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The doctor left, but what happened to me next was one of those extraordinary events that take over the mind unexpectedly. The space in front of me, where he had been sitting, was now like a vacuum—an absence.
We finally rented a house, at 163 Butler Avenue on the East Side,
Will Ludwig, an old blind man, would stand and “watch,”
“Shalom Aleichem,”
Mother also supported my beloved grandmother, Pauline Fox.
When she was eight years old, she suffered a bizarre accident that resulted in the loss of her left eye.
When she did speak, it was in Yiddish. We listened to every word as if no one else in our lives would ever say something like it again, as if what she told us was how we ought to be. She was like an angel that way.
Carl was still able to buy us a home, at 182 Saranac Avenue in North Buffalo,
Making music is like a prescription for a disease that cannot be cured but whose symptoms can be alleviated.
The entry for Sanford D. Greenberg in the 1958 yearbook of Bennett High School, Buffalo, New York: President of the senior class; president of the student council; president of the Buffalo Inter-High School Student Council; representative of the Empire Boy’s State; associate editor of the school yearbook; chief consul of the senior class; member of the Bennett High School Hall of Fame; member of the Legion of Honor, Key Club, French Honorary Society, cross-country team, and track team. Prom king.
I had made it through enough of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to recall, “Now, just as the Gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold the City shone like the sun; and the streets also were paved with gold.”
Each morning I walked from my dormitory, New Hall, through a cozy quadrangle. At its far side a large bronze of Alexander Hamilton guarded a building that became the center of my intellectual life—old Hamilton Hall.
“When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read. And dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.”
Mark Van Doren
It was not only the education those teachers imparted but also a respect and admiration for them, for their amazing, infectious passion for work and ideas, that were among the truly priceless gifts I have received. They helped set my sights high, bolstered my self-esteem, and firmed up my determination to emulate them as much as I could. Their example would later help me out of a terrible slough of despond.
I had been on the Columbia campus less than a month when I happened to meet a fellow freshman
He introduced himself as Arthur Garfunkel.
I had always been an amalgam of doer and dreamer.
Thus began my shadow university education, one that sustains me still.
As my freshman year moved along, I developed nothing less than a hunger for art. The museums were, for me, sanctuaries, holy places. My two, going on three, years in the city with my eyesight still functional provided me with a storehouse of art—images archived in my memory.
I learned to use art to live, not just “appreciate” it in passing.
For one thing, we agreed on the beauty of the “Kol Nidre,” the poignant Ashkenazic prayer sung on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Perhaps, we once brainstormed, we could take the best of Jewish music, such as the “Kol Nidre,” which Max Bruch had made world famous in his variations for cello, meld it with the best of Christian music—Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor—and produce a transcendent sound.
“Now, Sanford,” he said, “listen to me. I am going to give you five reasons why you will be my roommate next year. Here are the five reasons: Your nobility. Your devotion to pursuing a lifetime study of music, the arts, and literature. You find beauty in all of life’s corners—a passion I share. We will form a pact: should either find himself in extremis, regardless of the cause, the other will come to his rescue, notwithstanding his life circumstances at that time. Finally, you’re cool.”
His evidently authentic feelings struck me forcefully. I knew it was a singular moment, one never to be forgotten. As my wise grandmother would have said, it was b’shert—destined to be. I raised my hand slowly, shook his, and responded, “Yes—of course.” “Cool” was the style of the day.
himself. “If you’re going to become an architect,” he continued, as though talking to himself, “then you have to consider whether the work you’re going to do will last. It’s the same for artists.
Doctors, for example, know their work won’t last because all their patients will eventually die. It’s a noble profession, but still—there’s always that.”
Mallomars,
For me, memory is not casual daydreaming; it has been a life-sustaining activity. The process of thinking about my good moments and my bad moments, my good luck and my bad luck, functions for me something like an old-fashioned carpenter’s spirit level. It has allowed me to steady myself, as though it were an extension of my limbic system (which, incidentally, is a bit handicapped for a blind person).
Much of that necessarily occurs in one’s head, and by an ironically beneficial twist, a blind person is left largely with only that: the conscious life within his or her head. One then realizes how much of one’s mental life had been anchored in the world one saw. This is something that you, the reader, must contemplate, if you are sighted, in order to understand much of what my account is about.
“God does not send us despair in order to kill us; he sends it in order to awaken us to a new life.” The awakening, though, was brutally hard.
Then, abruptly, Arthur asked me when I was going to return. When! It soon became clear that he was concerned merely about the great amount of coursework I had missed and would have to catch up on for the second half of junior year. As if it were that simple! I replied that, flights of fancy aside, I really did not know whether I was going to return at all. At that, he was silent for a while. Then he said that of course I was going to return, that it was his job to convince me to return: “There is no other way.”
Arthur told me he would help me if I returned.
He began to sing: “Oh Sanford, Sanford, Sanford…I made you out of clay, and now you’re dry and ready. So, Sanford, we must play.” With that, his intensity vanished; we both laughed and put our arms on each other’s shoulders. With his simple nonsense, he had succeeded in dispelling my uneasiness,
of life’s barrel,” as I phrased it. “Sanford, let’s recite together,” he said abruptly: “‘Oh, to be in England / Now that April’s there, / And whoever wakes in England / Sees, some morning, unaware…’
Yes, it was blatant self-pity, but I now like to think of it as a way of firing myself up, of creating the momentum of emotion in order to move on. It was the standard tactic of backing up to get a running start.
No, you won’t see the sun, but the fire in you will lead you to achievements that others can only dream about.”
but I need you there. You’re my best friend.
We made a promise to each other.
about. It’s the perfect time. I need you to come back. And if you come back, then you’ll need me. This is what we promised each other. This was the whole point.”
Arthur was right. It was a stipulation: one would be there for the other in times of crisis. This was a chip, I would discover throughout my later life, that I would need to cash in on occasion.
There were thousands of other times when he would be there for me. Because of this commitment made to me as a young man on our way to a bookstore near Columbia, he would forgo substantial income time and again to honor it. That was in his character.
Arthur is a genuine poet—someone who realizes life “every, every minute.”
So come back with me and conquer Columbia.”
none of their words would have mattered to me so much then as these words spoken along Saranac Avenue in Buffalo. This was Arthur speaking to my heart.
Arthur seemed to think that the sky was my limit.
For a long time afterward, I wanted to think it was Arthur who made my return possible, and in a sense that is true—but the door swings both ways. I was going back because of him, yes, but also for him; the meaning of that took me years to fully grasp. In taking, the receiver offers an opportunity for the giver to give. The giver is a receiver, and the receiver a giver. I owe my life to that balance.
The help I required most urgently was to have study material read to me every night. He would say, “Darkness is going to help you today.” Or, “Darkness is going to read to you from The Iliad.”
Last but not least, there were his words of encouragement, the expressions of faith, the expressions of knowing something that was impossible for him to know but sounding as if he did.
What, then, was the “opportunity” for which he was willing to sacrifice hours of devotion to his own expected career in architecture? What he did for me stands outside of scale or measure.
“Don’t you think,” she said, “it would be easier for those around you if you could travel independently? Wouldn’t that restore your pride?”
