Doggy Heart

Since the blog concept can seemingly encompass gratuitous inclusion of anything the blogger decides he or she wants, here are some liner notes I wrote some years ago for Bob’s (I’ve disguised his name by spelling it backwards) CD and have always liked. If you’re interested in purchasing the CD, let me know and I’ll have “Bob” send you one. If you do buy one you might find that the songs move into your brain and stay with you, rent free, for the remainder of your adult life. If the reader of this happens to be a child or an adolescent, the songs may stay with you for at least a portion of your childhood and/or adolescence but will stand a greater risk of being forgotten, or at least fading into a more generalized memory of “the kind of music your parents used to listen to” as you progress into adulthood. Good luck to you.

After we’d spent the night rehearsing, recording, stepping over mics and wires in the kitchen and horsing around in general, Bob would always walk me down the narrow stairs of his East Boston flat to see me off. We’d stand for a few minutes on his gigantic marble front porch overlooking the perilous traffic on Saratoga Street and discuss the fate of the world. Bob always made the trip downstairs, not just because he enjoyed doing so, but also because he has good manners. Bob stands on ceremony; the view’s better from there.
My car would usually be parked across the street pointing north towards Winthrop. This meant it was going to require a bit of athleticism (and luck) to get into the driver’s seat without being hit by a speeding vehicle hell-bent on making it to the 24-hour store before closing time. On occasion I’d park in the lot behind Bob’s building. The risk factor in that case was Fritzy, a big white dog just a chain link fence away, who hated me and wanted to kill me. Fritzy, who’d already barked himself hoarse upon my arrival five hours earlier, would be well past his refractory period, and by then would have blood in his eyes and rage in his doggy heart. I would have liked for him to kill me someday because he seemed so earnest in his desire.
This CD contains nine of Bob’s songs, realized in the kitchen and washed down with orange juice and instant coffee. The performances are flawed, “just demos”, “could be better” and all that other nonsense. But there are moments which are beautiful. The songs have been turned them over and over and over, looked at from every angle. They are polished, though not in any technical sense of the word. When I listen to them now, years later, I can still remember stepping out onto the back porch for a break and watching jets roar straight at us, just seconds away from landing at Logan Airport. I’m put in the mind of homemade bookshelves and Becky’s paintings of horses. I can even recall Bob Halperin’s raucous guitar playing, though that was from years before.
God knows where I’ve been for the past 15 years. Fritzy died, unrequited and Halperin has moved to an undisclosed location in upstate New York. These days Bob has taken to burning CDs in a bright pile in his backyard. He claims to be perfecting a production concept he calls the “picket fence of sound.” I don’t have the heart to tell him that you really need a banjo to pull that off. Maybe I’d better just buy a banjo.

Broke Bark Driveway

The tree next to my driveway has a section halfway up the trunk where the bark is cracked open and coming off, as if the tree's unbuttoning its shirt. It’s an inconspicuous feature which would not warrant mention were it not for the fact that this bark crack happens to be a gateway into the jaws of hell.

Until I’d rammed my car into it while backing in, I wasn’t aware of just how close to the edge of my narrow driveway the tree was. Close inspection revealed that the trunk was bent inward, but that that bend was camouflaged by a nasty little bouquet of leaves.

I remember a story told to me by a friend who lives in Boston about one lone tree on his urban block. All the neighbors were intent on getting rid of it, or any other tree, because “trees are dirty”. Such a sentiment seemed ridiculous to us and we laughed about it. But now, if I could, I’d chop the tree by my driveway on down, feed it branch by branch into a wood chipper, and piss on the sawdust.

The dent in my car cost me a couple of hundred dollars to fix; and that was just to replace the tail light. It would have cost me a few hundred more if I elected to get the body work done. Instead I enlisted the help of a robust cousin wielding a 2x4 in pushing it out. But there’s still a wrinkle of a dent there, a lingering reminder that I no longer live on the wide streets of Milton, but rather in the capillaries of Roslindale, where simply driving past another car going in the opposite direction can be a harrowing and death defying act.

My next encounter with the tree was a few weeks later. Siobhan was pulling out of my driveway very early in the morning as I lay sleeping on the third floor. I was jolted into consciousness, wide eyed at the sound of ripping and breaking metal as her side view mirror was separated from the body of her car. It was a sound that had the anonymity of the city to it, a sound denoting somebody else’s misfortune, but intuitively I knew that this was for me.

Now it began to dawn on me why the bark was coming off the tree. The mark was a battle scar. I began to regard the tree with distaste and loathing. I despised the way it slouched there surly and damaged as I climbed into my car every morning. It waited for me when I returned at night. And worse, it didn’t give a damn. I wasn’t its first dance partner and I wouldn’t be its last. I’d drive carefully past it the way I would a vagrant hoodlum, avoiding eye contact, slightly tensed

My driveway parking spot had been granted to me, by special mention of the landlord, as my own personal space. While each of the other residents of my building, who’d lived there much longer than me, had to jockey their cars in and out of the opposite side driveway I was guaranteed my on unshared spot. In hindsight this was a red flag.

Then on a freezing midnight, just as I’d stepped past the tree on my way to my apartment, my left foot hit ice, went completely out from under me, and I was suspended sideways in mid air. I have a fixed image, which I now can’t get out of my mind, of a crack in the sidewalk where I was about to land. Milliseconds later flesh and bone met ice and concrete; shoulder first, full body weight. What followed was a nightmare of emergency rooms, surgical procedures, comically awkward pain, human kindness, and surrender.

Enroute to the hospital on the day of my shoulder operation, Siobhan and I stopped at my place to pick up some clothing and personal items. She pulled into the driveway and went upstairs to get my stuff while I waited in the car, drugged and sullen. My gaze fell on the tree next to me with its insolent disclosure and its mocking bunches of leaves. It had been in on this. And it was still standing. Now it was my time to go off to the elephant graveyard and lick my wounds. But our day would come.