Last Wednesday, stuck in a traffic jam

The Column: 02.12.24

Joe Biden came to Manhattan for a couple fundraisers last week, which gave the NYPD a fine excuse to close off as many streets as humanly possible, which is why some people go into law enforcement — for the chance to make civilians stand behind barriers — and there I stood, looking at York Avenue, abandoned except for a few cop cars, lights flashing. I’d crossed over from the West Side in a cab driven by a cabbie who’d been at it for 39 years and who was highly irritated by the blockages, also said the economy’s tanking, shops closing, people abandoning the city, crime up, Wall Street in trouble, but at the same time, he said, “It’s Number One, the greatest city in the world.”

New Yorkers have this ability, to express despair and municipal pride in the same sentence. I over-tipped him and hiked 12 blocks to my doctor who took my blood pressure and said it was excellent, so I owe Joe for getting me to exercise. I was so surprised though by his language describing his likely November opponent, which I read in a paper I won’t name, a two-word term, a participle of concupiscence modifying a word for a common human orifice. Joe, unlike the other guy, is a churchgoer and if my chest had a bazoom, I would clutch it, but it doesn’t, not yet. I just wonder, where are we headed?

I was brought up in a nice home with clean sheets, where never a door was slammed nor did my family use bad language — we even shrank at the euphemisms — and so, one day not long ago, sitting in Starbucks, the stool slid out from under me and I spilled half a large latte in my lap and I said — this is a direct quote — “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” It was the voice of my mother, still in my head though she’s been gone for years and I am now only 16 years younger than she and hoping to catch up.

There have been times when I’ve used the words that are available for dismay at hot coffee in your lap but I think those words have worn thin for me. I have friends who use obscenities the way other people use commas and I ignore it because they’re good people and I love them. I hear pop lyrics that make Lennon & McCartney seem like Lovelace and Milton, and I just ask the waiter to move me to a quieter corner. It’s noise.

Well, I tell myself, people do have strong feelings. I had some myself a few years ago. But a person comes to an age when you wake up in the morning and this fact alone is worthy of note and so is the sun shining in the window. The coffeemaker works beautifully. And there is a beloved person who rises from her bed and sits on my lap, her head against mine. And I haven’t driven cab for the past 39 years, nor did I ever need to teach Creative Writing to earn my daily bread.

I hear that Taylor Swift’s upcoming album is called “The Tortured Poets Department.” I hope she means this ironically but I worry that it may inspire millions of young women to write formless verse about the meaninglessness of their mornings and the agony of their afternoons. I just want Taylor to be happy and for us to be happy for her. If the tight end makes her happy, fine, otherwise loose ends can be fun too.

Don’t torture yourself. Turn away from brooding over the slights and shortcomings of your life and devote yourself to the limerick as I do.

The poet Sylvia Plath
Was filled with misery and wrath.
The day she dove
Headfirst in the stove,
She should’ve just had a hot bath. 

Miss Austen, the beautiful Jane,
Had an overly sensitive brain.
She needed a guy
To give her the eye
And lead her in out of the rain. 

Kafka was lonely in Prague
And lived in a neurotic fog,
Groaning and keening
And longing for meaning —
He should’ve just gotten a dog.

Do you get my drift, people? The streets are blocked, people are infuriated, an old cabdriver is pouring out his anxieties to me as we sit, the meter running, but I get out and walk and it turns out to be good for the heart. Try it.

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