Summer snapshots from (childless) father time
📣 Being Alive Book Club returns in September with big back-to-school energy 📚️🏳️⚧️✨
The weather is late-summer perfection here in Brooklyn; it’s blissfully sunny, 81°, and low humidity. I’m sitting on a breezy corner in Fort Greene watching the runners, strollers, dog walkers, afternoon-after lovers, Citi bikers, iced coffee drinkers, and delivery workers go about their days. My Saturday is comparatively still and stationary, intentionally unplanned and tethered close to home after weeks of weekends away.
I’m in a reflective place. My borrowed companion doodle lazes at my feet. Maybe we’ll walk to the park. (We did!)
I’m feeling the change of season approaching; the return-to-routine, back-to-school disorder (reorder?) of September is just around the corner. It’s been a summer of growth across the board.
My kid turned ten last weekend, the day after she returned from three weeks at sleepaway camp. It was a fluke of the calendar that the lead-up to marking a decade of being her Dad coincided with the longest stretch of time we’ve ever been apart. I’ve crossed into this next phase of fatherhood, and every year that passes portends less time together in the future. She needs me differently now. I miss her.
I started a book of photos to celebrate her big birthday. Halfway through the process, I realized the exercise was for me. I bought her a Chromebook instead. After she changed her profile pic to an objectively cute “bookworm” illustration, she went to work on the next iteration of her “we need a dog” pitch deck. (My dad had me making banners in Print Shop, I taught my daughter to create in Canva.)
It was/is disorienting to be without the metronome of my daughter’s daily needs. Who am I without pick-ups and drop-offs? Does it matter if there are carrots in the fridge? I suddenly had weeks of freedom from obligation, unencumbered by an other, and little desire to sweat it out in NYC more than the “three days in the office” required. So I spent a lot of the last month on the road visiting Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, and upstate NY. I’ve stayed in perpetual motion, not settling into any one place for more than three or four nights. Only now, typing this all up, did it occur to me what exactly I was doing avoiding. Yes, it was wonderful to get out of the city, forest bathe with trees, and see my friends and family. And, also—it’s so obvious now—constantly changing my presence distracted from feeling someone’s absence.
On my first “free” weekends, I took a pilgrimage up to MASS MoCA to convene with some truly great art. It was my first time visiting the sprawling factory-turned-museum in North Adams, Massachusetts. I got lost in the maze of Sol Lewitt wall drawings, meditated with a handful of James Turrell’s, swayed to the music accompanying Jeffrey Gibson’s immersive, technicolor installation POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT (!!!), and stared longingly into Louise Bourgeois’ entangled The Couple.
I also turned a dark corner in Building 4 and stumbled into Tourmaline’s Atlantic is a Sea of Bones playing on a loop, part of the Like Magic exhibit. The 7-minute film is an ethereal, haunting portrayal of performer Egyptt LaBejia’s life in NYC over three decades, weaving together archival footage with fantastical reenactments. It poignantly opens with Egyptt standing near a window, gazing down at the West Side Highway below:
I literally lived on that pier that’s no longer there.
I lived there, in a hut.
See that one that’s no longer there?
I lived on there.
And I’ve slept on this thing right under there, because I was homeless. And I had to make money and I had nowhere to go.
And then one day I just snapped out, I said this can’t work no more. And I just started reaching for better things.
Oh my god! I’ve never seen it from this angle before, so it’s a lot…
She wipes her eyes and turns to speak directly to us, the viewer:
The times of the Village, from 14th Street to Christopher Street. The memories. People should never forget where they came from.
Thanks to Visual Aids, you can watch the entire film online. Right now—when the administration is aggressively erasing trans people and trans art—what a gift to see Tourmaline and Jeffrey Gibson’s larger-than-life works.
With all this solo driving, there was a lot of time for listening. Friends and longtime readers of Being Alive know I listen to a lot of podcasts. Thank goodness my favorite critic, Wesley Morris, is back regularly on the mic with his new show Cannonball. I only watched a few episodes of The Bear, but devoured his conversation with Samin Nosrat. You’d think it would be about the food, but it’s really about the meaning and character of time itself. (Listen)
I also tried to experiment with NOT listening to so many (news) podcasts, filling the long drives with audiobooks borrowed from my local libraries. Unfortunately, my first pick, Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, was hardly an escape from existential angst. I probably should have downloaded some fiction. My audiobooks ended up feeling like podcasts. Seeking inspiration and puberty preparation, I re-listened to 3/4s of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic and started Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabees. (OOF!) Maybe I should listen to more music. (Chappell Roan’s The Subway on repeat, just me? She’s got a way.)
When I wasn’t driving, I read words on paper. Sometimes even while wet! I savored every sentence of Jeremy Atherton Lin’s sensuous and meticulously researched memoir, Deep House. It’s a dirty, queer love story twisted up in the sheets of immigration law and gay marriage. My copy is full of marginalia, highlighting affectionate observations, like:
Something each person can be in a long-distance relationship: a destination.
Along with historical revelations:
In July 1989, there was a surprise final reversal at the New York Court of Appeals. The opinion in Braschi v Stahl Associates Co. stated that ‘a more realistic, and certainly equally valid, view of a family includes two adult lifetime partners whose relationship is a long-term and characterized by an emotional and financial committment and interdependence.’ This marked the first-ever legal recognition of same-sex relationships by an American appellate court.
You’ll have to pick up your own copy to read the NSFW sections I thrice underlined.
Last weekend, with the worst of the city heat passed, I stayed in one place long enough to cook a meal for a new friend visiting from out of town. I’ve lived in the same pre-war apartment building for seven years and only just this summer ventured upstairs to the undeveloped roof—an unthinkable notion with a young child in tow. Turns out, sometimes an orientation towards rule-following keeps you from enjoying the simple pleasure of watching the sun set over the Manhattan skyline without (a) reservation. Here’s to new possibilities that time passing and growing up provide.
I love hearing from all of you who missed the Being Alive Book Club this summer. We’re going back-to-school in September with author James Frankie Thomas’ Idlewild. Formal announcement with Zoom registration will post next week. In the meantime, go ahead and order your copy (Bookshop, library) and save the date for our BABC gathering (with James!) Mon Sept 22.
It’s almost sunset now. I should probably run upstairs…
xx Kyle
Such a talent for words!