My friend Rose wrote me to tell me she was coming into town.
Her: I’ll be there in August! I’d love to help you diminish any quantity of rum you would like. Me: As long as it’s not the 24th.
This comedian named Rita Rudner once said, “I love being married. It’s so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”
It was my wedding anniversary this past Saturday. Spent it drinking by myself from 11AM to midnight.
I remember getting married pretty clearly. Was working on a project for a client until the moment we left for the courthouse; I took this one last job because I knew we’d spend the next few weeks or so just daydreaming.
She probably found it annoying but never mentioned it. I just wanted to get all the work out of my brain and desk to focus on being married to her.
We picked February 24th because it was exactly 10 days after St. Valentine’s Day, so it would be easy to remember.
I remember that we spent the whole day trying on the words, “my wife” and “my husband” like a new shirt.
Alison died on May 24th.
My father died on August 24th.
And February 24th is miserable day for me.
So if we ever meet up in RL, figure I should tell you now that I’m busy on the 24th.
This past week, I had a number of clients and friends contact all at once.
I’ve not really worked in any meaningful capacity in almost three years. But I’m right back as if nothing happened.
And yet, so much has happened.
Had a meeting on the Upper East Side with my buddy Steele’s wife for some work the other day and I’ve always prided myself on always being punctual.
She was on East 80th Street so I took the train to East 77th and got off.
When the train pulled into the station, I was so concerned about being on time that it didn’t occur to me that I’d been there. So many goddamn times.
I forgot that’s where the hospital was. The last hospital we went to.
As I walked up the stairs, saw it and my knees buckled. Ended up sitting on the stairs as I tried to catch my breath.
For those of you that know me in real life, that know my aversion to germs and dirt, picture me wearing one of my suits and sitting on a subway stairwell.
It was surreal.
Passerbys asked me if I was ok, if I needed help. Told them that I was beyond help.
Made it to my feet and made it to my friend’s door. Don’t even remember how.
Her: (opening door) Logan! Come on in. So good to… Me: (interrupting) I forgot. (leaning against wall) I forgot this is where the hospital was. I…(chokes) Her: (steps out, gives me a hug) It’s ok. Me: It’s not. (shakes head) It’ll never be ok. (her baby cries)
Just like that. I’m right back as if nothing happened.
Steele and I chatted about it afterward.
Me: BTW, I’m sure the wife will tell you but I had a mini-breakdown in your apartment and may have scared your kid a bit. Him: I can’t blame you. He’s gotta toughen up anyway…
Funeral Blues
by W H Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Wrote once about The Pigtail Ordinance:Â That was when this super racist judge in 1873 tossed out alla these racist local laws against the Chinese because he knew that the laws were contrary to the Constitution, the controlling law of the land.
In other words, he upheld the main law of the land over his own personal feelings.
You see, the Constitution says you can’t hurt a group of people just because you don’t like them.
That’s equal protection, which came about in 1868; The Pigtail Ordinance was shot down just five years later, which makes it all the more impressive.
But logically, if what I just said is true – that the Constitution says you can’t hurt a group of people just because you don’t like them – then the contrapositive must also be true: If you like a group of people, you can’t help them.
Thought about that with everything that’s going on politically.
Nowadays, it’s all about one’s team winning – whatever winning entails – at the cost of following the rules. Help those you like, hurt those you don’t. That’s not how it should be.
That’s all a preface for an unpopular thing I’m about to say:
Since we’re walking down memory lane together, do you remember when I flew to give a lecture in front of the Paris Bar Association? The topic I was speaking about was VARA: The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990. VARA was the law in question for this case.
Most of my clients – when I had clients – were artists.
So I’ve always been on the artists side. And what I’ve always believed was that VARA didn’t go far enough to protect artists. For example:
Why are only visual artists protected?
Why isn’t the art protected if the artist wants it destroyed?
Why is the law written so that only works of “recognized stature” are protected?
That last one always bothered me. Because who is to say when a work is of “recognized stature?”
But that’s one of the main areas where the judge got it wrong (amongst others).
In my opinion, and this is just my opinion, he saw that the developer was kinda a sleezeball, which he was, and simply assumed that 45 (45!) works of graffiti were of “recognized stature.”
That’s just not fair.
If I put a gun to the head of the average person and asked him/her to point out the Mona Lisa or Nighthawks, chances are they’d get it.
What if I did the same thing but asked him/her to name any one of these art pieces?
What if I did the same thing to the average art critic?
VARA is a wrong law and but that’s still the law. You don’t get to cherry-pick the laws you like and the laws you don’t like.
A racist judge shouldn’t ignore the Constitution to help white people.
A (rightfully) offended judge shouldn’t ignore the wording of a poorly constructed federal law to help these artists and hurt an unsavory person.
The artists were allowed to paint on the exterior of this building. That doesn’t give them the right to prevent the building from being torn down. They could have removed their art, at their cost, or taken hi-res pictures of it, which they did.
How the developer did it – without warning – was sleazy. But VARA doesn’t comment on the character of the art benefactor.
VARA should be replaced with a better law that truly protects art and the artist. But until then, it should be followed.
Below’s me talking about the case a lifetime ago. If you want to read my notes on the subject, you can download the powerpoint here.
And now I return to my life now: changing diapers and trying to figure out a way to get my kid to eat something besides peanut butter.
Her: Do you know what the worst part about being short is? Me: You don’t get to go on the adult rides in an amusement park?
This was a long weekend. The kid’s usually away at least every other weekend with my mom so I get a little break but this week, I had plans to bring him up to a birthday party with Alison’s college friends on Saturday morning.
See, I want him to have as much of the life that he woulda had with Alison. She woulda been there with her friends.
But he had a stomach thingy and we couldn’t go at the last minute.
This also messed things up for me because I was hoping that a neighbor or a sitter could watch him while I went to one of my oldest friend’s bday parties. But it’s not fair to stick someone with a vomiting kid.
Besides, I was worried it was the flu, despite him not having a fever.
So I stayed in the whole weekend. Then I started feeling rough. So the Gymgirl came over and spent one day watching him while I slept and drank fluids. She even brought him to an indoor playground through the pouring rain.
The Gymgirl is pretty short. I’m no giant but she’s tiny. I tell her that I could easily bench press her.
I like her cause she’s got a big heart, though. Actually met her because she did a few fundraisers for Alison.
I was in the living room resting when she was playing with the boy in the other room and smiled when I heard them interacting.
Her: Who’s that? Who’s that? (pointing at Alison’s picture) Him: Mama. Her: That’s right! That’s your mama.
Often write about how the only luck I’ve got is of the kind you don’t want.
But I did wake up this morning to this text from my phone from ABFF:
I have two kids with temps of 104 and one threw up tonite. So it’s good Nate didn’t come by…
It’s a tiny win but a win nonetheless. I’ll take it.
Me: Look at it this way, you and the kid can see eye-to-eye. Her: I’m not that short! Me: (looking over her head) Wait, where did you go?
When I was younger, there was a film called The Crow that I loved. Heard they’re gonna re-do it.
Always thought that crows were cool. They’re all black, sociable, are one of the few animals that mourn their dead, and seek revenge.
Alison, however, preferred owls. In fact, we have several owl figures in the house, all purchased by Alison throughout the years. She was always surprised when I pointed out that we had other owls here and there.
Her: Oh! I didn’t even notice. I wonder what it is about owls that I like? Me: What’s there not to like? They’re nocturnal, solitary, eat everything, are highly intelligent, and are quietly dangerous. Her: (laughing) I’m going to name it “Reginald.”
The Gymgirl also likes owls, as her family name has a part that means owl in her native language.
As luck would have it, one of the first words from my son is owl. He can recognize both regular and barn owls as owls.
I find the whole thing both peculiar and interesting
Since everything went down, I don’t suffer superstition well. I don’t believe in signs or the supernatural or anything of the like.
But I do like this, somehow. That my son likes owls. It must be Alison in him. This little thing makes me happier than you might imagine.
Did you know that owls and crows are mortal, natural enemies? They will try to kill each other on sight.
I’ve always said that we spend our lives seeking out our tribes. So, perhaps I was a crow that became an owl. Or maybe I was an owl all along.
It’s better this way, I suppose.
AÂ group of owls is called a parliament. A group of crows is called a murder. I’d rather be a party of a parliament than party to a murder.
He’s kinda like a cat that randomly runs into another room for no reason, only to hurriedly run back. Like the cat, he knows exactly why he runs, but the observer does not.
As I told a buddy, life with him is disquieting.
Not because of things like that, though. That’s comforting, somehow; that he’s a happy child, doing happy child things.
Rather, it’s because of something that Alison related to me once that her mother told her: The day you have a child is the day you start to worry and never stop.
I agree with that. And my case is especially anxiety producing, for two reasons:
1) I do this mainly alone.
2) Everything worries me.
On the former, I don’t have Alison’s keen insight into child rearing that she seemed to have naturally. She had an answer for everything.
Wish she was around for a million reasons, one of which is that I don’t have anyone to discuss rando child-rearing things with.
On the latter, that’s a different matter.
The other day, we stopped by a Super Bowl party with the same neighbors I spent NYE with. While there he fell and hit his head while playing around with RE Mike.
For anyone else, this is probably something that’s quickly forgotten. But because of what happened to Alison, any time he hits his head, feel a panic that I can’t describe.
My mom: He said “I want daddy” while you were away. Me: Get outta here. Wait, “daddy” or “papa?” Her: Daddy. Me: I wonder where he learned that from? Her: Does that really matter? Me: No. I guess not. (leaning in) Did you miss me? Him: No! Me: (laughing) Well, that didn’t last long.
