What I Saw

2003-01-29T12:04:00.000-05:00

Hello Google crawlers (and any poor soul who may have wandered in to see if I am still alive and utilizing the English language). I feel that it's time to explain something. This blog was created to celebrate, gripe about, and generally describe the New York state of mind. Well, I have left that country. Call it the onset of middle age. Call it a yearning to escape the claustrophobia that comes of living and thinking cheek by proverbial jowl with a multitude of dudes and dudesses. I dunno. I just got tired of it. It's a hard place to live, as anyone who's ever done it will tell you.

I knew I was leaving when I began this blog, and I suppose What I Saw was always meant to be a sort of final love letter to the city. It ended up being more of a Dear John letter, and that is perhaps more appropriate to the situation. I knew I was leaving. I knew I'd miss it. I knew I wouldn't miss it at all. (Both are true, by the way, and logic be damned.)

Long ago I started a list of things I'd miss and things I wouldn't. Here are a few:

The way the west village feels like Paris when it rains.
Shops with names like The Lively Set and Tea and Sympathy.
Meeting friends on street corners and watching them approach, knowing them by how they walk. (I know that works elsewhere, too, but it seems more romantic in a great city of millions)
Being able to get the absolute best version of whatever food you desire, as long as you're willing to trek there.
Walking and walking and walking, and always something remarkable to see.
Outlandish garb of every variety.
Sweet proprietors of delis, dry cleaners, restaurants, and a million other tiny businesses who are delighted to see you because they recognize you from yesterday, and hope you'll come by tomorrow to keep their business in, well, business.
Bus rides. No really, I like them, when they're uncrowded and it's Sunday morning and it's like watching a parade outside a wide and gently rocking window.
The view from the Empire State Building. Damn, it's fine. I never saw the view from the Twin Towers - I had an attack of fear of heights combined with fear of being crushed in the elevator on the way up, and my sister kindly agreed to stay down on the ground with me, where we looked up and marveled at their height from below. I have pictures of that day - it's the last time I saw those towers alive.

I don't think I want to talk about the things I won't miss. It seems like insulting an ex after you've left and it's all history, and it was really just a difference of lifestyle and outlook - nothing worth dissing someone about behind their back.

Anyway, more things I'll miss:

Yonah Shimmel's wonderful knishes, hot from the microwave on a cold day - burn your hands and eat them with mustard. Gorgeous. Breakfast.

The gritty garment district, a hub of commerce and fashion students that makes everyone else feel out of place. I was sent there on a mission for bridal fabric for a friend once, and had a terrific time begging swatches from the salesfolk.

The lower east side: including accidental Shakespeare heard in a parking lot on a blazing hot day, glimpses of really old world Jewish culture like Bialys in the window, pickles sold out of barrels on the street, and encroaching chinatown.

Bridges. Queensboro in a cab - a long twisting view of the island behind and to the right. Brooklyn, perpetually for sale to suckers and always reminding me of that Cher movie. Manhattan - I never can figure out where it comes in, but I know it gave Dumbo its name and perhaps its chic.

A sudden burst of music from under the footbridges in Central Park. Mysterious, echoing, sometimes jazz, once an accordion played by a Polish immigrant under the decaying mosaics near the fountain.

Quite a piece of work, all in all. Good luck to you.

2002-11-05T14:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, here’s the thing that truly made me leave. I noticed it again yesterday as I was walking along in the light and pleasant drizzle, watching a young stick with red lips and red boots and a red leather coat look around to see if her various reds were attracting the attention she’d hoped for.

A great many people here dress as if for a parade. This in itself does not bother me. I rather like it.

What does bother me, however, and ultimately contributed to my feeling that Enough was Enough Already, is the sense one has when visiting New York City that to live here would be a grand spectacle, an ever-changing panoply, a buffet of eternal champagne and myriad caviars—in short, a parade.

I spent five years waiting for the parade. Granted, I lived in Midtown, which almost never sees anything interesting walk by. It’s an endless stream of old women pushing poodles in prams (yes, I know that’s interesting, but is it exciting? Is it worth leaving Iowa for? No way in the shade.) and young round-bodied men with more money and confidence than sense or sensibility boiling out of the bars at 11pm on their way home to a sodden sleep and a too-early morning meeting.

But really, I have a friend who lives at the veritable Apex, on Clinton between Stanton and Rivington. The grand Crossroads of Cool. And does she have an exciting, paradeful time of it? Only marginally more than me. And that’s because she’s got pets and has to go outside and walk them occasionally.

It took me far too long to figure this out: New York can be Boring. One can have No Life here. No more of a life than any suburb-bound housefrau, and housefraus get dishwashers to make their lives easier, and I’ll bet not a single U.S. housefrau has to haul 40 pounds of laundry across four city blocks every week.

Yes, I admit it. It was laundry that made me leave. Laundry and the lack of parades in my honor. There probably were parades in my honor, but they all happened in the 80s, when I was young and strong and creating parades elsewhere.

At least the poodles are entertaining to watch on my walk to the train.

2002-10-29T13:31:00.000-05:00

This blog will be on semi-hiatus while I get my head in some kind of shape to make observations that are more than just groaning about dog crap and traffic. The truth is, I just don’t have much time for reflection (or observation) these days, and it’s stultifying the blog. We’ll resume when things chill out and I find a less commuteful way of making a living. I will occasionally report in when I see something worth writing about, but don’t expect the every day note.

I leave you (for now) with a parting observation: Only in Manhattan do moms push the baby carriage in black tights and knee-high boots. And of course, only here do they use said baby carriage as a battering ram to get across traffic.

2002-10-28T08:59:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been to Edinborough? There’s a lot of dogshit there. As I was walking through a particularly thoroughly poop-mined stretch of NYU dormitory this morning, I suddenly thought of Edinborough.

There are signs threatening legal action, financial disciplinary measures (i.e., large fines), and general ostracism from polite society (which makes sense; I mean, who considers it polite to leave their dogshit in big piles for everyone else to ruin their shoes on?). And yet, if you’re not walking with eyes glued to the sidewalk in front of you, you’re liable to ruin a pair of shoes every time you set foot outdoors in Edinborough. What is it with people?

I would have thought this particular bit of rudeness to be characteristic of bad, lawless New York. But no, here you see many dog-walkers with their bit of plastic baggie (or worse, newspaper, eeewww!) clutched in the non-leash-holding hand, merrily scooting along the sidewalk alongside their airedale, or wolfhound, or coiffed little poodle. Some folks here do clean up after their dogs. Just not in NYU.

I doubt there’s any great meaning behind this, other than yet another way to divide mankind into the inevitable two parts: those who give a (pardon the pun) shit about the comfort of fellow humans, and those who do not. For the record, my mom assidiously cleans up after her pooch when walking in the park or other public spaces. In her own yard, puppy gets to do as she pleases and mom calls it fertilizer. This seems fair to me, though it doesn’t exactly make me want to spend much time wandering in her yard.

2002-10-24T15:20:00.000-04:00

The sun is shining but I’m dreary inside. Too much reading of the news, I believe. Sniper-terror-bestselling book about rape.

Outdoors a woman shoved into my side/bag to get around me so she could stand that extra two feet further into the street to wait for the traffic to clear. I followed her and shoved her back as I passed her. Never done that before. I was angry.

Certainly been angry but never chased someone down to clandestinely shove them right back. Not sure if I’d recommend it. Strangely unsatisfying, even though it was some sort of outlet.

2002-10-18T15:49:00.000-04:00

Didn’t get much of a look at the world outside today. Instead, I shuttled back and forth on a total of six trains (or will have, by day's end). And I can attest that, in order of relative states of yuckiness, NJ Transit is the nicest by far. The N/R train is the ugliest, most airless, and foulest-smelling (those last two are no doubt related). In between is the PATH, which wins points for relative lack of filth, but loses them for overcrowded conditions, not to mention unbearably hot tunnels.

Anyway, I was hauling uptown and back for allergy shots (yes, I’m one of those people who’d be Darwined out of existence in the natural order of things), and as I was rolling up every sleeve on my body (three on each arm) I began to ponder friendship.

It’s my vote for the key to happiness, and a good sized chunk of the reason we’re here. But let me rewind slightly, so you can see why I would be thinking about friendship in the allergist’s office when I’m just there to get little needles stuck into both arms.

There’s a nurse there whom I don’t get to see anymore, and I really miss her. She’s still alive and well, mind you, but my new commute has changed my shots schedule, and so I see a different nurse now. She gives the shots about as painfully as Lillian did, but without that wonderful dose of high spirits and twinkling companionship that I could always count on from Lil.

You ever meet one of those people who just Have It? You don’t know how or where they found it—maybe they were born with it—but their perfect positioning right on the groove of life, Right There, is written all over their faces. Lillian is one of those folks. She has a face like an angel, and when she dies, that face will look as different as different can be, because it’s Lillian’s wonderful personality that makes her so beautiful.

Physically, she is a nicely aging black lady with that appearance usually termed "ageless." She has a daughter somewhere in her thirties, so I speculate Lillian’s a bit older than my own mom. But there’s something about her that reminds me of my favorite (and departed) grandmother. A combination of sweetness and spunk, more than a hint of mischief in her expression.

Oh Lillian, my Lillian, when you were sticking needles in my arm, I swear I didn’t mind the Youch! And the wait in the waiting room was just an excuse to read, and the packed N train home was—well, it was the subway, and we know how much I love the subway. Yech.

But still, it was amazing how cheery an expedition my shots were when I got to see Lillian. Since I’ve switched schedules, I hardly make it there anymore. It’s cursory, a hassle, and I’m always looking around, listening for her voice.

See, that’s why we’re here. To meet our Lillians.

2002-10-17T09:16:00.000-04:00

In an inexplicably good mood (relative to yesterday, anyway) this morning. Thought I’d better write quick, before it dissipates, or gets chased away by the random icky flotsam that swirls about Manhattan. Maybe there are currents of emotion as well as currents of air. Other people’s nastiness just eddies around one till it infects your own mood, usually by virtue of some physcial altercation. Even the ones as small as being bumped on the stairway can have that effect.

Weird dreams again this morning. Almost slept through my train. You know you’re up with the birds when 6:10am=sleeping in.

The weather has cleared and people are again shuffling around the streets in a more relaxed fashion, though the usual New York White-Rabbit-must-hurry rule is still in effect. I guess it’s the body language that’s different when the sun’s out. People stride, and bounce, and swagger in good weather. In bad weather they crouch and scurry and cringe.

Personally, I like to mosey.

2002-10-16T14:53:00.000-04:00

Not sure what to say about today. Thus far, it is an extremely mixed bag. One count of cab-dunking (that uniquely New Yorkian sport with which drivers amuse themselves by driving as quickly as possible through gutters a foot deep in uglywater, thereby drenching innocently shambling peds). One mishap at the train station. One unsuccessful shopping trip in search of some produce to accompany lunch.

Ever stop into a shop where you’re convinced they’re sneering at you? Where you get that aura that the staff believes you should be on your knees with gratitude for being allowed the privilege of forking over $5 for a bucket of blueberries? Makes me not want to buy anything. Gourmet Garage has crappy produce anyway. I don’t know what their problem is. Who buys wrinkled Washington State Pippins in October anyway, when crisp, luscious NY state Macouns and Jonathans could be had more easily for half the price? Well, not at GG, anyway. Stupid place. I am never bothering with them again.

Their cheese is raw, anyway. It’s mid-October and already I am pining for decent fruit. What is wrong with this picture? Land of plenty, my ass – New York is a third-world country crammed onto a single island off the coast of America.

Oh, I expect it's only Soho, land of designer eyeballs, that's the trouble. In the E. Village, or Queens, I am sure one could get lovely peaches fresh off the trees of Paraguay for a pittance. But that's not my point. What is my point? It's rainy and everything is bad.

2002-10-15T10:48:00.000-04:00

I dreamed last night that I was in France. I can’t figure out whether it was contemporary day or not. That is perhaps due to the longer-timescale nature of French countryside than American countryside, and perhaps due to the fact that the book I was reading is suddenly zapping back and forth between 17th century England and the present day. Which doesn’t exactly explain France’s appearance as a guest star in Valencia’s Dream, but there you have it.

I believe my sister was there, which doesn’t surprise me, as she and I have talked, in a desultory way, about journeying together in the near future (i.e., two years or so). This all looks very trivial on the page, as do most attempts to explain or even describe dreams. I imagine, somehow, that when I’ve died and am attempting to describe my life, it will come out much the same. Foggy and insubstantial, and I won’t be able to explain why it was so compelling to someone who wasn’t there at the time. Perhaps that is, in fact, why we dream now. Practice for that future frustration and nebulousness.

Not so much that we need practice in order to be frustrated, but perhaps an opportunity to practice pegging the ineffable with words, or gestures, or strange eye movements that have significance to those in the afterlife.

Does any of this make any sense to anyone else, or am I just dreaming again?

2002-10-14T09:12:00.000-04:00

Working on Columbus Day is one of those peculiar tortures that makes you realize you have not managed to arrange an adequate life for yourself. Put it right up there with attending weddings alone and strolling through a college campus or coffeeshop in mid-day.

Just not adequate. I remember traveling slightly in my youth and having the same experience every youth does when overwhelmed by all that is unrecognizable and tantalizing and accented. "I will find a way to do this all the time. I will travel for years, until I have been to every continent."

Have I been back since? No. Well, a single week-long business trip with lots of work and little play. But essentially, no.

I know, I know, it’s no fun to read the whinings of a could-have-been. But really, it’s myself I’m kicking, not The World That Done Me Wrong. And if one doesn’t stop and do this sort of thing from time to time, well, then that trip around the world (or at least around somewhere else) will never get taken.

2002-10-11T15:08:00.000-04:00

It is cold and miserably raining today, and still there is a line in front of the little sushi place on Thompson. What does that say about New Yorkers? That cold, slimy fish is just the thing on a bleary wet day? That our palates are so accustomed to exotic stimuli we simply can’t bear to have a burger? That we’re willing to brave any number of discomforts for (presumably) good, cheap sushi?

I don’t know, but it appears to say something.

I scuttled up the block for a box of tissues and squelched back to the office in wet boots. A cheese sandwich will do very well for today, thank you. Incidentally, my office-mates were all having soup when I got back.

2002-10-10T13:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I was warned about this. Before I moved to New York, a friend who’d lived here for ten years said to me, "You’ll love it and you'll hate it. Everybody does." Or words to that effect.

When the balance shifted and I found that I really hated it more often than I really loved it, I started thinking about Getting Out. But there are degrees of Out, and I’m not fully escaped yet. In fact, I still spend the bulk of my waking hours here. So I guess it’s still subject to the love it-hate it equation.

This is one of those Can’t Stand To Be Here Days. The city looks to me just as it did when I visited as a child and thought it the most disgusting, dirty, smelly, frightening place I’d ever been. Rats the size of shoeboxes, cockroaches almost as large, and everywhere the reek of piss.

That was my impression then and it’s my feeling today. Though to be fair, it was two small half-decayed mouse corpses I saw, and a lot of urine, both human and animal. But ugh! What a dumb idea, cramming so many people onto one tiny island and calling it civilization.

What that overload of proximity does is wipe out any traces of civilization, as evidenced by the rudeness of gypsy cab drivers nearly running me over and then cussing at ME for crossing WITH the walk-sign.

I do not like it, Sam I Am. I would prefer a greener land.

2002-10-04T10:42:00.000-04:00

Dreary drecky dreadful day today. Rainy, but not in a charming English countryside sort of way. Not cool enough to have the bite of fall. Not warm enough for spring. Not much of anything.

I, along with everyone else, am trudging along the sidewalk, head down, umbrella up. My bag and shoes are getting wet. I wore the short jacket, afraid that the long one would be too hot.

On my answering machine just a day or two ago I stumbled over the date, saying August 2 instead of October 2. Mother Nature is doing essentially the same thing. I can just hear her, sleepily waving her wand and incanting the climate conditions for the day, "Oh drat. That was last month’s formula. Damn. Well, they’ll just have to shear the sheep again."

2002-09-30T13:34:00.000-04:00

Ah, the trip to the trim shop. The one on lower Broadway run by a fleet of old Yiddish gentlemen. They are alternately lovely and polite, or gnarled and curmudgeonly—depending on which salesman you get that day, and perhaps, on what he had for breakfast that morning. I imagine that matzoh brei mornings produce the politeness, while kasha days are grumble-inducing. The one I had today seemed to have breakfasted on leftover noodle kugel, for he was a charmer.

I went in to get one item: 4 yards of woven trim to use as curtain tie-backs. Instead I walked out with four different kinds of trim, in rainbow colors. Blue and green flowers on a red background, orange flowers on a black mesh background, black and white flowers on a red ribbon, and red and white abstract patterns on a navy background.

And I didn’t even bring home the purple and pink one I’d been eyeing.

For the record, I had cold cereal this morning.

2002-09-27T15:17:00.000-04:00

Valencia go boom! That is the sound of my nose hitting the desk. The third time. Must get caffeine. How hard is it to find plain coca-cola in Soho? It takes me three tries.

2002-09-26T13:31:00.000-04:00

A walk through the city, any walk through the city, is a journey through different worlds. On a rainy day like today, there is first of all the hunt for the $3 Umbrella Lady, which takes one from Prince to Broadway and then across to the east side of the street where we spy her, just visible behind a row of curved wooden handles. Those, we speculate, are $10. But it’s uncertain how much they really cost, as no one we know has ever bought anything other than the cheapie disposable $3 variety. Today the smiling Chinese woman in a purple coat and black hat says the small ones are two for $5. The Upper East Side blonde next to me protests that she only wants one. I, too, only need one. So the lady splits the price for us, oddly to less than half the 2-for deal, and I get a $3 umbrella for $2.

Which is nice for me, because I only had two singles and a $20.

But then, the tour really begins. Into Ricky’s, where the dragonfly hairclip fad has certainly died out and all they have on offer in the way of barrettes are plain clips in bubblegum colors. Striped. With glitter. None for me, thanks.

A few blocks down, at Pearl Paint, it is the land of the freshman art student. Ahead of me in line, a pair of cute Japanese American girls are buying one another little gifts (paint pots, apparently) and discussing plans to "turn the basement into my studio." Their earnestness sends me back in time for a moment, and then unpleasantly into a realization of how far from that place I’ve come, and in a direction nearly opposite from where I wanted to be.

Then it’s my turn at the register. The young man, in dreadlocks framing a smiling face, asks if I have a student card, then after a slight pause, or a teacher card? It’s the first time I’ve been asked the second, though I often get asked the first.

The walk back up Mercer St., across the paths of cabs whose drivers seem astonished that no one wants them in the rain, is populated by a series of types. Chauffeurs holding giant golf umbrellas just outside the doorways of furniture stores selling nothing but white slipcovered items and white painted items. Middle-aged women in well-worn chunky boots and long skirts, their long hair artfully permed and highlighted to resemble teenage curls. Younger women in thick purple plastic glasses with their long tresses (so similar to the middle-aged women’s) carelessly piled into clips atop their heads. British tourists discernable by their pale long faces, thin paisley scarves, and undefinable air of tailoring, even when sporting something as inelegant as a red velour track suit.

European hotel guests sitting at either end of a thick oak bench looking in opposite directions with studied indifference to passersby who wonder if they’re famous or just wealthy.

And me, dragging a large bucket of paintbrush cleaner ($14.95, on sale) in a red and white Pearl bag back to the office. I am trying to extend the life of the housepainting brushes I bought at Home Depot. They are rather expensive, and we have a lot of painting to do. It occurs to me, reading this over, that the onset of middle age is of the creeping variety rather than a discernable step forward.

2002-09-26T09:46:00.000-04:00

"Seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." Italo Calvino

2002-09-25T13:40:00.000-04:00

Group of brightly colored children bouncing about a wire-enclosed playground like dancing (and screaming) birthday candles. Could they have influenced my choice at the bookshop—Harry Potter?

2002-09-25T09:14:00.000-04:00

This morning on the way to catch my public transport, I see a field of fireflies, except they can’t be fireflies, it’s 6:23 am. Ah, they are not, indeed, fireflies; they are cars, racing along a bigger road than ours. I am viewing them across a field layered with mist, and the lights of the cars are dancing along the top of it like flowers on a cake, or the aforementioned fireflies.

2002-09-24T16:25:00.000-04:00

Alas poor blog, I knew it, Horatio, a place of infinite babble and musing. Well, it has been sorely wounded by the onslaught of brain-boggling deadlines (only boggling because I wasted too much time writing blogs) at work, and now it limps back into existence, grayed and bleak as a day in some month other than September.

Yes, yes, the weather’s good, but who cares? I am indoors writing tomes on the history of women’s employment in the U.S. for a surprisingly non-historically-minded audience and wondering where to go next. Nepal? Japan? Bed, perhaps, perhaps to dream.

Today I saw two little flowers that looked like claws, and I thought "Even flowers can have claws." And that sounded like some kind of warning for the folks who underestimate sweet-seeming girls.

Or a gentle reminder to the girls who waste too much energy Getting Along With Everyone that it’s okay to be a lion sometimes.

Or maybe it was just a disturbed image like that dream I had last night about a giant green viper that kept springing out of the corners of my house. We have a lot of weird bugs. Not used to them yet. Scary.

On the way to work I squashed yet another furry denizen of the forest under my increasingly bloodied car tires. I have lived in remote locations before but never had I run over an animal until last week. And now it’s two. A groundhog and a weasel. My significant other warned me I ought to practice my swerves in case the next one is a deer. Gulp!

2002-09-18T13:37:00.000-04:00

So wiped out I almost:

a) thought a fallen, trampled leaf was a squashed frog

b) walked into a tree—or was it a no parking sign?

c) missed the triple-decker array of discarded restaurant equipment standing in for nifty sculpture on Houston St.

d) watched a homeless man intently writing something on a piece of cardboard behind his wall of stuff piled on two canvas mail carts and thought, "At least he doesn’t have to drag himself three hours each way to a dreadful job every day. His job is wherever he is." Of course, his job is to beg for food from those who have other sorts of jobs, the ones that require business clothes, good hygiene, and pay in checks instead of small change. Stupid Valencia, do not envy the poor homeless man. He probably spends most of his day envying you, despite your awful job and lack of sleep.

And then there were the stick-thin chicks in red cowboy boots ostentatiously pouring Equal packets into cups of coffee in front of the pricey hair salon. I kept looking around for the camera crew—I was certain they were filming a commercial. It was that deft flick of the wrist to make sure the brand name was showing on the packets.

And then I was thinking: bike messengers are the only ones in the city who seem free. They wing through traffic like birds, and most of them are built birdlike, ready to take the air. But then I saw the chain around the cyclist’s waist (zoooom! There he went, as I looked with slow cow eyes) and remembered they only go so fast because they don’t get paid as much when they wait for red lights.

2002-09-18T11:12:00.000-04:00

Pardon the sporadic nature of observations recently. Have moved into new abode and am up to proverbial neck in Still-Packed Boxes, Polyurethane, and Alarm Clocks of Doom. Why are they Of Doom, you ask? Because they trumpet that horrible sound, the sound that means it’s your turn at the electric chair, that there is no last-minute reprieve from linear time, that yes, you do in fact have to Get Up and Go to Work. And, having moved rather further away from my place of toil (in the interests of having a room of my own), I now must wake with the birds, yea, before the sun pokes its shiny nose over the horizon. Alas, alack, zzzzz.

2002-09-16T14:36:00.000-04:00

Not a banner day in the annals of Valencia. It started with a 5:30am wake-up time, followed by a 6am bus ride, followed by a 45-minute wait to get into my office, effectively screwing up the whole "getting in early, leaving early" plan I had so carefully hatched to prevent me from having to come home at 8pm and fall into bed exhausted an hour later having neither eaten properly nor relaxed nor done any of the housework I have on my list.

I saw a lot of sleeping people on the bus—sadly, I was not one of them, being consistently unable to slumber on public transportation (not airplanes, not even trains). It’s always so odd to see assorted Masters of the Universe (both male and female) lying a-tilt with their expensive dentistry showing between their hanging jaws. Sometimes they look cute, like defanged mountain lions or grenades with the pins welded shut. Other times they look—I dunno—ugly. Not in the physical sense so much as being visible evidence of what’s wrong with a culture. We make people get up before their natural bedtime.

I am certain that if we could all just sleep to our bodies’ content, far fewer people would be in the mood to, say, shoot two others and then take their own lives, as someone did this morning in a Times Sq. office bldg.

I can tell you I was feeling pretty antisocial this morning as I leaned against the outside door of the office and waited. And waited. And waited.

2002-09-13T15:20:00.000-04:00

I am seeing dizzy and double these days, due to a recently quadrupled commute. Waking up before the sun rises and getting home after it sets. And it’s not even post-Solstice. All work and no sleep is making me an extremely dull observer, I fear. Nevertheless, one must make an effort. Today I saw a lot of people wearing coats in the morning (again, very early, cold and dark) and then a lot of people wearing not enough clothing to construct one coat from (at lunchtime, in a warmer clime).

Now I know how those bicoastal commuters feel. If you dress for the ride to the airport, you’ll be too hot or too cold once you land. Anyway, I bought myself a pretty pen to facilitate some letter writing on these long hauls. Must-find-job-without-big-commute.

Enough grumbling. I went into Kate’s Paperie, a store that should be heaven for us letter writing types but generally just makes me feel not rich enough to buy something as simple as paper.

But…and this is a big but. They were having a sale. I got a pretty birthday card for a dear friend (not on sale but she is a dear friend and it was a sweet card) and a nice pen to write letters with (75% off. Really. You should go.) (And they should give me kickbacks for all this free promotion).

See, I told you! Commuting makes me boring. Bo-ring! What else did I see? Little amoebas that float through one’s vision when the sleep is lacking. And a pushy cat trying to get into the bathroom to drink out of the faucet this morning at 5:35 am.

Screws with the perception of time, too. Sleep deprivation is just like Star Trek — anything can happen at any time. This is the episode where Valencia meets Data the artificial human and she doesn’t notice that he’s any different from the Wall Street banker type down the bar drinking a dirty martini — except that Data is drinking a pink martini and this makes him seem instantly more loveable and so she takes him home with her and discovers that yes, he is FULLY functional. I suppose Tasha Yar could have told her that, but Tasha died in the first or second season. Next Generation fans are the TV equivalent of Elvis Costello fans. When we say Captain we mean Picard, not Kirk, when we say Elvis, we mean Costello not Presley. Both blasphemous, I know. But both absolutely correct. ZZzzzzzz.

2002-09-12T12:41:00.000-04:00

There’s a thing you should see. For my money it’s the best memorial I’ve seen to the people who died on the 11th last year. It’s just their names, in plain text on a black background, and it’s tremendously affecting, in a way that lets you think about the monumental sorrow of those events in human terms, rather than as a carefully crafted media montage.

Just take a look, and see if you don’t think so too. It takes a really long time to scroll through them all. Longer than it did for many of them to go from wide awake and breathing to ashes floating through the air.

See, the temptation to describe is nigh irresistible, isn’t it? Better just to look at their names, and wonder what they liked to have for breakfast, and how their ride to work was that day, and what they were planning to ask for for their birthdays, all 3,044 of them. We miss them, even if we didn’t know them personally.

2002-09-06T13:42:00.000-04:00

Today it is clear and clean and that of course gives me the willies, particularly in the morning. (see 8/8/02 blog re: the 11th) But it’s great weather for a walk, so that is what I took, ranging far and wide across the Village and Westerly parts.

I visited a bookstore, forgot to run an errand, saw men traipsing through crime scene tape, and noticed a new infusion of Goth fashion among the young recruits of NYU. And it seemed to me that the Toyota Echo quotient of the general vicinity has increased in the past few days. Guess their marketing plans sucked in the boomer dads and moms who thought: It’s a Toyota, Let’s buy it for Junior! Just as they were meant to, when the marketing executives sat at that big conference table trying to work out a way to get kids hooked younger.

Not that I am anti-Toyota, mind you. Some of my best moments in high school were had in the passenger seat of a faded red Toyota Corona gripping the dash as my friend Vic tried to break the sound barrier in a 20-year-old hunk of junk.

But that was more about Vic than the car, wasn’t it?

2002-09-06T10:37:00.000-04:00

Yesterday there was a blind woman approaching an area that had been roped off for construction. She was moving slowly, cane outstretched, as if she could sense an obstruction, but the cane would have slipped below the rope and I was just getting worried about her and wondering if I should do anything to assist, and if so, what (since it’s not always kind to interfere with blind folks’ navigation), when a fellow passerby walking a large dog stopped, addressed her very politely and with a minimum of fuss explained to her the nature of the obstacle in front of her.

She didn’t understand immediately what he was talking about, but it was obvious from the grace with which he did the thing that it would soon be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. I later saw the same fellow deposit a small plastic bag containing dog feces into a trash can, evidence that all was resolved satisfactorily for the dog as well.

2002-09-04T14:36:00.000-04:00

At lunchtime I saw umpteen students meandering sloppily (the curse of the uninitiated walkers) through Washington Square on their to and fro (their dorms or their classes). They remind me, in retrospect, of hobbits. Pierced anorexic shaved hobbits, but small and burbly nevertheless.

I bought two books from a chap who was bemoaning the fact that his bosses make him read mysteries instead of the plain fiction he prefers, and then scurried back to the office like a — well, a hobbit, really — myself. The bookseller had in fact mistaken me initially for a student on a mission for an Edgar Allen Poe title their prof had ordered. So it all comes round in the end.

Online I saw some really enticing electric vehicles, none of which appear to be actually available to your average adventuresome consumer. What a shame. All this brainpower and cool technology going to waste because the Big Three can’t get over a fossil fuel prejudice. But that is waxing political, and I am sworn to observe, describe, muse, and not pontificate too much.

Still, they are groovy little cars. GM’s EV1 and Ford’s EV Th!nk.

2002-09-03T15:50:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, on the way to Kmart (an urgent need for socks), I saw a striking tall man with a giant afro standing on the corner at Astor Place holding upright in one hand a half-nibbled mango, with the skin still on the bottom half and bright orange flesh peeking out the top half. An oddly tropical and provocative image for a ho-hum day in a city bustling with midwestern college students trying to adjust to the crowds.

Kmart was unusually jammed, but I survived it by the bright-idea expedient of pulling out my subway book and reading it in line. I didn’t even have to let out one of those frustrated sighs that usually escape those in line behind a woman buying a very full cart worth of household supplies. Calm, calm, calm—well, as calm as I get in the metropolis, anyway. I am so proud.

2002-09-03T10:10:00.000-04:00

This weekend I saw a lot of the inside of Home Depot, and a strange pattern emerged. The guy manning the ceiling fan area was lovely, folksy, and super-helpful. The several persons manning the paint section were inarticulate, perpetually annoyed, and condescending.

People need paint a lot more often than they need ceiling fans. Now I ask you, chicken or egg? Is the fellow in ceiling fans so nice because he doesn’t get many visitors and actually welcomes the company, not to mention an opportunity to be of use to a do-it-yourselfer? Did the Pricks in Paint start out as kindhearted souls and only get nastier and more snobbish by dint of having been asked the same questions day in day out by rank amateurs who are certain that at least they can paint their own bedrooms, even if they must call in pros for every other aspect of home improvement?

Or does the Grand Bufoo Head Honcho of Home Depot have a sadistic streak and place those with the worst customer-service skills in the section that sees the most action from the least experienced home improvers?

Like the age-old question of How Many Licks Does It Take To Get The Center Of A Tootise Roll Pop, the world may never know.

2002-08-29T14:45:00.000-04:00

BonusBlog—
Okay, here’s a more "regulation" whatisaw installment: In the grocery store (obtaining small carton of juice, cheese, and spring water), I saw a 60ish man carrying his groceries (milk and spring water; yes, I bought mine because I noticed his and remembered I was out) in a child’s cart. You know, one of those horrid youth-marketing gimmicks they have now, mini grocery carts, painted a cheery red, with a flagged sign "Customer-In-Training." It’s the sign that’s so ooky.

Anyway, I complimented him on his intelligent stratagem. It’s a small hand-basket size, but has wheels so one needn’t lug a gallon and a half of liquids around in one’s arms. And the only downside (if it’s even a downside) is looking a wee bit eccentric, which in Greenwich Village doesn’t get you much ribbing, even now in a decidedly post-bohemian New York.

2002-08-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

Today I saw blue skies where there were none, and a bright future where normally I see chaos and uncertainty. In short, my dad did something very nice for me yesterday, and I felt loved and supported and grateful, and as I spoke to him to thank him again (by cellphone, walking through Soho under an umbrella), it felt as if he was right there with me, not physically mind you, but in some ineffable way, a bridge of sorts—the kind of presence you hope to still feel when people you love are no longer on the earth. Only, thankfully (and with much knocking of wood), he’s still around, just a few hundred miles away at the moment.

Anyway, sometimes the surprises you get from parents are very, very nice.

Pop, if you’re reading this, how’s that for a mushy blog?

2002-08-28T14:51:00.000-04:00

Today I saw mostly the scrumpled interior of my own yellow brain. It is a stress-filled week. A week of bizarre and elaborate rendez-vous, of harried telephone conversations, of not taking my usual walk because I just can’t imagine strolling for pleasure in the midst of Everything I Have To Do, and Manage, and Keep From Falling Into Rack And Ruin.

So I saw hardly anything as I scuttled out to buy a banana and some peanut butter (Smuckers Natural, with no hydrogenated crap in it, but it gets stiff as concrete after the first few sandwiches). Some dog poop pressed into a chain link fence as if someone were sculpting with it. A few chaps in pinstripes (okay, one). Some anonymous New Yorkers whose clothing and general demeanor made no impression on me (nor mine on them, I trust).

A rather nice Hispanic clerk in the grocery store (she smiled at me). Clump clump clump back to the office to fret some more.

2002-08-27T09:48:00.000-04:00

This morning I saw a rusted metal sidewalk that gave the impression of medieval tapestry. Something about the pattern of rust looked as if it might be intentional, embroidered by a large metal troll working in copper threads. A species of them might live in the sewers, I suppose. I mean, apparently there really are crocodiles down there.

I wonder what it takes to start an urban legend. Plausibility doesn’t seem to be much of a requirement. Having the ears of enough people? Naw, because urban legends are an adult version of that annoying childhood game, Telephone. Having the ear of one person who speaks to enough people. So it just takes one very popular friend.

Alas, my friends are largely geeks such as I. The sewer dwelling metal embroidery trolls will never get their 15 minutes of fame. Sorry, guys. Perhaps I can make it up to you with a new color of thread? I think they have gold at the button shop on Broadway.

2002-08-26T11:28:00.000-04:00

On Sunday I saw a large crowd of people congregating on Orchard St. The reason? A pickle festival. That’s right, pickles. And sure enough, hordes of people lined up and waited patiently to buy long green slabs in plastic baggies. You saw them walking around, a salt-sated glaze in their eyes, sucking on a half-sour.

If that isn’t evidence of the city’s continuing diversity, I don’t know what more I can show you.

2002-08-23T14:53:00.000-04:00

It’s one of those cloudy days that make colors seem brighter. A new contender for my favorite door appeared on Sullivan St., #174, a lovely mellow raspberry set in a slate blue townhouse. Oh so tasty-looking. Apparently I am not the only one who is noticing colors today, as a cyclist (dressed all in white, on a white vehicle) complimented me on my color combination (bright red, burgundy, and hot pink). Cheered me right up, that did, which I needed, as I had a nasty fiscal surprise this morning.

Am certain that if I were to visit a psychic reader right now, she’d tell me I have major upheaval going on in my home and money planets. Not that being told so would help much. I guess people just like to have their suspicions confirmed. "Yes, you ARE artistic and hot tempered." "Aha! I knew it!"

I saw again today the Bum of Many Colors—and coats, for that matter. He walks about festooned with a variety of children’s clothing, so that he seems to be a large feathered creature trailing a multicolored peacock’s tail of little sweaters, T-shirts, and jackets. Pinks, blues, greens, you name it. He’s crazy, of course. The first time I saw him he yelled "Bitch!" repeatedly. I couldn’t tell whether he was actually addressing me or not, so I moved on quickly just in case. The second time I crossed the street to avoid him—and also to examine more closely a federal period townhouse, its bricks freshly scrubbed and looking especially brick-colored (thanks to the aforementioned clouds).

2002-08-22T13:30:00.000-04:00

Fussy, fumey mood today, and for the last several. I am having a delayed stress reaction to 9/11, it seems. Seriously. Sucks because everyone else had theirs closer to the event, and so now people will just think I am being a pill. Which I am. But for good reason.

I saw a celebrity on the street today whom I once was told I resembled. Oddly, it made me even crankier. I feel so old, so frumpy these days, wearing glasses and clothes I don’t like, my hair all flabby and ugly, that seeing her in the flesh just made me more conscious of how little I resemble her at all, anymore.

For six months after the 11th, I rode a bicycle to work and home again, every day, rain, shine, hail, you name it. I was lean, I was buff, I was a traffic terror. I felt wonderful. Now I haven’t been on the two-wheeled creature in nearly as long as all that time I rode it, and I feel fat and old and out of shape and uglier to boot. Am not accustomed to such sensations of self-worthlessness. Had given them up for Lent after teen years as counterproductive and generally no fun.

Wonder why the hell they decided on a return visit. More like a return storming of the castle.

2002-08-16T14:19:00.000-04:00

This kind of weather sucks the energy and liquids right out of your body like a giant vacuum cleaner. A 20-minute walk nearly had me on the passed out on the ground. The words to describe it are all used up: sauna, steambath, yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels like nothing so much as an elaborate and very effective torture chamber.

I’m sure I saw plenty of interesting and/or disturbing things, but mostly I didn’t notice them. The tourists walking six abreast in my way keeping me from getting my errands done more quickly I noticed. The giant scary man yanking his shirt up over his face (he looked just like Mr. T., complete with Mohawk, only a fat rather than muscular physique) I tried to forget about. The hangdog Lab, plodding gamely along beside his sweat-logged master, I noticed and sympathized with. And that was about it. Every Snapple vendor looked like a mirage to me, a beckoning oasis which I was prevented from visiting because, having recently been brought back to a consciousness of the ever-hulking threat of insolvency, I just can’t swallow $1.75 for a single iced tea.

I washed up, drenched, on the shores of Soho after 40 minutes of this, and promptly drank 8 oz. of water without a pause for breath. Global warming is no hoax.

2002-08-16T09:27:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten the impact of money—or rather, the absolute lack of it—on the psyche. Well, on my psyche. Funny, a little miscalculation, a little underestimation, a little forgetting about automatic investments on my dreadful losing stock fund IRA, and voila! Mentally I am back to my horrible mid-20s, when I was scraping by in a deadbeat sort of town in an economically depressed corner of the country, paying for breakfast in loose change and depending far too much on my parents to keep body and soul together.

Silly to feel that way when I have a paycheck coming next week and all I have to do is curtail spending enough to make that last $100 last nine days.

But there it is, the human body grows its lessons like limbs, and they stay with you, shadows of an amputation that still itch and hurt and scare the begeezus out of you.

Anyway, imagine my surprise and delight (extreme relief can feel like delight, I suppose) when I discover that TODAY is payday, not next Friday, as I had thought. And I am once again if not flush with cash, at least able to buy a cupcake for my brother if we happen to meet at the bakery.

The emotional significance of a steady bank balance and clean laundry are not to be underestimated.

2002-08-14T15:01:00.000-04:00

Only in NYC can getting to work be such an adventure. On an otherwise unremarkable W train, we stop in the tunnel between 49th and 42nd Sts. Not an unusual occurrence at rush hour, of course. But the announcement is quite out of the ordinary: "Attention Ladies and Gentlemen. We are being delayed due to an unauthorized person on the tracks. The police are being called. We apologize for the delay. Please be patient."

Everyone sits and giggles and is relatively patient for a few minutes, apart from some heavy sighs. Then, even more remarkable, the announcer begins to give us detailed updates every three minutes or so. "The police have arrived and are pursuing the unauthorized customer from 14th St. to 8th. St." "The police have not yet apprehended the customer on the tracks, he is now down at Prince St." "The police have still not apprehended the customer. He is between 8th St. and 14th St."

And finally, "The police have caught the unauthorized customer at 14th St. We have not yet heard on the dispatch radio when we will be moving. There are trains in the station at both 42nd St. and 34th St. ahead of us. Please be patient."

Then another 10 minutes pass (with our announcer faithfully letting us know every few minutes that he has no new information and that the trains are still stuck in the stations ahead of us). Empty trains pass us on the interior tracks being moved, no doubt, further along the line to get passengers to work downtown.

Finally the announcer begs us to please write these numbers down: "The train you are on is the 814W from Astoria. Write these numbers down, ladies and gentlemen, please." People take out their pens, looking confused. "Please look at the train car number located at the front and back of each car and write that number down. Now, when you get to work, you may call this number (718-something) to get verification for your employers that this train was delayed for at least 45 minutes."

Then we start to move, with a little lurch and a general sigh of relief. The conductor once again asks for our patience, letting us know that although we are moving, there may be slight delays due to congestion.

Really, I ask you, is this not the best train announcer in the MTA’s history? The man should get a commendation. Not only does he keep us absolutely informed, including the kinds of details that usually get swept under a frustrating rug labeled "police investigation" by lesser conductors, but he even includes the farcical elements for our entertainment. We sit there, stuck, yes, but with the wonderful Keystone Cops radio play in our heads, images of a group of sweaty police chasing the miscreant carefully (watch that third rail!) through the fetid tunnels of the subway system, running all the way from 14th St. to Prince St. and back again before they finally nab the sucker.

Clearly this announcer has a great understanding of human nature. A prince among MTA monkeys. Thank you, kind sir, whoever you are.

2002-08-13T15:07:00.000-04:00

This morning on the train I saw cluttered rooftops as far as the eye could see; so jolting to realize spots of green popped up among them in about the same proportion of green-to-concrete as single blades of grass in the sidewalk. This place used to be all green, then it was mostly green for a long time, and at some point, it all became re-divided and subdivided so that green seemed a waste of Valuable Real Estate. But then, after a while, having no green whatsoever devalues the real estate, because, after all, who wants to spend all their time looking solely at what man has wrought. We think we’re so clever, we humans, but look at what we make, and then compare it to the grass and trees and meadows we dug up to do so.

As soon as we have Triumphed Over Nature, we get that queasy feeling that tells us we need our nature back.

I do, anyway.

Consider this: The inevitable result of progress is a slum.

2002-08-12T16:17:00.000-04:00

Argh. Too-much-going-on-to-blog.

Well, Friday I saw a bunch of chic literati. I know, it's a weird mental image - people who are really into literature are supposed to look kind of greasy and wear lots of plaid that hasn't been ironed in its lifetime. At least, that's how they used to look in my day.

Now they look like rock stars - or at least rock star roadies.

I don't get it. I was at a reading at a so-chic so-smoky bar, one of those places where you're not sure whether the appalling lack of oxygen is due to cigarettes or all the egos. All I know is I was definitely Not Cool Enough. Which should be okay, and all, since I was there to see a friend of mine read, and with all the objectivity in the world, her work was far and away the best stuff there.

So, you know, I should have had that reverse-cool "I'm a friend of the band" kind of vibe going.

Listen to me, I even sound ridiculous trying to describe this place. Like an outsider mimicking their Ave. B-dialect.

Well, the point of all this is, I have no tattoos. My horn-rimmed glasses are functional rather than decorative, and I got them because I have spent too many long afternoons reading by daylight that faded into dusk before I noticed it.

I spent one of those just this weekend, in between traipsing out to see "Men in Black 2" and inhale some pasta and meats at a local joint.

My friend is a brilliant writer, by the way. When she's famous, she'll still have me around, lookin' even less cool than I do now, I am sure. But I can and will bring some awe-inspiring cupcakes to the premiere. Or opening, or whatever you call it.

2002-08-08T13:35:00.000-04:00

Okay, here’s something weird. Nice days make me nervous. I have noticed this on several occasions this year, when a sudden burst of California weather made me uneasy before I got round to being cheerful about it. When it’s sunny and cool it doesn’t bother me so much. But when it’s sunny and clear and about 80 degrees, as it is today, I get the heebie jeebies and call my mate and leave messages that say: "Hi. It’s me. Um, I have a sore throat today, and I’m worried because Monday I was on a subway car full of white powder. What should I do?"

There’s a reason for this, of course. Sept. 11 was a very sunny, pristine, 80-degree day in new york, which I spent half-walking, half-running eight miles in a business suit, trying to keep up with my shell-shocked boyfriend who had been three blocks away from the Towers when they went down, and rode out on a bicycle covered with pulverized building debris (and perhaps human remains) through a dust cloud that blotted out that strong sun for half a mile in every direction.

White powder is a mysterious thing to sprinkle on the subway floor and chairs, and I still can’t figure out why someone or ones did it.

But then, it’s hard to imagine the rationale behind a lot of things people do.

Today there is a guy riding around on his bicycle attaching eight-inch wide swaths of living lawn turf to lightpoles with a bit of wire. He was working on his second piece on a single pole when I saw him, and had a third laid over his bicycle seat.

This is probably a piece of inspired performance art—the grass was quite long, really, longer than a typical piece of sod. I liked it. It seemed an attempt to return the city to its greener roots, and reminded me of that saucy Talking Heads song lamenting the loss of parking lots and malls in favor of redwood forests and fields of flowers.

I bought plums, and giggled anew at the sign in a dry cleaners’ on Waverly: We make custom dog clothes.

But it still wasn’t okay.

2002-08-06T13:19:00.000-04:00

Lovely weather today. I know, I know, a singularly dull topic for blogversation, but haven’t you noticed what a big difference a nice day makes in your internal moodometer?

Today the wind is whooshing along trying to snatch my hat, but I—clever soul that I am—happened to wear the hat with chin ties, so I am in no danger of losing it and can just set my jaw at the wind. "Ha-ha! Wind—do your mighty stuff! I am prepared."

I generally like a windy day. There’s something mad and free and exciting about a (non-lethal) gale. Today I had slight troubles from a little blowing debris threatening to get behind the sunglasses and take up residence in my eyeball, but I managed okay with the blinking strategy.

Didn’t do much of note—a little errands, a call to Dad (yes, yakking on the cell just like those people I skewered a few days ago. But I was talking to DAD, an important family member, about important things, so that makes it better. Also, this is my blog, so I can skewer and then turn around three days later and do the thing I skewered with impunity).

Had to avoid three more male bums—one of whom was gesturing wildly, turning this way and that, blocking foot traffic on the narrow west sidewalk of Broadway. The usual.

But I don’t care, because it is a sunny cool day and I have a hat with chin ties on.

2002-08-05T14:14:00.000-04:00

Had one of those weekends that feel more like work than work does. Not fully recovered yet. Noticed a lot of creepy old men out today, all of them muttering under their breath, some of them apparently addressing me, others not.

This city is starting to get really weird. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s been bland vanilla all these long years, but to my admittedly weary annoyed eyes, it seems to be sliding backwards into the land of many bums, more trash and vomit in the streets (as if there weren’t enough already), and several frightening experiences a day.

This morning’s W car was halted so that an extensive cleanup crew could do something about the unbelievable amounts of litter piled into it. Way beyond the usual crumpled 40-sized brown bags and half-eaten hamburgers one finds. This car (and the one behind it, too, judging from the announcement by the dispatcher summoning all available cleanup personnel for cars 1 and 2) had magazine and newspaper pages covering fully one fourth of the seats, with curved impressions left by sweaty bottoms, and quantities of white powder sprinkled on many of the seats, as well as under them, with clear evidence of having been trod on by dirty feet. There were also plenty of empty bottles, bits of food, and so on, covering whole sections of floor like an unsavory carpet.

A strange combination of debris, to be sure. I sat in one of the few clean seats, trying not to think about anthrax (really, it looked like baby powder), wondering what sort of travelers would have left behind such a strange combination of things. A tired yet rowdy football team wearing very short shorts? Dousing themselves in baby powder and arranging magazine pages to sit on so their legs wouldn’t stick to the plastic seats? Of course, the magazine pages would then adhere to their legs when they got up.

I dunno. Whoever the perpetrators, the folks who had to clean up their mess wore orange safety vests and MTA baseball caps—and bewildered expressions as they surveyed the damage.

I transferred to a departing N and fought the urge to scream at the women standing so closely over me that their clothes were trying to annex my own. Yes, I live in Hell.

2002-08-02T15:00:00.000-04:00

A youthful jazz quintet performing a languid old standard I heard done with much greater vigor by a group of elder statesmen in the streets of New Orleans. But so pleasant to listen to their not-quite-tight rhythm like the perfect soundtrack to this unbearably muggy day. It’s so funny how the mark of an unpolished band isn’t the squeaks and sour notes of a soloist practicing his scales (see Wednesday’s blog) but just a general sense that the car they are driving may fall apart at the seams at any moment.

I don’t mean this as an insult, though. I very much enjoyed their performance and was grateful to them for making the first part of my walk as pleasant as a sojurn into a giant outdoor sauna could be. I sat on a stone wall and tried to pretend that the smell of stale urine wafting into my face wasn’t coming from a dried puddle actually underneath my legs.

Then I staggered humidly to Eighth Street for a brief book purchase, and all the way back to Broadway and Prince to do battle with catty women in Victorias Secret. What Victoria’s secret really must be is how she manages to persuade millions of women to shell out their hard-earned cash for the privilege of waiting in long lines of nasty bitches at lunchtime in order to score a few flimsy pieces of nylon.

I stomped out, flinging the one item I had been waiting to buy (a measly pair of stockings for a wedding I have to go to), frisbeelike, onto a carefully arranged pile of lewd-icrous panties (at 2 for $18, no doubt).

Kiss my Jockey-clad ass, Victoria.

2002-08-01T13:20:00.000-04:00

Today at lunch: Strange tilty drunk bobbing and weaving about the sidewalk.

Innumerable sassy young females jawing into cell phones about nothing of great import. Here's a sample: "Well, I think you have to buy tickets to see something thaat daaaay. But there's also a puppet show, at Saks? For the people who look in the windows?" I kept getting stuck with her waiting for the light to change so I got treated to much more of this babble than I really care to hear.

Is it just me, or isn't it about time the humble cell phone moved into the territory of plain old serviceable piece of equipment, to be used for quick conversations at a low volume, and then hung up quickly and put away? Personally I try and forget I have one unless I need to know what time it is.

Later, there was a crazyman shouting into his phone so loudly that it could be heard, exact words and all, more than a block away, through the din of cabs flying along sixth ave.

Clearly he was having some kind of power struggle with his fellow overweight bald middle aged record label executives that required an obnoxious public display to show his colleagues on the other end Just How Important He Really Is. The rest of us just stood around praying a pigeon would come by and shit on him.

2002-07-31T15:45:00.000-04:00

Arriving early for a doctor's appointment this morning left me with 15 minutes to spend in Central Park. Now, Central Park on a weekend is one sprawling party, complete with confused-looking revellers wandering around looking for the exit and mischevious children careening into walkers on their tiny bicycles, or rollerskates, or feet. On a Wednesday, however, it is the mysterious glade its designers envisioned: odd bits of music spiraling out of the faux forest, and lone walkers with their heads down—and of course the hardcore cyclists getting in their hour's workout before heading down to wall street, or wherever it is they go, that sought-after land where the accepted arrival time is less unbending than ours.

An incident early on nearly spoiled the walk (and maybe more) for me, though. Me: Approaching a clarinetist playing scales, with the occasional squeak of the student still refining his technique. Enjoying the low mournful hum of the instrument magnified by the bricks of a pedestrian tunnel nearby.

A Suit comes barreling towards us from the opposite direction and says—as if I were already engaged in conversation with him—"Huh, huh. Guess he's still learning." These little words don't convey the sarcasm and condescension with which they were spoken. As if learning were something to be mortally ashamed of. As if the Suit himself had sprung forth from the womb, a fully-formed and Brooks Brothered Instant Master of the Universe.

He said it very loud, plenty loud enough for the clarinetist to hear him, and then laughed cruelly several big haws just for good measure.

I wanted to slap him upside his arrogant empty head. And compliment the clarinet player on his nice tone. I was too startled and dismayed and outraged to do either. When I am an old woman I may feel freer to give those "Now listen, you rude young man!" lectures. I hope, I hope.

Later on, I passed by the clarinetist again, this time on a small footbridge overlooking his practice spot. I stopped to listen and wave a silent blessing on his progress. A brave thing, I think, to take up a new instrument in full-blown adulthood. He should be praised for doing so, not taunted. And his tone *was* nice.

2002-07-30T13:29:00.000-04:00

Tough time at work now, so not very observant in my brief sojurns Out There. Between the bank and the grocery store (getting what they’d call a Ploughman’s lunch in the U.K.) the only matters of interest were: a woman saying to another woman (the latter in a dyed black ponytail with what looked like a shaved underneath bit) "I love all the people." An unusual sentiment to hear in a NYC ATM.

Also, strangely crowded grocery; apparently 12:30 in the middle of the day is prime shopping time for Greenwich Village. Not just lunch cheapstakes like me, but tall 30ish women pushing packed carts, and the requisite hunched retirees buying Doc’s Hard Lemonade and a few bits of food.

Next door a profusion of color at a caged garden. Do Not Feed The Pigeons, but a light-winged sparrow is slurping happily at his pigeon-free birdbath. Black eyed susans in a bushy bunch and some magenta flower that grows in clusters with which I am unfamiliar.

Back to work. Yuck.

Note: I always think the heat is Not So Terrible when first I step outside, but by the time I get back I am half-melted and stuck to the sidewalk. Why is that?

2002-07-29T14:47:00.000-04:00

Portrait of a city under a heat lamp:

In Washington Sq.:

Young ragamuffins, male and female, sleeping, heads together, on a bench beside the dog run.

Young squirrel lying flat out on his stomach, legs sprawled in all directions, panting in the shade of a maple.

In a concrete playground nearby: Small dog (Yorkie, I believe) tucked into a narrow Yorkie-sized nook under a circular cement bench just inches from a red and white sign reading "No Dogs In Playground."

2002-07-26T13:48:00.000-04:00

Today I saw a leprechaun. At least I think that’s what he was, despite his street-clothes disguise. Five feet two in his sneakers, wide-set pale blue eyes, of that sort that seem to be more three-dimensional than most, so that they goggle, bowling ball-like, at one. Wide forehead on a heavy face that tapers to a surprise pointed chin. Draw a triangle and turn it to stand on its skinny end, and you get the idea. Anyway, it was a leprechaun, just missing the little green suit, and the general air of jollity.

It being Manhattan, this particular leprechaun looked sweaty and miserable, pining, no doubt, for the emerald green lawns of his native land.

Shortly thereafter a water nymph passed by—this was all on the west side of La Guardia Pl., between the giant (by urban standards) Associated grocery and the row of outdoor cafés. The nymph looked confused, startled even, as if she had been plunked down that very instant in the mid-Village, and was trying to figure out which way the beach was.

She had a vague small face and a lot of curly blond hair, and was sliding along the sidewalk without picking up her feet.

After that the prototypical New York Girl on Prince Street seemed almost an afterthought. She: black long sleeved shirt, black long pants, black shoes with fashionably chunky segmented soles that resembled nothing so much as giant dead beetles. Long ponytailed hair, dyed that odd dark cherry color that results from dark brown hair treated with Clairol Natural Instincts in Rosewood. The body neither thin nor fat, but shaped in that peculiar NY health club way (Crunch, would be my guess). Expression: glazed, guarded, old-as-the-hills, inclined to be difficult when trapped in an elevator, sassy and ironic on a first date.

Then I caught my own reflection in a window and had to laugh. Scrappy plaid country hick-type person, slouching along with bad posture in comfortable blue shoes. And yet I can tell you how to get to Bedford and Downing, and where the good bicycle through-route is to the West Side Highway, and which is the least crowded train to Queens at rush hour (the new and mysterious V).

I 'pose it takes all kinds, but sometimes the array of kinds is enough to make you stand, slack-jawed, staring.

2002-07-25T13:36:00.000-04:00

Despite the continued spate of nice weather, this seems to be one of those days when the rudeness quotient of New York City is stratospheric. Generally people are most cranky when it’s hot and humid, but perhaps a sudden burst of September air in the midst of nearly-August has so dazzled people that they've forgotten any semblance of politeness and consideration they once possessed.

I dunno. Whatever it is, the raspberry you don’t hear but would if this were an audio technology instead of a visual one goes out to:

The fat black woman who, when she lost out on getting a subway seat to a man in creased khakis, decided to obtain one for herself by sitting on my leg. I am not exaggerating. Her big wide ass was SEATED on top of my small, stringy thigh. Ouch, and furthermore, FUCK YOU LADY. I not only got up, I got out at the next stop to wait for another train. It was either that or sticking a pencil right into her eye.

I only had a calligraphy pen, and while it was a cheap calligraphy pen, it still wasn’t worth getting eye-goo all over the nib. So I switched trains.

2002-07-24T14:22:00.000-04:00

After long absence, the blog returns. Sorry folks, observations delayed due to opaque and all-encompassing work-related blinders, decreeing that I: a) not see the outside world for more than two minutes at a time, and b) not have a moment to write about those two minutes anyway.

Okay, so today we have a breezy crystalline day, complete with a curious, almost beachy smell along Seventh Ave.

Visited an old haunt of mine, a very special jazz club tucked in among the tourist traps. It wasn’t open, of course, it being lunchtime, but—all the better—there was a band rehearsing below stairs, the fat (and phat) groove bursting out of the depths like an ode to something. At one point, a saxophonist crept up to the top of the stairs and asked me if I’d seen a baby. His fellows were still playing below, and I must have gawked a bit at the question, for he soon explained that someone was supposed to be bringing his infant son by.

Now, the whole scenario was just beautiful—every angle of it. The well-remembered club, its details filled in by my mind’s eye rather than my physical eyes, as I was only able to stand outside. The rich, gorgeous sounds spilling out of the open doorway. The handsome black musician, with his sax held loosely between the fingers of his right hand, dangling almost, so much a part of his body he need not spare attention for more careful holding. And then, best of all, this tiny secret glimpse of a musician’s life. A working player, with his baby son about to arrive for the afternoon jam.

How I miss that part of my life—the one where I’d stay up late even on weeknights to catch some music, where my schedule was molded in Play-doh rather than stone. When I didn’t feel that all my resources were more than drained by the end of an ordinary day. When I wouldn’t need a month of Sundays lined up one by one, little pigs waiting for me, just to recover from a single night’s debauched jazz fix.

Anyway, that must be why folks complain about aging. It’s not the wrinkles, it’s the wear and tear on your energy. It’s the infernal limiting of possibilities. Fuck that.

2002-07-18T16:09:00.000-04:00

Bad day today.

2002-07-16T15:14:00.000-04:00

Ah, I had the sort of lunch that, from the far-off reaches of childhood, one imagines will take place daily in adulthood. A long (over-long by working-stiff standards) lunch in a pleasant bistro, with an erudite companion—one who has worked long and retired and lived to tell of both.

And now I am in the stale office precincts once more, basking in the nasty soul-sucking fluorescents and grappling with the recalcitrant computer that, just this morning, absconded with my new e-mail and refused to budge with the mere two sentences of it that I needed to tell me where, in fact, I was to meet my lunch companion.

A lunch replete with wine, with armchair philosophizing (is there any better kind?), with fury at the terrorists, and with the general musing over the What To Do Now that hovers like a haze, a flame, a motivational carrot, over the best lunches. We try to solve our own problems and those of the world, in less than two hours, and we end up, as always, merely at the conclusion that a salmon sandwich and white wine on a balmy day in mid-July are as close to heaven as one gets in a besieged but still elegant city in North America. And as to the terror, well, we still feel it, and go about our business as if all were right with the world.

2002-07-15T14:01:00.000-04:00

Grumpy, grumpy day. Lots of incompetent walkers bustling right through me—or they would have, had I not flattened myself against a convenient though hardly comfortable iron railing. Evil, evil sloppy walkers.

The only charm of this day was contained in the attire of a young girl, a blue-and-white flowered dress reminiscent of Delft china, worn over a pair of bright orange shorts. The color combinations of the young are so imaginative, so free.

And then a very tall very slim very smiling gay boy, whose demeanor clarified something for me about the stereotypical "gay male look." It’s not actually feminine, as taunting schoolboys have traditionally charged; rather, it’s an aura of being very aware of one’s own appearance and expecting to be appraised on it by others. In U.S. society as a whole, women more often wear that look than men do, but there’s nothing inherently "girly" about it.

One lone pigeon scuttling along dejectedly; her markings give the impression of having originally been a black pigeon who happened to roll in a pile of chalk. Speaking of which, there’s a new chalked-on street slogan, in handwritten all-caps: "I am trying to break your heart."

2002-07-12T13:48:00.000-04:00

Series of carefully stencilled spray-painted slogans on the sidewalks: in yellow, Cavr Oche. In white, Fin. And some vertical logo that I cannot reproduce with mere text.

And then there are those rather nice-looking whirly daisies on several street corners done in ropy Pollockesque paint, white, with occasional red accents.

A slogan chalked on the board outside of Vintage New York (a great wine shop on Broome and Wooster): "In water, you see your own face, in wine you see the heart of another." —French Proverb. Those French clearly know a thing or two about living the good life. In that spirit I bought some fancy raw milk cheese for lunch.

2002-07-11T13:54:00.000-04:00

A mid-July day masquerading as a mid-April day. Crisp, sunny, with a small hamster-shaped white cloud poised over 6th Ave. Ever notice how firetrucks are the most pristine of all vehicles? Always bright clean red, always shiny chrome, with their number and neighborhood painted in elegant lettering. Three firetrucks dashed to and fro during my half-hour walk. The third slowed down at the entrance to MacDougal below Houston, while residents of the block pulled the police barricade aside to let the No. 5 from Greenwich Village pass. The elbow of one firefighter was visible through the glassless window—crisp new-looking chartreuse neon stripes across the black heat-proof suit.

Approximately one hundred bottles of imported beer, each a different brand, are crowded into a deli window, meticulously set in four dense rows. A very impressive array for a small deli.

A short-shorted woman rides by on a Harley, blond hair streaming from under a minimalist blue helmet.

Lovely group of six year old girls on the steps of a local school, all eating brightly colored popsicles with their caretakers, who are also eating popsicles. One of the children is trying to get the attention of an adult, sticking out her small arm for inspection: "See? I’m bleeding."

Lots of people are sitting in the pigeon-filled square at Bleecker and 6th. One is a young woman who has fallen asleep with her head thrown forward onto her own lap. An elderly gent is trying to catch the attention of some women his age across the street, by yelling "Yo!"

At the fruit place on Bleecker between Carmine and Cornelia I obtain three Southern Peaches, two of which turn out to be mealy and inedible. Haven’t tried the third yet. Some things really are better gotten at the grocery store, though it lacks a certain element of romance. The fruit shop has a green tray of fresh figs for 59¢ each, and glossy-leaved bunches of basil for 99¢.

A succession of tourists wandering loosely with the dazed smiles of their kind. I slip down Minetta Lane, which always feels furtive somehow, and end up on MacDougal again. A parade of outdoor diners, at blue and yellow-clothed tables, or wrought iron, or marble topped, or chic black. Eating pasta with pink sauce, two slices of honeydew melon, a fat omelette, red wine, iced tea, Perrier. I walk back to the office for a cheese-and-Branston-pickle sandwich (it’s a Brit thing, the pickle is kind of like a dark chutney. Looks gross, but the sandwich is strangely compelling). And those damned flabby peaches.

2002-07-10T14:24:00.000-04:00

Lunch with a visiting relation, so no big blog today. All I saw was the interior of a restaurant, woman nursing a cup of coffee and a pack of Camel Regulars at the next table (ugh!), and waitresses flitting around doing everything possible except bringing me my damn café au lait.

Macramé shoes, hurtling white vans trying to blast through the intersection of W. Broadway and Houston without yielding to peds. Clear blue sky, then back to the grind.

2002-07-09T13:31:00.000-04:00

Superb eyeball fodder today.

A fierce-browed black man walking a happy-go-lucky golden retriever. So marked was the difference in their respective demeanors that I found myself wondering if it could even be his dog. Then again, perhaps the man’s face simply reflected discomfort in the humidity, or a fight with a girlfriend, or an unexpectedly large Visa bill.

In the same 1-block stretch of Houston St. between Thompson and Sullivan, doppelgangers for both Jerry Garcia (smoking on the steps of an upscale shop) and Ram Dass (striding toward Jerry in a white caftan and long khaki pants). Perhaps they were planning to meet at Jane’s restaurant.

Despite it being one of the few days on which my attire approximates Soho standards, I headed for the peace of the labyrinthine West Village. Here’s why Bedford St. is one of my favorites: shops with names like Poodle Cut (a dog groomer’s) and The Lively Set (Antiques and Decoratives).

A tree on an unknown side street has some sort of disease that has caused its flesh (I mean, trunk) to scrunch up, so that it looks for all the world as if it’s constructed of chewed wads of grey bubble gum. A hand-colored sign exhorts passersby to "Be Kind," which apparently translates to not allowing dogs to poop beneath the tree to which the sign is attached. An unpainted, handmade-looking door reads 7 1/2, while the door for 7 is fresh forest green and taller.

Later, on MacDougal, I see my favorite door in the whole city, a perky lemon-yellow (#86, check it out sometime—it is exquisite). Once I was walking down the street admiring it aloud and pointing it out to my friend, when the owner happened to be walking by, apparently returning from a trip, overheard, and said "Why, thank you."

But back to the anonymous side street off Bedford. I execute a neat right hand turn and find myself miraculously deposited on Bleecker at the corner of Cornelia, my other favorite street. Lovely little Cornelia, one block long, like a placid jewel tucked between the madness of 6th Ave and the delivery truck parade of Bleecker.

The chalked sign at the Cuban restaurant on Cornelia says "Authentic! Really!" under the description of a chorizo dish.

And finally, a Boston Terrier flipping his tongue around like one of those ball-and-cup games of old, and a 70ish woman in a pink hat so bright it acts as a beacon in the misty, almost wet air. I am training myself to feel a semblance of comfort in high heat and humidity, in anticipation of a late retirement in New Orleans, where I plan to lie on a chaise longue all the day long with an unending stream of jazz piping into my head like a glucose drip.

2002-07-08T14:39:00.000-04:00

Red. That is what I saw all morning, as a morass of cross purposes, foul-ups, and general crap threatened to engulf and potentially derail a very important Life Event. So—RED.

Then I saw the inside of a Radio Shack store, an upselling but reasonably efficient Radio Shack salesguy on the phone with the Great Radio Shack in the Sky, arranging for the repair of my suddenly inaudible cellular phone. Samsung, by the way. It’s cute, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It has had persistent battery problems through its amazingly brief existence and is now rendered unusable by a failing filament in the earpiece. And another Samsung owner in my limited circle of acquaintance has had the very same problem with hers.

Luckily (or not, considering the potentially three-week wait for repair), I had the foresight to purchase an extended 3-year warranty. I’ve already gotten three replacement batteries out of these folks, so really, the warranty was worth the extra cash up front.

Anyway. Then I saw a strange two-part harmony composed of a tall bright red emergency post-thingy and a piece of twisted car part (section of muffler?). They were laid with such artistry on the sidewalk along the north side of Houston that I wondered if an artist had actually placed them there as a street-art project. But no, I imagine it’s just coincidence.

On a meteorological note, it’s amazing how downright pleasant a mere 92 degrees can seem after a week of near-hundreds.

2002-07-07T11:57:00.000-04:00

Oh, yes, and I almost forgot. Beautiful shimmering reflections of fireworks on the black faceted Trump Tower and shorter, squatter UN bldg. The fireworks were extraordinary this year, but also quiet. No big booms, presumably to avoid making us all feel nervous. We missed having a big smashing finale. But also, for the first time in a long time, I know what it's like to feel unabashedly patriotic on the fourth. A country where something so beautiful is held purely for public delight, so everyone can look up and feel as if stars are raining gently on their heads, is a wonderful thing. I think the East Indian fellows sharing a rooftop perch with us agreed. Living in Queens makes it more fun, if anything, to feel patriotic, because you get to share that feeling with recent immigrants. It's like being around someone new to the city or young babies new to the planet - you see familiar things through the eyes of a newcomer and appreciate them all over again.

2002-07-07T11:37:00.000-04:00

A violinist playing Beethoven at 11:30pm on the steps of St. Mark's church. At least a hundred people crowded into the narrow entryway of Veniero's Pasticceria around the same time. Four perfect cannolis nestled in a string-tied box.

A self-consciously handsome man sitting on a bench in Soho on a sunny day. He looks at each passerby with a strange intent expression on his face as if he's upset that no one is staring at him, noticing how handsome he is. It is apparently against nature for the handsome to have to sit alone on a sunny day.

Personally, I rather like sitting alone on a sunny day, but then I am not a handsome man.

2002-07-03T14:40:00.000-04:00

Lunchtime-
Temp: triple digits

First sighting: mouse remains—a small twisted corpse, head and front legs missing.

Second sighting: abandoned teal-blue baseball cap hanging on a park railing.

Third sighting: dead sparrow, intact and belly up. Has the look of a creature that simply keeled over from the heat and fell out of the overhanging tree.

I stupidly trek twenty blocks running errands, and then have serious doubts about whether I can physically make it back to the office. I start bargaining with myself, repeating the image of the water bottle on my desk over and over in my mind’s eye, imagining draining it, the (admittedly lukewarm) liquid suffusing my cells. Try not to swoop up behind the little boy in front of me and steal the cold bottle he’s swinging carelessly at his side. I can tell it’s cold by the beads of water on the outside.

An elderly woman sits in a row of otherwise empty park benches, mopping her neck with what appears to be a crumpled paper towel. She has bright red lipstick on.

Strange how the body may not feel much different between 97 degrees and 100 degrees but the mind makes 100 seem impossible. You spend the whole day wandering around in it thinking, "This can’t be happening. It’s too hot to be real."

Maybe it’s because of the extra digit. You BAKE things in three-digit temperatures. Nobody ever wrote a recipe involving a two-digit temp.

2002-07-02T10:46:00.000-04:00

***We interrupt this blog to bring you a bulletin. The swamp thang has taken over the city. Repeat. The swamp thang has taken over the city. Time for languid jazz and strong drinks. The part of NYC will now be played by New Orleans. Thank you. That is all.***

2002-07-01T15:45:00.000-04:00

Lunchtime-

The post-parade detritus has gathered into the edges of sidewalk and gutter along Washington Square. Bits of purple and pink crepe paper streamers, stacked-up metal police barricades, a long lavender line painted down the center of the (one-way) street. And stickers: God Made Me Queer. Soon-to-be Married (on a hot pink sticker with some fine print explaining the symbolic mass wedding of single-sex couples whose unions are not currently recognized in the state of New York).

I was on a quest for accessories to wear to a (hetero, state-sanctioned, even partially Catholic) wedding this weekend. Wandered through Pat Fields, where the underwear was too flashy for a wedding and all the hosiery is one-size-fits-drag-queen.

By the time I escaped into the bright hot air, I was too dazed to recall my other errand—a new book. I’m almost out. A dangerous state of affairs for a boroughs commuter.

Walked back to work admiring the chutzpah of the little Moroccan restaurant on Thompson that is bravely waging a war against anonymity. Each time I pass by, it has put up a new ad for itself and its many delectables. Today it has two giant goldenrod yellow banners, triangular, flanking the small cluster of outdoor tables like partial tent walls. Every time I go by, I think, "I really ought to eat there. They’re trying so hard."

The few patrons I have seen seated at those little circular disk-tables out front usually look pleased, so perhaps they will get some word-of-mouth.

Also of note: several interesting variations on outdoor menu-placards. One, held in place by a giant red plastic easel with the brand name "Little Tykes" was for a Japanese restaurant offering "free Japanese ice cream" with purchase of dinner. Another was a thick wooden music-stand style with the menu-holding device in the shape of a chunky ship's anchor.

Lots of smokers out today. Getting in their fill before the tax hike, I suppose. Never understand how they can stand to light up on a 90-degree afternoon, though. Yuck.

2002-07-01T10:20:00.000-04:00

On a shopping excursion (mandatory, not recreational) on Sunday, a series of enthusiasts from two different groups (one of which I was expecting to see, and the other of which I didn't even identify until the 11 o'clock news offered an explanation). One group, composed largely of dark-skinned, dark-haired families with the occasional crop-shirted babe flashing her navel at all and sundry, wore a variety of garments in extremely specific hues of bright yellow and green—several appeared to have crafted their garments directly from a flag. These revelers, I discovered thanks to the news, were celebrating Brazil's win in the World Cup soccer match.

The funny thing was, there were a lot more of them, and they were a lot louder than the raindow-bedecked Pride Parade participants I expected to encounter. Granted, the parade moved downtown this year instead of ending in Central Park (in whose vicinity I was shopping), but still, it seemed a bit strange that some impromptu flaunting from nationalistic ex-pat soccer fans should overwhelm a long-established and beloved actual parade.

I mean, we're comparing a mere sports event, one which took place many leagues away from here, and was won by denizens of another country entirely, to an orchestrated event that celebrates a whole community, a vital group within our city's culture and one that has won its current place through hardships both human-imposed and natural disaster-related.

Anyway. The usual rude Monday awakening was made even worse by a jostling in my freshly-cleaned left arm by a rude fortyish white male who clearly considered his two seconds sooner to the subway platform more important than my personal space. Fucker.

2002-06-28T09:11:00.000-04:00

Another Thursday night out resulting in a slightly draggy Friday morning. Up with the dawn, though, and ghosting around the office by 8:15. On the way there, buying the usual Gatorade (traditional, not Frost, Fruit Punch flavor—I highly recommend it as among the more palatable of the colors), it occurs to me that a hungover morning in NYC is really no worse than a normal morning in NYC, as the city is itself a sort of permanent hangover.

To wit, the awful smells that assault one and induce nausea, the stains and/or puddles of piss everywhere you walk, the sense that the world is unremittingly gray. The general tendency to shuffle and slump as you locomote to your eventual destination—always a building, no different from the other buildings that surround it. Hangovers are really just exaggerated ennui, exaggerated to the point of producing physical symptoms, perhaps, but ennui nevertheless.

Perhaps that is, in fact, how it became "cool" to look world-weary—because the hot young jet set is permanently hungover.

Anyway—did I mention yesterday’s bright pink fire hydrant, with a kelly-green top?

2002-06-27T09:43:00.000-04:00

Another swelterer, according to predictions, and that early-morning sense of a hot wet blanket about to descend on our unsuspecting heads. The elderly woman wearing a long white eyelet dress and apparently nothing else will no doubt be comfortable. In all fairness, she had a lovely figure.

A heat-addled pigeon attempted to board the N train this morning, according to my traveling companion (I missed it, sadly). They say that Coney Island pigeons intentionally ride the trains into Manhattan to save themselves some wingwork. Sounds like urban legend to me, but a curiously appealing tale.

Some interesting graffiti—one wall covered with an elaborate multilayer word-mural, in that puffed-up style that has always reminded me of Bubble Yum. A smaller, simpler one on a different wall, in blue spray paint: Blue Glob.

Two orange-T-shirted boys standing with matched black Sharpeis, both straining at the leash, in front of the Mercer Hotel. Black-kerchiefed workman ascending a fire escape by means of a galvanized steel ladder pulled up to it.

Oh, and this from a couple days ago, before the heat erased my memory: a convertible bright yellow VW thing, top down, parked across from said hotel, with the license plate: MODPROP.

2002-06-26T16:29:00.000-04:00

Monsoon today. Tried to bravely sally forth at lunchtime but was thwarted by a floppy umbrella and sideways rain. Better luck tomorrow. All I spied were two Japanese women on stiltlike sandals cowering under the scaffold in front of the office. Then I ran back inside like a 'fraidy feline.

2002-06-25T14:46:00.000-04:00

Lunchtime-

General notes: lots of folks in unusual color combinations out today. Also a number of overheated-looking dogs. Details follow.

Large rotund man in striking lavender shirt and modestly embellished straw hat crossing LaGuardia at Bleecker St. At a nearby payphone, one side of a conversation: "Well, I have to go home to drop my fan off, and I need potatoes."

Dog1: Chesapeake Bay retriever, stocky, slow, and panting, sniffing mournfully at the dog run to which his owner does not appear to have keys.

Dog2: scruffy terrier type being pushed along in a basket set atop a shopping cart, under the shade of a giant rainbow striped umbrella the owner is holding carefully over the dog’s head (and his own, as a seeming afterthought).

Dog3: cute perky boxer-type, simultaneously panting and wagging, peering interestedly in the windows of a restaurant while its owner reads the menu.

Dog4: tiny terrier carried in arms by a solicitous owner along Greenwich Ave.

Dog5: Passed-out pit bull lying in identical posture to that of its also passed-out owner, on the grass in Washington Square Park. Owner has the look of a man down on his luck, though the pit bull has a bright blue plastic bowl of fresh water and appears sleek and well-fed.

Two round piles of clipped vines from an industrious ivy-pruning session near NYU. They look like nests for some giant creature – a human, perhaps? The bum I saw bedding down in his accustomed deep windowsill on Prince St. this morning would no doubt find them far more comfortable. Wish I could tell him about them, but I don't know his daytime haunt, and the ivy piles will probably be swept away by tonight, anyway.

A sudden influx of shops advertising gelato, homemade ice cream (the freezer set right out on the sidewalk in case you miss the giant chalkboard advertising it), and—oddly—bubble tea or tapioca tea (to those not initiated in this imported-from-Japan fad, the concept is a glass of milky looking tea, with globules of sweet tapioca clustered in the bottom of it. Gross, if you ask me).

Dog6: Huge hulking mastiff being walked by a slim woman (they always are). Mastiff has that related-to-equines look, and is panting as he saunters down Thompson on giant dog-feet.

A woman on Sixth Ave. (they only call it Ave. of the Americas Uptown, it seems) is decked out in matching bright orange pants, jacket, and shoes, with a lighter orange tank top underneath the jacket. She is neither young, nor slim, nor beautiful, and is squinting and sweating from the sun, but the overall effect is debonair, bless her colorful heart. I applaud inwardly, as outward applause on Sixth Ave. can get one into trouble on a hot day.

Several flaccid babies being pushed along in prams covered with umbrellas and frequently draped in cloth (better than the suffocating sheets of plastic they get on rainy days). Nearly all are white babies pushed by dark-skinned women. The solo nannies look at the babies as if they’ve stolen their youth, while the nannies in pairs with identical headscarves look cheery and companionable, above the bored faces of their charges. One baby is playing with her little yellow baby-hat, all smiles, oblivious to the dark looks her nanny is shooting her.

Dogs 7 and 8: short, fat black creature waggling his behind along Washington Sq., happy as can be, and a long-bodied, long-haired daschund looking put upon by mother nature (and the vagaries of human breeding ideas)—short legs and long hair are not well-designed for getting around comfortably in a hot city. Poor guy.

2002-06-24T15:19:00.000-04:00

Lunchtime-

Ugh—hot hot hot. A sweaty slim black man walking on the opposite side of the sidewalk crosses to the middle so he can spit right in front of me. I look at his face to see why; there is no clear indication.

On Thompson, three pedestrians pass in rapid succession, holding gelatos: one green, one orange, one chocolate. I see the store and almost stop but then remember I’ve just eaten.

Old man groping over a pile of perfect peaches in the grocery store, rejecting each one with a mutter. Six fire trucks parked all along Waverly Place, one of them backing up a full block, guided by four firemen in their striped rubber suits, on foot, waving their arms. The firemen here always look storybook-perfect in their matching suits and helmets. I still wonder how they’re doing every time I see them going about their business. This crew looked very young. I wonder if it was largely new recruits from after the 11th.

By the time I get back to the office, I have that stuck-to-a-vinyl-car-seat feeling. Should’ve had that gelato.

2002-06-22T23:10:00.000-04:00

Saturday, Daytrip, on the road-

Green. Trees. Many green trees. Cars whooshing alongside green trees. The little known equation comes back to me, and I remember, with a little start of joy, Trees = heaven.

Poppies in the median, planted by some kind soul whose hand I would like to shake. Thank you, Poppy Planter.

Later, a deer stops right by the side of the road, miraculously without running into the road. We stop and pull over and roll the window down (an antiquarian misnomer for the automatic window bzzzz). "Hello beautiful," I say to the deer. Deer turns its head and looks right at me, smiling almost. Big brown eyes, delicate little wafer limbs. She stands for a minute, nibbles a leaf, then walks up into the woods, where we see a fawn behind her, scrambling over rocks, running half graceful, half gangly over boulder and branches. Now this is the life.

Green. Green. Green.

Lakes with water lilies, like tiny single snowflakes set on green saucers.

I think it would be much easier being green than being cement-colored. (Yes, Muppet-friends, I am speaking to Kermit the unsatisfied frog. Though he comes to terms with it in the end, perhaps he does not realize how dull the alternatives are.)

Anyway. Green, lovely, then traffic, and moon rising yellow over Queens.

2002-06-21T08:54:00.000-04:00

Crashing headlong into massive concrete wall - translation: big deadline at work. No blog yesterday.

But here's what I saw then:

11:40am, Broadway at 37th, a red and white sign in a restaurant window: Fight back. Eat out.

6:21pm, 40 black youths dancing and careening into one another while music loud enough to shake the sidewalks blares out of a nearby doorway. Sign over doorway identifies building as a high school. Hard to believe music that loud is sanctioned by a high school.

9:35 pm, old man in light colored shirt (too dark to tell what color) is sitting in a corner of the small park on Chrystie St. Calls out something indeterminate ending in "Baby," to a younger, prettier woman passing by. She ignores him. He keeps calling, with increasing persistence, as if he's certain that he can convince her to run away to St. Tropez with him. He's a bum, actually, which makes this all rather funny to the observer. Or maybe it is the Merlot running in my veins that makes it funny.

Another block west, and it's suddenly Balthazar territory, chic little shops selling lampshades, just lampshades, and dresses displayed like jewelry each on its own silver hook. Then the subway, as crowded as if it were rush-hour. Perhaps there is a second rush-hour on Thursday nights (the official start of the college weekend, as I recall) — this one the rush-hour of barflies heading home, worried about incipient Friday hangovers.

Friday morning, Spring and Greene. Corner deli has basket of ripe bananas out front, individually separated for lunchtime customers. Inside, the hot food bar sends out a humid wave of frightening smells — hot wings, rice and raisins, some form of meat coated with brown sauce. The bagels and other friendly morning items are clustered meekly in a corner, as if cowering in the shadow of the Tower of Meat. Gatorade, ministering angel to the overly Merloted, costs $1.50 in Soho ("small" 20 oz. bottle).

Back to the deadlines.

2002-06-19T13:18:00.000-04:00

Lunchtime:

Large truck, with what looks like a feed trough filled with muddy water behind it, plus some sort of tall vertical scaffolding, parked across several spaces of an outdoor lot. The sign on the truck says "Drilling Specialists." What are they drilling for on Houston St.? Ratjuice?

Another truck, bright red, reads "Demolition Specialists." Walking by Lucky’s Juice Joint, which smells like a tropical paradise at all times, I wonder what kind of specialist I’d like to be. A purple truck, perhaps, with the sign hand-painted in white letters. Lurid Dream Specialist.

Walking on. A pretty (in a luxurious Southern Belle way rather than a toothpicky NY way) tourist in a fuschia linen shirt asks for directions to the subway. I give them—straight ahead on Houston to 6th Ave., turn right, about three blocks up to West 3rd. She promptly sets off walking, then I see her a minute later on Thompson St. I try to catch up to tell her she can still get to W. 3rd from Thompson by taking a left, but she crosses the street and I decide yelling at her might be frightening rather than helpful. Now she’s gonna think New Yorkers purposely give wrong directions to make nice Southern tourists get lost.

On Sullivan, heading south now, two black policeman are discussing which sort of ticket to give to a parked car. The one appears to be training the other, looking up a violation number in a big booklet. They seem cheery somehow; having a peaceful moment outdoors on a warm day. They both have beautiful Caribbean accents.

A passing grandmother instructs the young girl with her: "They can’t give you a ticket if you don’t have a car."

Crossing into Soho—the West side of it still retains some of the original charm of an old Italian neighborhood. Ben’s Pizzeria with the large plasticine figure of a chef holding out his hand to passersby. Flowers and mangoes rivaling one another for color at the corner shop. Lots of little restaurants with names like Boom (the slogan on the sign says Make food, not war.), Le petit café, Le Gamin.

At the corner of Sullivan and Spring, two young men appear, one pushing the other along (crouched-up and holding a film camera) on a short silver dolly. Further east there are other remnants of the film crew, a plumpish woman holding two walkie-talkies, a trailer with the door open showing the portable toilet stalls inside, and a taped-on paper sign: "Lucy." The yellow flyers on the lampposts where they’ve blocked parking (a big section of Soho, from Broadway to West Broadway, along Prince, up Greene, and who knows where else) say it’s all for a movie titled "How to Lose A Guy."

Shoes in the window of Barbara Bui look like tangles of spaghetti coiled on top of wooden planks. Shoes in Arché next door look as if they’re cut out of felt—Muppet shoes.

I stop and root through the hair sticks at the outdoor market on Wooster and Spring. Bamboo shoes on the street at a vendor on Prince retail for $6.

2002-06-18T13:47:00.000-04:00

Morning-

Just noticing anew the change in geography (or, rather, economics) on the walk from Canal St. into Soho. At Canal, there is a dead rat to be avoided, a procession of bums waking up and shuffling off to their daytime lairs, a number of industriously moving Chinese immigrants on their way to work, a cart serving fish broth and noodles for breakfast (with a crowd of patrons), and a few early-birds in casual chic walking north to Internet-related jobs in lofts furnished in the latest iMac colors.

By Spring St., there are art-gallery attendants making their spindly-heeled way to work and a few local loft denizens walking their giant dogs and bustling unruly children off to private school.

Lunchtime-

Kicking myself for wasting a beautiful day full of California-clear sunshine on a trip to Old Navy. On the way, however, I spied one of those women whose legs are so thin they look like fingers—well, there were about a hundred such women, carrying various brightly colored glossy-coated paper bags with string handles. But this one was wearing a pair of black cigarette pants noticeable for the turquoise and black satin ribbons that tied around the knees; not an added embellishment, mind you. Part of the pants themselves, attached via grommets. Another woman sported a skirt that appeared to be made of the top part of a pair of bluejeans, cut into a "V", with a large handkerchief-style scarf attached below.

In line at Old Navy, an astonishing assortment of female specimens —really, they might have been torn from a textbook showing variations in the human species. Old and grey, young and tank-topped, slim, pear shaped, fashionable, dowdy, Caucasian, Hispanic, Black, Asian. The middle-aged but very well turned-out black woman was holding three tank tops with built-in bras in neutral colors. The short Japanese American in her fifties wearing a bright orange T-shirt with a scalloped bottom edge was carrying a red T-shirt I’d almost bought myself. The plump Hispanic women behind me clearly had different conceptions of personal space than I—the elder of the two kept trodding against my foot.

Or maybe she was just one of those odd ducks who lack awareness of the boundaries of their own bodies. I see them all the time, a strangely numerous breed in a city with such narrow sidewalks. They seem unable to discern where their own edges are, and are constantly wandering right into other people’s bodies, assuming perhaps that the laws of physics will prevent them from accidentally melding with strangers, or, for that matter, concrete, automobiles, scaffolding, and large toothy dogs.

2002-06-17T14:03:00.000-04:00

Lunchtime-

This column should perhaps be titled What I Smelled, as NY is in full-on stinky summer mode already. So first, some strange combo of dogshit, garbage, homeless person, piss, and who knows what else, is wafting along Houston St., to be revisited later in Washington Sq., where, oddly, it accompanies a bank of flowers someone has gamely planted alongside the dog run.

But hey, it’s not all bad. There’s also a six year old boy kicking his shoe off in the process of trying to punt a soccer ball.

A line of young ballerinas sitting in a row on a stone stoop along the edge of a playground. You can tell they’re ballerinas by their tightly slicked back updos and long legs folded up around their elbows like birds’ wings.

In a similar vein, a 15-16 yr. old fawn of a girl, all natural blond hair and angular cheekbones, wandering down 6th Ave. just waiting to be "discovered." This time next year, she will be swiveling her hips around the runway in a miniskirt constructed entirely of cormorant feathers.

An orange-red traffic cone perched jauntily on the hood of a 1970s Bonneville in exactly the same color.

A sign for a missing cat, who is described as dark, noisy, and fast.

On the way back, the same bunch of ballerinas in a completely different location, followed by another pair, slightly older, with cut-up baseball shirts over their peeking-out leotards. Same hairstyles, even longer legs. They look like a flock of yellow flamingos.

I have exchanged a book which I mistakenly bought twice, once at Amazon, once at the local book nook. The book nook took it back, no problem, just pick another one of the same price. A rare and joyous cashless (and cardless) transaction. Felt like some sort of mysterious bartering arrangement.

Oh, almost forgot:

A line of luxury cars, all beginning with the letter "A." Avalon, Acura, Altima, Acura again. The latent librarian in me really wanted to arrange them in alphabetical order, and to toss out the lone Camry interloper.

2002-06-17T09:10:00.000-04:00

Monday, 8:35am

Interesting variation on being asked for directions:

In the subway stop, buying a new Metrocard after getting off the train (much better than standing in line getting jumpy trying to get one before train arrives). Impeccably dressed tall German businessman asks whether a single ride ticket can be bought from machine. Small Chinese local is trying to convince him he should buy an unlimited card for $4. Businessman clearly just needs to get from his Soho hotel to Wall St., and will later have a driver or share cab with fellow impeccably dressed businessmen. I promise to hang out for a minute and walk him through it, feeling very virtuous and helpful. Sort of a nice way to start the day, really.

2002-06-16T16:16:00.000-04:00

Welcome,

I had expected that starting this diary of impressions on a weekend might make the first installment less bizarre (not that a lack of bizarreness is necessarily a desired feature). How could I forget? NYC never lets me down—well, not when I'm out looking for weirdness.

Saturday, in front of (though not shopping in) Barnes & Noble on 16th & Union Sq. Park-

A 60ish woman with peach-colored hair waving clipboards and ranting, "Sign our petition to keep right-wingers out of the courts!"

"No I don't want that," I said.

Jaw drops. 10-second pause. "You're gonna be sorry."

"No, I believe everyone deserves a place in the courts."

Walking on.

A tall girl wearing tights that look like tattoos: black and flesh-colored whorls. She is my lunch date. We head over to the farmer's market in Union Square. Nothing looks good today—there's no fruit and the crowds at the piles of sugar-snap peas are getting pushy.

We end up in a French cafe eating crepes and drinking coffee out of bowls big enough for breakfast cereal.

But not before being nearly run over by a young woman driving a Lexus the exact shade of her blue-tinted sunglasses. Perhaps they are opaque.

Sunday-

Weirdness takes the day off on Sunday—or at least I hide out from it until laundry-time. Last time the laundry-day altercation (there's always one) was with a 12-year-old boy on roller skates, skating from one side of the laundromat to the other, bashing into as many laundry carts as possible on the way.

"Take those skates outside."

"I'm friends with the boss."

They never did call this the city of brotherly love, did they?