Tag Archives: Grief

In the Shadow (How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?)

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Updated 2007.09.12: Added brief bio and link for Renee Barret-Arjune.

Haddadada the gargoyle stands watch behind the maple in my backyard.
Haddadada

I’d rather be writing about something else, but this presents itself right now. Better I write it while it’s fresh, and raw, and resist polishing the life from it.

Earlier this evening, I learned of the death of John Larsen, someone I knew from my old days in the East Village. We were neighbors, bar buddies, and, for a hot minute, boyfriends.

In March of 1996, I had just started reading Walt Odets‘ “In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV-Negative in the Age of AIDS“, the first book I read which gave voice to feelings shared by many of my cohort, gay men of a certain age: survivor guilt, and a spiritual crisis which has ravaged many of us. I wrote:

March 1996

 so far surviving
what will it mean to be alive
having outlived generation after generation
decades of death
the explosion widening until, finally
and yes, with some grim, righteous satisfaction
finally noone can truthfully say
they are not also affected

 imagine how it will be
when your closest friends are strangers
when long ago you gave up hope
of growing old together
as everyone you’ve loved, and despised
has died, seven times over
when you’ve learned, and loved, and lost
and learned, loved, lost
and …
When each new friend is met with the knowledge
that they too will leave soon
but it no longer matters
because, you think, you’ve already grieved their deaths too

 the corpses pile up
against the walls you’ve built around yourself
walking along familiar streets
past the bars, your old haunts
you see tombstones, crosses, ashes
and you’re not safe, even in your own mind
especially at night
when the walls must come down
and you must remember the dead

 you want to believe you’ve come so far
but it hasn’t even begun

I moved to Brooklyn in June of 1992. I’d lived 13 years in the East Village, in the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. My move was neither well-planned nor well-executed. I knew I had to move. I didn’t know how important it would be to me for my survival, for my recovery. Though I could not surface the thought at that time, let alone voice it, I was also running, trying to run, away. I couldn’t face any more death.

January 25, 1994

 ghosts

 glimpsed in a stranger’s gait
darting behind another’s mask
in that moment

 for how long
must I never forget?

 the epicenter
reaches to numbers inconceivable
my heart implodes

 when darkness falls
how should I greet it

 for a moment
I thought I saw you
but you left long ago

Reminders of the upcoming 6th Anniversary of 9/11 are piling up. My first day back at work from my North Carolina trip, I walked by the Deutsche Bank building – ruined in the attacks, condemned, and only now being dismantled – where two firefighters had lost their lives the day before. I could see the blackened scaffolding and walls of the building. I smelled the smoke, startled for a few minutes, taken back to the months after the attacks, when the fires burned for months, when we walked every day through the crematory of downtown Manhattan. I know – knew, met a handful of times – a woman, Renee Barret-Arjune, who died from injuries she received in the World Trade Center attacks. It’s how we measure our distance from such things: who we knew, how many, how close.

Earlier this summer, Eleanor Traubman of Creative Times gave me a little gem of a book, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century of Life in the Garden. It’s by and about the poet, Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006), written with Genine Lentine and with photographs by Marnie Crawford Samuelson. When we met at the Flatbush meet-up, she recommended this book to me.

I’ve estimated that half of everyone I’ve ever known has already died: from AIDS, chemical dependence or overdose, or suicide. I should have expected to feel resonance with a centenarian gardener-poet writing at the end of his life. Here’s an excerpt from Kunitz’ “The Layers”:

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.

Kunitz closes more hopefully:

no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

This evening, fresh with the news of a death of a friend, I look behind. Nor am I done with my changes.

Renee Barrett-Arjune worked as a compensation accountant at Cantor Fitzgerald in Tower 1 of the World Trace Center. She grew up in Brooklyn and lived in Irvington, NJ. She was active in the church where Blog Widow John worked at the time; I met her a couple of times through him. She was 41.

Her name is inscribed in a bronze panel – #N-48 – along the North Pool of the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero. The names of Cantor Fitzgerald employees and consultants make up 34, nearly half, of the panels surrounding the North Pool.

American Dream

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A post on Bay Ridge Blog reminded me of an incident I haven’t thought of in many years. Any romance street explosives might once have held left me on the afternoon of a hot, sunny 4th of July.

In 1980, within nine months of moving to New York, I had my own apartment, a fifth floor walkup in a tenement building in the East Village. The rent was cheap.

Across the street was – still is, for all I know – the NYC headquarters of the Hell’s Angels. My apartment faced the street. Every 4th of July, they closed off the street and had their block party. Fireworks and firecrackers were always part of the activities. After the first few years, the novelty wore off, then transformed into endurance trauma.

Over the years, the scale and scope escalated. More fireworks, more elaborate displays, larger booms. My least favorite was some kind of single-shot explosive. It was launched from a canister on the street, rose several stories, then exploded. It rose to just below roof height, right outside my windows. Even on a bright, sunny day, you could see the flash of light through the dirty plastic roll-up shades. Then you felt – not heard – the percussive shock wave pass through your body. Then you noticed your ears were ringing.

One year, I think in the late 80s, my neighbor across the hall invited me to look after his apartment and his cat while he escaped for the 4th. This was a vacation for me as well: he lived in the back of the building, away from the explosions. And he had air-conditioning and cable television, both inconceivable luxuries to me at the time.

I was up on the roof for a while, looking down at the street, watching the people and their barbeques. People were talking, laughing, playing their radios. This year the Angels were loading up metal trash cans with boxes of god knows what, M80s? Then they set fire to them. The first few would go off, sounding like nothing more than loud firecrackers. Then more would catch, firing closer together, then they were firing all at once in a roar magnified by the metal in the can, smoke and flames rising out and up, then dying down, slowly, then silent. The devil’s Jiffy-Pop.

When I’d had enough, I went back downstairs, into the A/C. I could still hear explosions, but they were muffled, distant. I watched TV.

I felt the shock wave pass from the front of the building to the back. Through me, through every piece of furniture in the room, through the building itself. I felt the pressure wave pass through and around me. There was no other sound.

I ran to the roof, to the front of the building, and looked down. On the street, where the trash can had been, was a metal ring. It was smoking. It took me a moment to realize it was from the bottom of the can. The bottom of the can, the rest of the can, was gone. The asphalt of the street beneath where the can had been was on fire.

The scores of explosives, which had crescendoed and subsided like sulfurous popcorn throughout the day, this time had exploded all at once. The trash can was instantly converted into shrapnel slicing into the crowds at street-level. The people on the street were shocked and dazed. People shut off their radios. At first the street was silent. Then strained voices, crying, and screams. From five floors above, I saw blood.

A young man had been hanging out with friends, with family. He was staying with relatives who’d journeyed here before him. Maybe he’d come here to stay, maybe he was thinking of it. He’d only been in this country a month. I didn’t know him. I didn’t even know he existed until a piece of trash can propelled halfway down the block found him. It sliced his jugular. He was dead in minutes.

As I said, I haven’t thought of this in a long time, maybe 20 years. All these images, these sensations, are vivid in me right now. Before I read the post from Bay Ridge, I was going to go to sleep. It will take me a while to get back to that place now.

Grief & Gardening #7: The Garden of Memory

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Yesterday afternoon I was in the East Village. I took a chance and went to visit the first garden I worked on in New York City. I haven’t seen it in nearly 15 years.

It’s not visible from the street. It’s behind a tenant-owned building on 1st Avenue. You’d never know it was there, like so many hidden garden treasures in the city.

The last time I had seen it was sometime shortly after I moved to Brooklyn in 1992. I went back twice. The first time, I saw that, despite neglect, the garden was holding its own. Some things had spread surprisingly well. The hardy Begonia grandis had escaped the bed and spread into the dry-stacked brick retaining walls and halfway across the brick path. By my second visit, someone had “weeded” the garden, removing all of the Begonia, not knowing what they had.

It was a little disheartening. My move to Brooklyn had been disruptive. I was not so much moving toward something as running away from and leaving behind – abandoning – much of my life. I had hoped the garden would continue without me. It seemed as if it might not.

When I went to visit it yesterday, my expectations were low. It could have been worse. I noticed the big changes first, then some details.

20 years ago, we planted a paperbark maple, Acer griseum, as the centerpiece of the garden. It was an outrageous purchase: $300 for a 6-foot tree. I was astonished that it was still there. It’s now huge, probably 20′ high and as wide, nearly filling the width of the backyard. I noticed some dead branches, but otherwise it seems healthy and vigorous. With a judicious pruning, it has decades ahead of it.

The holly which had graced the corner of the yard was overgrown, leaning out from both walls, racing the maple for the light. The two large Ailanthus which had shaded half the backyard were gone. Much of the garden was a rampant carpet of green, mostly Virginia creeper.

Closer inspection of the green told me not all was lost. I recognized the leaves of plants I had planted all those years ago. Epimedium, Cyrtomium, lotsa Hosta. There’s now a carpet of variegated Solomon’s seal. Toad lily. Climbing Hydrangea. I even saw the distinct blue-green scalloped leaves of bloodroot, growing yards from where I had planted it.

And, I was happy to see, the Begonia is still happily seeding itself around. It had not been extirpated after all.

So the garden is still there. In desperate need of weeding and shredding, but largely intact. My visions of what the garden could become, expressed through the selection and placement of plants, have drifted and blurred.

I lived in the East Village for 12 years before moving to Brooklyn. It was where I landed in New York City. Through this garden, the breakup of lovers was transmuted into friendship. New lovers courted in its embrace. I celebrated my 30th birthday there. Many of the others who helped build this garden, men who were my neighbors, died long ago. That garden holds them in my memory.

News, NYC, April 20: The Daffodil is now our official flower

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[Updated, 2007.02.22 10:00 EDT: The Parks Department finally posted the Press Release on their Web site.]

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced today [April 20] that the daffodil has been honored as the official flower of New York City.

“I am pleased to announce that the daffodil has been selected as the official flower of the City of New York,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “This flower has earned the distinction, the Daffodil Project makes the City a more beautiful place every year, and bring us all together by serving as a living memorial to the victims of September 11th.”

– The Daffodil Named The Official Flower Of The City Of New York, Parks Press Release

I wrote about the Daffodil Project last fall as part of my series of posts about Grief & Gardening. 2006 was the first year that Daffodils were made available to NYC residents through neighborhood associations and other community organizations. In previous years, the daffodils were planted in parks, along parkways, and in other public areas by the Parks Department.

In October 2001, the Parks Department teamed up with New Yorkers for Parks (NY4P) and landscape architect Lynden Miller to launch the Daffodil Project, a citywide initiative to create a living memorial of hope after the tragedies of September 11. Since the inception of the Daffodil Project, over 20,000 volunteers and Parks staffers have planted over three million bulbs in 1,200 parks, playgrounds, schools, community gardens and patches of green space throughout the City.

“One of the most brilliant and dependable harbingers of spring is the annual re-emergence of three million daffodils,” said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. “Thanks to the energy and generosity of our many partners, communities throughout the City have been united through the act of planting this hope-bearing flower. As the official flower of our City, daffodils will continue decorating our landscape with fields of gold.”

“After the attacks of 9/11, New Yorkers for Parks was honored to work with the City of New York to create the Daffodil Project,” said Christian DiPalermo, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks (NY4P). “The blooming daffodils represent a living memorial of hope and we are delighted that Mayor Bloomberg is recognizing the its significance as New York City’s official flower.”

The Daffodil Project is the largest volunteer planting effort in New York City’s history. The Daffodil Project is made possible in part by the generosity of Dutch bulb supplier, Hans van Waardenburg of B&K Flowerbulbs. He has pledged to donate 500,000 daffodil bulbs to the project each year as long as there are volunteers willing to plant them.

– The Daffodil Named The Official Flower Of The City Of New York, Parks Press Release

Just in time for spring, the city has a new official flower.

The city announced Friday that the daffodil has been chosen as the city’s official flower.

The flower took on a special significance after the September 11th attacks, when the city launched the Daffodil Project.

To remember those who lost their lives, volunteers have planted more than three million bulbs in parks and playgrounds across the five boroughs.
– Daffodil To Bloom As The City’s Official Flower, NY1 News

The IPCC Report: Grief & Gardening #6

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On Friday in Paris, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first volume, “The Physical Basis of Climate Change,” of their Fourth Assessment Report, “Climate Change 2007.” The Summary for Policymakers (aka SPM, available in PDF only) presents the synopsis of the findings. Other sections of the full report will be released later this year.

I’ve been reading the reactions and responses – angry, depressed, pessimistic, or nihilistic – to this report from my favorite garden and nature bloggers.

We are experiencing, and witnessing, grieving on a global scale. We are grieving for the world. And the world is grieving.

I’ve been processing my own feelings about all of this, and trying to formulate my own response. For now, I don’t want to respond directly to the IPCC report, nor others’ reactions to it. Here’s all I want to share right now.

David Bowie – Five Years Live 1972

The Daffodil Project: Grief & Gardening #5

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DSC_4132Today I planted bulbs in the front yard, including daffodils I received through the Beverly Square West Neighborhood Association, which were donated through The Daffodil Project. With this act, our front yard becomes part of a living memorial to those murdered on September 11, 2001.

The Daffodil Project was originally created to commemorate September 11. …
The Daffodil Project is made possible in part by the generosity of a Dutch bulb supplier, Hans van Waardenburg of B&K Flowerbulbs, who has pledged to donate 500,000 daffodil bulbs to the project each year as long as there are volunteers willing to plant them. More than 20,000 volunteers have responded to his challenge so far. And thanks to their efforts, nearly 3 million yellow daffodils bloomed in over 1,300 individual sites across the five boroughs in the spring of 2006.
– The Daffodil Project, New Yorkers for Parks

… This act of immense generosity has been coupled with that of Joseph Temeczko, a Minnesotan handyman who willed his entire life-savings of $1.4 million to New York City, $300K of which will pay for the shipping of these precious bulbs for the following 5 years. Temeczko, who is said to have been a Nazi prison camp survivor, entered the U.S. through Ellis Island and lived for a time in New York City where he worked at the Statue of Liberty. Following September 11th, 2001, he redirected his estate “to honor those who perished in the disaster.” An avid gardener, himself, he loved to share his garden’s harvest with others, and passed away only a month later while working in his own garden.
– My Community Hero: The Daffodil Project, Claudia Herrera Hudson

This Daffodil Project is distinct in that it involves no particular site. All public parks and community gardens are potential sites for the Daffodil Project. After 9/11, New Yorkers turned to their parks as a common ground where they could congregate, debate, memorialize, grieve, and find spiritual and physical renewal. The Daffodil Project is a lasting tribute to the people that died and the heroes that were born that day, it is a symbol of remembrance and rebirth in the heart of what is common ground for all of the citizens of New York: their public parks.
– The Daffodil Project, The Living Memorials Project

Here are some more photos of me in the act this afternoon, graciously taken by my neighbor, Jeff Tolbert. (Since this is my photographic debut on my own blog, I decided not to upload the flattering butt-crack photos.)
DSC_4129DSC_4131DSC_4138
DSC_4144DSC_4151DSC_4153
DSC_4160DSC_4173DSC_4179

Related Posts

The Daffodil Project

Links

Plans for bequest made by Joseph Temeczko, Press Release, Parks, February 12, 2003

Buying Indulgences: The Carbon Market

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My opinion – based on gut reaction, not any deep analysis – of carbon trading is that it’s equivalent to the religious practice of buying indulgences: sin all you like, as long as your pockets are deep enough to buy “penance.”

It doesn’t work. The problem is that carbon, like sin, is itself a very deep pocket. There’s no cap on carbon emissions, at least in this country, the single largest contributor. Without a cap, “supply” is unlimited, and no incentive to reduce emissions. There’s a perverse dysfunctional incentive to emit more carbon to create more “product” to sell.

Selling indulgences creates a disincentive to reduce sin.

The business of climate change is heating up — along with the planet — so fast that many ordinary folks are left wanting to do right but wondering where their money goes. The emerging carbon-offset industry has little oversight or transparency, so it’s difficult for consumers to see if they are really being a “hero” by going “zero” — as Travelocity preaches on its Web site — or being suckered.

There’s no quick and easy way for consumers to see exactly how the money is spent.
…
Just because someone pays to offset a ton of carbon pollution doesn’t mean that a ton is taken out of the atmosphere. Also, offsetting a ton of carbon dioxide doesn’t even mean that is the gas being offset. Everything is converted to carbon — meaning that one molecule of methane, a really bad gas — is equal to 23 molecules of carbon dioxide — a somewhat bad gas.

– Feel Less Than Green?

via 3rliving, a local business on 5th Avenue in Park Slope which promotes the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The Wound

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This morning, I accidentally (subconsciously) got on the wrong train this morning to work. This route brings me to Trinity Church and its cemetery. It also takes me past Liberty Plaza, reconstructed since the 9/11 attacks, and across the street from Ground Zero. Earlier this week, on October 27, the Office of NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced that NYC will expand the search for human remains in and around Ground Zero, the former site of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan.

Liberty PlazaLiberty Plaza, looking northwest from Broadway toward Ground Zero. 1 Liberty Plaza is the building on the right. The Service Road, where human remains were recently found, runs in front of the World Financial Center buildings, visible in the background.

Liberty PlazaLiberty Plaza, looking west from Broadway. The Deutsche Bank building, where human remains were recently found, is the tall building with the scaffolding. Liberty Street runs to its right.

The New York Times also noted yesterday that the remains of three more victims had just been identified, including the head flight attendant and a passenger on the plane which struck the north tower. With these, remains of 1,601 of 2,749 victims have been identified. That means 1,148 are yet to be.

Three of the sites to be searched are visible in the photos above:

7. 1 LIBERTY PLAZA [Building at right of first photo]

The rooftop of this 53-story building will also be searched, for the same reason.

8. LIBERTY STREET [The street running to the right of both photos]

Exploratory excavations are planned between West and Greenwich Streets, in parts of Liberty that were never fully rebuilt. There may be a layer of trade center material under the temporary asphalt surface.

9. FORMER DEUTSCHE BANK BUILDING [The tall building in the second photo]

Since September 2005, some 760 human remains, mostly small bone fragments, have been found on the rooftop and upper floors of this 41-story building at 130 Liberty Street, which was damaged and badly contaminated on 9/11. It is eventually to be demolished.

– Where the City Will Search for Remains From Sept. 11, New York Times, November 2, 2006

The numbers are keyed to an excellent map the Times put together, showing all the locations where searches will be concentrated. There are 12 of them, covering several acres.

I worked downtown then, as I still do. I remember how – quickly in retrospect, achingly slowly at the time – the news went from rescue to recovery. When I heard that relatives were being asked for toothbrushes, combs and hairbrushes, anything from which DNA samples could be taken for identification, my heart sank. I knew what that meant. They weren’t finding bodies. They were finding “remains”: the fragments, shreds, traces and dust that once were people.

In the weeks and months that followed, I saw the grim grey goo which covered everything and ran in the streets and gutters, smelled the sharp acrid ozone smoke when the wind blew the wrong way. I regarded these then as remains, for that’s what they were: all that remained.

I remember too how quickly I angered when someone, a friend, referred to the “tragedy.” “Tragedy?!” I bellowed. “It was an atrocity.” She nodded, in acceptance, and asked why. I paused to find the words and replied, “People did this.”

People did this in the name of their gods, as the greatest atrocities have always been committed. As they continue to be committed today.

Gardening Matters: The death of Takeo Shiota (Grief & Gardening #4)

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[Updated 2007.02.23: Added link to the issue of Plants & Gardens News (PDF, requires membership login) which mentioned Shiota’s death in the U.S. internment camps.]

A video sparked a connection for me among three seemingly unrelated topics: a Japanese Garden built over 90 years ago, World War II, and the Department of Homeland Security.

DSC_0013This is a view from the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I took this photo last year, November 5, 2005. BBG has this to say about this garden on their Web site:

It is considered to be the masterpiece of its creator, Japanese landscape designer Takeo Shiota (1881-1943). Shiota was born in a small village about 40 miles from Tokyo, and in his youth spent years traversing Japan on foot to explore the natural landscape. In 1907 he came to America, driven by an ambition to create, in his words, “a garden more beautiful than all others in the world.”
– Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Note the year of Shiota’s death, 1943. I learned recently, from a review of the book Defiant Gardens in the Fall 2006/Winter 2007 issue of BBG’s Plants & Gardens News (PDF, requires membership login), that Shiota died in a United States internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II.

It has happened here before. It can happen again. And our government has plans to do so.

The Pearl Harbor attack intensified hostility towards Japanese Americans. As wartime hysteria mounted, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 causing over 120,000 West Coast persons of Japanese ancestry (Nikkei) to leave their homes, jobs, and lives behind to move to one of ten Relocation Camps.

This constituted the single largest forced relocation in U.S. history.
– Minidoka Internment National Monument

The largest, so far. I am painfully aware of the parallels between Pearl Harbor and September 11. As bad as the hysteria has been, it can get worse.

On January 24 of this year, the Department of Homeland Security awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) a $385M contract [my emphasis added]:

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster.
– Halliburton Press Release: KBR AWARDED U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY CONTINGENCY SUPPORT PROJECT FOR EMERGENCY SUPPORT SERVICES

This has been widely reported in the press, including the New York Times. Peter Dale Scott wrote an extensive analysis for Pacific News Service.

I can add little, except to relate these current historical events to the atrocity committed against a single person over 60 years ago, and share my feelings about all of this. Takeo Shiota was responsible for one of the most beautiful gardens in the world, one which I and millions of others have enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy. I will never again be able to visit that garden without wondering about him and his life, and thinking of how my government killed him. It is the least I can do.

Video: Crosby & Nash, “Immigration Man”

I haven’t thought of this song in many years, decades maybe. It was always one of my favorites, hauntingly beautiful vocals and chord progressions.

I don’t know who’s responsible for assembling the images into the video, but it’s an effective piece of work. This is what reminded me of the Halliburton contract, and led me to post this.

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