In a normal year—won’t it be sweet when we can retire that phrase from our lexicon?—our screens would be chock-a-block with glittery trailers for holiday movies. Our local festival programmers, meanwhile, would be on hiatus except for the year-end fundraising email, mulling next year’s events.
But everything’s upside down in our ongoing Bizarro World. The only major studio films of the season, Wonder Woman 1984 and Soul, are delayed summer releases that will be viewed, overwhelmingly, on home streaming platforms (HBO Max and Disney+, respectively). Festival wizards, on the other hand, are plying us with rare December programs. And are we grateful.Sponsored
SF Jewish Film Festival 40th Anniversary Hanukkah Celebration Dec. 10–17 Online
The SFJFF canceled its annual big summer bash on account of the pandemic, and this eight-day program (to correspond to the Festival of Lights) is the second online mini-fest assembled by the venerable organization this year. The lineup includes several familiar names, including preeminent Israeli director Eytan Fox’s big-screen return to romantic drama, Sublet. The remarkable Lynne Sachs continues her rewarding adventures in personal, poetic documentary with Film About a Father Who. If you missed the crowd-pleasers Oliver Sacks: His Own Life and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit during their previous Bay Area presentations, you have another chance.
As for new voices, Yossi Atia’s slight slacker comedy Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive expands on his short film of the same name. This debut feature accompanies underachieving 30-something tour guide Ronen (played by Atia) on his free daily walks to the sites of terrorist attacks of the 1990s and 2000s. The premise is subversive, if not taboo, but the movie doesn’t mine either its sociological or political implications. Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive suffers more than any other movie in the festival by not being seen in a theater with a crowd, where the minor-key absurdism and deadpan jokes would build to, if not a cascade, at least a steady trickle.
From intimate meditations on nature’s healing and drug-induced becoming, to radical deconstructions of cinema, language and architecture, this programme showcases film’s potential to both abstract and interpret a chaotic world.
Whilst some makers experiment with form and format, disrupting the image itself through corrupted DCPs and violated stock, others look to articulate the political and personal, using film as a vessel for self-expression.
For this edition, we welcome back LSFF regulars Max Hattler (Collision) and Lynne Sachs (Carolee, Barbara, and Gunvor) with collaborative work “made with and for” Barbara Hammer, alongside new additions in collective Telcosystems (Louthings) and talents-to-watch Henny Woods and Nicky Chue. Programmed by Philip Ilson. 75′
This programme contains flashing images. Please note, the film A Month Of Single Frames can only be accessed by UK audiences at the request of the filmmaker.
Films
TESTFILM #1 Telcosystems, 14’, 2020, Croatia Exploring the creative possibilities of the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) – the new global infrastructure for film projection in cinemas. Can one upset the default behavior of the DCP system, or is the system designed to exclude any possibility of human intervention?
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HORROR – PART I. Péter Lichter, Bori Máté, 8’, 2020, Hungary An abstract adaptation of Noël Carroll’s influential film theory book of the same title, using hand painted and decayed 35mm strips of classic slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street.
APPLEFIG Louise Ward Morris, 4’, 2020, United Kingdom A study of internet search algorithms’ potential to irreversibly alter how humans form meaning and understand concepts.
A MONTH OF SINGLE FRAMES Lynne Sachs, 14’, 2020, USA In 1998, filmmaker Barbara Hammer had a one month artist residency in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with no running water or electricity. While there, she shot 16mm film with her Beaulieu camera, recorded sounds with her cassette recorder and kept a journal.
PLANT PORTALS: BREATH Nicky Chue, 4’, 2020, United Kingdom An experimental meditation on the unspoken history many queer and trans people of colour carry daily, connecting bumblebees, colonial trauma, alternate universes and the complicated concept of ‘rest’ to ask: can nature heal us?
GLF LSD Jordan Baseman, 13’, 2020, United Kingdom Narrated by Alan Wakeman, an early member of the Gay Liberation Front, discussing the connection between the GLF and LSD as an essential part of becoming.
ECHOES OF DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS DURING LOCKDOWN Henny Woods, 5’, 2020, United Kingdom A recreation of uncomfortable conversations from its filmmaker’s past in a time when socialising is impossible.
SERIAL PARALLELS Max Hattler, 9’, 2020, Hong Kong Hong Kong’s signature architecture of horizon-eclipsing housing estates is reimagined as parallel rows of film strips.
CUT UP UP CUT Kristian Baughurst, 5’, 2020, United Kingdom An experimental visual poetry film created in response to the 2020 global pandemic and William S. Burroughs’ cut-up poem, Formed in The Stance.
VISIT TO BERNADETTE MAYER’S CHILDHOOD HOME / VISITA À CASA DA INFÂNCIA DE BERNADETTE MAYER
30 DE JULHO DE 1971 (por bernadette mayer)
30 de Julho Quando você é mulher, você faz um ótimo disco e uma filha, cuja filha, as portas e a placa de armadura do busto de uma mulher e os cachos, morcegos negros, desastre iminente desgraça iminente interminável iminente uma reorganização do emprego das faculdades um pombo voa pela janela o assunto emoldura, veja, apenas, tanto, quem é você? como eu vim por você? Sou a raiva minha raiva é o sentido de perfurar você eu estou colocado dentro esta peça, este é um jogada, seu homenzinho boneco cai pequena mulher boneca se aproxima, fica ferida, você se levanta de novo um milagre, nós acasalamos, como dois relógios na mesma pulseira, à prova d’água espero. Coloque-os. Acerte-os algumas horas antes do meio-dia. Algumas horas antes do meio-dia. Com tinta, sua jogada, em um certo número de horas movem-se horas. Como você mencionou antes como uma reorganização daquele que foi mencionado antes, para aquele com quem minha presença fala, eu atiro nos homens lunares de uma vez e então tenho todo esse tempo sobrando para chupar o dedo. Eu preciso arrumar um relógio e começar a precisar dele. Não há duas maneiras de fazer isso é como mijar na versão mais analítica de todas as estrelas, é como respirar, respirar a fumaça da sua própria porra de marca. Então eu fumo o seu. Seu renegado, por que não admitir e me libertar. Eu odeio as peças de xadrez. Odeio todas as correções de poder exceto o poder que tenho para te mostrar algo.
JULY 30, 1971 (by bernadette mayer)
July 30 When you are a woman you make a great record & a daughter, whose daughter, the doors & the bust armor plate of a woman and curls, black bats, impending disaster impending doom unending impending a reorganization of the employment of faculties a pigeon flies by the window the subject frames, see, just, so, much who are you? how did I come by you? I’m anger my anger is sense drills into you I am set in this piece this is a move you little man doll fall down little woman doll moves closer, is wounded, you get up again a miracle, we mate, like two watch faces on the same wrist band, waterproof i hope. Set them. Set them back a few hours to noon. Back a few hours to noon. Inked, your move, in a certain number of hours moves hours. Like you mentioned before as a reorganization of the one who was mentioned before, to the one my presence here speaks to, I shoot the moon men all at once & then I’ve got all this time left to twiddle my thumbs. I’ve got to get a watch face & start needing it. There’s no two ways about it it’s like pissing on the most analytical version of all the stars, it’s like breathing, breathe the smoke of your own fucking brand. So I smoke yours. You renegade, why not admit it & set me free. I hate chess sets. I hate all power fixes except the power I have to show you something.
—translated by sean negus
LYNNE SACHS & PAOLO JAVIER
STARFISH AORTA COLOSSUS / COLOSSO DE AORTA ESTRELA DO MAR
10. (por paolo javier)
Não é mais hoje, mas eu admito ontem eu nunca pensei
Novamente lágrimas chamam à porta começam a cair na tábua dos vinte
Langor interno verde maravilha a emergência do poema
Vento estouro chegada é você
Apareça ante o espaço vazio
Nomeia Português a minha divindade praia vazia
Nessa praia vazia nos sentamos perto por nos aquecer
Viva krakooom praia vazia filhotes de foca brincam quando submerge o panda
Fundo do oecano lareira rodízio alienígena estrada horizonte largo
Ele vem chamando feito sinal de pá sobre a tundra iluminada
Eu sei ele talvez saiba movimentos de caneta intenção chicote sob aorta de estrela-do-mar
Furacão crescendo ou bagre cidade Português sublime
Nomeie Português a ressaca além qua divindade
Terror lamente volta pergunte por que o horizonte aorta colosso impede
10. (by paolo javier)
Today it is no longer cry but admit yesterday I never once thought it
Again tears call to the door begin to fall on the board of twenty
Green inside languor wonder emergency the poem
Wind sprint arrival are you
Appear before blank space
Name English mine divinity empty beach
On that empty beach we sit close to keep warm
Live krakooom empty beach seal pups play while panda submerge
Ocean bottom hearth buffet alien lane wide horizon
He comes calling like a shovel sign above sunlit tundra
I can will may know pen movement sling intention under starfish aorta
Hurricane crescendo or catfish city sublimate English
Name English tide return furtherance qua divinity
Terror lament volta inquire why horizon aorta colossus impeach
—translated by rodrigo bravo
LYNNE SACHS & LAURA HARRISON
ORANGE GLOW / BRILHO LARANJA
BRILHO LARANJA (por lynne sachs)
Um rosto desmoronando azulado fragmento edifício rochedo em luz fúcsia não é espaço, mas um traço um nado uma escova indivisível do olho que esculpe a visão alguma luz é lâmpada e alguma é sol dentro da gema, cada traço tão diferente um rosto em uma moldura se torna um melancólico e também uma casa de triângulo de caixa.
Entrar no fogo. Entre a fumaça do oeste capturada no índice de qualidade do ar de um escuro 2 PM. Agora a poeira da hospitalidade hermética em seus pulmões fumaça em seus ouvidos.
Sim, eu posso ouvir o zumbido em seus ouvidos esfregado por esta imagem que você fez, não realmente São Francisco agora, mas é para mim, torna-se aquele lugar. Me manda lá. Sinta o calor. Nada vem através do nevoeiro, mas o calor, a crepitação da mato queimando sob os pés, o calor, a preocupação, e através de tudo isso uma linha se desenha cuspindo em movimento no líquido.
ORANGE GLOW (by lynne sachs)
A face crumbling blueness fragment building crag in fuchsia light is not space but a stroke a swim a brush indivisible from the eye that carves sight some light is bulb and some is sun inside the gem each stroke so different a face in a frame becomes a wistful and also a box triangle home.
Enter fire. Enter smoke from the West caught in the air quality index of a dark 2 PM now hermetic hospitality dust in your lungs smoke in your ears.
Yes, I can hear the ringing in your ears rubbed by this image you made, not really San Francisco now but is for me, becomes that place. Sends me there. Feel the heat. Nothing comes through the fog but the heat, the crackling of the burning brush underfoot, the heat, the worry, and through it all a line drawing itself spitting in motion in liquid.
—translated by sean negus
Lynne Sachs is a filmmaker and poet who grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and is currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Her moving image work ranges from short experimental films, to essay films to hybrid live performances. Lynne discovered her love of filmmaking while living in San Francisco where she worked closely with artists Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Ernie Gehr, Barbara Hammer, Gunvor Nelson, and Trinh T. Min-ha. Between 1994 and 2006, she produced five essay films that took her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel, Italy and Germany — sites affected by international war – where she looked at the space between a community’s collective memory and her own subjective perceptions. Looking at the world from a feminist lens, she expresses intimacy by the way she uses her camera. Objects, places, reflections, faces, hands, all come so close to us in her films. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, she searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with every new project. With the making of “Every Fold Matters” (2015), and “The Washing Society” (2018), Lynne expanded her practice to include live performance. As of 2020, Lynne has made 37 films. The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Festival International Nuevo Cine in Havana, China Women’s Film Festival and Sheffield Doc/ Fest have all presented retrospectives of her work. Tender Buttons Press published Lynne’s first book Year by Year Poems in 2019.
Bernadette Mayer is an avant-garde writer associated with the New York School of poets. The author of over 27 collections, including most recently Works and Days (2016), Eating The Colors Of A Lineup Of Words: The Early Books of Bernadette Mayer (2015) and The Helens of Troy (2013), she has received grants from The Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. From 1980-1984, she served as the director of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and has also edited and founded 0 to 9 journal and United Artists books and magazines. She has taught at the New School for Social Research, Naropa University, Long Island University, the College of Saint Rose, Miami University and at University of Pennsylvania as a Kelly Writers House Fellow.
Paolo Javier was born in the Philippines and grew up in Las Piñas, Metro Manila; Katonah, Westchester; al-Ma‛adi , Cairo; and Surrey, Greater Vancouver. A featured artist in Queens International 18, he is the author/co-performer of the 2019 chapbook/cassette EP Maybe the Sweet Honey Pours (Nion Editions/Temporary Tapes), and O.B.B., a long comics poem forthcoming from Nightboat Books. Publisher’s Weekly calls his previous book, Court of the Dragon, “a linguistic time machine,” and is the inspiration for Lynne Sachs’ film Starfish Aorta Colossus.
Laura Harrison lives and works in Chicago. Her animations focus on marginalized, social outcasts with their own sub cultures. These fringe characters provide a focal point for her concerns with diaspora, trans humanism, gender and the loss of touch in an overwhelmingly visual world. Her films have shown at various festivals internationally including The New York Film Festival, Ottowa International Animation Festival, Japan Media Arts Festival, Boston International Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, GLAS, Animafest Zagreb, VOID and Melbourne International Animation Festival. Her work has garnered many prizes, most recently a Guggenheim and Best Animation at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival.
EXCLUSIVE: Cinema Guild has acquired all U.S. distribution rights to the Lynne Sachs-directed documentary Film About a Father Who, which made its world premiere in January as the opening night film at the Slamdance Film Festival. The film is set to open at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image on January 15, 2021, alongside a retrospective of Sachs’ work. It will also be available in virtual cinemas across the country.
Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. Film About a Father Who is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings.
“We’ve long been fans of Lynne Sachs’ films and are very excited to work with her on Film About a Father Who,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly, “It’s a defining work from a fearless and deeply feeling filmmaker and we can’t wait to share it with audiences.”
“I am thrilled to be bringing my most personal and candid film yet to cinema audiences via such an adventurous and thought-provoking distributor as Cinema Guild,” said Sachs.
With a nod to the Cubist renderings of a face, Sachs’ cinematic exploration of her father offers simultaneous, sometimes contradictory, views of one seemingly unknowable man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame yet privately ensconced in secrets. With this meditation on fatherhood and masculinity, Sachs allows herself and her audience to see beneath the surface of the skin, beyond the projected reality. As the startling facts mount, she discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal.
Film About a Father Who features Ira Sachs Sr. with Lynne Sachs, Dana Sachs, Ira Sachs, Jr., Beth Evans, Evan Sachs, Adam Sachs, Annabelle Sachs, Julia Sachs and Madison Geist.
The deal was negotiated by Peter Kelly of Cinema Guild with attorney Stephen Darren Holmgren negotiating on behalf of the filmmaker.
Lynne Sachs has a resume of 35 films including Tip of My Tongue, Your Day is My Night, Investigation of a Flame, and Which Way is East. She received a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Arts. In 2019, Tender Buttons Press published Lynne’s first collection of poetry Year by Year Poems. Her recent film A Month of Single Frames won the Grand Prize at Oberhausen 2020.
Cinema Guild’s upcoming releases include Hong Sangsoo’s The Woman Who Ran, Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella and Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 ft. The company’s recent release slate includes Wang Xiaoshuai’s Chinese Portrait, Angela Schanelec’s I Was at Home, But…, and RaMell Ross’s Oscar-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening.
“The Clapping” Image by Lynne Sachs Text by Didi Goldenhar 2 min., 2020
“The Clapping” evokes the inside-out of our lives in May 2020, sheltering in place during Covid-19’s first wave. In solitude, we relish nature’s symphony – shimmering rain and splish-splash of thunderstorm – while longing for the hustle-bustle of performance and more populous times.
The experimental filmmaker and emerging poet, Lynne Sachs, returns to Filmwax to discuss a free virtual event taking place this evening, Wednesday, December 2nd at 6:30 PM Pacific / 9:30 PM Eastern. Lynne will be reading from her debut collection, “Year by Year Poems”, and shares some of her recent short films. Register at www.beyondbaroque.org/calendar.html
Lynne lives with her husband, the filmmaker Mark Street, in Brooklyn and is a regular guest on the Filmwax Radio podcast.
Espaços da Intimidade is the title of the third part of the 18th edition of the festival, with a date set between December 3 and 9, and the moment with the greatest national presence.
In this 3rd part of the Festival there are names like Diogo Pereira (“A Vida em comum”), Guilherme Sousa (“O Primeiro Passo da Melomania is a Birra”) and João Pedro Amorim (“the shadows and their names”), who present his films at world premiere (the latter two are still eligible for the Fernando Lopes Award, for the first works). This moment also summons André Guiomar and Paulo Abreu who, after visiting Porto / Post / Doc, arrive in Lisbon to present “A Nossa Terra, Nosso Altar” and “O que não se se”, respectively.
December also features “This is Paris Too”, by Lech Kowalski, “Film About a Father Who”, by the North American Lynne Sachs, and “Narciso em Férias”, by Ricardo Calil and Renato Terra, where Caetano Veloso recalls his personal experience lived during the period of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. The film will now premiere in Portugal, after being presented in September, at the Venice International Film Festival.
Between January and March, the festival welcomes in Lisbon Oleg Sentsov, Sakharov Prize for Press Freedom 2018, with the film “Numbers” and “Visions of the Empire”, by Joana Pontes (world premiere), again meets Paula Gaitán in “Luz nos Trópicos” (after the passage of “É Rocha e Rio, Negro Leo” in October), and also watches the acclaimed directors Radu Jude, Frederick Wiseman and James Benning return with the presentation of a restored copy of “ Grand Opera: An Historical Romance “.
After a packed room for the preview of “Amor Fati” by Cláudia Varejão, a film that ended the second moment of the festival, Doclisboa continues its journey with many new proposals and in permanent dialogue with the rooms so that all sessions are presented safely and in order to maintain the collective nature of the cinema experience.
Check out the December films here or check the complete program at doclisboa.org .
The Jewish Film Institute, the S.F.-based entity that wasn’t able to present its annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this past summer due to the pandemic, has devised a special program to mark its 40th anniversary and light up your personal screen with Jewish films for Hanukkah.
From Dec. 10 to 17, JFI will be presenting what it has deemed “eight days of illuminating programs” — including a drive-in movie in San Francisco on opening night, online screenings, a panel and an event for the anniversary.
“Audiences will come together to honor four decades of independent vision,” the JFI said in a statement. In addition to films, the event will be “a celebration that will recognize SFJFF’s enduring history, our supporters and the vibrancy of our community. So let’s raise a glass and light a candle to 40 years of bringing Jewish storytelling to light.”
Things will kick off Dec. 10 at 6 p.m. at the Fort Mason Flix pop-up drive-in with the U.S. premiere of “Howie Mandel: But, Enough About Me,” about the Canadian comedian and actor. The 88-minute film examines Mandel’s life and career, as well as his painful struggles with mental illness. A special JFI interview with Mandel and director Barry Avrich will follow the film.
Tickets are $40 per vehicle for JFI members and $45 for the public, and many Covid-19 protocols will be in effect. Off the Grid will provide food truck options, JFI said, with details to come.
The other films in the 40th anniversary Hanukkah celebration will be available for streaming throughout the festival, most of them followed by a recorded interview with the director and/or principal actor. All are either 2019 or 2020 releases. Here’s a look at the lineup:
“When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” is a sweeping, two-hour German drama about the rise of Nazism as seen through the eyes of a 9-year-old-girl in Europe. It’s the latest from Caroline Link, director of “Nowhere in Africa,” winner of the best international feature Oscar in 2003.
“Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive” is the festival’s Next Wave Spotlight film, an Israeli comedy selected for its appeal to young adults. Co-directors David Ofek and Yossi Atia, who also stars, find an absurdist angle on the social tensions and political violence of Israel 20 to 30 years ago.
“Sublet” is a romantic drama from Israel that’s been an audience favorite at other Jewish film festivals this year. Directed by Eytan Fox, it tells the story of an American travel writer who goes to Tel Aviv and is drawn into a relationship with a young film student.
“Oliver Sacks: His Own Life,” directed by Ric Burns, explores the life and work of a legendary neurologist and storyteller who had battles with drug addiction, homophobia and the medical establishment.
“Film About a Father Who” is a documentary by Lynne Sachs, who attempts to understand child-to-parent and sibling-to-sibling connections by using interviews, home movies and archival images to probe the personality of her bon vivant father, Ira Sachs Sr., over a period of 35 years.
“A Crime on the Bayou” is a gripping documentary by Nancy Buirski that recounts the true story of a Jewish lawyer who, in 1966 New Orleans, tirelessly pursued justice for a Black teenager wrongfully accused of assault.
Also in the lineup is “Jews in Shorts,” a program of four shorter documentaries from both the U.S. and Israel.
Another free event that can be accessed online at any time during the festival is a virtual panel called “Engines of Truth.” Jewish filmmakers Amy Ziering, Bonni Cohen, Judith Helfand and Roberta Grossman will converse about how various factors — such as Jewish values, identity, culture and feminism — have figured into their groundbreaking documentaries.
The event to celebrate the SFJFF’s 40th anniversary will take place online at 6 p.m. Dec. 12, with guests and remembrances from four decades of Jewish cinema and culture, plus film clips and trailers. This event is free, with a suggested donation.
“This year has made crystal clear to us that community, art and film have the ability to bring light and hope in challenging times,” Lexi Leban, JFI’s executive director, said in a release. “We are not going anywhere and we plan to be around for the next 40 years.”
“JFI 40th Anniversary Hanukkah Celebration”
Dec. 10-17. $10-$15 per online film, $40-$70 for festival online passes. All proceeds support the ongoing work of JFI. For more information, visit jfi.org, email boxoffice@jfi.org or call (415) 621-0568 weekdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Stretched Time Maya and Noa home our two daughters in their beds again Here there all at once. Child and adult. Temporal inversions.
Inside this terrifying middle eating Mark’s slow dinners slowly Warm bread, just ripe fruit delivered by a woman with her own daughters sleeping in their own beds.
Revisiting each day of an opening act March 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Friday the 13th Where I was intending to be and where I was.
Narrative of an unwinding. The city is ours. The city owns us. 56 days in captivity so far. My father calls it the Velcro padlock. Fear the only real authority — when to stay and when to go.
Pages I’ve read as a measure of time almonds eaten, cleaning surfaces cleaning again bleach and more bleach again
Masks – to wear or not to wear? to protect me. to protect you. Anger at T. Anger at the mayor.
Watching “Tiger King” and flattening the curve social distancing and comorbidity Pod and PPE Fauci and Floyd.
Before I would walk from A – call it home – to B then to C and D all the way to Z. Stop and stop again in a zig back in a zag a diagonal a curve I used my feet road on elevators shook hands hugged. You too remember the long ago here.
We imbibe together. Family Zooms. Passover in four different states. With Mom, sister Dana, brother Ira, with everyone but without No with in space, only time.
Moving my body at home bra becomes braless.
Hospitals with others. Hospitals without beds. Hospitals with 1000s of beds, all full. Fear of going in with you. With me inside.
Ruthless flossing.
Fighting about something that happened six years ago. Caring about everything knowing that only one thing matters. Dreaming like a film. A film like a dream. 76 days in captivity and counting.
Going for a walk with a friend but without her. Talking like a crazy person and wondering if I am. Being with being there. Being here only. Not knowing where you’re here is. Forgetting my mask and feeling ashamed. Running home. Looking a stranger in the face saying hello loudly droplets on my glasses the fog of it all.
Hand sanitizer So raw it hurts. No need for more. No where to go.
Needing to imagine NYC as it is as it was even while I am here. People worrying about me.
Singing “Happy Birthday” twice under warm water.
Delivering food to a 65-year old friend I thought would starve. Delivering food to a 90-year old friend who later died. Our time together counting and recounting the seconds I was in his house, dreaded time, minutes or seconds count and recount. He went to the hospital and never came home, two months alone Jim died of loneliness at least in my mind.
People of color become surrogate shoppers.
Andrew Cuomo reading mortality and hospital statistics every day at 11:30 am. Giving $50 tip to our UPS delivery person, Edison. Feeling good About me.
Hearing from a crazy old boyfriend who is worried about me. Stop.
7 PM noise parties celebrating the workers, the frontliners the ones who took the risks We whistle and hoot from deep within our mouths 60 seconds of anger and anxiety in unison with our neighbors then we four turn around, 180 degrees sit together for a meal Talk of our day as if something and nothing can happen all at once.
I don’t miss a meal made in a kitchen I can’t see. Nothing tastes good in a plastic box. How I relish Mark’s food savory and sweet made hot just a few feet from our cat’s breakfast and her day-old bowl of water. Part of our hermetic now. Part of our daunting.
Looking for a place to pee I rush home from Greenwood cemetery preferring not to die there.
Saturday August 15 Our pod fragments – Abandoned artificial routines. I listen for the echo from April and May. Strange longing for the solitude and the ache.
Less and less in the weather more weathered more aware of the weather Spinning umbrella-less in the rain.
In a city on a lockdown, doors never locked. Nowhere to walk And yet walking every day to somewhere not far from here. In circles that resemble city blocks. Tethered by the distance it takes to run home.
Nothing grows so fast so boldly as the Morning Glory vine these late summer days. I weave its wayward shoots through the bars of our old wrought iron fence. Wrought.
