completely split in two – half of the class are career teachers with little to no knowledge of science who are fulfilling a distribution requirement for their Masters, which has become necessary thanks to No Child Left Behind, and the other half are earth science teachers who are trying to become certified in their subject area, a difficult venture as New York State only recognizes certain geology courses (such as the farce in which I am enrolled) as valid, whereas the infinitely more challenging geology classes I took at Hamilton don’t count for a sack of bureaucrats.

Regardless, part of the problem with this class is that half of us could ace the Earth Science Regents while blind drunk, and the other half would require a few months of intensive coaching to eke out a passing grade. The other problem is the professor, who has done honor to the term “incompetent”. It’s hard to decide which part of his incompetence to focus on. The man routinely walks out of class for up to an hour at a time to “make photocopies”, leaving us with the same worksheets that he assigns his high school students, which the teachers of earth science scoff at because it’s the same basic stuff that we teach our middle school students, but which thoroughly confuse the others, because they’ve never been taught the material. When he does attempt to teach, he routinely confuses the most basic principles of science, as well as confusing most of the students, with his claims that oceanic crust sinks below continental crust “because it’s lighter” or that, as cool air moves to a warmer area, it cools down.

Worse, the course gives no sense of the breadth of the material – it would be difficult enough to cover the entire discipline in twelve meetings even if he didn’t dedicate five of them to discussing how carbon dioxide affects climate change. The entirety of this surreal experience could be summarized in a single anecdote: the professor wanted to show us an episode of “Scooby Doo Adventures” where the Mystery Machine crew go down to Antarctica to combat global warming, despite the fact that he had clearly demonstrated a week earlier that that we could not use the DVD player because we didn’t have the right cables. This is supposed to be a graduate level class in geology; it leaves me feeling dirty – like I’m simply trading time and money for credits. During his desperate fumbling with the DVD player, I walked out of class, got on my bike, and met my friend Esther at the Botanic Gardens for a resplendent afternoon amidst the cherry trees and the blooming tulips. When I returned two hours later, nothing had happened. It may be a joke class, but it’s no longer funny.