creativity boot camp, day 2
What a challenge, today’s word picnic, since it’s a work day, I live in the manmade canyons of Manhattan, and I won’t get home until nearly 9pm.
Or so you would think.
Manhattan is lush, full of flowers and trees and bushes and color. Benches and paths, winding brick roads. It may not be what you call to mind, but it is so intertwined in the city that I cannot think of it otherwise. Central Park, you probably thought of that one already, huge and filling the heart of this city. But there’s also Riverside Park, a place I document in this blog again and again in every season, because it’s effectively my back yard. I never get tired of walking in Riverside Park. I walk past joggers, and dog walkers, and parents following toddlers, and parents following new bike riders, and lovers, and friends, and young people, and older people, and people sitting on benches in the sun, or reading the newspaper, or eating.
Those are some of the big parks, but certainly not the only ones. There are smaller parks everywhere. Actual parks, and nearly-hidden lots that have been turned into a small community garden, or park, we all crave that kind of space. I work on Madison Avenue, in the heart of midtown. There are churches in the neighborhood, and bodegas, and diners, but it’s primarily business business business.
Ten blocks south of my office is Madison Square Park, which has been a shared urban space since 1686. In 1870, it was landscaped when the city formed its first Department of Public Parks. Every summer there is a huge BBQ cook-off in the park; in a corner of the park there’s a locally famous joint called Shake Shack, which is so popular they have a Shake Shack cam so you can check how long the line is before heading over. I had no plans to eat a greasy hamburger and fries, or to savor the heavy ice cream concoction they call a concrete. Instead, my missions were two: to get out of the office and into this beautiful day, and to illustrate the urban picnic.
breakfast picnic, on Broadway in front of Macy's
what do we do during our urban picnics? We lounge and soak up sun. We eat salads.
we eat salads and sushi in the company of strangers
sometimes we dress in a twee and precious way, read a bit of Proust while not wearing socks, and munch delicately on a classy subway sandwich, while being exquisitely aware of our own cool sartorial splendor
On the way back to the office from my picnic observing, I spotted a few things I wanted to share with you:
sunlight reflecting off one building onto another
a great horned restaurant right next to the Museum of Sex. Horns? Horned? And what *are* those things above the horns?
it's an upright town - you've gotta look straight up to see the sky now and then
happy hour at the Macy's picnic tables on Broadway
[edit: That building with horns? Turns out it's the Gershwin Hotel. In addition to regular suites and rooms, they have dorm rooms with bunk beds! You can stay there for $49 a night, in the 6-bed room room, or $39 a night in the 10-bed room. Or you could get the suite for $275/night. It's an interesting space, full of art. ]
This poem about a picnic doesn’t start off sounding like the Manhattan version, but by the end I can totally see it, can you?
Picnic on the Shore (Lois Jenkins)
Shore grass growing
among the big rocks
enduring year after year.
This is the way to live.
A simple life,
the proper arrangement
of a few elements.
But here you are
standing on slippery stone,
trying to balance
a full plate and a cup.
What with the wrappers,
the flies and the wind,
already things have gotten out of hand.
madelinetosh tosh merino light! glory!
Isn’t it funny that we have to use a euphemism for that word, that p-oh-r-n word? But it’s all I could think of when I looked at the photos I just took of my new yarn, scored from a raveler who wanted to divest herself of a bit of madelinetosh’s elusive tosh merino light. The colorway is porcelain, and it’s just the most subtle, pale pink. It shades to tan, here and there, but the palest tan. Here, take a look:
tosh merino light, in porcelain. Actually, I have 6 skeins...
and now for the closeup
I’ll have today’s Creativity Boot Camp post later this evening…..
schizophrenia is not always fun for people in the subway. take my word for it.
Maybe you live in a smaller city, or a town somewhere – maybe you don’t live in a teeming city like New York. Teeming is a good word for us, it means abundantly filled with especially living things. Boy is that ever New York City. “Abundantly,” yes. “Filled,” oh yes. “Especially living” – yowza. So anything that teems can have a wide variety of things in it; I’m sure in a teeming ant hill, there are a couple of wacked-out insane ants here or there.
one of my friendlier neighborhood schizophrenics
So if you don’t live in a teeming place, you may not have the same kind of casual acquaintance with schizophrenics. You may not casually note ‘oh, there’s that schizophrenic dude again’ and just keep walking. You may not pass the enormous fungal-smelling homeless schizophrenic guy who lives by the front door of your office with the same breath-holding ease, you may not even take a second glance when you see he’s standing up peeing in his pants. Again.
I was walking on Broadway one evening last week, and a very tall woman passed by, then stopped in the middle of the street and was having an extremely vigorous conversation with someone that only she could see. There’s something very unsettling about it, if you stop to think about it. And if you think about it a little longer, it can start to goof with your ideas about reality, the philosophy of what is. By now you may be feeling sorry that you don’t have the same opportunities I have. Well, let me balance the scales.
This morning, as I was entering my subway station, there was a guy just behind me on the street, and he stopped at the top of the stairs and started raging, which impelled me to race down the stairs to get away from him. His voice was roaring, it had a growl edge, he was absolutely terrifying. And he was speaking a secret language that perhaps he could understand, but the words themselves were unintelligible, even if the feeling and power were not. But now and then, regular English words came out – kind of startling, like when you hear English pop up in a French sentence — ‘allons au picnic’ or something. His version:
crazy crazy crazy MOTHERFUCKER crazy crazy WEST SIDE STORY!!! CRAZY crazy fucking crazy WEST SIDE STORY!!! crazy CRAZY crazy crazy!
Well, that’s fine I guess. I may have a mixed review of West Side Story myself, but to each his own. But he was truly terrifying. He was pure terrifying rage, roaring in an inhuman way, but with a very human capacity. For a long time, he was stuck at the turnstile and I was anxious, wishing a train would hurry up and come before he got through. He made it through, and was rampaging up and down the platform, coming nearer to me at the end, then turning around, then coming back, roaring and shouting. I was terrified that he’d get into my car – I’d have jumped out before the doors closed, if that happened. Of course, if he got on the train, he could just walk from one car to the next. I felt terrible for anyone in a car with him.
The train came, finally, and he was mid-platform. Far from me, at the very end of the train. When we got to the next stop, 7 blocks away, the doors opened and I could hear his roaring, pouring out of the car and resonating in the tunnel.
So “teeming” can be a mixed blessing. That’s my take on it.
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