Notes

Note: Spring Studies

On the first day of spring I’m in New Orleans among the live oaks, some of them over a thousand years old. Research warns us that loneliness kills, which may explain the oaks’ secret to survival: they are never alone, the Spanish Moss and Resurrection Fern clinging to trunks and branches with the fierce loyalty of first love. I’ve read that two trees can supply the oxygen needs of one person for one year, a gift so disproportionately generous that I’m sure the trees have noticed, and have long ago closed their eyes and imagined us gone.

*

The white azaleas of Louisiana are soon replaced with the familiar wildflowers of California. I rehearse their names as they rise from the ground——Indian paintbrush, fiddleneck, buttercups, goldfields——and by the time they blossom their names roll off my tongue.

*

I drive away from the city before 5 a.m. and study the high rises alongside the highway, a scatter of lit windows that double as signs of life. The inhabitants beam out their lives absent of details so I imagine the familiar shapes of routine and ritual. The everyday is a strong edifice until “you sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends,” writes Joan Didion, whose husband died at the dinner table. I remember the increased anxiety surrounding air travel after September 11, and the common retort that there was no reason to worry as we were far more likely to die in a car accident anyway, as if consolation can be found in disasters of “the ordinary instant.” (Didion first writes, “life changes in the instant,” then adds, “the ordinary instant,” then determines there is no need because there is no forgetting.)

*

I walk up Taylor Street and first notice the immaculate red brick, then the bronze owls, and finally the inscribed motto. “Weaving spiders come not here,” a fairy sings in Midsummer Night’s Dream. The line was adopted as motto — and the owl as symbol — of the Bohemian Club, a private boy’s club that confirms what we already know about wealth, power, and privilege: it pools into a pinprick. Rumors of elite members and bizarre activities swirl, lending the club an allure largely indebted to mystery. But then in April the club’s dishwashers, cooks, servers, and front desk attendants went on strike because working for the rich paid less than minimum wage, and despite decades of employment, raises were measured in single cents. Suddenly the club looked terribly familiar and behold the mystery vanished.

*

Within steps of the club I pass an alley, look up, and the street sign reads Hobart. I whirl around to share my disbelief but of course no one is there. I arrive at the small bar where I’m meeting a friend and because I’m the first and only customer, a bartender bounds over to take my order, a miracle on most nights. I dutifully smile and rattle off an order and then I see the owl, a wooden brooch that sits atop the bartender’s necktie. I turn around as if I’m being watched but of course no one is there. Soon my drink arrives and then my friend, so I tuck away these signs I’ve collected——the owl, weaving spiders, Hobart Alley, the other owl——because the magic of serendipity fades under the withering gaze of others, and I plan to conjure up some meaning for a bit longer.

 

Note: Serendipity

One night during junior year of high school, my classmates Sam, Jessica, and I drive to Coronado, where we eat dinner, share ice cream, and walk the beach at night like the best of them. We weren’t particularly close, in fact we hung out only a few more times that year and never again. But memory tends to surprise us with its cherry-picked moments, of car rides and insults and faces and smells that stay fresh, that outlive the rest.

*

We walk through the Hotel del Coronado toward the beach, tracing the walls with our fingertips as if to mark a trail. We slow our steps to study the framed photos of Marilyn Monroe posing in front of the very same hotel; Some Like It Hot was filmed here, which I saw shortly after with the very same Jessica. Jessica was the first person I met who went out of her way to say ‘films’ rather than ‘movies,’ a self-conscious habit that had its intended impact as I was easily impressed.

*

We push open the exit doors and light from the hallway rushes ahead then retreats. By the time the doors click shut our shoes are off and we’re running through dark toward water. I remember shouting to be heard, so there must have been wind. Jessica was a senior, so hardly older though at the time I considered it to be much older, so when she suggests that each of us share our favorite word, Sam and I go along as if obeying an older sibling. At the water’s edge we come up with yes, summer, and serendipity.

*

"Serendipity" and "there must be a God" and "it’s a sign" slip out of my mouth interchangeably, a way to acknowledge those moments that feel perfectly planned and executed, like someone had me in mind. Even the most trivial instance of serendipity inspires a thrill because it suggests the possibility that things might not be so hopelessly random after all.

*

I’m away from the city for weeks and within a few hours of my return, I’m on a walk through Golden Gate Park. I pass de Young and see the doors propped open, so I slip in and discover it’s the one free day of the month, 15 minutes before closing. Only a few of us remain and we wander noiselessly, hushed by the grandeur of art with no spectators. For the first time — how did I miss it before? — I spend time with Pierre-Edouard Baranowski by Amedeo Modigliani, a portrait of a boy with blue-green eyes. It was painted in 1918, just like his Portrait of a Young Woman, which I had recently seen at the New Orleans Museum of Art. A century later and here I am meeting them for the first time. I think, it’s a sign. Then I remember yes, summer, and serendipity.

Note: Autumn Studies

A change in life however big or small really just comes down to a split second; saying the words, signing your name, hitting send. What-could-be becomes no-turning-back in an instant, and when such power is wielded, what results is a shocking reminder of how much say we actually have in our lives.

*

My address has changed, a seemingly annual occurrence, so now the city like a roommate or a mother is beginning to have an outsized presence in my life. I have a new route to work but the faces I see are familiar and interchangeable, like the tourists in Union Square and the smokers on Maiden Lane and the girls who balance cups of coffee in cardboard carriers like the personal couriers of their colleagues (it’s almost always a girl). In her very first essay published in 1961, Joan Didion writes, “We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait.” It’s almost always a girl.

*

Sometimes when you’re in a new place and you feel low the universe simply shrugs, and other times it has you turn down one street and then another until you enter an empty, dimly lit cafe that’s playing Nat King Cole, and faith in the universe is momentarily restored. A slight lady wearing a short winter scarf serves me coffee while adding, “We have a beautiful garden in the back, too.” Sometimes people know just the right thing to say, often they don’t. Recently at work an old man with many friends passed away and I assigned myself the task of collecting remembrances. One woman responded that after mulling it over she had nothing to say: “He was such a pleasant person, and it seems, somehow, that the foibles of less-nice people are easier to recollect and recount.” Such is proof that preoccupation with a legacy is futile because legacies are dependent on the faulty memories of unreliable people.

*

With every person who enters this dim cafe, now playing Frank Sinatra’s “You Make Me Feel So Young,” I feel a quick flare of surprise because just for a little while this place was all mine, but nothing and no one is ever all ours. Far from being her only customer, the slight lady with the short winter scarf seems to know everyone on a first-name basis except me. They all know she is leaving for Japan next week. One of them delivers her a single pink rose, which quickly makes its way into a thin porcelain vase. Sometimes people know just the right thing to do, often they don’t. I once brought sunflowers to a dinner party and by the time I left, two of them were on the kitchen floor, petals plucked, discarded playthings of the hosts’s one-year-old.

*

Today is the first day of winter. Mornings are getting colder, so cold that after walking a couple miles and then stepping indoors, the heat that greets me inspires a smile that spreads across my face so widely I notice. Smiling is often intentional, perhaps more so for girls, something I do rather than something that happens to me. The natural tug feels nice.

*

This year offered enough surprises to harden even the best of us, so let’s make use of this new armor, of lessons learned, as we begin winter and soon a brand new year.