November

November

Earlier that day Garbo the painter sat down at his computer and wrote a note to his children. The words shaped the moment and the feeling:

Sometimes when I break for coffee

And glancing up, notice

That what I just painted is well crafted

And the Bach lays over me like the perfume of perfection

And the sun streams through the trees

And my knees no longer hurt

And my children are all healthy

And their children too

I think to myself....

This is heaven

How can it not always be so?

As a young man Garbo led a rather rakish life in pursuit of being an artist. In spite of his proclivity for over indulgence he managed a modest career without compromise. Loving painting with a deep passion gave him, he thought, the right to pursue all of its manifestations as a Casanova pursues all women. Talent was always there and hard work came without procrastination. Self-sacrifice could without regret put him in the most unappealing living situations as long as the work progressed.

His inquiry led him to change stylistically every couple of years Galleries that once embraced him, flung him out the door upon seeing a new “image”. Momentum, career-wise, floundered and Garbo would be forced to start over. “Hello, my name is Garbo would you be kind enough to review my slides?”

Yet through the years, the marriages, the children, and the ups and downs of excess, Garbo remained optimistic despite an arthritic condition that curtailed his once vigorous jitterbug. Vestiges of a reputation remained so that occasional sales allowed a modest life style. And he painted without pause.

Now approaching 80 the old man had but one question: “What will happen to all these paintings?” Now approaching 80 there was but one answer: “It doesn’t matter.”

What mattered was that it was November and as every year his children and their children would come to his studio for Thanksgiving and he would cook and they would say “ It always smells so good in here”

Paris in'63

My name is Garbo… don’t laugh. Nobody forgets. It’s Hungarian not Swedish. I’m not related. I’ve not seen her films. I am only familiar with a few scenes with her in a top hat on stage in some beer hall. She might be good. Is she the one who said “I vant tobe alone” ?

I’ve got two sides. The Hungarians, like Aunt Lina who was famous for her coconut cream pies, Mister Szabo ( a perfect souse) a friend of my father’s father who came to live with us after we moved to California after the war in ’47, and Uncle “Shadow” who got his nickname from following the older toughs of Buffalo. These are my father’s people (or were…all dead) Buffalo, that’s where we all come from.

My mothers people, the Sicilians were more interesting, only tales I overheard when they thought I was too young to understand or got scraps of ‘the lore’. Later my older Cousin Cookie and I sat around and drank when we were the only ones left. And now she’s dead and I have no one to envision or partake about life in the old days, the old ways of our clan. Not that I have no family. Mercy no. I have seven Grandchildren. But aside from Alyosha my second son and Sasha my first son, nobody inquires about their so-called roots. But, even they, have only made a cursory inquiry into the personalities that make up our gene pool so to speak. I once told a story that my Aunt Connie told me about my Grandfather, Nonno ( He and all my Grandparents died before I was born. I know them as characters in a never-ending story. His sir-name was Orazio. He came to America in 1914 from Valledolmo, Sicily with his bride Concetta. They had the usual difficulties ..food and shelter. Anyway the story went… Grandpa used to go to the park and catch pidgins that he would bring home in a cloth sack. Gramma Cocnetta made stew from these meager carcasses. Anyway he got tossed in the cooler for three days when he forgot his sack and his pockets full of pidgins got loose on the trolley home.

Other weird Italian cuisine included watching my Uncle Frank who boiled chickens feet and gnawed on them with a napkin tucked into his starched white dress shirt he wore every day cause he was a Jehovah Witness Minister. Being a servant of god didn’t stop him from molesting me and my cousin Carmine who turned out to prefer a homo salacious cornucopia.

Once after getting good and liquored up, Cookie asked if I remembered the funerial of Aunt Domanica when we were about 4 or 5. I asked in return if she was the one they made us kiss in the coffin. She said, “ I haven’t looked into a coffin since.” Me neither.