Monday, December 31, 2007
a gwb w/ merit
Riverside Drive. I mean, Riverside Park Path. On my final day of apt/cat-sitting for Du & Ojijo, I got in a great run along here, remaining (more or less) Hudson-side for the duration. Or until I found my way up to the bridge, which proved no small feat (again).
Riverside Park is a narrow four-mile strip (72nd to 125th) between the Hudson and curvy Riverside Drive, designed by the Central Park guy, Olmsted. All sorts of vegetation, monuments, quaint walking bridges and tunnels, rec facilities... lot goin' on.
GWB from my starting point. I think I zoomed in here, though, so it probably looked farther.
North River Sanitation Plant.
Closer...
Harlem, near Fairway Market. The trail was under construction, I think, so I had to re-route for a bit. Unexpected combination of industry, blue-collar pubs, and country club-variety cafes near the water. I guess I'm never up here, though, so wouldn't take much to surprise.
[insert pic]
Once back on the path, I experienced maybe my first 'wait, you say I'm in Manhattan?' moment. Obviously things had become a little tricky, causing me to skirt and dart and otherwise chance my way around.
Same crumbling point on the path. I edged down a slick hill of rock to get closer to this.
Beneath. Now, to get on it.
So close, yet so many roads, lanes, ramps...
On it. It was mid-afternoon, though it looks closer to dusk in this image. That's Jersey over yonder, downtown Manhattan to the left... Of all I've enjoyed in the last three years, this view (second time) is one of my absolute favorites. It's just so sweeping--and rare, given the little time I've spent up this way. I loved being able to pick out what must've been the Statue of Liberty--barely visible, the tiniest of lines--from so far north. And the ESB, closer but still so negligible looking. Just as mesmerizing was the appearance of the water--the slight shifts in current, the wavy, sparkling track of sunlight... This bridge's side rails are none too high, which you do your best to forget.
From Jerz.
Back homeward.
I haven't pinned down exactly what it is, and I probably won't, but since moving here my love affair hasn't dimmed at all. Maybe on some level I associate bridges w/ taking risks, yet w/ the assurance that substantial support is provided. Then there's the head-hurting beauty of such enormity, such painstaking craftsmanship...
Very much zoomed in on.
From down below, you don't realize how twisty the shoreline is. It is.
Another hit to the heart.
Shifting waters, shifting roads...
Washington Heights, somewhere around 178th. I took the train back to the UWS from here, catching said train from a station I'd seen once before (similar running route, I believe, like two point five years ago). It was precisely tube-like, reminding me of a) London's Underground, and b) those canisters you'd use at drive-thru banking centers back in the day. Rats make themselves right at home at this station, judging by the way a big fat one hung out on the platform and stared up at me for a good five seconds. (Happening upon this, I had to share. Apologies.*)
WH.
*Please accept this gentle poem [kooser.pdf] as compensation for any ratty and/or bloody dreams that befall you.
Friday, December 28, 2007
puckers of embroidered smocking
I feel like I'm haunting my office. I must be the only soul here today...
The other day, going back over some favorite books, I rediscovered Sharon Olds' poem, Parents' Day. Lately I've been trying to pay close attention to any physical sensations, however slight, that come in the wake of reading books, poems, articles, emails, whatever. On reaching the last line of the below bit of loveliness, I felt the customary shiver, but it's interesting: there have been a few times in recent weeks, in the last week even, that the chill has come before the fact--the effect just before the cause, in a way. And I'm referring to first-time reads here, not re-reads. And it's not like I'm being impacted primarily by the gist, or by a line/word that precedes some more-obviously impactful line/word, or at least I don't think this is the case. I really do get the sense that I'm responding to something yet to come. Maybe it's evidence of firmly established trust in certain writers. Whatever it is, it's exciting.
Parents’ Day
in the crowd of oncoming parents, I strained
forward, like a gazehound held back on a leash,
then I raced toward her. I remember her being
much bigger than I, her smile of the highest
wattage, a little stiff, sparkling
with consciousness of her prettiness--I
pitied the other girls for having mothers
who looked like mothers, who did not blush.
sometimes she would have braids around her head like a
goddess or an advertisement for
I worshipped her cleanliness, her transfixing
irises, sometimes I thought she could
sense a few genes of hers
dotted here and there in my body
like bits of undissolved sugar
in a recipe that did not quite work out.
For years, when I thought of her, I thought
of the long souring of her life, but on Parents’ Day
my heart would bang and my lungs swell so I could
feel the tucks and puckers of embroidered
smocking on my chest press into my ribs,
my washboard front vibrate like scraped
tin to see that woman arriving
and to know she was mine.
Friday, December 21, 2007
holly jolly
Ah, Burl Ives. Burl Ives at Christmas. Yet, Burl Ives at Christmas in New York is not the same as Burl Ives at Christmas in Seattle. Phooey.
Yup, this year's lookin' to be my least hectic holiday season in, well, ever. Easily. Staying Brooklynside, and thus far, here's how the two days are shaping up:
Dec. 24: Get up. Run. Go to a park. Hit up church. Cozy dinner w/ the few people I know who'll be here. Return home. Sink into my extravagant easy chair, cross-stitch in one hand, highball in the other, eyes misting over a Lawrence Welk Show rerun... Ha!
Dec. 25: Get up. Run. Sneak into a Brooklyn soup kitchen (to work, not to eat, I swear! most are actually overstaffed, which is pretty awesome, and why they're not eagerly snatching up more recruits). Go to another park, maybe the same one. (This year's tree's kindof neat. That's not the best picture.) Dinner w/ pals. Return home. Watch Miracle on 34th. Shake my head and chuckle over some sparked memory. Oh golly, I'll be. Pick up w/ the cross-stitch. (I got nothin' against the sport, I swear.) Nod off.
I'm not hatin', though. I'm actually looking forward to the easy tranquility. Besides, I'll be housesitting for Ojijo(sp) and the Du while they're in SEA, which means I'll be visiting the UWS daily, maybe crashing there a few nights... Surely I'll carve out an adventure or two while at it.
Random:
Sad--good place.
Glad--that track! So close to me, too.
"General scruffiness and bad behavior"--oh, kitty!
Commonplace here--but still strikes as strange.
So, so great--thanks, Mendy!
On male friendship--beauty.
Monday, December 17, 2007
And one goes & ruins it for all
Snowmens, w/ chocolate sprinkles for eyes, slivered Swedish fish for noses, and chocolate-covered mini Oreos for hats. Chocolate cake's vegan, and near-perfect I might add, but the heeeeeavy buttercream frosting is not vegan. Neither is it perfect, or very near it. Though I followed the recipe to a T, I'm convinced ol' Martha effed up, as biting into one of these is too much like squishing my teeth into a stick of Parkay. That said, they're still pretty yummy. 
Loner. 
I walked by this fantastic signage (UES) on the way to the 6 after attending a reading/conversation between Madeleine L'Engle's two granddaughters the other day. They read passages from A Wrinkle in Time and Camilla Dickinson, talked about L'Engle's influence on them growing up and into adulthood, and then took questions from an enraptured audience. To hear the pair tell it, their grandmother was just as you'd imagine: reading her granddaughters Shakespeare in bed while they all sipped hot cocoa; wandering routinely out to her star-gazing rock; carried along at the whim of her fictional personalities (they tend to re-emerge in subsequent L'Engle texts). What a woman. Man, if every kid were raised w/ the ideals of active curiosity, imagination, non-judgment... Wouldn't hurt. 
At trapeze the other night, this happened. Looked odd.
Choked up
The running's going well these days, largely because I'm bribing myself off Park Slope's 4th & 5th avenues, dangling promises of exotic new scenery. I don't know, I was more adventuresome for a time there, making trips out to Brighton & Manhattan beaches, Sheepshead Bay, Coney... Of course, that was back when I was running more than 10 miles per stint, making it easier to reach more distant pockets, but still--even just five miles will get one out pretty far in Brooklyn, and if you double that distance, all the further/better. Ten miles out (versus five out/five back) does require reliance on the subway to get back to one's starting point, but on a leisurely Sunday, I've generally got the time to spare. Especially if I'm procrastinating--then I have all the time in the world.
Anyway, this is just what I did last Sunday (not yesterday; yesterday I shied away from the out-of-doors' nastiness in favor of daylong pajamas, a few achingly good books, Lucinda Williams, and my most challenging-simple-as-it-appears cupcake recipe to date). I'd always meant to take Flatbush Avenue in a southeasterly way, and this particular nine-miler seemed like the perfect opportunity. I had music w/ me this time, as I sometimes do when I'm having a hard time scraping myself off the couch/chair/floor, and I let a violin and a pretty voice carry me along 5th, then Flatbush, where I remained for the entire duration of the run. Running downhill for the stretch of FB that goes past the Brooklyn Museum, the newly revamped Brooklyn Public Library (where I was offered a copywriting job several months back, though I'm sure I didn't mention it here), and the botanic gardens, I looked up at the bare, nubby branches reaching high across the sidewalk, slowed down a little, took a long breath, and felt pretty alright. I think I knew it was going to be a good run.
It was a very good run. Because Flatbush Ave. is the main thoroughfare through Brooklyn, going all the way from the Manhattan Bridge to Jamaica Bay, I passed through several neighborhoods/sections: Ditmas Park, Flatbush, East Flatbush (sortof), Midwood (sortof), Flatlands, Marine Park, Bergen Beach... FB was originally an Indian trail, in the late 1920s straightened to its current form (though there are still remnant streets in the grid, recalling the past). You see some great old homes lining parts of it, and a few buildings in particular stood out. This one's pretty grand (such visible age), and several mighty churches and synagogues popped up en route.
I loved Flatbush--embarrassingly, it was my first real look at it--for its energy (lots of foot traffic), its storefronts and building facades (all sorts of color & architectural detail), the intoxicating smells drifting out of so many West Indian restaurants... I almost lost my footing/ran into people a few times, distracted as I was by all the stimuli.
Then there's a lengthy stretch connecting Flatbush and Marine Park that's pretty sedate, w/ parts looking plain forgotten. Hardly a bad thing, but there's little retail presence for a ways, and when the avenue broadens from four lanes to eight (w/ a median) in the vicinity of King's Plaza (retail presence heightening momentarily), the experience turned foreign and strange. The day was dim, w/ clouds swirling low, and there something uncanny, almost eerie. I never would've called this "Brooklyn," and when my eyes settled on a sight straight out of some quaint marina town (the sailboats and breezy housing of, turned out, Bergen Beach), then Nick's Lobster, I kindof fell in love all over again w/ my borough. Amazing. Technically I should've turned back at this point, knowing full-well there'd already be a certain amount of walking involved in reaching the nearest train station (this area's known for subway inaccessibility; buses only), but I figured I'd take it just a bit further, curious to see what lie up ahead.
It was a park--a really big one from what I could tell (and have since confirmed). I saw a golf course, birds, long green hills... I missed the salt marshes that are apparently there for the seeing (neat history), but I'll surely return at some (warmer) point.
While I didn't know this at the time, I later learned that I was steps from being in Queens. As in, the Rockaways. A convenient pedestrian bridge away. The prospect! Looks like a chilly winter beach run isn't far off...
Anyway, I slowed to a walk, reversing direction. A Dunkin' Donuts coffee and a 25-minute trek later and I was on the 2: safe, warm, Slopebound.
For as long as I live here, I'll never leave Brooklyn. Here's a map.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Edwards is my man, but...
heh heh, funny:
Friday, December 07, 2007
In yesterday's Times...
Ah, yes! I don't suppose I'll ever run a race w/o afterwards having the thought of 'I could've gone harder, I could've sat (run) w/ a little more discomfort than I did.' Always! Yet mid-race, how impossible it feels to act on this knowledge as recalled from past experience. Amazing.
Anyway, at the heart of the story: using dissociative techniques in competition. This is what I wrote about for RW a few months back(!), though research led me to a slightly different conclusion. Yet I think the discrepancy (w/ this writer suggesting that dissociative coping techniques produce better results than associative ones) is primarily an issue of definition, w/ Ms. Kolata advocating a broader view of dissociating--for instance, considering concentration on arm swing and stride cadence 'dissociative.' Then again, one of her sources (Radcliffe) mentions 'counting' foot strikes, which seems at least as distractive as it does associative/running form-oriented.
I’m Not Really Running, I’m Not Really Running...
Published:
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Huh
Aw. Love it/them. You know, Bill Watterson turned up in WSJ last month, after going MIA for a good long time. Apparently, since the end of C&H, he's taken up oil painting, but burns a lot of his work for fear of people profiting off of it (then again, think I read somewhere else that the practice was handed down by Watterson's dad, who BW paints Ohio landscapes w/ and who believes that one's first 50 paintings are invariably crap), as some did in selling autographed books of his on eBay. (I guess at one point, Watterson would on occasion sneak into bookstores and furtively sign copies.)
Such a sweet conclusion/final strip [December 31, 1995]: Calvin--"It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy. Let's go exploring!"
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
11 months...
...till a better America!
Anyway...
Following my acquisition of two A.B. tickets last week, it occurred to me that good ol' craigslist has amounted to a pretty crucial part of my NY experience. Beyond the concert tickets, the home furnishings, the clothing, bike lock (pffft, heaps of good that did), and other odds & ends I've exchanged pennies for since moving here, it's the communication I get something from, a distinct kind of communication that fulfills something that being in the company of loved ones does not.
Take those tickets. It was decided that I would meet up w/ the person offering them, which ended up being no easy matter. There were several emails, a phone call, a missed opportunity (my fault), several texts & a few more emails before we finally got our siht together and made the exchange. It happened on the corner of 23rd & Fifth, at which point I already knew a) where this person works (in the email sig), b) something about his taste in music (over email, he recommended a band I've only recently come to like, thanks to a keen friend), c) the kind of schedule he keeps (hectic), d) that he's semi-easily irritated but ultimately sympathetic (okay, so this one's a stretch)... Hardly an exhaustive understanding, but it's still more than I know about some of my actual acquaintances. Anyhow, the transaction involved nothing more than the physical swap, a few breathless words (late, I'd come at a run, of course), a wave... It was fleeting, in other words, which, following the barrage of communication, was slightly dizzying but ultimately thrilling, and kindof sweet.
There've been so many others. There was the TV girl in Carroll Gardens, a transaction that involved me showing up at 11:00 a.m. to find said girl & her roomie (or friend, anyway) crying into their wine glasses over a recently lost beau. We chatted a while, and I left to 'hey, since we're all new to the area, if you ever wanna hang out, get a beer w/ us...' Granted, it was mostly the cabernet talking, but it was still an act of kindness. I clambered out of there, hugging one heavy load to my chest (and before long, my thighs as the damn thing slipped dangerously low), moved by the novelty of the event. I don't know... There was the chandelier man from when David and I first moved to Park Slope more than a year ago. He wasn't far from TV girl--in Cobble Hill. We walked into his tree-framed brownstone to find a small museum's worth of antique furnishings: lighting fixtures spanning every decade of the last century, various paintings, sculpture, glassworks... And there was a fire blazing in the fireplace, I remember. It felt homey. We didn't stay long, just long enough to swap the usual niceties and for him to give us the story behind our purchase. Good man.
The list goes on: Park Slope TV stand girl, Sunset Park bookcase man, UES art print man... And then there were the few things I myself unloaded, making me Park Slope cheap IKEA chair girl, Park Slope TV girl (yes, it took several attempts before I committed)...
Anyway, what I think is satisfying about these brief encounters is that they open w/ the necessary correspondence, which, when the face-to-face eventually occurs, gives a certain gravity to the exchange. But that's not an end-all. I think part of the reason this gravity feels nice is because it begins arbitrarily, and in the wake of some amount of dialogue, ends meaningfully--but meaningful in a safe, transitory, sometimes thrilling way. It's also compensatory: it makes up for all the times I've felt a palpable sense of loss as another train whizzes by me, faces in the windows clear for a few seconds before fading into the future. It always occurs to me that it's unlikely I'll ever see them again, or if I do, they'll go unrecognized. In a city where so many faces bleed into one another, it's gratifying to lock one down for a few.
It makes me think of this Psychology Today story I read over the w/e, which talks about this phenomenon that's seen in busy urban settings. You get the idea that you're alone--maybe you're walking through Central Park over lunch--but you're still surrounded by people, by strangers. The article says that because of some subconscious awareness of the ways of our early ancestors, for whom 'community' was everything and to be alone/isolated was to be rejected, this kind of 'alone' can lead to confusion, to the distant impression that you're being blatantly disregarded by all the people--strangers--streaming around you.
This city. I don't think I'll ever stop feeling overtaken by it, which is sometimes a good thing and other times not.
Monday, December 03, 2007
like jacques cousteau underneath the atlantic
Last Friday's Andrew Bird show was divine. Luminous. The number of things he had goin' on up there--the voice, the whistling, guitar, violin, foot pedal-operated looping machine, a careful dance move/shuffle, these spinning horn speakers... Gift!
Oh, he had two other dudes up there through most of the set, M (drummer, bassist), and that nervous tic song went unplayed. This, however (disregard the skating, unless you're like, a skater or something; or maybe you're in love w/ one?) did not go unplayed, and I'm pretty sure I went to heaven for its duration. Painfully obsessed.
All of 'em:
First Song
Action/Adventure
Why?
Opposite Day
The Giant of Illinois
Fiery Crash
Lull
A Non-Animal
Imitosis
Plasticities
Heretics
Dr. Stringz (cute)
Fake Palindromes
Simple X
Dark Matter
Happy Birthday Song
Wait
Trimmed and Burning
Brr
Reading another crumbling book, picked up at that same book fair. Tagged "a revealing study of genius at work," it's The Creative Process "explained in their own words by thirty-eight brilliant men and women including [list]." Neato.
Re: that awesome shivery feeling:
“Poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual. A year or two ago, in common w/ others, I received from America a request that I would define poetry. I replied that I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but that I thought we both recognized the object by the symptoms which it provokes in us. One of these symptoms was described in connection w/ another object by Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘A spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up.’ Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. This particular symptom is accompanied by a shiver down the spine; there is another which consists in a constriction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes; and there is a third which I can only describe by borrowing a phrase from one of Keats’s last letters, where he says, speaking of Fanny Brawne, ‘everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear.’ The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach.”
Wit's end
Okay. I give myself three more months of flat-out refusing to kill (or catch & release) the bugs in my apartment before a takeover is imminent.
Now, I've only crossed paths w/ maybe a half dozen in the eight months I've lived there, so about a bug a month. And w/ the exception of maybe one, they've all been pretty bitty. Thankfully, I had company over when the bigger-than-bitty one appeared on the scene, company happy to whisk the leggy scoundrel clean-away. Otherwise, I've favored a turn-the-other-cheek approach to a putting-up-my-dukes one. Plenty of cracks & crevices by which to vacate, I've always said, and since I rarely leave food out and I offer little in the way of roach-suitable entertainment... well, I've chosen to ignore. But alas, I fear the day of reckoning is fast upon me. Over the w/e, a few sightings, and though I'd love to call them one & the same, I'm afraid they were unique. At least two of them were. And things is, as long as they're allowed all-access privileges, they'll probably alert the family. And friends, colleagues, pets, government officials... They'll apply for a charter, take up urban planning, design mass transit, wage wars... And no longer will I be able to kick back w/ a cold one at the end of the day. There won't be anywhere to sit.
I don't know!