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Siren Song

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The Aged General heard it first.  When he was a boy, there had been stories told of such a thing, the kind of stories one whispers in the dark. Never in his long and illustrious career had he ever experienced one, but he was smart and quick  to understand. From the first note, he knew what was happening, and he jumped up to shout a warning and cover his ears. But his hands moved slowly, as if they were under water, and his voice lodged in his throat and came out as more of a strangled cry.  “It’s a si-“   was all he was able to manage – before the sound overwhelmed him.   Afterwards, no one was able to describe the exact melody.  A female voice, mournful, all could agree on that, a single voice sounding like multitudes of simultaneous voices.  The melody was unlike anything they had ever heard, with overlapping harmonic tones. The key was minor.  No, not minor, said the music theory experts, some sort of a variation on the A...
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february 2019

“I have died many times,” Lanie said to me, listing offhand just a few of the experienced that changed her.   These were “before and after” moments, moments after which she grieved for the person she thought she would be, for the life she thought she would have, for the person she once was.   She had to “die” and then emerge as someone else. “That’s part of growing older,” she said to me.  Looking at Lanie, at this person whom I admire and respect so much, but whom I met only after the events that currently shaped her and brought her to my life, it was comforting somehow in my grief. So many different layers of grief.   It was difficult to see where one ended and the next began.   How to peel it apart to determine the provenance of this darkness versus that one.     We’ve had a rough time of it lately, I would say, thinking first of my friend whose simplicity of life choices I had found myself relying upon as a kind of barometer, until th...
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a saturday night

On my way to the city from Brooklyn on a Saturday night.   The energy is mild, but 8:30 is still early by New York standards and it’s summer. I walk past the girls on the platform in their short skirts and thick eyeliner;   their hair is beginning-of-the-night perfect.   They wait for the train, shifting their weight from foot to foot, radiating hope and desire. Maybe tonight will be the night. Maybe something will happen. Or at least, it will be fun. Their laughter is loud, nervous. Then I’m up the stairs and on to the sidewalk, back in the familiar buzz of the street.   The mom getting ice cream for her daughter, the couple walking from the restaurant to the bar. The night hasn’t really started yet.   Nearby, a driver in a car and a driver in cab play a game, mimicking each other as they tap lightly on their horns while waiting for the light to change. The driver of the car is in his 60s, but the delight on his face makes it clear what he looked like as a...
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