autumn flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing to stay — Mary Oliver
There’s a good reason Hollywood shoots so many wistful movies in autumn in New York; we’re at our best, this time of year. The cooler air makes the city’s summer smells disappear, we’re less snappy and cranky this time of year, the less-appealing animal life scampers away from sight on their little rat feet, and most importantly, our thousands of trees put on their show. Usually, the foliage is a bit more beautiful upstate, but this year since Hurricane Irene goofed up the Catskills’ autumn show, our trees are at least as beautiful, if not more so. The trees aren’t as thickly-leaved as they might’ve been, since we had that freak snowstorm a couple weeks ago, but it’s still quite beautiful.
the glorious earthy red of a sumac, always takes my breath away
the sidewalk at the edge of the sidewalk
there's an enormous part of the park below the street level, down at the level of the West Side Highway. The light's very different down there; it reminded me of a di Chirico painting
I never ever EVER get tired of this view. It's everything an urban park should be.
all the lights were on with this one
this guy was quite small; there was a GIANT cardinal in Katie's backyard, remember, Katie?
As always, Mary Oliver has a beautiful poem celebrating this particular glory:
Fall Song
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
Good job, trees.
ever wanted to see a NYC neighborhood in January?
Walk with me — I had to run a quick errand and took a couple of neighborhood shots with my phone (do we still call them that?):
my street, on the other side of Broadway - grim winter
see what I mean about the trash?!
one of the public schools in my neighborhood. I KNOW! Wild, right?
These weren’t taken in my neighborhood, but I think you’ll agree they’re very nice:
let's all make this New Year's resolution! I'M IN!!
ME TOO.
And with this, I quit making blog posts for the day!! Geez, get to work Lori.
take a walk through morningside heights with me – let’s listen to a little music and find out who’s buried in grant’s tomb…
Time for an evening stroll in my neighborhood, again. A short walk up Riverside Drive brings us to the General Grant National Memorial. If you’re so inclined, you could go in and see his tomb, and all the memorializing stuff that’s found in sites like this. I’ve never been inside. In the summer, there is a music series set on the grounds, and I took a shot that Wednesdays might be the night. Bingo!
On the way, while walking through Riverside Park, I saw this guy and his two doggies.
mutt and jeff. get it? mutt? mutt and jeff? hahaha...i make myself laugh
I could hear the music from a few blocks away…
there's the memorial - and here's the crowd
here's the band - a jazz band tonight
All kinds of people in the crowd – people with fancy chairs, with holes in the arms to hold cold drinks, people without chairs at all, people with blankets, people with friends, people all alone. Lots of happy people.
they couldn't sit still!
kicking back after a long day
these ladies were living LARGE
a fancy man, enjoying himself and the music
I walked around the monument grounds; the site is lined with fantastic Gaudi-like benches that are covered in folk art mosaics. Another picture, another time.
all those symbols of power and glory, doncha know
Then I headed home, because it was kind of muggy and still. On the way home I passed the Riverside Church, which is kind of famous, I’ve heard. It has a fantastic exterior, all the detail and accoutrements of Big Fancy Church, including stone carvings. Like this:
oh the shame. why me, lord. why must the birds nest on MY shoulders. what's wrong with the guy next to me. really.
that scene always gives me pause. an airplane flying toward a building... even if it isn't, really.
Now they’re getting serious. No more “set up” shots, no taxicab confessions. Now it’s time for the dirt. Ice T is on the scene.
That's Ice T blocking my doorway. Like he does.
Meloni (in shorts) and Hargitay, rehearsing the part where they find the victim. The SPECIAL victim.
Now they’re getting serious. No more “set up” shots, no taxicab confessions. Now it’s time for the dirt. Ice T is on the scene.
watching the Law & Order SVU episode being filmed right outside my window…..want to see Mariska? I’ve got pics.
OK, I’m getting kind of bored. They say that making a movie (or TV show) involves mostly standing around and waiting, and they’re not kidding. It takes a crew of dozens to do every single thing. Each person does one thing – this guy stands and slowly rolls up that piece of tape, another guy slowly rolls up another piece of tape, while half a dozen stand around and watch those two guys slowly roll up their pieces of tape. All for one very brief scene. I’m just uploading the photos into a flickr set, which I’ll update when anything interesting happens. I want to see the hair and make-up girls make the murder victim look victimized. If that happens, I’ll snap the pic.
To work. Enough farting around for me this morning.
I thought the murder scene was a cab, but I was wrong. The team spent all morning preparing the cab for a driving-around scene, with Mariska in the cab.
Hair and makeup are still outside my window, and now the team is setting up tables and tents. More to come….
I thought the murder scene was a cab, but I was wrong. The team spent all morning preparing the cab for a driving-around scene, with Mariska in the cab.
-
- Mariska’s inside – lighting the scene
-
- and there she is!
Hair and makeup are still outside my window, and now the team is setting up tables and tents. More to come….
The SVU victim will be in a cab, I think – literally just a few feet from me:
The SVU victim will be in a cab, I think – literally just a few feet from me:
lighting the murder scene
using my street for an SVU murder AGAIN.
Looks like the murder will be happening right outside my apartment window. The production guys just parked a police car and a detective car right outside my window. The streets have been cleared – no parking, no traffic – the trash pickup came earlier than usual, the big panavision truck is here, and the bedbug exterminator had to come in very quickly. LIFE IN MANHATTAN. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for Mariska and will snap a pic if I can.
our bldg has bedbugs, they have roscoe - doesn't seem fair
PANAVISION!
setup for the fake cops
I think the fake murder will be happening in that little alley between the two buildings. They always do. More as the (duh duh) drama unfolds.
another adorable subway story – I’m not kidding!
Another subway story – this one really made me happy. It’s another hot and muggy day, even early in the morning, and we’ve got a long holiday weekend ahead. I think people (especially the early morning commuters) are all a bit dazed – at least, they were in my subway car this morning. Since I’m coming up to my last day at this job, I’m not killing myself to get in so early so I was traveling during more regular rush hour than usual, which meant I didn’t get to sit. No matter; the train wasn’t densely crowded so it was just fine. I stood next to a pole in the center of the car, in case the conductor was one of those kinds of drivers, and pulled out my knitting.
this isn't the actual swatch, but it IS this yarn
[sidebar announcement! I am knitting a swatch! I KNOW! Kelly is a good influence on me, plus I really want to make a beautiful sweater that fits me.]
So there I was, a bit dazed myself, listening to the new RadioLab podcast and knitting my swatch. At some point I finally glanced up and all the people sitting in front of me – and I mean very literally all the people, each one in the entire row – were gazing up at me with slight smiles and big eyes. You know how it is when you’re kind of out of it, and something captures your attention, that kind of dopey unfixed smile you get? Well, it was like that. All these people gazing up at me with slight dopey smiles. In their dazed state, seeing someone do something a little unusual must have been just enough to capture their unfocused attention. I felt like the mother, or the teacher, and it was really charming. I wish I’d had a hidden camera so I could’ve captured it for you.
At the next major stop, most of the people on that row shook themselves a little and got up to leave the train, but a couple of guys stayed. And for the entire trip, they held that expression on their faces.
Tonight I’ll wet block my swatch; I feel like such a responsible grown-up! 
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.
dude, i don’t want to hear you sing.
dude.
Manhattan is an exciting place to live. It is. Everything is here – every country, every industry, the most exciting industries, famous people just doing their thing and we let them be, energy, disaster, everything. I don’t ever want to live anywhere else (though I would definitely consider living in Paris, Hanoi, Cusco, or Amsterdam). New York is amazing.
And there are days where it just wins. Somehow New York beats you, now and then. For me, the win usually comes at Duane Reade. If you’re from here, I don’t need to say more. If you’re not – Duane Reade is the everywhere drugstore, and the employees will just defeat you.
You know how the very thing that’s so great can also be the worst? It’s that whole “everything contains its shadow” deal. Well, one of the often-amazing aspects of living here is that all these people – all these different, wildly different people – we’re all living on top of each other. You have to adjust, you have to not take things personally because we’re all just trying to make it happen. That’s cool. I almost never get tired of seeing all of us. I feel so tender toward humanity…all you have to do is look, and there it is, pulsing and moving and trying so hard.
But sometimes, sometimes it’s just eNOUGH, man. Sometimes I am just not. in. the. mood for the guy who gets into the subway right next to me and decides to start singing – loudly – for the pleasure of doing it, as far as I can tell. In another language. Or the woman who wheels an amp and a big speaker into the subway, turns it on, picks up her mike, and starts singing Donna Summer On The Radio (and I love that song, by the way…). Or the woman who steps into the car and starts shouting her preaching, and it’s never good, it’s never all about how loved we are by God, it’s always about how bad we are, how far away, how sinful, how death and destruction are coming. You kind of have to have a bit of energy to spare to hold yourself in the face of that loud. It’s a public shared space – the unwritten rule is that you don’t take smelly food into the subway and eat it while you’re riding. You don’t do that! It’s rare that someone does, actually. But if I wanted to hear a concert, I’d seek it out. I don’t necessarily feel like it when I’m exhausted after a hard week, when the walk to the subway has taken me through crowds of tourists teeming in and out of Macy’s, when the trains are fucked up and late and so crowded you can’t imagine squeezing in but you have to try, when it’s just been a sucking week at work. And you do all that, and you just want to get home, and you’re standing there so tired it’s hard to stand, and the guy next to you opens his mouth and starts singing some very loud, shouting song in spanish, maybe, you can’t tell, and you can’t even get away.
Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, he eats you.
New Yorkers are friendly, we really are!
Well….it’s who a great many of us are, a good deal of the time. Last night on the subway, I saw something happen that is pretty ordinary, but I’ll bet it doesn’t fit with most people’s ideas about New Yorkers. I didn’t know any of the people involved, but for the purposes of telling the story, I’m going to randomly assign names to the primary people involved. It’ll make the story much easier to follow than if they’re called “the guy” or “the other guy.” So here goes:
The train is packed, like it has been lately. People are jammed against the doors, those in the center of the aisle are reaching their hands up to touch the ceiling in order to stabilize themselves a little bit since they can’t reach a pole (though, it’s probably true that they couldn’t fall if they wanted to, given the crowd). People are mostly patient, even if someone else’s bag was poking their back, or touching their face. Mostly patient. When the train is crowded like this, it can be hard to get out at your stop if you’re not standing right by the door. So anyway, we come to one of the major stops, the doors open, and Bob, a somewhat older guy, gets up from his seat and pushes through the crowd to exit the train. Jim, who was sitting next to Bob, sees a folded piece of paper that Bob apparently dropped. Jim picks it up and starts waving it and shouting at Bob, trying to get his attention and return the paper. But Bob is already out of the train and in the crowd on the platform. The crowd in the train just relays the dropped paper, person to person, out of the car and into the crowd on the platform, where it finally makes its way to Jim, who looks surprised. I saw him smile as the doors closed and we pulled out of the station.
It’s really not unusual. When I was first visiting New York before I moved here, I was often lost or confused and I always received kind help from complete strangers. Once, a woman overheard me talking about my destination and told me that I was on the wrong train, how to get to the right one, and when we got to the appropriate stop, she got off the train and escorted me through a huge station to the right train. That one still floors me – I’m always happy to give people directions, or steer them in the right way if they’re confused, but even I wouldn’t do that, mostly because I don’t have that kind of time to spare. When a tourist asks someone for directions in the subway, other people standing around are likely to chime in and suggest different/better routes, if appropriate. What I typically see is an open willingness to give directions, but not gushy overt friendliness – after giving directions, New Yorkers immediately turn back to what they were doing, reading the paper, talking, thinking, playing a game on their iPhones, whatever. So it may not be the kind of friendliness you’ll see in the southern states, but it is just the kind you need in New York.
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