Movember of my soul

by amfreedman

Why is a fake real hair moustache creepier than a real real hair moustache?

Oh November, what have you done to us! The light is vanishing and the days are getting colder. The leaves have fallen off the trees, the sky is the color of bone, and all across the city men have begun to sport uneven growths on their upper lips. Is it the last refuge of manliness in a feminized world? Pink ribbon envy? An excuse for silly facial hair? Much as I’d love an exposé of the prostate cancer industrial complex (brownwashing?) instead I’ll direct you to J.’s fundraising page. Support men’s health and marital discord.

Of course we have more important things on our minds. I’m going to start with the hurricane. We caught the very edge of the storm in Montreal. I fell in love with New York hard when I lived there in the nineties, and I have many friends who live there still. I’ve been teaching Ovid this week and I was struck by this description of the flood. Here it is, in the Rolphe Humphries translation (I like Jorie Graham’s version even better, but it’s not at hand).

                                                           Ugly sea cows

Float where the slender she-goats used to nibble

The tender grass, and the Nereids come swimming

With curious wonder, looking, under water,

At houses, cities, parks and groves. The dolphins

Invade the woods and brush against the oak trees;

the wolf swims with the lamb; lion and tiger

are born along together; the wild boar

finds all his strength useless, and the deer

cannot outspeed that torrent; wandering birds

Look long, in vain, for landing-place, and tumble,

exhausted, into the sea.

Some of those photos of New York–the parking lot of taxi cabs bobbing like dead goldfish, the black streets, the broken-necked crane–have that same surreal serenity. I wish you clear skies, New York, and a quick recovery. And for all of us: this may not be a message from the gods, but we’d be wise to take it as one.

And the election! What a relief. To turn to Ovid once again:

Now Gaza. I’m aching for those on both sides of the border who will suffer in this conflict. I’m not interested in assigning blame, arguing about who started it, discussing proportional response, or looking at your atrocity pictures on Facebook. I just want it to be done. The night before memorial day, B. disappeared into his room. He came down at 11 the next morning and read this poem to me solemnly.

The poppies whisper as you pass.

Shining red in the green grass.

They whisper of the earth’s great wish

a wish for man, trees, birds and fish.

A wish for peace, for us to understand

what war has done to this green land

For only then when we all realize

war will go away, immaterialize.

The poppies whisper one by one

for those who died from what war has done.

My son at 10. Pacifist. Poet. And able to (correctly) describe the cadences of the fourth line as Seussian.

There may be hope, even for us. Still: natural disaster; political near-disaster; war; and to quote that ubiquitous HBO series winter is coming. Can I be blamed for feeling a bit apocalyptic? At Atwater market at two in the afternoon the sky was already turning pink and it felt like I was watching the sun set into the end of the world.