in heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here. and when we’re gone from here, all our friends will be drinking all our beer!
I think I’ll start with the “not beauty” so I can end on a high note, on the last post I’ll ever write in 2010. We’re 5 days past Blizzardgeddon – the idiotic name the media gave to our big storm last Sunday – and boy is the bloom off that rose. For real. Here’s a shot out my living room window (shot through a filthy living room window, I apologetically add), of the view of my street. It’s made even worse by the fact that tomorrow morning trash is picked up, so it’s all out at the curb. Days like this I have to repeat over and over to myself “you love NY, you love NY, you love NY.”
looks like a set for a post-apocalyptic movie, doesn't it?
It only needs blood-dripping zombies staggering down the street to complete the gloomy lifeless feeling. Good thing I don’t feel gloomy and lifeless. Or zombie-like.
So here’s the beauty. My 3rd daughter has figured out that a very easy gift for me is yarn. She sometimes gives me a book – I’m so very very easy. The easiest person in the whole wide world. Here’s what she gave me for this past Om Day celebration — Berroco’s new Ultra Alpaca tonal, 2 skeins:
430 yards, worsted weight.....GO!
So soft, so beautiful, such a long queue to fit it into. 
There are worse problems.
And I’ll end unexpectedly, since this is a fancy day of anticipatory celebration (yay new decade! wait…last year actually startNever mind.). You get to decide whether this is beauty or not beauty. For me, it’s beauty all the way. It’s my favorite polka of ALL TIME, “In heaven there is no beer”. I used to polka around my bedroom to this when I was pretty little, and yes I was ‘unusual.’
See you next year!
want to run an errand with me? come on!
I had to go downtown again today, to the Union Square area, and this time (unlike last night, dang me!) I remembered to take my camera. It’s too bad I didn’t have it last night, I saw some adorable things, like the dude in the Union Square subway station who was sitting at a little tv tray, with an old Smith-Corona typewriter and a sign: “Poetry While You Wait.” Here’s some of what I saw today:
the holiday market set up in Union Square
the sky made this shift in 45 minutes
Then when I was transferring subway lines in Times Square, I heard these guys — Roosevelt Dime — and I really had to tear myself away, they were so good. Usually Andean flute players are set up there, and while I do enjoy Andean flutes (especially when I heard them in Puno, around Lake Titicaca in Peru), these guys brought it.
Roosevelt Dime, in Times Square - MAN. I do always love a banjo and a washtub bass.
Finally, exiting my subway stop I emerge above ground at my corner market, all duded up for the holidays. I probably shop here every single day, at least once:
Westside Market, my corner grocery store
And now you’ve just spent the afternoon with me. I wish you’d really been with me, we could’ve had such a nice conversation while we stopped for dark hot chocolate with marshmallows at Max Brenner. You probably would’ve warned me against drinking through the sippy hole, because you’d have realized that the marshmallows would clog up against the hole and if I pulled to take a hard sip it would come shooting through the hole along with a big mouthful of scorching hot chocolate. You’d have stopped that from happening, you’re very nice that way.
Have a wonderful wintry evening y’all –
Theater! Kids! Can! Be! Hard! To! Take! In! An! Enclosed! Space!
One of the only things I miss (and really, just partially) about my old job is the daily exposure to New Yorkers during the commute. The New York stories have always been among my favorite posts to write (which is not to say that the NY stories were always pleasant experiences). Now, I’m in the subway three times a week, tops, and the rides are not very long.
But today I had to go way down to the other end of this island, so I had quite a long trip in the subway. Going down was quiet and quick, and I expected a relatively similar trip home, since it wasn’t rush hour and the train was pretty empty when I got on.
remember the Master Thespian, on SNL? ACTING!
But then, at the Penn Station stop, a thundering horde of THEATER! KIDS!! ran into my car. In their Very! Excited! (and Loud!) Way!
Oh my god! They were just So! Very! Excited! And SHOUTING! And once, a group of them broke into SONG! It wasn’t at all like being in an episode of Glee. One of the chaperons was standing right next to me at one end of the car, and just kept shouting at the other chaperon, who happened to be as far away as possible. Then he shouted at her (and they had to shout very loudly to be heard over All! The! Excitement!) and whatever he said made her laugh her excruciatingly loud and piercing cackle laugh. I put my knitting down and covered my ears with my hands, trying to minimize the feeling of being assaulted.
Thankfully, they got off at 66th, leaving me 7 quiet subway stops to home. I let my hands down and got ready to pick up my knitting when a screaming clattering horde of Puerto Rican teenage girls ran into the car and even though there were only 4 or 5 of them, they were every bit as loud as the 15 Theater! Kids! had been.
I sat there thinking about the shared public space of a subway car. Yeah, it’s a public space, so you can shout if you want to, play music if you want to, do whatever, as long as it isn’t illegal. But it’s shared, which ought to mean that extremes are modified a bit – especially in a tightly enclosed space. We don’t eat smelly food in the subway cars. We use earphones for our iPods (usually, though that’s no guarantee that I won’t have to be blasted by your irritating music). We talk to each other in normal conversational tones, with normal conversational volume (or even a little quieter, if we can). Because there are Other! People! On! the! Train!
geez. I’m thoroughly enjoying the absolute silence of my apartment right now. I think I’ll knit. Yeah.
where the hell IS everybody?
riverside park
That photo was taken today – Saturday, a summer Saturday, at 1:30. It’s 87 degrees, calm winds. Really nice! SO WHERE IS EVERYONE?
This is New York City! Crowded, teeming New York City. BUT: This is New York City in the summer. It really empties out, at least in the parts of town where people live. I’m sure Times Square is its usual bloated bleeting mass of tennis-shoed, fanny-packing, camera-wielding humanity, but luckily, I don’t have to go there.
Parking is easy – spots everywhere. Sidewalks aren’t crowded. Parks are pretty empty. New Yorkers go to the beach – the Jersey shore, out to the Hamptons, anywhere there’s a spot to lie down with water nearby. And luckily, since I live on an island and am surrounded by other islands and a coastline on the Atlantic, there are lots of options. I usually sneak onto the private beach in one of the Hamptons during the summer.
Me, though, as a pale-skinned very white woman, I’m delighted to sit indoors, watch the sun streaming through my white curtains, bake something yummy, watch something engrossing, and knit my brains out. I’m so easy.
Here’s some summer music for you:
is he drunk, or a suicide bomber? how would i know?
Last night I had to take the subway downtown a little ways, and when I got into a car, the absolute REEK of alcohol literally made me gasp. Of course, when this happens I immediately begin to try to figure out which person is the drunk. Because I want to stay far far away from him. And it’s almost always a him. The last time I was trapped too near a drunk, he started vomiting and the car was so crowded, we were all just trapped, and on and on he went. Other times, the drunks are rowdy and big and loud, and kind of scary. Especially to me.
So, last night I grabbed a seat and started looking around, trying to ID him. I didn’t think it was the big guy sitting next to the door; he had a gym bag between his feet. I didn’t think it was the Sikh man standing, facing the door. Yeah, probably not him. (I know I’m being guilty of visual profiling!) No one looked drunk, but I figured it was probably the young(ish) guy standing in the middle of the aisle with his back to me. He wore work boots and a long jacket, and he had some kind of leather bag hanging down, which he wore under his jacket. STRANGE.
my subways
So that leather bag…..hanging inside his coat…..what’s that about? Who does that? Is he just some strange guy, or someone who was robbed once, so he learned to do that? Or is he some crazy subway bomber?! And that gym bag by the door, what’s really inside that zipped duffel bag?
Suddenly the question of whether the guy was a drunk was much less important.
Living in post-9/11 Manhattan, with the ongoing question of whether to prosecute the 9/11 suspects here, with subway bombings happening elsewhere in the world, with the occasional pair of murders happening (a double knifing on my own subway line a couple of mornings ago), you know? You pay attention in the subway. You get used to random bag searches; my assistant at work was routinely searched, but I’ve never been stopped. According to a story on Gothamist, “one rider said, “I feel the tension on the Metro. Nobody’s smiling or laughing.”" And that’s different from other days how?
To close on a much nicer note: Crow Kai-Mei:
Kai-Mei socks, madelinetosh sock in crow colorway
Isn’t that such a beautiful color, that indigo blue, with shadings from black to denim to lighter blue? I would never have thought to call it crow, but I guess madelinetosh was thinking of the blue-blackness of crows so I get it. To me, it looks more like denim but I’m no colorist. I’m only knitting these socks during my commute to and from work, so I get a few rows done at a time. At this rate, I’ll have one done by the time I finish my daughter’s wedding dress and shawl, but who cares! I’ll still have feet, and need socks, so there.
Popular posts: