My last evening in Brooklyn. D will pick me up tomorrow, drop me in the water - that is, the pool, we'll do a bit of provisions shopping at Sahadi's and Trader Joe, and hightail it back to good old Columbia County. After a matinée of Girl Who Played With Fire, which I liked but didn't love (less riveting than Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and throughout which I savored scenic glimpses of Stockholm and the beautiful Swedish countryside, I bought a bunch of thank-you flowers that might well be from CC (regional countryside anyway) - zinnia, sunflower, globe amaranth, yarrow, and flowers that I'm guessing to be echinops and phlox. Classic six country bouquet. I peeled off the cellophane, struggled with the tightly bound rubber band, and now the stems are fanned out in a glass vase atop my friends' lovely marble fireplace mantle, reflecting in a mirror that I remember J saying he found by the trash on one of his neighborhood rambles. It's really nice, oval with a wreathed offwhite-painted frame, shabby chic but not overly so. Some people have the knack of finding treasures on the street, tag sales, second hand stores and the like. I don't particularly, though some years ago we brought our taxes to a preparer in Park Slope, who charged $200, a mighty sum, and afterward when we headed up a leafy brownstoned side street we spied a wonderful pharmacy floor lamp that someone had put to the curb. I'd seen such lamps at Pottery Barn. We're not eagle-eyed scavengers but this had obvious value so D picked it up and we brought it home. There was a minor wiring issue which D handily fixed and we surmised that that's why it had been discarded. I'm fond of the lamp, which stands by an armchair in the living room. It's made of dark metal and the shade reminds me of a World War I helmet. It's very expressive. We refer to it as R2D2.
At the time I looked up the lamp in a PB catalog - $200 - the cost of the tax preparer. Who didn't even do our taxes right. That summer the IRS contacted us and said that we hadn't availed ourselves of something or other and that we had overpaid and here was a nice refund.
***
I love the little nearly-square framed view of the sky from this tiny study. Now it's blue sky and animated white clouds. I keep seeing amorous couples kissing though not just now. No discernible shape really. Puffy white Australia with New Zealand or Borneo in tow maybe.
Missed Stella the Artist this morning. For some reason I couldn't get the livestream to work. It seemed to kick off after the 3 am KZE rules-of-the-game review, and I couldn't get it going again until a song or two after Stella. I'm sorry I missed it. I've played the Letterman version a couple of times, but it's not the same. I love it when Stella unexpectedly comes at me, which doesn't happen every day.
Livestreaming my thoughts to you... Another perfect day, they keep piling up, someone sings now. Cat Stevens, I'm guessing. Let me check. Not even close. Monsters of Folk.
***
Went for a swim at midday even though I didn't have sunscreen. Had a contretemps with a parks worker who made a federal case over the fact that I didn't have a lock. I said I'm here from out of town for a few days, I didn't think to pack one, and the woman at the door (who gave me a hard time yesterday but waved me through with a friendly smile today) said it's okay. There were a good half-dozen blue-tee-shirted parks staffers in the women's locker room. We can't be responsible, this one said maniacally. If someone wants my f**king dirty clothes they can have them, I said. (Yes, the f-bomb dropped. I'm totally amazed I got away with it - she could have booted me right there. But lucky me - I think that was part of her regular vernacular so I don't think she noticed (phew). Talk about a Girl Who Plays With Fire.) Or wait, I offered, maybe I could just keep my things on the pool deck while I swim. She looked appalled. Oh no, not the pool deck. F***ing insanity.
But it was instantly all okay and worth it once I hit the water. I ended up sharing a lane with a friendly European woman, and we compared notes on how amazing & delightful the pool is - that is, if you can get past the gauntlet. I told her how I don't have a lock. Oh you can get one at the 99 cent store, she said. I didn't think of that, seemed like a pricier item to me. Plus offhand, not sure where a dollar store is around here.
Enough about me - how is everything with you? I check your weather (or the nearest to you as I can figure): 55 and clear. Day length will be 21 hours and 51 minutes. Use the two hours and nine minutes of darkness wisely, darling.
This being culture diary and all, I should mention that I saw Solitary Man a couple of days ago, too. Another movie I liked but didn't love. Good Michael Douglas though, playing a roué who isn't as solitary as he ought to be, creating such messes that he ends up more solitary than he wishes to be. I'm sure that was the (thinly disguised) diner that's on the corner of Fordham Street and City Island Avenue. And I love Susan Sarandon but she had on way too much makeup, a mask. Surely she (or the character she played) doesn't need it. That image is definitely not how I wish to age.
Girl Who Plays With Fire and Solitary Man. Good match. Love and kisses, darling.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
culture diary, day 6
Beautiful late afternoon. The heat wave seems to have broken, so much so that I've shut the a/c and opened the screened windows again. Skies are blue and there's a fresh breeze, the air feels dry. I went for a swim earlier, all delightful and uneventful as what I had always experienced in years past. I have just woken from a nap and feel langorous and still wakeful. I've spent most of my time in this apartment nude. So comfortable. It's a rare pleasure to spend long stretches of time luxuriating in one's own skin. I sit at the computer typing, and when I get up to go to the next room there's a beautiful antique oak mirrored dresser in which I see my torso reflected back. I've seen this image so many times now it feels almost depersonalized - my head is cut off above the curved oak frame. It's me, or it could be any rounded French Venus from throughout time. I step past the bed and there's a full-length mirror, and it's me again, hair pinned up, looking back at me, no longer faceless, anonymous. And then I step past the image and it's just the sensation of me again, spirit within skin, moving about the apartment. I stand at the sink and rinse a few dishes, hard granite countertop cool against my skin, droplets of water dampening my breasts and I don't care (oh the liberation of no apron!). Back in the study I lean back in the office chair, stretching beneath the circulating fan and smiling up at the clear blue sky and treetops at the top half of the window. A helicopter hovers in the distance, tiny dragonfly over the East River. My back is slightly burned from my noontime swim, the sun having its way even through pearly haze. If I go to the pool tomorrow it'll be at the end of the day. I think of going to the Guggenheim in the morning for an exhibit whose theme is hauntings and repetitions and recursions, right up my alley, but then see that they've reproduced quite a lot of it online, so much so that I sit deliciously in my primordial, timeless nude and enjoy the most unrestrained tour, and my mind floats and I muse and dream as I gaze at the images and read the notes, grateful to be momentarily weightless, give myself to apprehending it all (albeit on reduced, flattened scale) without the clamorous distraction of painful feet. I wonder a bit about the tone of the curatorial notes, I sense a subtext that disdains as sentiment longings for the past, of memory, of the desire to preserve, record, remember. The overview notes that the exhibit "documents a widespread contemporary obsession with the past, both collective and personal." Whyever not? How is this a "contemporary" obsession, or an "obsession" at all? Isn't it one of the most essentially human existential quandaries that the past recedes, disappears, yet informs our present, we seek it and perhaps it seeks us? And that for time immemorial this quest to recapture lost time has been a very raison d'etre for art? Another curatorial note, on artistic recordings of landscape, reads, "artists... insisting on the importance of remembrance and memorialization." Insisting? Those sentimental artists! I just sense another agenda afoot, that while ostensibly celebrating poetic and artistic contemplations of the past, they are viewed as suspect, marginalized, unrealistically interfering with the steady march of progress, redevelopment, changes in landscape, loss of memories, rituals, traditional ways, etc.
I'm completely babbling, and if you were here enjoying delicious rose, ice melting the wine to pale pink, I don't know that we'd mire ourselves more than lightly in a theoretical critique of a subliminally coded virtual gallery tour. Or maybe we would. But with a cool breeze on our skin and soft sheets beckoning we wouldn't limit ourselves for long.
***
P.S. to KZE -- chasing your butterflies -- GG Train, Olivers Army, and all the delightful rest - LOL!
I'm completely babbling, and if you were here enjoying delicious rose, ice melting the wine to pale pink, I don't know that we'd mire ourselves more than lightly in a theoretical critique of a subliminally coded virtual gallery tour. Or maybe we would. But with a cool breeze on our skin and soft sheets beckoning we wouldn't limit ourselves for long.
***
P.S. to KZE -- chasing your butterflies -- GG Train, Olivers Army, and all the delightful rest - LOL!
culture diary, day 5
Good morning darling. Missing you. Where are you? I imagine you're very busy. I think of you as a field marshal. Shades of those war games that you had set up in your attic so many years ago, miniature toy soldiers arranged on a cloth mapped with the geography of a famous battleground on which you staged and analyzed one battle or another from military history. I remember your enthusiasm as you outlined the scenario for me, the role of topography, compelling advantages of the winning side, fatal miscalculations or strokes of misfortune of the vanquished. That's how I picture you now, on the beach with the troops engaged in a campaign. Well that's pretty intense - not exactly, of course, no winners or losers (I hope), nor violent battle. But rather, attending to all the logistics and personalities, mindful of the overarching mission and tasks, everyone looking to you. I picture your determined look, your contagious enthusiasm as you outline the scenario for the troops...
Peaceful here this morning. I'm in a langorous, reflective mood. The sky's been a blank pall but now the sun is breaking through. Embroidered Indian panels cover the bottom half of the window in the tiny aerie study, and all that's visible from the top half is sky, treetops, and occasional birds, pigeons mostly - doves - flitting past, images darting across a screen. The heat wave continues. I'm fine in here. KZE is on low, the A/C is going, a small fan attached to the desk whirs and blows on my bare skin. Feels nice.
Went to the pool yesterday and it was such a miserable experience that I have a draft complaint letter started to the parks commissioner. The city administration changed the pool hours citywide yesterday, which threw people off because there wasn't advance notice. As a result, where I was (in a scene that I have little doubt was played out similarly at pools across the city), hundreds of people stood on line in 90+-degree heat and sun for well over an hour before being let in. Then, not 20 minutes later, we were all kicked out of the water because there weren't enough lifeguards. The adult lap lanes were closed in order to redeploy guards to the middle section which was opened now to accommodate the crowds. Hundreds of people stood on the pool deck for who knows how long (I left after a few minutes) as lifeguards dragged their chairs and assumed their new positions, surely something that could have been done while the pool was closed - say, while we were all waiting on line.
It's funny, thinking of you as a field marshal where you are, because that latent aspect of myself was coming out (in my own mind at least) as I waited to get in. A parks staffer surveying the long line came up to me as I stood (I looked brisk, I suppose). He was really nice and apologetic and tried to explain the problem, and I give him credit. It certainly wasn't his fault. The problem was lack of competent management and adequate contingency planning for a heat emergency. I myself was hearing about the coming heat wave for a good week before it arrived. The City can't claim that it was was caught offguard. There was nothing sudden or unexpected about it, not to mention that extremes in weather appear to be the New Normal.
One aspect of the experience that I feel discouraged and dispirited about is that I believe the main goal of government officials was to try to conserve the energy grid, not that that isn't a critical goal. They encourage people to cool themselves off at the pool instead of running their fans and air conditioners. In response to energy demands they sought to expand times the pool was open by shuffling the hours - but as a direct result they stressed those seeking relief from the heat even more. In changing the hours without notice, and not lining up enough lifeguards by timely authorizing overtime (as a guard told me would be the case starting today), the administration did not sufficiently take into account the impact of its actions on the the basic human needs and comfort of young families, mostly, and many, many small children.
Ah, I'm in no mood to rant now. I want to feel mellow. And yet there are other themes that I see. I have some kind of resistance fighter in me that kicks in. The crowd was complacent, didn't even seem really annoyed to have to stay in line for so long in the blazing sun. Well, bless them for their patience - but is such obedient, mindless submission so acceptable in a citizenry? I felt that they had a right to be angry. I felt angry. I talked to a couple of staffers who were very nice & calm - as was I, though analytical and pointed. I'm expressing my frustration here in words, and when I get back home upstate I'll finish the letter to the commissioner. I'm speaking for myself and not to be presumptuous, but I think I speak for others on that line yesterday too.
I had the feeling of very small-minded petty bureaucrats running the pool, inmates running the asylum. I had the sense of being at a correctional facility, a prison, a camp. A population being controlled, herded, and toyed with - certainly not cared for. As they finally started letting people in, I was spritzed by a sprinkler that a staffer had set up to water a young, already dead tree and dead flowers. Was the garden being watered? Or was the crowd - rather than being smoothly and efficiently admitted to the pool - being symbolically hosed to cool off?
And people accept this, as though that's all they deserve, all they're due. The masses are micromanaged and they're used to it. New Yorkers flatten themselves out so as to get by.
Also, when I see a problem - my mind wants to find a solution, try to fix it. I like for things to run smoothly, and to see things improved. But that's not the way the world works, is it? To try to fix a problem can be viewed as a challenge to the status quo, the system.
This experience brought back to me why I was happy to leave the city of mindless enforced conformity. I really had enough of the feeling of being tamped down, too often for stupid reasons.
After the all the chaos, the two hours I spent to get in a ten-minute swim, as I left the pool a staffer called after me.
Sorry darling, this post is a mess. It's 11 in the morning and I don't really have a plan for today. Believe it or not, I'm thinking about going to the pool. But I still don't have a lock, and now they know I wear shoes.
I hope all is well with you darling.
Peaceful here this morning. I'm in a langorous, reflective mood. The sky's been a blank pall but now the sun is breaking through. Embroidered Indian panels cover the bottom half of the window in the tiny aerie study, and all that's visible from the top half is sky, treetops, and occasional birds, pigeons mostly - doves - flitting past, images darting across a screen. The heat wave continues. I'm fine in here. KZE is on low, the A/C is going, a small fan attached to the desk whirs and blows on my bare skin. Feels nice.
Went to the pool yesterday and it was such a miserable experience that I have a draft complaint letter started to the parks commissioner. The city administration changed the pool hours citywide yesterday, which threw people off because there wasn't advance notice. As a result, where I was (in a scene that I have little doubt was played out similarly at pools across the city), hundreds of people stood on line in 90+-degree heat and sun for well over an hour before being let in. Then, not 20 minutes later, we were all kicked out of the water because there weren't enough lifeguards. The adult lap lanes were closed in order to redeploy guards to the middle section which was opened now to accommodate the crowds. Hundreds of people stood on the pool deck for who knows how long (I left after a few minutes) as lifeguards dragged their chairs and assumed their new positions, surely something that could have been done while the pool was closed - say, while we were all waiting on line.
It's funny, thinking of you as a field marshal where you are, because that latent aspect of myself was coming out (in my own mind at least) as I waited to get in. A parks staffer surveying the long line came up to me as I stood (I looked brisk, I suppose). He was really nice and apologetic and tried to explain the problem, and I give him credit. It certainly wasn't his fault. The problem was lack of competent management and adequate contingency planning for a heat emergency. I myself was hearing about the coming heat wave for a good week before it arrived. The City can't claim that it was was caught offguard. There was nothing sudden or unexpected about it, not to mention that extremes in weather appear to be the New Normal.
One aspect of the experience that I feel discouraged and dispirited about is that I believe the main goal of government officials was to try to conserve the energy grid, not that that isn't a critical goal. They encourage people to cool themselves off at the pool instead of running their fans and air conditioners. In response to energy demands they sought to expand times the pool was open by shuffling the hours - but as a direct result they stressed those seeking relief from the heat even more. In changing the hours without notice, and not lining up enough lifeguards by timely authorizing overtime (as a guard told me would be the case starting today), the administration did not sufficiently take into account the impact of its actions on the the basic human needs and comfort of young families, mostly, and many, many small children.
Ah, I'm in no mood to rant now. I want to feel mellow. And yet there are other themes that I see. I have some kind of resistance fighter in me that kicks in. The crowd was complacent, didn't even seem really annoyed to have to stay in line for so long in the blazing sun. Well, bless them for their patience - but is such obedient, mindless submission so acceptable in a citizenry? I felt that they had a right to be angry. I felt angry. I talked to a couple of staffers who were very nice & calm - as was I, though analytical and pointed. I'm expressing my frustration here in words, and when I get back home upstate I'll finish the letter to the commissioner. I'm speaking for myself and not to be presumptuous, but I think I speak for others on that line yesterday too.
I had the feeling of very small-minded petty bureaucrats running the pool, inmates running the asylum. I had the sense of being at a correctional facility, a prison, a camp. A population being controlled, herded, and toyed with - certainly not cared for. As they finally started letting people in, I was spritzed by a sprinkler that a staffer had set up to water a young, already dead tree and dead flowers. Was the garden being watered? Or was the crowd - rather than being smoothly and efficiently admitted to the pool - being symbolically hosed to cool off?
And people accept this, as though that's all they deserve, all they're due. The masses are micromanaged and they're used to it. New Yorkers flatten themselves out so as to get by.
Also, when I see a problem - my mind wants to find a solution, try to fix it. I like for things to run smoothly, and to see things improved. But that's not the way the world works, is it? To try to fix a problem can be viewed as a challenge to the status quo, the system.
This experience brought back to me why I was happy to leave the city of mindless enforced conformity. I really had enough of the feeling of being tamped down, too often for stupid reasons.
After the all the chaos, the two hours I spent to get in a ten-minute swim, as I left the pool a staffer called after me.
"You leavin'?"***
"Yeah - why?"
"Cause you're wearing shoes. They should be in a locker."
Sorry darling, this post is a mess. It's 11 in the morning and I don't really have a plan for today. Believe it or not, I'm thinking about going to the pool. But I still don't have a lock, and now they know I wear shoes.
I hope all is well with you darling.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
culture diary, day 4
Good morning darling. It's 6:30 in the morning. I'm sitting in the nude in the top floor aerie sipping iced coffee. Very oppressive out, comfortable here with A/C on low. Let me check the weather where you are. Precisely as I thought - 39 and overcast.
***
Emails ahoy, from Monday:
It went fine. The receptionist, a beaming young woman, was sweet as she could be, not the evil once-over type, and the suit was in a closed bag. I felt relieved that the pickup went smoothly and that I had escaped embarrassment, ego intact. But I did ride down the elevator with an elegant, soignee executive in a clearly expensive asymmetrically-cut formfitting sleeveless silk print dress and heels. In the lobby the burly male receptionist leered at her approvingly, ignoring me in my teeshirt (Ralph Lauren) and jeans (Peebles), as she sailed crisply out the door all action figure.
***
Afterward I went to the Angelica, the 11:20 screening of The Secret in their Eyes, an Argentinian crime suspense thriller that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last year. At moments it had a Law & Order feel and indeed afterward I read that the director also works in the States and has directed episodes. The movie was like a richly elaborated L & O, with all the more subtle themes, nuanced characterizations, and intelligent dialogue. There was an intriguing idea at the center of the movie - that individuals are motivated by a central passion, a driving force that doesn't change, that a person isn't really able to change. A person can change addresses, careers, spouses, and all the rest - but in the midst of all the mutable swirl of life there's an overriding, core passion that the person returns to again and again, is compelled to play out. I suppose I have come to a sense of mine, and that my daily writing, to the beloved, unknowable, unattainable other, is an expression of it.
***
I returned to the neighborhood, did a bit of grocery shopping, bought a couple of bottles of rose from the wine merchant with whom after all the years here I'm on a first name basis, and procured a large cup of black coffee that, chilled with a bit of raw sugar, became this morning's iced coffee.
Then I changed into my swimsuit, which fits beautifully, threw on a tee shirt and shorts, grabbed a towel, and headed towards the Red Hook pool, first time since moving upstate in 2005. I tucked ID and Metrocard in my shorts pocket, thinking that I might take the bus. But I found that despite the heat I was enjoying the walk. It was tolerable on the shady side of the street. I've been missing my conservation area regimen and it was nice to set out at a brisk pace again. When I used to go to the pool years ago we'd drive or I'd take the bus mostly because I absolutely hated crossing on foot the highway underneath the Gowanus Expressway that in its trademark Mosesian brutalism savagely divides Carroll Gardens from Red Hook. But yesterday I didn't mind so much. My head is in a different place. I've spent several years now in the country, know that I'll return there in a few days, and my nerves have been soothed somewhat over time. When I lived in the city I was so stressed out all the time that the filthy, cacophonous, overscale, highly trafficked Gowanus hurdle was just too much for me. Yesterday it was fine. I walked down leafy, pleasant Clinton, waited for the light to change, crossed the highway, passed under the rubbled, dark, pounding, concrete overhead behemoth expressway, and crossed another highway, all in one piece without my heart racing. Then, along a calm if impoverished street, I ambled a few more blocks to the pool.
I recall that they require that people bring locks for a locker, and was prepared to be turned away for lack of one. Lock? said a parks worker. I waved my ID. No, but I have nothing to lock up. He waved me through.
The pool is glorious. It's Olympic size or maybe two or three times larger, I have no idea. It's enormous and the water is a beautiful azure blue. Heavenly. One end is reserved for the majority, that is, adults and kids who just want to splash around and cool off. The other end is for serious lap swimmers - that's the end I like. This summer the middle seems to be off limits, creating a large calm buffer between the two zones (an improvement over previous years, when the middle was for lap swimmers and the enticing, lapping waters of the far end were left melancholically empty - attracting once I saw, an egret, longing and confused).
I slipped into the soft water, with a sense of pleasurable wellbeing that I'm in better shape now than I was the years before. The water was a lovely mild temperature, no shock to the system, and it felt heavenly to be immersed, stretch out my limbs and my body, move through the water at a steady rhythm and pace. I'm not a great swimmer, self-taught with no stylish stroke (I admire swimmers with beautiful, powerful, precise strokes and the ability to cut fast through the water). But I can get from one end to the other, and enjoy pausing for a few moments against the edge of the pool, resting, people-watching, and stretching my legs deliciously underwater.
Such a different realm, truly, to be in the water. I thought of the Bill Viola piece I saw the other day, the languid, underwater swimming nature of those on the other side. Viola has another wonderful video I saw once years ago at the Whitney (my first acquaintance with his work), divers coming up from deep bubbled ocean, bursting forth to the surface, cascading into the air, then returning, diving deep back down.
I felt myself to be in a peaceful, joyous, languid zone as I swam my lengths. But as happens every summer - some kids on the frolicsome end of the pool were evidently getting frisky. It breaks the romance of the azure waves to be interrupted by the loud, flatfooted, megaphone bellowing of a parks worker reading the riot act: there will be no male to female body contact, there will be no female to female body contact... She went through the various combinations, then issued the threat that that all bodily contact, which she took pains to spell out means hands and legs and all other body parts and parts thereof, is prohibited and punishable by a $250 summons - that's U.S. currency, she clarified (!) - plus an, I don't know, lifetime ban not only from this pool but from all New York City pools.
But hormones are hormones and whoever she was yelling at wasn't paying her no mind. So all up and down the pool on either side the lifeguards began to blow their whistles in short bursts nonstop - the signal which means everybody out of the pool, including us innocent (at least in public) adult lap swimmers. It felt like kindergarten for the whole class to be punished. We were all hauled out, and the perimeters on either end of the pool were crowded with everybody waiting for the all clear to jump back in. At that point though I'd swum only 20 lengths and was shooting for my usual 30, I put my clothes on over my wet suit and left. I crossed again under the Gowanus. The temperature at a Sunoco station read 102. A few moments later I was heading up the shady green of pretty brownstoned Clinton Street. I arrived back at the apartment, took a cool shower rinsing off the chlorine with fragrant lemon verbena soap, wrapped a bath towel around myself, filled a tall glass with ice, and poured a delicious Spanish rose. As they say in Argentina, Salud. Hope all is well with you, darling.
***
Emails ahoy, from Monday:
D, if not too much trouble could u pls overnite my swimsuit (hanging in closet). I thought I might hang out at the Red Hook pool one day.Note: O works in the Soho atelier of a trendsetting, high-flying, very high-end fashion designer.
Can't get it out today (holiday)... checked UPS rates [pricey]... O [next door neighbor] offered to take it with him when he goes to work tomorrow. You'd have to meet him in Soho but you'd have it tomorrow... Take the O offer; it doesn't really cost him anything, he wants to do me the favor, and you'd have it sooner. Maybe you could check something else out in Soho to make the trip more worthwhile.
Yeah okay - maybe I will pick it up from O tomorrow - gives me
an excuse to get out of the house & into town.
O will leave the suit with the receptionist... As he is frequently pulled around to meetings he thought this would be simplest. The suit is one of two identical Delta Burkes - closet wire drawer, nothing "hanging".
I just might pick it up incognito. I can just imagine horror of MJ staffers encountering the horror of a Delta Burke suit. All kidding aside will pick up & present whatever ID is required. I presume my plus-size person will suffice. Fuck 'em.***
Proper attitude; just try not to laugh as you conjure an episode ofUgly Betty.
It went fine. The receptionist, a beaming young woman, was sweet as she could be, not the evil once-over type, and the suit was in a closed bag. I felt relieved that the pickup went smoothly and that I had escaped embarrassment, ego intact. But I did ride down the elevator with an elegant, soignee executive in a clearly expensive asymmetrically-cut formfitting sleeveless silk print dress and heels. In the lobby the burly male receptionist leered at her approvingly, ignoring me in my teeshirt (Ralph Lauren) and jeans (Peebles), as she sailed crisply out the door all action figure.
***
Afterward I went to the Angelica, the 11:20 screening of The Secret in their Eyes, an Argentinian crime suspense thriller that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last year. At moments it had a Law & Order feel and indeed afterward I read that the director also works in the States and has directed episodes. The movie was like a richly elaborated L & O, with all the more subtle themes, nuanced characterizations, and intelligent dialogue. There was an intriguing idea at the center of the movie - that individuals are motivated by a central passion, a driving force that doesn't change, that a person isn't really able to change. A person can change addresses, careers, spouses, and all the rest - but in the midst of all the mutable swirl of life there's an overriding, core passion that the person returns to again and again, is compelled to play out. I suppose I have come to a sense of mine, and that my daily writing, to the beloved, unknowable, unattainable other, is an expression of it. ***
I returned to the neighborhood, did a bit of grocery shopping, bought a couple of bottles of rose from the wine merchant with whom after all the years here I'm on a first name basis, and procured a large cup of black coffee that, chilled with a bit of raw sugar, became this morning's iced coffee.
Then I changed into my swimsuit, which fits beautifully, threw on a tee shirt and shorts, grabbed a towel, and headed towards the Red Hook pool, first time since moving upstate in 2005. I tucked ID and Metrocard in my shorts pocket, thinking that I might take the bus. But I found that despite the heat I was enjoying the walk. It was tolerable on the shady side of the street. I've been missing my conservation area regimen and it was nice to set out at a brisk pace again. When I used to go to the pool years ago we'd drive or I'd take the bus mostly because I absolutely hated crossing on foot the highway underneath the Gowanus Expressway that in its trademark Mosesian brutalism savagely divides Carroll Gardens from Red Hook. But yesterday I didn't mind so much. My head is in a different place. I've spent several years now in the country, know that I'll return there in a few days, and my nerves have been soothed somewhat over time. When I lived in the city I was so stressed out all the time that the filthy, cacophonous, overscale, highly trafficked Gowanus hurdle was just too much for me. Yesterday it was fine. I walked down leafy, pleasant Clinton, waited for the light to change, crossed the highway, passed under the rubbled, dark, pounding, concrete overhead behemoth expressway, and crossed another highway, all in one piece without my heart racing. Then, along a calm if impoverished street, I ambled a few more blocks to the pool.
I recall that they require that people bring locks for a locker, and was prepared to be turned away for lack of one. Lock? said a parks worker. I waved my ID. No, but I have nothing to lock up. He waved me through.
The pool is glorious. It's Olympic size or maybe two or three times larger, I have no idea. It's enormous and the water is a beautiful azure blue. Heavenly. One end is reserved for the majority, that is, adults and kids who just want to splash around and cool off. The other end is for serious lap swimmers - that's the end I like. This summer the middle seems to be off limits, creating a large calm buffer between the two zones (an improvement over previous years, when the middle was for lap swimmers and the enticing, lapping waters of the far end were left melancholically empty - attracting once I saw, an egret, longing and confused).
I slipped into the soft water, with a sense of pleasurable wellbeing that I'm in better shape now than I was the years before. The water was a lovely mild temperature, no shock to the system, and it felt heavenly to be immersed, stretch out my limbs and my body, move through the water at a steady rhythm and pace. I'm not a great swimmer, self-taught with no stylish stroke (I admire swimmers with beautiful, powerful, precise strokes and the ability to cut fast through the water). But I can get from one end to the other, and enjoy pausing for a few moments against the edge of the pool, resting, people-watching, and stretching my legs deliciously underwater.
Such a different realm, truly, to be in the water. I thought of the Bill Viola piece I saw the other day, the languid, underwater swimming nature of those on the other side. Viola has another wonderful video I saw once years ago at the Whitney (my first acquaintance with his work), divers coming up from deep bubbled ocean, bursting forth to the surface, cascading into the air, then returning, diving deep back down.
I felt myself to be in a peaceful, joyous, languid zone as I swam my lengths. But as happens every summer - some kids on the frolicsome end of the pool were evidently getting frisky. It breaks the romance of the azure waves to be interrupted by the loud, flatfooted, megaphone bellowing of a parks worker reading the riot act: there will be no male to female body contact, there will be no female to female body contact... She went through the various combinations, then issued the threat that that all bodily contact, which she took pains to spell out means hands and legs and all other body parts and parts thereof, is prohibited and punishable by a $250 summons - that's U.S. currency, she clarified (!) - plus an, I don't know, lifetime ban not only from this pool but from all New York City pools.
But hormones are hormones and whoever she was yelling at wasn't paying her no mind. So all up and down the pool on either side the lifeguards began to blow their whistles in short bursts nonstop - the signal which means everybody out of the pool, including us innocent (at least in public) adult lap swimmers. It felt like kindergarten for the whole class to be punished. We were all hauled out, and the perimeters on either end of the pool were crowded with everybody waiting for the all clear to jump back in. At that point though I'd swum only 20 lengths and was shooting for my usual 30, I put my clothes on over my wet suit and left. I crossed again under the Gowanus. The temperature at a Sunoco station read 102. A few moments later I was heading up the shady green of pretty brownstoned Clinton Street. I arrived back at the apartment, took a cool shower rinsing off the chlorine with fragrant lemon verbena soap, wrapped a bath towel around myself, filled a tall glass with ice, and poured a delicious Spanish rose. As they say in Argentina, Salud. Hope all is well with you, darling.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
culture diary, day 3
Good morning darling. The heat wave is here in earnest and so I have capitulated, closed the windows and turned on the A/C. Already it's much more comfortable. Not much to report in the culture diary scene. I walked up to the Heights yesterday and caught a French film, Mademoiselle Chambon. Unassuming slice of life, simmering love story, paper thin on reflection, evaporating like a wafer - yet engrossing, evocative and thoroughly enjoyable as I ate a deli ham sandwich in the dark theater and watched it. It's about a man, a builder by trade, who has a wife and young son. At the boy's school one day the man meets the teacher. At her request he gives a little talk to the class about his line of work and answers the children's questions. How many concrete blocks does it take to build a house? I don't know, I never counted - maybe 2,500-3,000? Loud gasps of wonder from the children. A little girl raises her hand. How many to build this school? Oh, perhaps 25,000-30,000? Even louder gasps! The children and the teacher are enthralled with him, he's charming and modest. After dismissing class the teacher asks his advice about a drafty casement window in her apartment. He visits her place to inspect it and recommends that she replace it as the frame is rotted. She hires him and he comes back to do the job. When he's done he approaches her bedroom where she's been keeping herself out of the way. The door is ajar - she's fast asleep and doesn't hear him calling. He returns to the living room, looks around, and sees a photograph of her playing the violin. When she gets up, he asks if she would play a "tune" for him. She's very shy and at first says no, that he'd be disappointed, but finally she's gently persuaded. She plays beautifully, an utterly yearning, elegiac piece. The man falls in love with the music and with her. One day he runs into her and asks if there's a recording of the piece. She invites him to her place, lends him her CDs, puts on another beautiful piece, violin and piano together, he takes her hand, they kiss... and all kinds of unrequited simmering continues to transpire between them... 
Ultimately I suppose the film boils down to a bit of a morality tale. How easy it is to fall in love - but don't be tempted. The man has obligations and learns that his wife is expecting. He wants to run away with the teacher, who's on a one-year assignment that's just ended. (She's been asked to stay another year but recognizes that since her love is doomed there is no point in staying in this provincial town so she decides to return to Paris.) The night before she leaves they finally make love and he tells her that he wants to go with her. Don't say that if you don't mean it, she says. The following morning she is on the platform, about to board. The man arrives at the station with a suitcase but hesitates to go up to the platform. He stands at the foot of the stairs. The boarding whistle sounds, the woman looks around, waits. The final whistle sounds. She boards, the train pulls out of the station, and the man goes home to his wife. The End. Trains leaving the station like moody strings of beads -- ah, yes, I can relate. Doctor Zhivago it ain't, unlike the story of you and me. That's what made it feel so slight to me - comparing it to our slow-motion Robert Wilson grand operatic lifelong epic in which for over thirty years virtually nothing happens yet so much detonates. So a guy meets a pretty teacher who happens to play the violin - by comparison it's a little thin!
So this is my little violin piece for you this morning, darling. I hope you liked it. Many kisses, and another tune later. Love, Woodstock
Monday, July 5, 2010
culture diary, day 2
Good morning darling. Yesterday, Independence Day, took myself to a museum in Chelsea. Is it possible to get off on the wrong foot at a museum? Yes, it is.
I should back up. After a morning of blogging & breakfasting I left the apartment and thought I'd catch a bargain matinee of Solitary Man, starring Michael Douglas, that's playing at Cobble Hill, a five-minute walk from here. I got there at noon, asked the clerk for a ticket, gave him a ten, and waited for change. He said it's ten dollars. Oh! Isn't there a bargain matinee? He said not today because it's a holiday. I thought, that's new - or relatively newly enforced - because for all the years I lived here I never paid full price for a matinee, including holidays. I said, I'm sorry, I had no idea - could I come back another day? And he was very nice about it, sure, and immediately gave my money back. No attitude, which was really nice. I'll go tomorrow instead - $7 all day & night Tuesdays. Might have gone today - but is today a holiday too? I don't wish to get into the issue. So I'll catch a French film at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema at 2. $10 for adults, all the time. Period. Takes the uncertainty right out of it!
So, back to the museum. This museum's policy is $10 for adults, $7 for artists. I've been feeling more emboldened lately to think of myself as an artist (of sorts), poetic letter writer more precisely. I balk at "poet" - I don't really write poetry, or only rarely. But letters are a legitimate form I believe - art form, that is. (E.D. was always known as a letter writer, but I'm getting the sense that more recently her letters are being formally considered as part of her oeuvre.)
I enter the museum and approach the desk. Three young people sit behind it. I say, pretty shyly, I consider myself an artist, and hand a young woman a ten. She says, oh - umm, do you have a resume or a business card? Say what?!!! (I'm thinking to myself - I have to prove that I'm an artist? it's not enough simply to self-identify as one? Okay, I probably look like a suburban matron - maybe I don't "look like an artist" in the hipster art uniform sense). I feel flustered. I say no - but I do have a website. The young man gets excited, and nods with vigorous approval. Oh that'll do, he says, what is it. And I blurt out the name, and instantly regret it - because of its odd, inbetween nature between public & private. And then I'm really flustered and say, no never mind - I'll just pay the full price, it's okay. And then they're all, no no, just tell us the website. Oh my God. No. It's okay, I'll just pay full price. And I do. Awkward, unnecessarily stressful encounter, not a good way to start off a museum visit.
I don't want you to think that I go through each and every day of my life tiresomely haggling. I don't at all. I hate it. I have never done it. I hate flea markets and avoid situations where one is expected to negotiate or haggle. If this museum had a flat pricing policy, I'd pay the price. I don't try to talk my way out of MOMA's $20 admission. But when the Met says "recommended" admission, and the Rubin allows "artists" in for $7 - I try, legitimately I hope - without trying to get away with something, without being an asshole about it (e.g., offering fifty cents to get into the Met) - to avail myself. If I could easily pay the full price in these situations I would do it. The institutions deserve it and it would certainly make my life easier.
Anyway. The Rubin specializes in Himalayan art, which I'm almost completely unfamiliar with. I was intrigued by their current exhibition, Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures, which explores "thought-provoking correspondences and assymetries" between the "art of death" in Tibetan Buddhist and Christian European traditions. Rich subject. I don't have much to say about it at the moment. It was interesting, though much of the imagery of the Tibetan Book of the Dead went right over my head, unfortunately. I realize it would take concerted study over a long period of time to fully enter it. Here's how ignorant I am of the culture (I'm not proud of my Palin-like ignorance). I watched a short video, an introduction to Kathmandu. Darling, I have heard the exotic name of course, but had absolutely no idea that it's a city - a teeming metropolis no less - in the Himalayas, and an extraordinary one at that, with art and temples at every turn and a pervasive sense of being in close contact with the gods. Imagine that, I thought, such a place absolutely exists, its world worlds, millions of people live their lives - all the while even when I had no idea!
I moved about the dimly lit gallery and decided to jot down a few notes. Without thinking I opened my handbag, fished for readers, pen and notebook, pulled them out, and scribbled. Across the darkened gallery space elevator doors open and I realize that a guard is warily coming towards me. I must have been observed on a surveillance camera and judged to be a potential threat. I feel sickened by this. It was stupid of me to have fished into my purse in a dim alcove rather than in a more open area (would that have made a difference?), it's the Fourth of July, and probably the whole city's on high alert. In the dimness, clutching my pen, notebook tucked under my arm, I stand frozen like a deer in headlights looking at the guard, while he, arms out, an apparition in the darkness, looks at me.
You know, usually in my life I have the sense that I'm a very good person, on the side of good. And I sense that spiritually, somewhere, somehow, it's quietly recognized. It's an abiding, enveloping sense, a comfort to me. And here twice in this museum - this museum of spiritual art - I'm feeling these challenges to my self-identity, that I must prove to young clerks' satisfaction that I'm an artist, and now to this guard who's hovering around me that I'm not malevolent.
So unpleasant. I tried to get over it. It was like a colossal misunderstanding in a nightmare, impossible to get out of. Whatever good karma there was for me (what I inchoately sense in my daily life) in this place, at this moment, had been utterly broken. I went through the rest of the museum and eventually slunk out of there, as doubtless noted, perhaps to their relief, on their cameras.
(You're going to quit reading my blog I'm complaining so much! I'm sorry, darling. I felt I needed to confront and come to terms with the experience - then put it aside.)
Back on a positive "culture diary" note. In a separate exhibit were beautiful large black and white photographs, portraits of residents young and old of a Himalayan village, and visions of the bleak, foreboding, fascinating, desolate landscape at the foot of Mount Everest. It really worked my imagination - it all exists, on the other side of the world - those lively individuals exist, every bit as you and me.
Finally, in the Memento Mori (Remember That You Will Die) exhibit, played a beautiful, enigmatic video, Three Women (2008), by the artist Bill Viola. The video served as a highly resonant transition between the Tibetan Buddhist art of death in one "hemisphere" of the gallery, and early Christian European conceptions in the other.
I sat in the darkened gallery before a vertical plasma screen. Images of three ghostly women emerged from the grainy black and white depths. They stood together at a remove, wearing long, simple gowns that draped against their bodies, revealing the contours of their breasts and their beautiful shapely forms. By turns they regarded one another, looked away, held hands, and took hesitant steps, all in slow, dreamlike, swirling movements like the three graces. They appeared to be a mother and her two young daughters, one a few years older than the other. The sense was of glimpsing into another realm, the afterlife, or beforelife, a dimension in which the dead or unborn are on the other side of the living. The women made langorous steps and lifted their lovely arms, swirling in slow motion around one another with longlimbed, balletically-trained movements that showed off their beautiful physiques and graceful comportment to beautiful effect. Then as if reaching a decision or sensing that it was time, the woman linked hands with the girls on either side and all three turned and began to step forward, appearing larger and increasingly defined as they drew near. The woman let go, extended her arms and stepped forward, seeming to break through a fluid wall from the black and white realm into sudden, immediate high-definition color as if she'd just been born. She stood soaking wet in her gown and lifted her hands to wipe the streaming water from her drenched face and hair so that she could open her eyes. Elegant and elemental she turned and extended an arm back, where it turned black and white as she invited her older daughter to join her in the realm of color. The girl emerged through the shimmering wall in full color, wet from baptism by invisible waterfall, lifting her hands to smooth away the rivulets of water streaming down her hair and face. Then the woman invited the younger girl to step into the realm of color. The three beautiful women stood blinking, wondering, regarding, marveling, in the light... Then one by one each stepped back into the black and white realm, became otherworldly apparitions again, growing smaller and smaller, their images grainier, until they disappeared finally from view.
I should back up. After a morning of blogging & breakfasting I left the apartment and thought I'd catch a bargain matinee of Solitary Man, starring Michael Douglas, that's playing at Cobble Hill, a five-minute walk from here. I got there at noon, asked the clerk for a ticket, gave him a ten, and waited for change. He said it's ten dollars. Oh! Isn't there a bargain matinee? He said not today because it's a holiday. I thought, that's new - or relatively newly enforced - because for all the years I lived here I never paid full price for a matinee, including holidays. I said, I'm sorry, I had no idea - could I come back another day? And he was very nice about it, sure, and immediately gave my money back. No attitude, which was really nice. I'll go tomorrow instead - $7 all day & night Tuesdays. Might have gone today - but is today a holiday too? I don't wish to get into the issue. So I'll catch a French film at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema at 2. $10 for adults, all the time. Period. Takes the uncertainty right out of it!
So, back to the museum. This museum's policy is $10 for adults, $7 for artists. I've been feeling more emboldened lately to think of myself as an artist (of sorts), poetic letter writer more precisely. I balk at "poet" - I don't really write poetry, or only rarely. But letters are a legitimate form I believe - art form, that is. (E.D. was always known as a letter writer, but I'm getting the sense that more recently her letters are being formally considered as part of her oeuvre.)
I enter the museum and approach the desk. Three young people sit behind it. I say, pretty shyly, I consider myself an artist, and hand a young woman a ten. She says, oh - umm, do you have a resume or a business card? Say what?!!! (I'm thinking to myself - I have to prove that I'm an artist? it's not enough simply to self-identify as one? Okay, I probably look like a suburban matron - maybe I don't "look like an artist" in the hipster art uniform sense). I feel flustered. I say no - but I do have a website. The young man gets excited, and nods with vigorous approval. Oh that'll do, he says, what is it. And I blurt out the name, and instantly regret it - because of its odd, inbetween nature between public & private. And then I'm really flustered and say, no never mind - I'll just pay the full price, it's okay. And then they're all, no no, just tell us the website. Oh my God. No. It's okay, I'll just pay full price. And I do. Awkward, unnecessarily stressful encounter, not a good way to start off a museum visit.
I don't want you to think that I go through each and every day of my life tiresomely haggling. I don't at all. I hate it. I have never done it. I hate flea markets and avoid situations where one is expected to negotiate or haggle. If this museum had a flat pricing policy, I'd pay the price. I don't try to talk my way out of MOMA's $20 admission. But when the Met says "recommended" admission, and the Rubin allows "artists" in for $7 - I try, legitimately I hope - without trying to get away with something, without being an asshole about it (e.g., offering fifty cents to get into the Met) - to avail myself. If I could easily pay the full price in these situations I would do it. The institutions deserve it and it would certainly make my life easier.
Anyway. The Rubin specializes in Himalayan art, which I'm almost completely unfamiliar with. I was intrigued by their current exhibition, Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures, which explores "thought-provoking correspondences and assymetries" between the "art of death" in Tibetan Buddhist and Christian European traditions. Rich subject. I don't have much to say about it at the moment. It was interesting, though much of the imagery of the Tibetan Book of the Dead went right over my head, unfortunately. I realize it would take concerted study over a long period of time to fully enter it. Here's how ignorant I am of the culture (I'm not proud of my Palin-like ignorance). I watched a short video, an introduction to Kathmandu. Darling, I have heard the exotic name of course, but had absolutely no idea that it's a city - a teeming metropolis no less - in the Himalayas, and an extraordinary one at that, with art and temples at every turn and a pervasive sense of being in close contact with the gods. Imagine that, I thought, such a place absolutely exists, its world worlds, millions of people live their lives - all the while even when I had no idea!
I moved about the dimly lit gallery and decided to jot down a few notes. Without thinking I opened my handbag, fished for readers, pen and notebook, pulled them out, and scribbled. Across the darkened gallery space elevator doors open and I realize that a guard is warily coming towards me. I must have been observed on a surveillance camera and judged to be a potential threat. I feel sickened by this. It was stupid of me to have fished into my purse in a dim alcove rather than in a more open area (would that have made a difference?), it's the Fourth of July, and probably the whole city's on high alert. In the dimness, clutching my pen, notebook tucked under my arm, I stand frozen like a deer in headlights looking at the guard, while he, arms out, an apparition in the darkness, looks at me.
You know, usually in my life I have the sense that I'm a very good person, on the side of good. And I sense that spiritually, somewhere, somehow, it's quietly recognized. It's an abiding, enveloping sense, a comfort to me. And here twice in this museum - this museum of spiritual art - I'm feeling these challenges to my self-identity, that I must prove to young clerks' satisfaction that I'm an artist, and now to this guard who's hovering around me that I'm not malevolent.
So unpleasant. I tried to get over it. It was like a colossal misunderstanding in a nightmare, impossible to get out of. Whatever good karma there was for me (what I inchoately sense in my daily life) in this place, at this moment, had been utterly broken. I went through the rest of the museum and eventually slunk out of there, as doubtless noted, perhaps to their relief, on their cameras.
(You're going to quit reading my blog I'm complaining so much! I'm sorry, darling. I felt I needed to confront and come to terms with the experience - then put it aside.)
Back on a positive "culture diary" note. In a separate exhibit were beautiful large black and white photographs, portraits of residents young and old of a Himalayan village, and visions of the bleak, foreboding, fascinating, desolate landscape at the foot of Mount Everest. It really worked my imagination - it all exists, on the other side of the world - those lively individuals exist, every bit as you and me.
Finally, in the Memento Mori (Remember That You Will Die) exhibit, played a beautiful, enigmatic video, Three Women (2008), by the artist Bill Viola. The video served as a highly resonant transition between the Tibetan Buddhist art of death in one "hemisphere" of the gallery, and early Christian European conceptions in the other.
I sat in the darkened gallery before a vertical plasma screen. Images of three ghostly women emerged from the grainy black and white depths. They stood together at a remove, wearing long, simple gowns that draped against their bodies, revealing the contours of their breasts and their beautiful shapely forms. By turns they regarded one another, looked away, held hands, and took hesitant steps, all in slow, dreamlike, swirling movements like the three graces. They appeared to be a mother and her two young daughters, one a few years older than the other. The sense was of glimpsing into another realm, the afterlife, or beforelife, a dimension in which the dead or unborn are on the other side of the living. The women made langorous steps and lifted their lovely arms, swirling in slow motion around one another with longlimbed, balletically-trained movements that showed off their beautiful physiques and graceful comportment to beautiful effect. Then as if reaching a decision or sensing that it was time, the woman linked hands with the girls on either side and all three turned and began to step forward, appearing larger and increasingly defined as they drew near. The woman let go, extended her arms and stepped forward, seeming to break through a fluid wall from the black and white realm into sudden, immediate high-definition color as if she'd just been born. She stood soaking wet in her gown and lifted her hands to wipe the streaming water from her drenched face and hair so that she could open her eyes. Elegant and elemental she turned and extended an arm back, where it turned black and white as she invited her older daughter to join her in the realm of color. The girl emerged through the shimmering wall in full color, wet from baptism by invisible waterfall, lifting her hands to smooth away the rivulets of water streaming down her hair and face. Then the woman invited the younger girl to step into the realm of color. The three beautiful women stood blinking, wondering, regarding, marveling, in the light... Then one by one each stepped back into the black and white realm, became otherworldly apparitions again, growing smaller and smaller, their images grainier, until they disappeared finally from view.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Hello dearest. Back up in aerie after a couple of hours in the city. I got back around 3:30, not really in the mood to go out again, and of course too early for wine. I was feeling figuratively up in the air, this uncertain feeling - what should I do? I feel too unsettled to read here for some reason. In times past I've put on their cable TV and caught up on silly reality TV programs such as Real Housewives, but somehow, probably because I have access to the computer here plus great radio, it holds no interest for me. So I was feeling myself bumming out ever so slightly, feeling a little lonely and stuck up here, not filling my time quite as well as usual. And so I set to do a little housekeeping. I washed a few dishes, refilled the cat's water bowls. Clipped ends of string beans, steamed and ran them under cold water. Washed lettuce, peeled a carrot, and made salad along with tomato & cucumber to go with cold salmon at dinner. Sliced a lemon. Scooped litter box. Put dirty clothes in one bag. Bustled and tidied and kept my hands busy - and do you know, it had a palpable centering effect - I feel so much better, organized, content. Just that little bit. Of course while I was going through these modest motions I fantasized about if you were here. Dinner might be more elaborate, or we'd go out. Or perhaps it would be just the same, quiet and modest and cool and relaxing, and amiable conversation and even more amiable else. It was funny standing in the kitchen listening to backyard noises, the old neighborhood regulars in their lawn chairs. I recognize Maryanne's emphysematic cackle. You should hear her and her crowd sing happy birthday. It's like out of a movie it's so off key, raspy, exaggeratedly slow and loud. You might be bemused to hear it, but it wouldn't mean much of course - it's just that when I hear those familiar sounds now - well, I heard them so many times over the years it makes me laugh. I'm glad a few things in this neighborhood haven't changed. So much turnover, a fresh crop of spankin'-new young population keeps turning over, the oldtimers one by one die off, and then there's a stalwart crew that looks a bit older but they keep hangin' on. They own their brownstones and probably could have cashed out big-time a few years ago - but no, they're still here, hosing off the sidewalks, moving their cars on alternate side of the street days, pulling out garbage pails and pulling them back in, yelling greetings at one another down the street, etc., etc.
I don't miss it - but it's fun to revisit.
I was bracing myself this morning for a very hot day, but while it is sunny and hot, it's not humid and so it's perfectly fine. I don't feel a need for the air conditioner (though it's there if/when I do need it). Wore a different pair of shoes today, the brown maryjanes I wore at WinterWalk - very comfortable (during that parade up & down Warren too) and my feet don't hurt from my excursion today. Which is a relief on more than one level - oh good, it's the shoes, not that I'm turning into a cripple.
Darling, I wish you were here, or I there. I wonder what you're doing for the Fourth. Anything to mark the holiday? Do the troops get the day off, or is it like Manhattan retail - everyone reports to work - whaddya think Freedom's all about? I hope you all are well-supplied with meat to grill, that someone remembered to bring coals and matches, and that there's plenty of "champagne, wine and beer available." I love you. I suppose if you were here perhaps we'd stroll up to the promenade to watch the fireworks later. Or, for that matter, climb up on the roof of this very building. Only I have a hard time with that narrow ladder. I can get up it just fine but find it nearly impossible to hoist myself back down. Then again, if I had sufficient motivation to get back down, in the form of you know what from you know who, I might myself become quite the performance acrobat. "Happy Fourth," as they wish customers stepping into Williams-Sonoma on Seventh. Kisses darling, as they don't. XOXOXOXO
I don't miss it - but it's fun to revisit.
I was bracing myself this morning for a very hot day, but while it is sunny and hot, it's not humid and so it's perfectly fine. I don't feel a need for the air conditioner (though it's there if/when I do need it). Wore a different pair of shoes today, the brown maryjanes I wore at WinterWalk - very comfortable (during that parade up & down Warren too) and my feet don't hurt from my excursion today. Which is a relief on more than one level - oh good, it's the shoes, not that I'm turning into a cripple.
Darling, I wish you were here, or I there. I wonder what you're doing for the Fourth. Anything to mark the holiday? Do the troops get the day off, or is it like Manhattan retail - everyone reports to work - whaddya think Freedom's all about? I hope you all are well-supplied with meat to grill, that someone remembered to bring coals and matches, and that there's plenty of "champagne, wine and beer available." I love you. I suppose if you were here perhaps we'd stroll up to the promenade to watch the fireworks later. Or, for that matter, climb up on the roof of this very building. Only I have a hard time with that narrow ladder. I can get up it just fine but find it nearly impossible to hoist myself back down. Then again, if I had sufficient motivation to get back down, in the form of you know what from you know who, I might myself become quite the performance acrobat. "Happy Fourth," as they wish customers stepping into Williams-Sonoma on Seventh. Kisses darling, as they don't. XOXOXOXO
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