2003-09-10 - 8:45 a.m.
Yesterday morning hit me full in the face. I was driving down Route 9. Singing the Black Eyed Peas song about "where is the love" and I just started bawling. I could not stop bawling. Like I had to pull over bawling. It was 8:39 a.m. and I called Riot718 to tell her I loved her and that she was my best friend in the world and how happy I was that she had brought her daughter into the world and I couldn't stop bawling.
And I was being all logical. And I asked myself, "why are you bawling?"
And then I realized that yesterday was the Tuesday after Labor Day. In my head. Tuesday was the day Certain Events happened.
I spent the day bawling. On and off. I was annoyed with bawling. I went to therapy and bawled there. The Therapist looked as if she had been expecting it. She's a trained grief counselor. I wonder what class they cover "How The Grieving Will Pick An Anniversary Date." Because I'd like to take that one. Because I was expecting to bawl on Thursday. I was not expecting to bawl on Tuesday.
I wasn't expecting it on a Tuesday two years ago either.
A friend of mine got an obnoxious email from her department head saying that they would have a moment of silence this week and would play random classical music. The director included editorial comments about the music.
I suggested that my friend counter the director's offer with a suggestion to play Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'" due to its lyrical references to NYC.
It was really funny at the time.
I spent yesterday re-reading this poem.
THE DAY LADY DIED
It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 9:59 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don't know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an Ugly New World Writing to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the Golden Griffin I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the Park Lane
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a New York Post with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 Spot
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
~Frank O'Hara,
