El Diario

Sunday, 4 January 2009

Saw LM off to her game. Checked for messages on Internet, a network. Showered, dressed, and walked, stepping lively, over to bagel shop. Egg and swiss on toasted sesame bagel, please. Counted change, correctly given. Thank you and have a good day. Over to F train station a few yards away from storefront, no liquor, with sign: CONTACT US REALTY. Is that U.S. or us, I thought on subway train gone local. Homeless man now: I am tired, I am hungry, and I am alone. Looking into my bag, I recognized what he was saying, and, after tugging on his torn coat, offered my egg and swiss. Thank you and God bless you, sir. No need to thank me for temporary comforts. Homeless man talks about drinking, losing his family, and reaching depths he never knew existed. At Jay Street, a mariachi band minus the mariachi--just guitar and accordion--gets on to play, entertain. Most are annoyed and I have a headache and remain without a morsel to eat. The band plays a few bars of a folk tune, shaped for delicate American ears, before quitting and asking for some money. It's a song I've heard before, on the record player my father once used, and at which he cry on Saturday nights. Why are you crying, I asked him once. Nothing, it's nothing. I didn't believe him then, and I don't believe him now. That's another song I've heard before, oh, it's nothing--there's no need to worry. It's a song without a title, without time changes, without a discernible pace; it is the song of vulgar laughter that was once heard in Newtown Creek before the chemical release, or in the Bowery before the arrival of another kind of filth. It's a song so commonplace that it has now become indistinguishable from crank-noise, indistinguishable even from itself. I think of that other rarity in music, genius, and John Bonham. He drank himself to death, you know, and I'm scared because I am seeing it happen all over again, closer. At 14th Street, a woman with a black beret and fur-collared coat gets on, looking intently at her map. She's lost and she knows it; the entire subway car knows it. I tell myself that she is a freelance consultant from Buenos Aires, or Prague, and she is in New York to land some business contacts, and perhaps to see some friends who have long since abandoned their ancestral homelands. The newspaper has an article about tourists steadily destroying Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat, and I resolve to add to that erosion. I think of LM, and wonder, among other things, about the plays she is making on the field. Onward to Lexington Avenue, where the woman with the black beret gets up and leaves, followed closely by a man holding a book whose title reads BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, year of issue unknown. No one writes short stories anymore. The best short stories are written as synopses of, and introductions to, articles in medical journals like JAMA and Lancet: Prostate cancer mortality in the United States has declined in recent years, but this cancer remains the most common nonskin epethelial malignancy in US men, with 186, 320 new cases and 28, 660 deaths (the second leading cause of cancer death) estimated for 2008. A grim prognosis, duly cited and noted. Father again, and his health. Parents off now in Colombia to regain composure, pleasant sun. Home is 74th Street and Roosevelt Avenue, and I head off into Elmhurst. I shouldn't have tugged at the homeless man's jacket like that. I was only trying to get his attention.

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