grrrrr. One of those days.
When I was a young mother, I did everything. I made all our clothes, I made everything we ate from scratch, I was the Brownie Troop Leader, I had my giant floor loom and a giant-er Navajo loom and my big spinning wheel in the living room, I played guitar and sang in the elementary school, I was a Maker Deluxe. In this vein, I planted a vegetable garden, a couple times, because it just fit with what I was doing in my life, for my family. Oh, I loved gardening. Except I really, really didn’t. I didn’t like the feeling of dirt under my fingernails. I didn’t like having to deal with bugs and weeds. I didn’t like one thing about it. So my first vegetable garden produced what it produced in its first blush but without the necessary care, it didn’t really last. The following year, oh, I love gardening! I planted another one. And I really hated gardening.
It took me a long time to figure out that what I love is the idea of gardening. I really love that idea. The idea of preparing the ground, planting and watching and watering, seeing the plants, the flowerings, the vegetables begin and then grow. Pulling that food out of the ground and putting it on my table. Love every bit of that idea. I just really don’t like to garden. I wish I did, but I don’t. I felt so much better when I realized this distinction, because it helped me understand this conflict and it relieved me from ever having to attempt to garden again.
Last night I had another insight, though perhaps it is more temporary. Another thing I like better as an idea is Manhattan — definitely the incredible crowds of people in Manhattan. From a distance, the crowds of people pouring through the subway stations, the hordes of people on the sidewalks, they make this city vivid and so alive. From a distance, it’s easy to see that all these people are Manhattan, really. That we all live together, in each others’ faces, in public, and we mostly do it very well. We create whatever private space we need around ourselves as we are crammed together in small spaces. From a distance — the George Washington Bridge, say — all these people on this island are exciting. All these people dashing about, creating the busyness that characterizes this city. I really like all these people from a distance.
But under any kind of stress, as I was last night, my feelings change pretty dramatically. I hate all these people! Good god, I just want to get from here to there. Nothing’s easy. The subways are often screwed up for any slight reason, and if it’s raining hard, or long, everything is just that much more difficult, including subway commutes. Since the subway is underground, obviously, and we’re on a small island, a whole lot of rain at once can bring the subways to a crawl. Once, the trains just had to stop, and we all had to leave. What this means is that (a) it’s raining very hard, (b) hundreds of people are streaming out of the subway at once, into pouring rain, so (c) getting a cab is impossible. No subway, no cab, no luck.
everything's less fun in the rain, here
Last night I went downtown, to the NYU area, for a knitting meet-up. I love and adore all my friends and various groups, but I’m the only person I know here who makes things, and now and then someone says something that makes me feel like I’m seen as weird, because of it. People will ask if I’m making something because it’s cheaper (um, no), and they’ll look at me quizzically. At a minimum, they don’t seem to get the impulse to make things. They do other things, but they don’t make things. When I was a young mother, most of my friends made things, because they were my friends from the weaver’s and spinner’s guild. So I’ve been longing for real-live in person friends here in New York who make things. This one meet-up takes place pretty far from my apartment, requiring two different trains and then a long walk, but it meets on a night that works for my schedule and I’d wanted to go several times before but then had to cancel. Last week I RSVPed for the meet-up and was determined to actually go.
And then, yesterday afternoon, it started pouring rain. Not just raining, but pouring rain. And it was windy. I thought about not going, but I decided to just suck it up and head out. The bulk of the trip is underground, and the long walk in the rain would be fine. I wore my raincoat, took my umbrella, and headed out.
Times Square -- one of the major subway stations on the west side of town
It was nothing less than miserable. By the time I got to my subway stop, which is one block from my apartment, my jeans were soaked to the knee, and my feet were soggy. The wind kept whipping my umbrella inside out. Going down the steps into the subway required tip-toeing through the lakes of rain, and the trains were very crowded. Transferring trains at Times Square nearly done the old girl in; I think everyone gets cranky when they’re trying to get around in this kind of rain, and the rain causes train delays so the crowds are worse than usual. And this time of year the city is filled with tourists, who are taking it all in and don’t know the rules of the road, so they poke along, they stop in the middle of where people are walking, they stand at the top of the stairs, blocking them, they struggle to figure out the Metro Card system, it’s not their fault but they muck up the works even more. We’re just trying to get home, it’s cold, we’re wet, it’s crowded. I finally made it to the second train, only to find out that due to debris on the track, the train I needed wasn’t running. I don’t know that subway line (or part of town) very well, so coming up with an alternative way to get there was mysterious to me, and I nearly turned around and went back home. At this point I was realizing that I don’t like people, I don’t like Manhattan, I don’t like any of it. That maybe this is one of those “gee, I like the idea of it” deals.
But I got there, and after the long walk, I entered the bar dripping wet. My hair was hanging, wet, because the wind kept inverting my umbrella. My pants were dripping, my toes were pruning, my raincoat was dripping. I found the group in the back, introduced myself, and sat down. And not one person spoke to me. They looked at me while I was introducing myself, then they turned their attention back to their knitting, and to each other, and went back to their conversations. I ordered a drink and sat there, smiling, trying to figure out what to do. I thought I’d just go back home. I felt terrible.
Finally two other women arrived and sat by me, and the proximity led them to speak to me. I ended up having a nice time with them, and may go back (but not in January, unfortunately, because the two meetings fall the same nights as my poetry group and my book club meetings). A couple hours later, the group started to disband and I headed home. The rain had slacked off, the crowds were a little less intense, and I was freezing cold because my feet and jeans had been soggy for all that time (and still were!). I got home and crashed, went straight to sleep; I’m so shy and introverted, and it’s exhausting putting myself into a new social setting with strangers.
I’m going to hold off on making a final announcement to myself about how I feel about Manhattan, and Manhattanites. Maybe I like more than just the idea of them, but I need dry feet and pants to feel it.
on the radio, whoa oh oh oh on the radio, whoa oh oh oh, someone found a letter you wrote me, on the radio….GEE i love New York.
Last week, on my trip downtown, this stern-looking black guy wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase got on the train. I wouldn’t have noticed him, but he started shouting (I had to get out my little notebook to write this down….I couldn’t make this up!):
Jesus Christ is coming soon!
I met him at Lincoln Center.
He was wearing jeans.
He was very cute.
He went on to address our expected concerns about his message, saying he knows we’re wondering why Jesus Christ would’ve met him there — him, a black guy. Of all the concerns I may have had, that actually wasn’t on my list.
And if you’ve read this blog for a long time, you may remember a couple times I’ve mentioned this woman who comes into the train wheeling a little boombox and speaker, and sings that old disco Donna Summer song, “On the Radio.” Well I just love that song anyway, but she does such a wonderful job I’m always happy when she appears. (And that’s pretty rare; most of the time it’s horrible…the other exception is the roaming mariachi band I adore.) This time I pulled out my phone and shot a little video, so you can hear her voice. It’s amazing. Although I do wonder if she has any other song in her repertoire; I’ve been listening to her sing this for years, and this is all she ever sings. It’s only 56 seconds, so wait for the end, when she gets to the belting-it-out part. She came on at one stop, and I had to get off at the next. Bummer. (And sorry for not knowing how to rotate the video 
.)
Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?
The act of doing it meant something – it was a part of the experience. Getting up at 3:45, in the deep dark of the night, dressing silently in the dark, scurrying out the door alone into the streets, that was part of it all. St. John the Divine is just two blocks from my apartment; I walked towards Broadway, where life was pretty dang busy with cabs whizzing past, people walking together and laughing, and even the halal truck up and selling food. In the middle of Broadway, the paper-white nearly full moon caught my eye and I had to stop and look at it for a minute. I love to remember that I am on a planet, whirling around in a solar system, twirling around in a galaxy, spinning through the universe. Little old me.
The cathedral wasn’t as full as it was for the Winter Solstice Concert, but it never is for the summer concert. I took a seat on the aisle and sat in the dark, thinking. One thing I thought was why are the hooks on a bra right over the spine, because that’s mighty uncomfortable when sitting in a hardback chair. I pulled out my moleskine notebook and a pen to scribble notes in the dark, hoping I’d be able to read them when I got home — I imagined the experience would be wonderful and I wanted to remember detail.
The extremely dim lights went down and the music started. A saxophone played from behind us, and then Paul Winter came up the center aisle, playing the whole time, and took the stage. One musician after another did that, and it was extremely cool. There was a Tibetan woman named Yangjin Lamu who sang this very high, wailing song**; her voice broke again and again but on the same note (not like yodeling, in other words, where the break takes the voice to another note). Her vocal breaks were almost like a stutter. It was such an eerie sound, like something from the ancient past. There were sounds that were so deep they were nearly just a rumble, so deep they almost didn’t have a note. I thought about how deep rumbling is so closely associated with something wrong, something terrifying, something of the earth itself. There were spaces of silence, where last notes hung in the giant space until they faded, and after a space of no sound, something else began. It reminded me of the great OM, where the silence after the last sound is part of the OM itself.
The musicians played for two hours, sometimes performing solos and sometimes together with others – voices and instruments – without a real break between songs. They just kind of flowed around like streams of water, one into the other, mingling and overlapping and then something else emerging. There were some sounds that were so mysterious, I couldn’t tell if they were voices or instruments. None of the vocal music was in English — most contained just sounds, but any words were in languages other than English.
Why are minor chords so dark? There is such great relief when it moves into a major chord. I know so little about the psychology of music, I’m sure someone could talk about the differences between minor 5ths and 7ths and how and why they’re colored differently.
Just as in the Winter Concert, Arto Tunçboyacıyan was part of the ensemble and his voice alone was worth getting up at 3:45. I think I could listen to him forever.
Sitting in the dark of a gothic cathedral, you can really see the spaces carved out by the architecture — the even darker spheres shaped by the domes over the apse, the pointed shadows that hang near the tops of the arches, the long hollow spaces made by the barrel vaults. Darker shadows in a dark space, but shadows that are in very particular shapes. The stained glass windows above the apse were illuminated a bit by the moon, just enough to see indistinguishable shapes, but with a big slash of brilliant deep red. As the light came up with the sun, the figures in the smaller windows around the clerestory, which were set in backgrounds of dark blue glass, looked like people just hovering high above.
[this note I scribbled just to relieve some of my irritation: dude behind me: can't you shut up and stop sharing all your thoughts for 2 hours? for the record, whispers are really loud in a silent space.]
At the end of the concert, the first word was spoken. Paul Winter finished playing his note, stepped toward the microphone, and said Good Morning. It was the most wonderful thing – the audience laughed with something like relief and happiness.
When I turned around to leave, I saw the gorgeous sky-blue rose window:
- facing west, the so-lovely rose window
It’s too bad the stained glass windows don’t show up in this photo (both taken with my phone), because the blues and reds are gorgeous.
- facing east — the stage under the barrel vault, with the stained glass windows above the apse. the scale is magnificent.
It wasn’t as joyous or intensely moving as the Winter Solstice Concert (here’s my post about that one), but I’m glad I went. I do wonder why the summer solstice is welcomed with quiet, and the winter solstice is welcomed with noise and flash — something like whistling in the dark I guess. I may not go again next year, though I’ll always try to go to the winter concert. Maybe the summer just isn’t scary, and we don’t need courage to face it, as we do the dark winter.
***
A Summer Solstice Poem: The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
**If you want to hear the ancient style of Tibetan singing, listen to this, starting around 2 minutes and 30 seconds:
If I can (bum-bum) make it there, I’ll make it (bum-bum) anywhere, it’s up to you, New York, New York.
I like this hand:
But on the other hand, this Manhattan not so much:
I was to meet a friend at the City Diner this morning for breakfast, which is 21 blocks away from where I live. So I left early enough to make that relatively long walk; the morning was cool and despite what they say, the city was sleeping. As always, I got there early so I sat down and drank a cup of coffee. Our meeting time came and went, and finally I called her….oh, sorry! She meant the Metro Diner, which is 10 blocks back in the direction of my apartment. Ah well, more good walking.
But on the walk to the 2nd diner, I hit one block of Broadway where I came face to face with what can be so very ugly about Manhattan. First, the stench. There was rotting garbage scattered all over the sidewalk and standing in the curb, and random pools of vomit here and there. As I walked along, a rail-thin older black woman in a wig stepped toward me, holding out her hand, and in a raspy whisper asked me for a dollar. She was a junkie. Then, a huge man walked past me farting to beat the band…seriously, enough to be propelling him forward, I’m sure. Then I passed an old hooker wearing a short lime green wig, and she was just so sad-looking it broke my heart. ALL THAT took place in one block, at 8:45am on a summer Saturday morning.
I hope your Saturday smells better!
bringing it home.
And boy does this joint need to be heated up. Snow AGAIN, still, always. Today it was the wet slushy kind, and the temps stayed above freezing so it’s just disgusting, wet, ankle-deep, brown slushy watery ickiness. Not to put too fine a point on it. It’s Wednesday, so I made my weekly trek down to Union Square, which is not too bad a trip since most of it is underground in the subway and in transfer stations.
On the way home, my spirits were a wee bit low, and as I walked through the Union Square station to the N train, I heard sounds of joy and light up ahead — Roosevelt Dime again! I’ve been watching for them. Here’s a little snippet, and boy do I need to learn how to use the camera in my phone. For real.
So that definitely lifted my spirits, and the ride home was pretty sweet. Then these two little boys and their mother got on the train and sat next to me, all with their adorable little British accents. The boys were probably 4 and 6 years old, and the older one pointed to an ad for a movie and said “that looks like a very interesting film.” REALLY, little boy??? A very interesting film? How old are you? Precocious and so adorable, all at once.
Paging Alfred Hitchcock, paging Alfred Hitchcock.
Across the street from my apartment, on the 2nd floor of the building, something’s going on. From my couch, I can see the bedroom window. It’s a fancy one. It is more like a glass door, it swings open like that. There are no cross-panes, it’s just a full door-sized window. The owners open it when the weather is nice; they have one of those tiny little balconies sticking off the front of the building, just deep enough for a few potted plants.
For the last several days, the overhead light has been on 24 hours/day, and for the last 3 days, that window/door has been standing wide open. Last night I was up from 1-3am and there it was. Lights blazing, door/window wide open, despite the snow.
Now, the door/window has been closed but the curtain is still pulled aside and the overhead light is still on. I haven’t seen a person once; it’s not like I see them very often — it requires a coincidence of timing, I just happen to glance over as they just happen to be there. But it does happen often enough that I would’ve seen them by now.
So! Just enough ambiguity to leave me uncertain what to do.
Tomorrow: lots of knitting. Hope to finish knitting D&S, in fact. Fingers crossed.
Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks
Trapped mouse update: Silence from the ceiling. This is such terrible news, you have no idea. I see face masks and gagging in our olfactory futures. In response to Pip‘s comment on my building a better mousetrap post below, in which she reminded me of Tom and Jerry, I (being a very old person) remembered Pixie and Dixie, a pair of mice who were always outsmarting Jinx the Cat – featured regularly on the old Huckleberry Hound Show. Even though they always got away from him, Jinx always said “I love meeces to pieces.”
I searched YouTube and found this cartoon…..perfectly perfect for me and this blog, because it’s about Cousin Tex coming to visit.
Happy Father’s Day to anyone with a dad, or a husband who’s a dad!
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