The Magnificat

     When I arrive at work I am greeted by a large black turd waiting at the foot of the steps. I step over it and go inside, where the night crew are laughing about it. It's all they can talk about. One of them has named it Bob. As a metaphor it's irritatingly obvious. Construction has begun and there are a lot of changes in personnel. Things at the museum are becoming increasingly grim.

     An enormous banner on the side of the building seems to promise an entire show devoted to the art of Botticelli, best known for one of the most parodied paintings of all time, The Birth of Venus. In reality, there is just a single example of his work inside, hanging by itself in one of the few galleries still open to the public during renovation. The people who make these decisions never have to explain these kinds of things to confused visitors or see the looks of disappointment on their faces.

     Madonna of the Magnificat is a small, round painting of the Blessed Virgin with her immaculately conceived son perched on her lap. Before her sits an open book in which she is writing the Magnificat, a New Testament canticle named for its first line, "My soul hath magnified the Lord." I can't help but picture this Lord as a bug being looked at through a magnifying glass. Love or kindness appear nowhere in the hymn; this is a plea for mercy to a fickle deity. Even Mary, blessed though she may be, finds herself groveling and thanking the father of her child for not smiting her.

     The infant's chubby little paw rests on his mother's arm as she writes. The idea is that he's guiding her hand, but coupled with the way he's gazing up at her -with the look of a child trying to see how much he can get away with- it seems to me like he's trying to restrain her. His hand resembles a doll's hand that has been sewn to his wrist. His left hand clutches a pomegranate. His head has been deformed in the way that artists sometimes do to their subjects to compensate for the distortion that occurs when a picture is hung high on the wall.

     The other figures in the painting are normally proportioned, however. Mary's face is flawlessly executed, and seems appropriately radiant. Three angels stand to her right, their flesh rendered so delicately that all the other paintings in our collection look clumsy in comparison. One angel looks down at the book. Another stares into space, distracted or bored. The third holds the inkwell and looks directly at Mary in a way that seems impudently bold. Mary in turn concentrates on her work, her lips parted, her nib poised on the rim of the inkwell. It's impossible to tell if she's about to dip it, or if she already has. I'm not sure why this detail seems important to me, or why it strikes me as being so sensuous.

    Rays of light emanate from the heads of all except the Christ child, and bits of gold float through the air like flakes of glowing ash from a bonfire. In the distance lies a perfunctory landscape, nondescript enough to not distract from the otherworldly creatures in the foreground.

     The frame bursts with carved fruits and blossoms the size of gilt walnuts, providing a chunky contrast to the delicate, jewel-like scene it encircles. It's like peering at a sublime world through a kitschy porthole. All in all, it's an exquisite little piece, and when things get too stressful during these difficult days I go upstairs to lap up some of the succor it offers before creeping back down to the garbage-strewn, shit-stained world.

Welcome Home

  A block away from the museum, on Jefferson, an Amazon pick-up storefront opens, on the first floor of a huge high rise built to replace one of the old brick apartment buildings. The storefront was once the entrance to The Mural Room, a jazz/strip club, which did indeed feature murals of jazz legends. Rectangular planters squat on the sidewalk in front of the building, though the plants are always being yanked out of them.

The store is a glorified pick-up locker, with a human working the counter. I try to keep my Amazon patronage to a minimum, but there are always people coming and going, often double-parking on the busy bus route or bike lane. Like so many other places, it closed during the pandemic, then reopened with reduced hours. One day, with no warning, they tape a printed notice on the door saying they have permanently closed. They remove the lockers along the wall to reveal the back room, on the wall of which are the words CUSTOMER OBSESSION. A few days later they board it all up, though the Amazon sign remains lit, a beacon luring confused customers to tug on the door handle that sticks out through a gap in the boards.

Garbage begins to accumulate on the sidewalk between the planters. I often see people sleeping between them, curled up in sleeping bags or else just in their clothes.

As I walk past on the way home from work one day, a stylishly dressed bald man says, to no one in particular, "Everything's boarded up. About time. This is China's century." The sheets of plywood covering the empty storefront where the Mural room once stood have themselves been covered by a new mural. Very neat, legible graffiti reads "Do I use blues? LOL No" and "Help, kidnapped by weird chicken woman, call 911 HURRY," plus a number of other cryptic passages. The centerpiece is a huge cartoon of an earthworm sitting on a green sofa, watching one of the planters as if it was a  TV. "Welcome home!" the worm cries cheerily. The piece is signed A Wormboy Scrapcan production. The name wormboy has recently sprung up in block letters all over downtown.

Graffiti artists come and go. Most of them just scrawl their tag, but every once in a while you get someone a little more creative. For a year or two, our neighborhood was covered in the name LOKI. For some reason, it irritated me more than other handles. I don't know why. The tags are still around, on walls and telephone poles, though I haven't seen a new one in years. One day as I got in the elevator in our building, I saw the word LOKI scratched in the black paint on the elevator gate. I felt violated; did LOKI live in my building, or did they have a friend here, or had they just slipped in? Someone eventually scratched it out but you can still see it. In the meantime, I say welcome home to Wormboy. Long may he squirm.

Orbit

 

I'm floating through myself, entering through the bony socket to drift through the chambers of this sunken vessel. Schools of silvery fish dart past,spooked by an oily shadow. Here and there a form huddles in a murky corner. I brush my hand across a rotted tablecloth, open a drawer and finger the encrusted silverware. The bulbs are black and the lampshades are slick with pale polyps. I pull a book from the shelf and open it but the sodden pages melt at my touch, the words wriggling away like fry into the darkness. 

 

 

 

 (for Charles Simic, 1938-2023)

Trigger

       As the door of the train opens, I hear a burst of raucous laughter from inside, and a figure hurries out and hustles away. I lug my bags in and set them down between my feet as I cling to the rail at the top of the steps. I'm tired and frazzled; between the high cost of everything, the numerous gaps on the shelves, and my attempts to avoid the other stressed-out shoppers as they careen along the aisles, the experience of shopping has gone from merely irritating to hellish. But I'm only riding until the next stop, then after a steep trek up the hill I'll be home.

    As the train starts moving, I feel someone bump up against me from behind. I turn to see a tall, bald man with a long gray goatee standing an inch away from me. He sports a huge grin and reeks of booze. A bunch of young men are sitting nearby, watching. They are clean cut, unmemorable, nearly identical. They look like they could be in an ad for a community college, or an Applebees commercial. I move away from the man, careful not to knock over my bags. He moves with me and keeps pressing up against me. The young men laugh.

    "A little personal space, buddy," I say in what I hope is a lighthearted tone of voice.

    "Can I have a hug?" he says.

    "Not from me," I say.

    "I could really use a fucking hug," he pleads, eliciting an eruption of laughter.

    "Give the poor guy a hug," one of the young men yells.

      "Man asked for a hug," another says.

    "Boy, it's really crowded on this train," says yet another. "Look at this, there aren't any empty seats." They rise as one and crowd behind me, all of them pressing against me, chattering and screeching. I try to keep an eye on my shoulder bag as well as my groceries. The Goose Hollow stop is just ahead but it feels like it's a mile away.

    "I can't believe you won't give me a hug," the older man wheedles. Despite his intoxication, his icy blue eyes are piercing. He smiles like a shark.

    “That’s some cold-ass shit, man,” one of the pack says.

    "What does Jesus think about you not giving this man a hug?" another hisses, as the train slows down and comes to a halt. The door opens and I grab the handles of my bags and hobble down the stairs.

    "Think I'll get off here too," the tall man chirps. He jumps off behind me and, placing his palm lightly on my back, once again asks me for a hug, his voice almost a whisper. As I walk away he hops back on the train just before the doors close, to wild cheering.

    As the train slips away, I brush my back to make sure he hasn’t stuck anything there and pat my pockets. I picture shoving the man against the side of the moving train, which proceeds to tear the flesh from the side of his face. Or maybe his shirt gets caught in the door and he gets pulled alongside as it speeds away, his body bashed to pulp until there's nothing left but a wad of bloody rags on the tracks. I can picture the panicked look in his eyes as he realizes what’s happening, as well as the looks of horror on the young men as they witness an image that will haunt them the rest of their lives. I can hear the screams.

    Calming down, I think instead of all the withering comebacks that would have stunned them into silence. I flash on all the times I've been picked on, starting in middle school. I remember all the times I had rocks and acorns thrown at me, remember all the names yelled at me from passing cars. I marvel at how swiftly that familiar mix of terror and fury has bobbed up, as if it had been lurking just beneath the surface the whole time. 

    I like to think I'm a kind, tolerant person who tries to show empathy and compassion in my dealings with others. We are all hurtling together towards calamity, screaming in fear and blinded by our suffering. But as I make my way up the hill in the rain, I wonder: if I would have been carrying a gun back there, would I have pulled the trigger? 

    No. Of course not. 

    Of course not.