Someone yell Timber, take off your hat

14 01 2009

It’s all falling down. Secretly pleased?

Some of us are. Maybe. Partly. Kinda.

I wasn’t in New York in the 1970s, but to talk to some New Yorkers who were, you ‘d think I’d missed the last, best time in the city.

You know, high crime rates. Graffitti everywhere. Distrust and malaise. Son of Sam. Bankruptcy. The good old days.

I’ve only been a New Yorker 2 1/2 years, but even I curse a scrubbed Times Square and the relentless pursuit of money. Still, I won’t claim nostalgia for a time not mine, and I’m skeptical of those who claim that New York a generation and a-half ago was a period of glorious artistic expression, unfettered by high rents or the (art) market. As if the artists and punks back then weren’t all on the hustle.

New York is a hustling town, mean and generous in turn, indulgent of those on the make and unforgiving of those who don’t make it. (Except, of course, when it does forgive. Crazy place.) So underemployed white kids get shoved out of the east Village and the Bowery and into Queens and Brooklyn and somehow this means New York ain’t what it used to be.

No shit. This city ain’t never what it used to be.

Still, amidst my squints and skepticism, I, only half-ashamedly, admit to a secret pleasure at the fall. Yeeeeaaaaaaah, a part of me thinks, now we’re gonna get real! Let it all fall apart!

Silliness. How nice to get on the train at midnight and not have to worry (except once) about robbery or assault. Air conditioned subway cars in August? A lifesaver. And I’d rather stroll by  store windows full of clothes or food or paint cans than those hidden by plywood or graffitti-ed gates.

I love ruin, I do. I thrill to the old and abandoned, the crumbling and fading. But it is an aesthetic thrill, a delight in these old and sad connections to pasts hidden and forgotten. The delight and the sadness are sincere, but limited: I want to enjoy these unreconstructed ruins, not live in them.

As for that secret pleasure? Maybe we’re (or maybe just I’m) high on our finally-unleashed anxiety. Yesss! We get to worry! Fuck that happy talk. . . .

Angst. Back in style.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Musing

Java jive

1 12 2008

Bit by bit. I keep forgetting that, but it’s bit by bit that one’s life settles into the ground.

I was in GradCity for over a decade (w/a year’s interlude in SouthwesternTown), and didn’t really notice how much I adapted to that city until long after I left it. The bus routes. The running and bike routes. This restaurant and that diner and the coffee shop on the corner and bourgie co-op and the militant co-op and the hidden beach with the nudists and the punks and the families and the men in suits (really!). My loop of used bookstores (starting at the cheapest one first, of course) and cd shops. The old Nat and the new (hated because new and then Oh My God It’s Fantastic!) pool and gym. The cheap movie houses and the really good-not-horribly-expensive theatre and the dive bars and wine bars and bars for groups and bars for couples. Mexican and Thai and Caribbean and Vietnamese and American soul and American diner food.

And friends. Pla and Pl and Pt and J and C and D and K and I and L and T and S and C and Js and R and Jn and god, I must be forgetting some.

Nostalgia? Not really. I didn’t like GradCity at all. Okay, my last two years there weren’t bad, especially since I had finished my dissertation and was lecturing or post-docking, but I used to complain (LOUDLY) of how much I despised the place.

But I had a life there. Bit by bit, I put together a life there. And now I live in a city which drives me around a freakin’ bend but where I really really (mostly) really want to make my home, and I haven’t yet figured out (switch to rock climbing metaphor) where are the cracks and footholds. Why not? Because I’ve been so busy trying to live in the entire freakin’ city that I’ve forgotten that I live in it in pieces.

I have tried forcing things, eagerly looking for ‘my’ cafe or park or neighborhood, but these things can’t be forced; they have to come on their own. They come when I go back to a cafe or shop or neighborhood because I’m drawn there—when the place catches on me, rather than me trying to grab on to it.

When I was a teenager my family travelled to New York on vacation, and in the midst of one of those scarifying bus tours (‘Look to the left, people, look to the left. If you don’t look to the left you won’t see it.’), we stopped at this amazing Episcopal church. I remember poking around and glimpsing, through a door, this stoneyard out back. A stoneyard! All of a sudden, the guide’s comments about this church being a work-in-progress slid into a literal, concrete, reality. This old craft in this becoming-building in New York City.

I remembered that when I moved to New York, and on a both very good and very bad day I took the train up to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and rested in this large, still, space.

There’s more to be said about that, but I mention it because that’s one piece. (I have also tried forcing a relationship with this place as well—that’s a part of the more-to-be-said—but St. John’s stays with me, regardless.)

And there is another piece, as well, a coffee shop I found courtesy of Rod Dreher at CrunchyCon, where I can buy my dark roast free trade coffee—Porto Rico, on Bleeker just off W 3rd. It sounds dumb—why not just buy Paul Newman’s coffee at Target?—but I love the act of making these people, in this place, a part of my life.Yeah, it’s a wee out of my way, work-wise, but why let the work commute dictate all? Plans, and all that. . . .

Bit by prosaic bit. The poetry rises out of this.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Stay awake

27 11 2008

Given so much killing, this would not be the worst way to live:

027

(From a building across the street from Temple Emanuel-El, on Fifth and 65th.)

—–

So this is a bit of a cheat—I adapted this from a comment I left elsewhere:

I grew up in a small town in the Midwest, moved to successively larger cities, and now live in New York City.

Needing to get out of the house today, I bopped over to Manhattan and strolled through Central Park. It was a bit late—the light was low—but I could catch a few images of this grand and humble place:

01510211

(stretched this one out a wee)

(jacked the contrast on this one)

I wandered around the neighborhood east of the park for a bit, taking in the discreetly exclusive apartment building between Fifth, Madison, and Park, exchanging greeting with doormen leaning out of doorways, and peeking into warmly-lit restaurants serving dinner this Thanksgiving. This is the genteel and lovely New York of near-past movies, recalling generations of families lucky enough to live within those warm lights.

Not that most New Yorkers have done so, of course. This was (and is) a city of working people, crammed together in slouching tenements which call forth a history neither genteel nor lovely.

Still, it is as easy to fall in love with the romance of hard times as it is to yearn for a sepia-lit life overlooking the park. To live amidst the tumultuous grace of history!

One of the things I love (and mourn) about this place is precisely that sense of history: when I walk through the Financial District early on a Monday morning I see the old iron sconces on the side of one building, the Art Deco doors on another, and the amazing mosaic at the entrance to the ITT building. It’s all still there.

Except, of course, it’s not. The old tenants have moved out and a pharmacy or bank or Starbucks has snuck in, and where o where is the idiosyncratic New York I moved here to find? Where is our tumultuous grace?

It’s there and it’s gone. New Yorkers are constantly bemoaning the loss of the ‘real’ city, the one which existed when they were teenagers or first moved here or yesterday, the city which justified the high prices and the crowds and standing-room only train cars. But this is the real city, today, and while I wish there were still Italians in Little Italy and working-class Jews on the Lower East Side, there are Poles in Greenpoint and Russians in Brighton Beach, hasidim in Williamsburg and Crown Heights and mosques in Bed Stuy. The Hare Krishnas and Scientologists lurk in the Union Square train station, and I even saw one brave soul setting up a McCain/Palin table not too far from the saxophonist. People from California and Cameroon and Oklahoma and New Zealand are tucked into corners all over this city, criss-crossing and occasionally bumping into one another. There’s the Stonewall Bar and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine (finally fully open this Sunday) and the wrecked earth from the Sept. 11 attacks posed in Battery Park.

This city erects and erases and absorbs its histories and cultures, mystifying and horrifying and, finally, gratifying those of us who are still learning when to hustle and when to slow down.

Where is your tumultuous grace? It’s there and it’s gone, wherever you are. Pay attention, wherever you are.


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Musing, Photos & art

Once in a lifetime

23 11 2008

I have a little problem with reality.

Mainly, it’s something that’s out there, a place where I ought to belong, but I can’t quite come up with the password or secret handshake or underground tunnel or whatever the hell it takes to gain entry. I can see it—I think—but then I fall back and wonder, Hm, is that it?

And if reality is over there, and I’m over here, then where the hell am I?

I blame my confusion on (at least) two things, one of which was my, ahem, extended stay in grad school. As high school and college friends were off doing the things regular people do, I was buying pizza at 2am to eat with fellow grad students in the computer lab. They took out car loans; I took out student loans. They bought suits for work, I washed my jeans.

Yeah, that’s a little glib, but not much. They were becoming adults, and I was becoming. . . a grad student. I got older, sure, but plotzing over a stalled dissertation is not the usual path to adulthood. And I finished—yay!—but then what? A coupla’ post-docs, and resignation from a profession I never got the hang of. A move to Bummerville, an escape to New York City, and. . . this.

Not that I have a clue what ‘this’ is.

So: When did you know you were an adult? When you left home? Got your first apartment? Moved in with your boyfriend or girlfriend? Got a mortgage? Got married? Had kids? Got divorced? When you look at your life do you say, Yep, this is mine? Or do you find yourself in the midst of a Talking Heads song: Well, how did I get here?

I know, we don’t all have to live the same lives, and it’s not as if anyone’s life is going to make sense all the time, but shouldn’t I be able to recognize something in it as mine? Or, more accurately, shouldn’t I be able to recognize myself somewhere in all of this?

Yeah, the second reason may play into this, namely, that long personality-destroying depression, but, really, how long can I continue to point at my voids and blame them for my. . . voids? Besides, don’t people without a history of self-destruction gape at their own lives, too?

So, what do we do? How do we know we belong where we are, or where we’re going?


Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Musing

Icon-gazing

4 11 2008

The South Street Seaport is fake fake fake.

Walking past the Abercrombie & Fitch and Ann Taylor and all the other crappy chain stores huddled around what used to be an actual working location, I felt like Elaine Benes, punching out an air ballot of her fake orgasms with Jerry: fake fake fake fake.

Ever been to Faneuil Hall in Boston? Used to be real, now it, too, is fake. A tourist suck, designed to hoover out the pockets of those yearning for a glimpse of history.

At least Times Square doesn’t bother with the pretense of authenticity.

Anyway, as crappy as the Seaport is, you can at least get some nice views of the East River, the Red Hook docks, and, of course, the Brooklyn Bridge:

002

The Manhattan Bridge is partially obscured by pont Brooklyn, but you can glimpse the Williamsburg Bridge in the background:

0062

Yeah, I’d like shots of the sun on bridges, but gray mornings suit me, too.

Besides, if I wanted sun, I’d live in California.

Okay, one last shot, down Wall Street:

017

Yes, this shot of Trinity Church is an iconic one, but who am I to argue with iconography?


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , ,
Categories : Photos & art

Down-gazing

2 11 2008

Little people live in the A train station, specifically, at the 14th St/8th Ave location. I only took photos of one figure, but I think I’d like to get them all.

They’re everywhere.

I like her smile.

I’m thinking of changing my avatar to one of these photos.

While my politics are pink(o), red isn’t really my color. Still, I like the whole hole-in-the-cube thing.

We’ll see.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , ,
Categories : Photos & art

I fall to pieces

25 10 2008

All that there is to write, and all that I don’t write. Bits and pieces, effluvia from the day, surfacing only after the computer is turned off, or things worthy only of quick hits.

So, some of the jottings:

NaNoWriMo: It’s a week from National November Writing Month, and I’m starting to get a bit freaked. Fifty-thousand words! In a month! Jesus Christ!

There is no possible way that I can do this. I have one day off a week. And while I write fast. . . I have one day off a week.

Ah, fuck it. Try and fail. That’s life, ain’t it?

—-

Blogging extras: I see RSS and CSS and Twitter and Deli.cio.us (or whatever) and all this other crap and I go, Huh? Should I be doing something with these?

Nah. Or at least, not now. I don’t have to know everything before I start—do I?

—-

Crushes, cont.: I neglected to mention the anti-crushes, the horrifying obsessions with ideas and worldviews so on the other side of you. Pat Robertson. Jerry Falwell. The 700 Club. Trinity Broadcasting Network. Rod Parsley. John Hagee. All crack for the lefty brain: you know it’s bad for you, but you can’t. stop. watching.

And then, of course, there’s Ayn Rand, the Objectivist wonder drug, turning readers into zombies. Best not to engage them at all.

Like my crushes, I carry the obverse inside me, too, but not willingly. Nope, viruses lodged in my brain,  waiting, waiting, to be reactivated with just one           more            hit.

Brrrr. Scary.

—-

Settling in: Two and a-half years in New York and I’m still not settled. I would like to settle.

When I moved to Bummertown, I thought it would be my last city. Before that, I lived in Feline City, which I loved, but which was also located in another country. In fact, I moved to Bummertown because a number of people had said, Oh, you like Feline City? Well, then, you’ll love Bummertown!

No.

So when I heaved out of there to NYC, I did so with the idea that I would stay—but knowing it could all go bad.

It is not bad. I would like to stay. But for this to be real, for this to be my last(ish?) city, I gotta sink my feet into the concrete.

Hasn’t happened yet. Soon, please, soon.

—-

Procrastination: Sixty papers. Not long, not difficult to grade.

And yet I don’t grade.

Baaaaaad professor. Can I blame my status as an adjunct?

—-

God and alienation: Still working my way through the Bedlam Farm archives, and reading about Jon’s conversations with the Hound of Heaven (Pastor Steve from a local church).

Jon often quotes from Thomas Merton, and he writes often about his struggles with his own spirituality and doubts. This past winter he started blogging about his regular conversations with Pastor Steve, and his uncertain steps toward God.

I, too, for awhile engaged with a local priest (variant: Episcopal) about God and doubt, but after awhile felt like I was simply wasting her and my time. I am not uninterested in God—duh—but I don’t feel any great need to move out of my doubt. I wonder why other people believe, and what God and their relationship to God means to them, but I’m fine with my role as observer rather than participant.

And I admit to some bewilderment at the notion that one can get closer to others by getting closer to God. How does that work? Isn’t that simply a kind of alienation? Running away from the world rather than opening oneself to it?

Not that simple, I know, and it’s entirely possible that opening oneself to God helps one to open herself to the world (cf. Caputo and Vattimo and the concept of weak theology).

Still, as someone who struggles with openness, I see God more as an escape than an entry.

—–

S&P.A, who I knew in Bummertown, have just had a baby. S. was in labor for 25 hours (!), but in the photo of her and her son O., she looks terrific. Really beautiful.

And my roommate’s sister also just had a son. Cute, she said. Round head, round face, and loooong fingers. (Roommate and I are getting along better, these days. All for the good.)

Welcome to the world, boys. We’ll try to keep to keep the lights on for you.


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Up-cross-grazing

20 10 2008

It really is too bad I lack talent.

I’d like to blame the light, the camera, but, really, it’s me.

I don’t know how to reveal the architectextuality of this city: that a part of my fascination lies in what is just beyond. The curves in the road which lead you to peer around, to see what else there is. The buildings behind and above and nestled next to.

Not exactly a palimpsest—buildings remain—but the constant jostling for space. A cause of despair and marvel.

So I lack talent. I try, nonetheless.

There is something here. I could spend the rest of my life not catching it.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: ,
Categories : Photos & art

Up-gazing

16 10 2008


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: ,
Categories : Photos & art

On a rooftop in Brooklyn

9 10 2008

What the fuck am I doing in New York City?

Really. I’m in the middle of my life and I have a. . . ROOMMATE! Not a lover, companion, partner, whatever. A roommate. With whom I don’t quite get along.

I pay too much to live here.

I’m working three jobs and still not making enough money to live on my own.

I have no lover (of the quick-toss or long-term variety).

City and state politics are a cesspool.

Cockroaches. Rats. Bedbugs. (No verbs necessary.)

JFK is a nightmare and LaGuardia is a nightmare to get to.

Too godDAMNED many people.

Sitting on the train and trying to avoid the crotch of the person standing over me. (But hey, at least I got a seat, right?)

Thinking that any beer less than 7 bucks a pint is cheap.

PissMoanPissMoanPissMoan.

Where the hell else am I going to live?

God. Dammit. I can’t live anyplace else. Where else would make me this crazy without actually making me crazy?

And tall buildings. I likes de tall buildings.

Dammit.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Musing

« Previous Entries Next Entries »