Carol Bergman

Jennifer Garcia and Seth Mintz met five years ago at special needs program at the Jewish Community Center in New York where I swim. The tall, handsome couple can be seen holding hands in the lobby as they arrive for their activities in the “Adaptations" program. I always greet Jennifer and Seth, both of whom are warm and well mannered. I shake Seth’s hand and give Jennifer a hug. Their obvious love for one another, consideration of everyone they meet and civility, makes me smile.

I had first met Jennifer at the pool where she collects membership cards, puts them in a metal file box, and then returns them to us as we leave. This is her job and she takes it seriously. She is a formidable young woman— friendly, attentive and caring. If I mislay my lock and have to bring my valuables to the pool deck, she will take care of them. If I forget my goggles, she will find me a pair of goggles. She wishes me a wonderful weekend and has asked about my life and my writing life. Often, I have stood dripping in my towel to have the pleasure of talking to her.

Recently, she told me that she belongs to a literary club in the Adaptations Program and has been writing poetry. Did I want to come to a reading? You bet.

The reading was last Sunday, one of the last before Christmas, so not as well attended as usual, Jennifer told me. I was her guest. She introduced me to her friends, showed me some art-work she had done, the buffet of healthy food, and led me to a seat in the front. Did I know she had Asperger’s? I did not. She is twenty-seven, and still living at home, but once she and Seth get married, they will move into an apartment together. He was there too, of course; he attends all her readings with devotion.

Jennifer was the first up to read, the first of four. She read a prose poem that begins with the phrase, “gone with the wind.” She hadn’t seen the movie. No drafts, she writes straight into her notebook—stories, poems, story poems—whatever comes to her. The assurance with which she stood at the podium and spoke her work clearly and slowly into the microphone was an inspiration. She is an inspiration.

The other readers were also incredible. Good stories, all well told, by brave writers.  Read More 

Years ago, when I decided to start my own professional writers’ group, I sent out an email blast to colleagues at two schools where I was teaching. I had numerous replies because writers are always grateful when someone else organizes a group. I culled the replies to a manageable twenty and then down to a short-list of ten. I wanted the group to be gender balanced and experience/publication balanced. I didn’t want any editors in the group, or writers who worked in PR or broadcasting. Editors cannot resist the red pencil, and if they are frustrated writers, they take liberties with the text that can be either intimidating or infuriating to the author. Public relations gadflies learn to homogenize and spin. In my experience, they lose perspective on what is authentic and what isn’t authentic. In an effort to reconnect with their own voice and subject, they are hyper-critical of everyone else and, ultimately, themselves.

It was my prerogative to be choosy; I was gathering the group. So I chose six people, all strangers, who I thought would work well together. Of course, I was wrong.

At first, everything went smoothly. We met once a month and had deep discussions about our work. We rotated round everyone’s house—another criteria—and agreed that there should be no food and drink to distract us; only water was served. Eventually we loosened up on the food and drink. We brought cookies, snacks and wine. Maybe that was the beginning of the end.

I was writing a lot of short stories in those days and the occasional poem. One month, I decided to submit an almost epic-length poem to the group. What was it about? I can hardly remember now.

Our last meeting was at my house where I felt—at home. I was very relaxed and eager for the arrival of my writer peers. After a year, they were beginning to feel like writer friends. Except for one thing: a feeling of competition between two of the writers who were hungry for fame. In fact, they were out of control hungry for fame. Fame and fortune. Such an intense appetite may or may not be good for the writing; it’s definitely not good for a writers’ group. Mea culpa, I hadn’t picked up this affliction during my phone interviews. Or, perhaps, I hadn’t even considered it.

So here we were at what turned out to be our last meeting. The critique began and it became uncivil in five minutes. I interrupted and said we needed to remind ourselves of the rules: A critique is not criticism. It is not personal. It is about the work.

I offered to be the next up to calm the tornado that had hit, and distributed my epic poem. After I read it aloud, I excused myself for a minute to go to the restroom. I could hear a churning sound, like a boiler about to explode, but when I returned to the living room, everyone had gone quiet. A copy of my epic poem was on the table face down. “It’s not even worth discussing,” one of hungry for fame and fortune women said.

“And I would like you to leave right now,” I said.

Which she did.

The group disbanded after that, not surprisingly, and I began another soon after which was much more congenial and successful.  Read More 

And so the holiday season begins. And all that jazz. And through it all, I tell my students: Do not stop writing. The mail never stops and neither does a writer, or a painter, or a musician, or time itself, alas. Which brings me—obliquely—to the subject of adaptation, improvisation, and Henri Matisse’s cut-outs. Here was an artist, well into his 80’s, wheelchair-bound and so infirm he could no longer paint standing up, creating works beyond even his imagination. He had thought he was done. Finished. But he had his assistant and his muse, Lydia Delectoraskaya, he had his ebullient temperament, he had his eyesight and dexterous hands, all of which was fortunate for an aging, infirm artist. And he would not stop. He drew with a long stick on the wall and he drew with scissors, cutting shapes into thick paper he had colored with gouache. One series was called “Jazz,” another “Blue Nudes.” His assistant pinned them to the walls of his rented rooms in the Hotel Regina in Nice. Masterpieces.

And one day Matisse wanted to go for a swim and watch the divers, but the beach was too hot so they—he and his young assistant—did not stay for long. When he arrived back at the hotel, he had an idea and said, “I will make myself my own pool.” Using canvas to create the water, swimmers in cut-out shapes, others sitting on the beach watching, his dining room became a swimming pool. Dismantled after his death in 1954, the swimming pool has been restored for the MOMA exhibition which will be on view until February 8, 2015.

As a swimmer, I was so moved, I could not move. Henri Matisse, in the last decade of his life, unable to swim himself, had captured the sensation of swimming.

And what a joy it is.  Read More 

Please excuse my two-week absence, dear reader. A big story fell into my lap, one I cannot ignore. It will take time to understand all the components of the story—not to be revealed here, not to be revealed now—and I'll have to continue researching and interviewing for a while, until Thanksgiving most definitely, perhaps longer. In other words, I have to do my homework before I begin writing. This can be both frustrating and exciting. Frustrating because I can't wait to begin writing; exciting because the project interests me so much that I awake in the mornings with paragraphs in my head. I rush into the kitchen, put the kettle up to boil, pull out a scratch pad and scribble. Usually more questions are raised; I make lists. Sometimes a sink hole in the story becomes a chasm that begs for repair. It was not evident the day before, but now it glares, demanding attention and renewed energy.

My students know that I am a working writer, not just a professor, and that I use my own struggles and writing life as example for them to emulate or reject; it's up to them, of course. And what I am modelling here, I hope, is the necessity of raising one’s knowledge base, another phrase to describe doing one’s homework. Because of our increasing reliance on Wikipedia, raising our knowledge base is not as obvious as it seems. Convenient, fast, helpful, it is always best to follow up on all the leads embedded in a site, to ask one more question, and read one more article.

How do we know when our homework is done? That’s difficult to answer because in a way it never is. Perhaps we’ve got a deadline, or come to a dead end in our research, or feel that the armature of the story has surfaced. Okay, good, time to gather our thoughts, and write.  Read More 

I had never stopped to talk to him though I had noticed him. It was impossible not to notice him as he was sitting on a milk crate strumming on his guitar and singing "Let It Be." He didn't seem to have another tune in his repertoire. And it was annoying because the passage from Overlook Terrace to the turnstile is a long one, cavernous, the acoustics perfect for musicians. There have been several: a flute player was my favorite but the "Let It Be" Man" had upstaged him, and he never changed his tune. On some days it sounded more melancholy than other days, a slow rendition.

He was stooped, his beard and hair frazzled. But his clothes looked clean and the guitar was shiny. I ran past as he kept on strumming, never a different song.

Days passed, months. Like everyone else I rushed down the passageway, I heard a train coming—isn’t there always a train coming?—and I never stopped, never put in any change in his guitar case, and I just thought of him as a him—nameless , a fixture, and an annoying one at that. He disturbed my rush to get somewhere. Who was he? Why was he there? Was he homeless?

Everyone has a story, everyone is deserving of attention, I thought to myself. So, one day I stopped. It was on my way back from somewhere so I had time. But more than that, the "Let It Be Man" had stirred my conscience. This is a journalist's affliction, a writer's affliction. I had to give him a name, hear his story.

"I notice that you like The Beatles," I said to him.

"I love the Beatles," he said.

"So do I. ‘Let It Be’ is a good one."

I wanted to suggest some other songs, but didn't want to hurt his feelings, or complain about the repetition. Perhaps there was something wrong with him, but what? He was smiling ear to ear, and sitting up on the milk crate as straight as he could. Seventy-five at least, I thought.

"So what brings you to this passageway? Do you live in the neighborhood?"

"No, I live in Queens, but my Dominican musician friends do and they told me about the acoustics here. So I come to practice. We're going to make a CD together."

"And you have an accent, where are you from originally?"

"Haiti."

Then came the introductions. We needed names before we could continue. A big story was sure to follow; anyone from Haiti has one. I knew he’d a hard time when he told me he was only in his late 50’s; hardship scars us physically and emotionally. But Gary--how relieved I was that he had a name--was ebullient and clearly happy to have someone to talk to, however briefly.

"Haiti, Mexico, New York," he said. “I learned Spanish in Mexico.”

"I'm pleased to meet you Gary," I said.

And then I promised myself that I would never pass him by without a greeting again.


Dedicated to Brandon Stanton, blogger and photographer, whose “Humans of New York” now has 10 million followers on Facebook. http://www.humansofnewyork.com/  Read More 

I wish I were writing today. I wish I were writing more than this blog post and a Facebook announcement for a reading/performance of Nomads on January 6, 2015. Not that far away, had to be done. The curators at the Cornelia Street Cafe plan far in advance, put up information on their website. And what else am I working on? Nothing. Except for this blog post, my journal, emails, marginalia on my students’ papers, my clients’ manuscripts. Is this enough? Never. A writer prefers (needs?) a project to look forward to every writing day. But there cannot always be a project.

In the hiatus between projects, what to do? Take walks, read, teach, keep lists. Lists of what? Five things from your childhood, Natalie Goldberg suggests in her new book, “The True Secret of Writing; Connecting Life With Language.” Make lists, no interpretation. What does she mean by this? Is it possible not to interpret? Is it possible to suppress the story-telling instinct? I don’t think so. When all else fails--no time, no ideas--shall I make a list on the subway? In the supermarket? Yes, why not? So yesterday, I bought some new journals (a pack of three slim lined red moleskines) and began to take notes about everything in front of me, so to speak:

* a man dressed in camouflage waiting for the Amsterdam Ave. bus. His arms are tattooed and his face is painted to match the tattoos. What is his story? Is he a vet? In costume for Halloween? Or what?

* a family –mother, father, older sister, grandmother—on the A train singing nursery rhymes to their toddler . How do I even know that they are a family? What makes them seem like a family?

I wrote maybe ten observations throughout the day and every one, without exception, was the beginning of a story.  Read More 

When I first arrived in London what seems like eons ago now, there still were golliwogs on Robertson jam jars and black and white minstrels on television. Having participated full throttle in the Civil Rights Movement in the US, I was stunned and enraged. Ex-Colonial Masters in the secondary school where I first taught were perpetrators and their students—mostly from the Caribbean—were, to their pleasure and amusement, imaginary golliwogs come to life. To say that there was cruelty in that school is an understatement. Caning, slippering (with a gym shoe known as a plimsole), humiliation. “These children are so backward,” the teachers said over and over again. But it was the country that was backward at that time, or these teachers in particular, to be fair, as the school system was in the midst of reform which was taking a long time to percolate outward to the worst schools.

My husband and I stayed in Britain for a decade; our daughter was born there. Over the years, as entrance into the EU became a reality, there was increased tolerance for the “other.” So many “others” were being born British, born Londoners, cosmopolitan and borderless. And so many “others” were visiting and studying in England, and so many young Brits were traveling and working abroad. This kind of voluntary migration shatters insularity. The neighborhoods, though divided by class, were integrated racially. People were socializing, dating, marrying. So I was surprised to discover that a British friend who visited New York the other day is still using offensive words and finding new uses for them. I am sure she is an anomaly, living in a small village, prey to the sensational press—Islamic terrorists these days instead of golliwogs. And offensive words still on her lips.

“Stupid,” was always a favorite, “naughty” another. “That’s a stupid woman,” my friend said on the M4 bus which travels from my neighborhood into Harlem and beyond. I had wanted her to feel the contours of my divided city, contiguous ethnic neighborhoods living peaceably side by side without much interaction. And a young black woman got on who was obviously unwell, perhaps even on medication, and her reflexes were so slow, her lips and hands trembling, that she didn’t get up fast enough from the side seat reserved for the elderly and disabled when an elderly woman got on. “Stupid woman,” my friend said again. That brought me back-ward to my early days in London.

“She is unwell,” I said, correcting my friend. “The words we use to describe people matter.” Earlier she had referred to our native people as “Red Indians,” and prided herself on not having any “laborers,” in her family. Class prejudice as well as racism, I thought. How quaint.  Read More 

It seems a long time since Princess Diana’s and JFK Jr.’s death, but for some reason I was thinking about them both this week when a friend of mine told me a New York Good Samaritan story. You will recall, dear reader, that when the paparazzi arrived at the scene of the accident in Paris, they took pictures of the grisly scene—what a scoop—but did not help. In France, as it happens, there is a Good Samaritan Law, Non-Assistance à Personne en Danger, and if citizens do not stop to help, they can be indicted. I was later asked to reflect on the lack of such a law in the United States by an editor at George magazine for an anthology JFK Jr. was publishing called “250 Ways to Make America Better," which is why this particular Good Samaritan memory chip called up both Princess Di and JFK Jr., both gone too soon in awful ways. But their legacies remain, and for this we must be grateful. In the case of Princess Di: landmines. She sought their elimination from former war-torn regions and went to visit fields and fields of landmines in former war-torn regions. And in the case of JFK Jr., he started a very good magazine and was involved in many political causes. So when my Good Samaritan friend told me her story, I took notice, and decided to write a little something about it while, at the same time, encouraging her to write about it; I always question the ways in which I appropriate other people’s stories in the guise of reporting them. And this is, sometimes, an ethical conundrum.

Nonetheless, I will return to my friend’s story, if only briefly. She was on the West 4th Street A-train platform late last Saturday when she spotted two men, covered in gold jewelry, carrying suitcases and a baby rabbit. My friend loves animals, rescues animals, and donates mightily to animal conservation—elephants, for example—and she was horrified when one of these unsavory looking men took the rabbit and held it over the track threatening to drop it. And, immediately, she had an idea: “I am going to buy this rabbit.” And that is what she did, handing over her last $40. There is more to the story—there always is—but I will let her tell it.  Read More 

Agi and Elena are watching an award winning Mexican telenovella, "La Fuerza del Destino " (The Power of Destiny) when I arrive at the Laundromat. It doesn't take long for me to figure out what is going on: bad guy, good guy, bad girls, good girls. In my minimal Spanish, and Agi and Elena's pidgin English enhanced by the translation app on my phone, they manage to convey most of the plot. I load up the machine and do a down-dog to stretch my back. Agi and Elena are mesmerized. Not surprisingly, on their feet all day folding laundry, they both have back problems. So, how about a bit of yoga, I suggest.

They cannot believe I am spending time with them again. Most of the customers drop off their laundry, but I don't. I make time in my day and my week to do household chores; it keeps me grounded. And I talk to everyone. Not only is this good for my sedentary writer's body and my spirit, but I get ideas for stories. When I sit at my desk, lost in a cyber world, I feel disconnected, the very opposite of what social media is supposed to do for us. Sure, I chit and chat, send out IM's and texts and emails galore, but how rare it is to talk on the telephone these days and to hear a live human voice. In fact, it's a shock. When a private client wrote me a query yesterday about a revision of her manuscript, I called her. She seemed a bit flustered. Was it a good time to talk? "Sure, for a minute." A minute!! Not only is letter writing now a lost art, so is conversation. This is not good for writers, one reason among many I enjoy the dynamics of the classroom. We talk!!

I remember hearing about a course Margaret Atwood once gave at Columbia University to the MFA students, so immersed in their projects they didn't know what day it was, or what hour of the day. The course was called something like "what writers do when they are not writing," and it was a sell-out, probably because it was Margaret Atwood on the podium. I am sure she surprised the earnest, ambitious, goal-oriented students. Did she tell them to get out into the city and talk to real people? Suggest they take a day or two off and volunteer somewhere? It seems so. The writer friend who had taken the course said it was life changing. Here was a writer she greatly admired who was not cloistered in her writing room; she was connected-- a mother, a wife, a concerned citizen with a life in balance. How can we separate these primal human needs from our writing life; we cannot.  Read More 

Let there be light. That’s what fiat lux means. I don’t know where I read it but the Latin expression inspired me to curate my new collection of odd stories—“Nomads”—using Latin words and aphorisms as headings, though I haven’t decided what they should be as yet, or how the stories will fall into each section. I am having fun figuring this out before the tedious copy-editing work begins.

Walking on the High Line, admiring the plantings and the view of the Mighty Hudson the other day before the end-of-summer turned into SUMMER here in New York, a writer friend suggested that I divide the collection into sections if only as a courtesy to the reader, and though there will be some who disregard these divisions, no matter, it is still a courtesy. So I set to work.

Fiat Lux. I love those two words, the sound of them, and the implications. Doesn’t every writer suffer from the delusion that we are illuminating life in some way and that others will agree that we have done so? And we persevere in this delusion with every new work—always our best, is it not?—until we begin the next project. Suddenly we realize there is more to say and we must try to say it better. And it’s odd that when we return to old work—which is what I have been doing all summer (small s)—there is always the sensation that either it is not good enough, or it is brilliant, that I have let in the light. Who can say? Not I.  Read More