On another journey to carry out my mother's last wishes. This was item number four; item number one was "Cheer Up!"
I spend the morning at the courthouse with the probate clerk, a lovely woman with the aspect of a black sorority sister and kindergarden teacher rolled into one. As she reviews the documents, she keeps saying, "Oh, good, very good! You've done a really good job!" in a soothing voice. Feeling like I am back in preschool is disconcerting, especially as aspects of my complicated parentage arise. At least for this matter, there is only one other sibling, instead of seven.
Next stop, Plain Lawn Cemetery, arguably the smallest cemetery in New York state that is still in operation. The once bucolic eponymous 'Old Country Road' is now covered with strip malls instead of pine trees, and the world's largest Chinese restaurant is visible through the stained glass windows of the chapel. The entire place is about the size of a city block.
Between two huge mauseleums of rose marble stands a tiny white bungalow with green trim -- the office. Inside the office are two women with deeply lined faces framed by tiny fluffs of permed auburn hair sitting at desks buried under mounds of paper. One of them types ceaselessly on an IBM Selectric next to a desk top copier and doesn't look up the entire time I am there. Mrs. Statton, who attends to the public, locates single niches for me on handwritten charts that are written on the backs of legal size manilla folders. She points out the few they have left with gnarled fingers.
This is one of those moments in wish fulfillment when you seriously want to change course. I didn't when we stood by our DNR order in the hospital as my mother's heart slowed to a halt. I didn't when we had no body or flowers or cremains at the funeral and my aunts spluttered, "No body? No body! But..!" As I stood in that office where nothing had changed since my grandmother was buried in 1973 in that tiny, combustion choked cemetery, I almost turned around and left the very nice Mrs. Statton and her ancient friend behind. I wanted my mom to be in a nice place with pretty plantings and computers, far off a main road and in a quiet corner under a tree. Someplace with rolling green hills, maybe. In a town that didn't have the unfortunate name of 'Hicksville.' One of those big cemeteries with tombstones in Chinese and stars of David next to the crosses and angels. Where the chapel didn't have a dingy pleather sofa in the shape of a boomerang with mirrored coffee tables.
Manilla folder charts in hand, I go to look at the niches. Obviously not facing the road, facing the cemetery, but in which direction? Since the reason my mother wanted to be interred here was because my father was, I decide to ask Mrs. Statton for directions to his gravesite.
My father died in 1997, and was buried with my grandmother. In 1999, her sister, my Aunt May, was buried in that grave as well. I gave Mrs. Statton my grandmother's name, Carmen Cleoptra (Doyle) Dolly, since she was the first one buried there. First Mrs. Statton looks in a dusty blue ledger, and finds my grandmother's name. I notice that the other names around Carmen Dolly also have Brooklyn addresses in Bed Stuy and Fort Greene, and wonder if this cemetery had sold plots to members of the same community. All these Brooklynites buried out in the country.
Then, she looks in her card catalogue, and finds my grandmother cross referenced to my father and aunt. There is a little confusion with the Doyles and Dollys but we get it straightened out and she sends me back out into the cold, with more manilla charts in hand.
I walk to the very back of the cemetery, and in a quiet spot in the "Garden of Memories," where the only markers allowed are bronze plaques, I find their gravesite. There is a big bronze plaque with a permanent vase at the top for flowers, but now filled with ice and snow. Underneath are two names: Carmen Cleopatra Dolly and Ralph Errol Dolly. And nothing else.
I dig around in the grass perplexed, looking for Aunt May's marker. I even brush the dirt off the neighboring plaques, which have been covered by a recent burial, hoping, as I did this, that my foot would not be the only way the dirt strewn about was removed. Nothing.
I stand and look back at the wall of niches to line up the one I will choose for my mother, and then walk back to the little white and green house, my mind racing. My half sisters had taken care of Aunt May's burial arrangements, using their legitimacy to freeze us out of the proceedings. They had sold the house she had lived in, a huge brownstone in Bed Stuy, so money was not a question. And yet, why was there no marker for Aunt May?
I feel guilty for not coming before. I had wanted to visit this grave, but didn't ask my mother when she was alive for fear of reminding her of the terrible loss of my father. My family doesn't have a tradition of visiting gravesites, so it is no surprise to me that no one has noticed.
"Are you sure that May Doyle was buried there" I ask Mrs. Statton.
"Oh, positive, this is the date?" It is.
"But there is no marker for my aunt."
'Well," she sighs, sitting back in her chair, as though she has seen this all before. "The original plate has space for two names. If there are additional burials, a new plaque has to be purchased." She holds my gaze steadily. "Do you want to put your mother in the site? There is room for one more urn." And have more sister drama?
"No, thanks, she requested the columberium." I told her which one I wanted, signed the contract, and ordered the plaque for my mom.
"Do you want the cross? There's a cross on it. I ask because sometimes people," she shrugs, "don't want the cross."
"No, the cross is fine."
"No cross?"
"The cross is fine."
"Oh. A woman came in here once and saw the cross in the chapel, you know the stained glass window? And she said, 'Is that a cross?' And I says, 'Yeah,' and she says, 'I can't...I just can't...' And I asks her, I asks, 'Are you Jewish?' and she says, 'Yes.' She went somewhere else. You know, they can't have the cross, they can't have the cross."
"I guess that is why," I say, "there are other cemeteries."
I bid her and her ancient friend goodbye and take off down Old Country Road, back to the city.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
The Socratic Jamaican Mechanic
Of course I go would go to the only mechanic in Long Island who uses the socratic and constructivist methods to bring you to an enlightened undertstanding of the nature of your car problems. Mr J is a tall man in his thirties, who speaks softly in a Jamaican accent and carries a big pedagogical stick. A conversation with Mr J goes a little something like this:
Mr J: Which is your car?
Me: The Camry.
Mr J: Ahh. (looks at young man in front of him) Which is your car?
YM: The Maxima.
Mr J: The stick?
YM: Yeah, yeah.
Mr J: You know how to drive stick?
YM: Uh yeah, yeah.
Mr J: 'Ow you learn how to drive stick?
YM: Blubbity blub driving school.
Mr J: Driving school?
YM: Yeah.
Mr J: 'Ow long you been driving stick?
YM: Huh?
Mr J: (more slowly) 'Ow long you been driving stick?
YM: (just looks up at Mr J)
Mr J: ...
YM: ...
Mr J:...
YM: Uh three years.
Mr J:...
YM:...
Mr J: You know why I'm asking?
Me: (silently) NO GODDAMIT! Just tell him what is wrong with the car.
Then it dawns on me that Mr J is leading this man to realize that his clutch is fucked up, right? Please God, I pray to myself. Don't let Mr J fix my car. As with anything having to do with my mother's death, even something innocuous as a conversation (much less a socratic dialogue) even tangentially related (it's her car, I wouldnt have it if she weren't dead, I'm here because my mother is dead, and so on...) can put me over the edge.
Of course, Mr J is my car doctor. He brings it from outside and parks it in the bay. I sit in the lobby to bore myself to death rereading the tedious _Emperor of Ocean Park_.
I look up at some motion in the corner of my eye and a low, "Miss." It is Mr J at the doorway to the garage, beckoning me closer with a hand towel. "Follow me."
We walk over to the car, and Mr J turns to me.
Mr J: You had this car from the beginning?
Me: Uh no.
Mr J: What year is it?
Me: 2002.
Mr J: So you had this car pretty close to the beginning?
Me: Uh. No, It's my mother's car, so I don't know much about it , actually.
Mr J: Your mother have warranty?
Me: Uh, I don't know.
Mr J: How the brake feel to you?
Me: I don't know. The tires and alignment were so messed up...
Mr J: (now allowing me to contruct my own knowledge) Get in the car and press the brake. (I do) 'Ow does that feel? (I shrug) Now keep pressing. (He smiles as I press it all the way into the floor.) Is that what should be happening?
Me: Going all the way down you mean? Um, no?
Mr J: (Smiling, cuz I constructed my own knowledge) Yeahh. Right. That should not happen.
Me: Oh okay.
Mr J: What you think that means?
Me: (i send my brain on a search for anything having to do with brakes) Um, the brake pads are shot? The calipers?
Mr J: (smiling at evidence of my use of prior knowledge) Not in a car this new. In a car this new, what you should do if something like that happens?
Me: Bring it to the mechanic?
Mr J: Right away. Bring it to the mechanic RIGHT AWAY. In car this new, could be the rear brakes need adjusting, could be the master cylinder is bad. Master cylinder is bad, you need to replace it under warranty. You have warranty?
Me: (teary eyed) I don't know. It's my mom's car and she died and I didn't even think to look for something like that. I guess I'll look for it.
Mr J: I am sorry about your mom.
Me:...
Mr. J: ...
Me: Well.
Mr J: We'll see if I just adjust the rear brake if that fix it all up. Okay?
He sends me back to the lobby.
It was the rear brake.
I did feel more enlightened. Thanks, Mr J.
Mr J: Which is your car?
Me: The Camry.
Mr J: Ahh. (looks at young man in front of him) Which is your car?
YM: The Maxima.
Mr J: The stick?
YM: Yeah, yeah.
Mr J: You know how to drive stick?
YM: Uh yeah, yeah.
Mr J: 'Ow you learn how to drive stick?
YM: Blubbity blub driving school.
Mr J: Driving school?
YM: Yeah.
Mr J: 'Ow long you been driving stick?
YM: Huh?
Mr J: (more slowly) 'Ow long you been driving stick?
YM: (just looks up at Mr J)
Mr J: ...
YM: ...
Mr J:...
YM: Uh three years.
Mr J:...
YM:...
Mr J: You know why I'm asking?
Me: (silently) NO GODDAMIT! Just tell him what is wrong with the car.
Then it dawns on me that Mr J is leading this man to realize that his clutch is fucked up, right? Please God, I pray to myself. Don't let Mr J fix my car. As with anything having to do with my mother's death, even something innocuous as a conversation (much less a socratic dialogue) even tangentially related (it's her car, I wouldnt have it if she weren't dead, I'm here because my mother is dead, and so on...) can put me over the edge.
Of course, Mr J is my car doctor. He brings it from outside and parks it in the bay. I sit in the lobby to bore myself to death rereading the tedious _Emperor of Ocean Park_.
I look up at some motion in the corner of my eye and a low, "Miss." It is Mr J at the doorway to the garage, beckoning me closer with a hand towel. "Follow me."
We walk over to the car, and Mr J turns to me.
Mr J: You had this car from the beginning?
Me: Uh no.
Mr J: What year is it?
Me: 2002.
Mr J: So you had this car pretty close to the beginning?
Me: Uh. No, It's my mother's car, so I don't know much about it , actually.
Mr J: Your mother have warranty?
Me: Uh, I don't know.
Mr J: How the brake feel to you?
Me: I don't know. The tires and alignment were so messed up...
Mr J: (now allowing me to contruct my own knowledge) Get in the car and press the brake. (I do) 'Ow does that feel? (I shrug) Now keep pressing. (He smiles as I press it all the way into the floor.) Is that what should be happening?
Me: Going all the way down you mean? Um, no?
Mr J: (Smiling, cuz I constructed my own knowledge) Yeahh. Right. That should not happen.
Me: Oh okay.
Mr J: What you think that means?
Me: (i send my brain on a search for anything having to do with brakes) Um, the brake pads are shot? The calipers?
Mr J: (smiling at evidence of my use of prior knowledge) Not in a car this new. In a car this new, what you should do if something like that happens?
Me: Bring it to the mechanic?
Mr J: Right away. Bring it to the mechanic RIGHT AWAY. In car this new, could be the rear brakes need adjusting, could be the master cylinder is bad. Master cylinder is bad, you need to replace it under warranty. You have warranty?
Me: (teary eyed) I don't know. It's my mom's car and she died and I didn't even think to look for something like that. I guess I'll look for it.
Mr J: I am sorry about your mom.
Me:...
Mr. J: ...
Me: Well.
Mr J: We'll see if I just adjust the rear brake if that fix it all up. Okay?
He sends me back to the lobby.
It was the rear brake.
I did feel more enlightened. Thanks, Mr J.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Fotos 2 :The Gates in the Snow
For my friends in the Southern Hemisphere, especially, who are having a very nice summer!
Fotos 1: The Snow Devil
J' Ro and I were walking down Columbus during the first big snowstorm and we saw these precious little girls making snow angels on the sidwalk. We smiled tenderly at this New York moment...
Until one of the snow angels saw us smiling, jumped up and started throwing snow at our heads, saying, "You laughing at me? You laughing at me?" It was funny and maybe a little cute until we realized that she was actually viciously attacking us and wouldn't stop so we started to run away, and she ran after us, and I said, "Hey! What happened to the snow ANGEL??"
She paused with a wad of snow in her hand, and said grimly, "She died."
Until one of the snow angels saw us smiling, jumped up and started throwing snow at our heads, saying, "You laughing at me? You laughing at me?" It was funny and maybe a little cute until we realized that she was actually viciously attacking us and wouldn't stop so we started to run away, and she ran after us, and I said, "Hey! What happened to the snow ANGEL??"
She paused with a wad of snow in her hand, and said grimly, "She died."
Monday, February 21, 2005
Dykephiles: Better than Cats -- L Word Spoilers, Season 2, Episode 1
I am posting this for Shelagh. Anybody else who don't wanna know what happens -- stop reading now! No need to go into what is problematic about the show, I'll leave that to the more earnest among us.
Okeley dokely, here is the rundown as I seent it.
Tina and Bette are still broken up, and Bette was fucking that carpenter latina girl, Candace. Then she stopped fucking her, and the same day tries to get back with Tina who tells her to go to hell cuz she knew she just got out of that bed with the girl that morning. Tina is also pregnant again (yes with that black man's sperm), but is hiding it from everyone. Bette keeps trying to get her back. So that is them.
Then bisexual Alice keeps kissing the tennis player Dana, and they are trying to "figure out" their relationship since they were best friends, although Dana is engaged to that annoying woman who killed her cat.
Pam Grier is getting closer to Ivan (the transgendered elvis looking kelly lynch whose last name is, we learn, Aycock -- get it -- i van a cock? really, now!), but surprises him in his womanly form, and Ivan asks her to leave.
Shane does Arianna Huffington's hair (Arianna's quote: "Someone told me that dykes are the new fags. Is this true?") and meets and of course fucks this fine ass latina girl named Carmen, but when she sees Carmen later in the club, she disses her because of course Shane has intimacy issues.
Marina is gone, there is some story going around that is different each telling of how she had a nervous breakdown and tried to kill herself. So hot ass Marina is gone. sigh. And of course stupid Jenny is still there, crying all the time and wearing those same black tights. Now she is crying cuz her stupid boyfriend is moving to ohio. He comes in for one last fuck, and we have to see his stupid naked ass, and then he gets on top of her and three thrusts later gets off and leaves. Wha? So that's the end. The title of this episode was love and loss, or some shit.
Previews: Next week we learn someone's secret -- which we all assumed would be Tina's pregnancy, but with this show, you never know. Also at some point, Jenny cuts her hair and right now it looks like she has on a weave. And horrifyingly, it seems that Jenny may get together with fineass Carmen. ugh. So there you have it.
Okeley dokely, here is the rundown as I seent it.
Tina and Bette are still broken up, and Bette was fucking that carpenter latina girl, Candace. Then she stopped fucking her, and the same day tries to get back with Tina who tells her to go to hell cuz she knew she just got out of that bed with the girl that morning. Tina is also pregnant again (yes with that black man's sperm), but is hiding it from everyone. Bette keeps trying to get her back. So that is them.
Then bisexual Alice keeps kissing the tennis player Dana, and they are trying to "figure out" their relationship since they were best friends, although Dana is engaged to that annoying woman who killed her cat.
Pam Grier is getting closer to Ivan (the transgendered elvis looking kelly lynch whose last name is, we learn, Aycock -- get it -- i van a cock? really, now!), but surprises him in his womanly form, and Ivan asks her to leave.
Shane does Arianna Huffington's hair (Arianna's quote: "Someone told me that dykes are the new fags. Is this true?") and meets and of course fucks this fine ass latina girl named Carmen, but when she sees Carmen later in the club, she disses her because of course Shane has intimacy issues.
Marina is gone, there is some story going around that is different each telling of how she had a nervous breakdown and tried to kill herself. So hot ass Marina is gone. sigh. And of course stupid Jenny is still there, crying all the time and wearing those same black tights. Now she is crying cuz her stupid boyfriend is moving to ohio. He comes in for one last fuck, and we have to see his stupid naked ass, and then he gets on top of her and three thrusts later gets off and leaves. Wha? So that's the end. The title of this episode was love and loss, or some shit.
Previews: Next week we learn someone's secret -- which we all assumed would be Tina's pregnancy, but with this show, you never know. Also at some point, Jenny cuts her hair and right now it looks like she has on a weave. And horrifyingly, it seems that Jenny may get together with fineass Carmen. ugh. So there you have it.
Teach for Hysteria: Things Kids Say
So I got up at work time, though I didn't have to go to work today, but I am starting to develop my grandmother's appreciation for the wee hours of the morn. I fed my resident mousecatcher, Dylan Superstar and walked the-purely-for-companionship-as-she-is-terrified-of-everything Sage. The Gate were lovely in the snow. At some point I will figure out the pictures thing, and you can see them, but for now you are going to have to use your imagination. It's alright.
I slept most of the middle of the day away and then got on the computer and started reading all these different education sites, blogs, chats, articles. I started thinking about the things that kids say. Two come to mind:
Three of my seventh grade students were discussing how mean I was. They had detention (like five minutes but of course they act like it is an eternity) because they hadn't completed their work in class and were instead fooling around. So they had detention until it was done. I was helping one of them, and the two others were sitting at their desks. One says with a snarl, "She so mean!" And the one I'm helping chimes in, "Yeah! I wish she would get a new job!" looking at me to see if I react, and of course I don't, and instead ask him if his lead paragraph is effectively setting the reader up for what is coming later in the article (it's not). The first commenter, responds, "Yeah! She should get a new job!" and, looking at the third, who hasn't yet said a word, says, "Right?" The third one looks up at me, taps his pencil on his cheek,as he does when he is thinking, and says, "Yeah, she mean, but if she got a new job, then we'd have a WHITE teacher."
The other two look up at me and nod. "Oh, yeah."
*
Then I wanted to share this note written to me by one of my 8th Grade students last year. I'd had her in 7th grade, and had to call in the counseling team in response to her first journal entry,"I hate myself. I want to die. I think about killing myself all the time." Sigh. but we got her hooked up with a great counselor and she started feeling a lot more positive about herself. However, in 8th grade, they took her out of counseling (no good goes unpunished) and she went into a slump where she literally, no matter what any of us did, would not do any schoolwork. It was particularly frustrating for me because I felt really connected to her and worried about her. But she would help herself to the markers and write these multicolored notes, with each word in a different color and give them to people, other kids, teachers, whomever. Well, I found one of her unsigned notes in a pocket this summer. This one, though, I keep on my wall:
Ms. Soucouyant,
I want
to let
you know
that I
am your
mother.
Make of these what you will, dear reader.
I slept most of the middle of the day away and then got on the computer and started reading all these different education sites, blogs, chats, articles. I started thinking about the things that kids say. Two come to mind:
Three of my seventh grade students were discussing how mean I was. They had detention (like five minutes but of course they act like it is an eternity) because they hadn't completed their work in class and were instead fooling around. So they had detention until it was done. I was helping one of them, and the two others were sitting at their desks. One says with a snarl, "She so mean!" And the one I'm helping chimes in, "Yeah! I wish she would get a new job!" looking at me to see if I react, and of course I don't, and instead ask him if his lead paragraph is effectively setting the reader up for what is coming later in the article (it's not). The first commenter, responds, "Yeah! She should get a new job!" and, looking at the third, who hasn't yet said a word, says, "Right?" The third one looks up at me, taps his pencil on his cheek,as he does when he is thinking, and says, "Yeah, she mean, but if she got a new job, then we'd have a WHITE teacher."
The other two look up at me and nod. "Oh, yeah."
*
Then I wanted to share this note written to me by one of my 8th Grade students last year. I'd had her in 7th grade, and had to call in the counseling team in response to her first journal entry,"I hate myself. I want to die. I think about killing myself all the time." Sigh. but we got her hooked up with a great counselor and she started feeling a lot more positive about herself. However, in 8th grade, they took her out of counseling (no good goes unpunished) and she went into a slump where she literally, no matter what any of us did, would not do any schoolwork. It was particularly frustrating for me because I felt really connected to her and worried about her. But she would help herself to the markers and write these multicolored notes, with each word in a different color and give them to people, other kids, teachers, whomever. Well, I found one of her unsigned notes in a pocket this summer. This one, though, I keep on my wall:
Ms. Soucouyant,
I want
to let
you know
that I
am your
mother.
Make of these what you will, dear reader.
Word Whirled: John Keene and Julie Ezelle Patton at BWC 2/19/05
Whew! What a reading. Even I was summoned out of my thousand years sleep for this one. Propelled of course by the siren call of one M L Obadike. Lately, if I am not stumbling mindlessly in to work, I lay in bed and contemplate the void and lose myself in fantasy or torture myself with all the THINGS I HAVE TO DO. After some fumbling around in time, some hours later I got an email from Mendi about this reading. Ah! The prospect of seeing all these extra-planetary bodies was too much, so after some subway fumbling I found myself in the Bowery Poetry Cave. Saw Christopher Stackhouse and Holly Bass. Both poets are beautiful, first of all. John with his casacading mane of locks seemed taller somehow, and reading from some older and newer works, went first. A catalogue of space and time, of gay black male life and politics, and the nature of reality and desire. I have to say in my quirky mind I got stuck in a loop of "Mirror in the Bathroom" when he read a line that referenced English Beat. Ah, how I loved them... let me indulge that tangent for a moment: "Mirror in the bathroom/I just can't stop it/Every Saturday you see me/Window shopping/Find no interest/ In the stacks and shelves/Only in the reflection/ Of my own sweet self self self self self..." Ah yes. Of course I also love them for "Stand down, Margaret/ Stand down, please/ Stand down Margaret..." telling Margaret Thatcher to get the hell out of office... Anyway, enough of that. Oh, and I wanted to metion that you must know that John was part of The Darkroom Collective, along with Natasha Trethewey, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Kevin Young, Sharan Strange, Major Jackson, and Vera Beatty. An important part of literary history I try to pass on whenever I can. If I am missing anyone please let me know!
Then Julie Ezelle Patton took -- and I mean -- TOOK -- the stage. I had only ever read her work on the page, and wrote about her in my thesis on black women's experimental poetics. Erica Hunt played one of her CDs for us in our poetry workshop, too. But nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. First things first. I went to the bathroom and played around talking to some friends in the back of the club, and when I went back to my front row seat, Julie was on stage, crouched behind an overturned table, spreading her papers around on the floor. Her salt and pepper locks were wrapped in a thick, white scarf and she wore these amazing brown and black harlequin pattern tights and calf length winter boots. i couldn't stop looking at her tights. She must have noticed because later she said, "like my tights? italy." I think she was on her way there. Tonya Foster, the curator of the reading series, stood and read Julie's bio, and after a little while, Julie began to punctuate Tonya's intro with some shakes of one of those electronic kid toys that make noise when you move them around. It looked like a mini Gandolf staff in red plastic. Too many things. Julie began the reading from behind the table, first making a little altar of some photos on a stand and an open journal that looked as though it had been through the wash in someone's pocket. Then she SANG to us, from the floor. Sometimes people singing poetry can be really really irritating. But her voice is so crisp and exact and clear and allows you to follow her manipulations of words and sounds and ideas through all their complexities. I found my mind working so fast and feeling the same pleasure in the center of my chest that I feel during exquisitely wrought musical compositions. Then she improv-ed some, riffing on the BWC sign behind her, and was joined by an excellent stand up bass player. One of the fave pieces of the night examined the current political situation by taking apart the names of the chief players...she did things with condeleeza rice's name (con da legions, among them) that I can't even explain but it was amazing.
Then we all went out to dinner afterwards at Planet One, a great vegan place in the East Village with lots of Caribbean/African cuisine, and a good time was had by all.
Then Julie Ezelle Patton took -- and I mean -- TOOK -- the stage. I had only ever read her work on the page, and wrote about her in my thesis on black women's experimental poetics. Erica Hunt played one of her CDs for us in our poetry workshop, too. But nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. First things first. I went to the bathroom and played around talking to some friends in the back of the club, and when I went back to my front row seat, Julie was on stage, crouched behind an overturned table, spreading her papers around on the floor. Her salt and pepper locks were wrapped in a thick, white scarf and she wore these amazing brown and black harlequin pattern tights and calf length winter boots. i couldn't stop looking at her tights. She must have noticed because later she said, "like my tights? italy." I think she was on her way there. Tonya Foster, the curator of the reading series, stood and read Julie's bio, and after a little while, Julie began to punctuate Tonya's intro with some shakes of one of those electronic kid toys that make noise when you move them around. It looked like a mini Gandolf staff in red plastic. Too many things. Julie began the reading from behind the table, first making a little altar of some photos on a stand and an open journal that looked as though it had been through the wash in someone's pocket. Then she SANG to us, from the floor. Sometimes people singing poetry can be really really irritating. But her voice is so crisp and exact and clear and allows you to follow her manipulations of words and sounds and ideas through all their complexities. I found my mind working so fast and feeling the same pleasure in the center of my chest that I feel during exquisitely wrought musical compositions. Then she improv-ed some, riffing on the BWC sign behind her, and was joined by an excellent stand up bass player. One of the fave pieces of the night examined the current political situation by taking apart the names of the chief players...she did things with condeleeza rice's name (con da legions, among them) that I can't even explain but it was amazing.
Then we all went out to dinner afterwards at Planet One, a great vegan place in the East Village with lots of Caribbean/African cuisine, and a good time was had by all.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
The Gates, The Gates, Wie Gehts?
Okay, this is it. What is going on with these people? I am fed up!
I was sitting at work looking at the photos I had uploaded from my phone, and I showed them to a fellow teacher. "Look!" I cried. "There they are!" Now, the "they" in question were photos of the large orange frames of the as yet unfurled Gates that I had taken on my morning dog walk. There they stood, glistening in the sunrise.
She snorted. "I don't get it. What's the point? Why are they doing that?"
"Because it's beautiful! Look at them!"
"But they're only up for what -- like two weeks? What's the point of that?"
"Umm, it's an installation," I replied. "installations are temporary, you know?" At times like these I feel like I'm working in a don't-get-it zone. I mean, she's a teacher, right? Right? Whatever.
Later I recounted this to my friend, the brilliant poet John Keene. He laughed. "Life is ephemeral. You'd think a science teacher would get that."
Then the reports come pouring in from my friend in Chicago ("I saw a critic on the news saying they weren't really art but a mechanical feat") and from Australia ("Everybody seems to hate them" -- this in a most charming accent --"The Times had a scathing review") Then at breakfast this morning with my brilliant visual artist friend and her lover, they were both commenting on the very smart and negative critique of the Gates in the aforementioned Times. Wha?
So, since Kwas said I should, here is my take on the Gates:
Everyday, twice a day for the past year and half, I have walked my dog through Central Park, in all kinds of weather, rain or shine, warm or blistering cold. A few months ago, as I blearily dragged myself up to the Great Hill, I noticed these little metal stands placed at regular intervals along the path. At the end of each of these metal stands was a nightmare orange plastic triangle, put there so that you wouldn't inadvertantly trip over these things. They were after all, almost the same color as the path, and at night you could stub your toe on one and take out your whole ankle, they are that hard and heavy (I tried, in true participatory new yorker fashion to move one, unsuccessfully). I asked a fellow dog walker what the hell they were and he told me they were for some "art exhibit." Now, having spent the best part of the last six weeks in hospital-funeral-landia, I was understandably out of the loop. My neighbor, S., told me excitedly, "Yeah! Christo is doing this thing called the Gates! It's going to be awesome! And right in our park!" "It doesn't seem that exciting to me," I responded. "At the moment, "It seems damn ugly." "That's not _it_," she snorted. "It's a whole something else."
Well, it is a whole something else. There is something to be said for living with the Gates. Maybe something that doesn't happen if you don't live with the park, see its seasons and know its contours. I watched as those hideous little plastic orange things were taken away and replaced by the massive frames, that was awesome enough. Then I stood out with everyone else that cold Saturday morning and watched them being unfurled in the sun, one by one, as people cheered, and took photos and the dogs played on unaware. And I walked beneath them that night, in the quiet, as they murmured in the wind. And the next morning I went to the top of the rocks at the Great HIll, and then down around the pond to the waterfall, and watched them winding through the stone dark trunks of trees to the other side of the park. I caressed the fabric to report on their texture to J. in San Francisco, something like muslin or taffeta, not a tarp; and if like a shower curtain, then a very very expensive one. I took photos and sent them to N. in South Africa so she could see shadows of the branches on them when the sun is in the east and they are illuminated against the steps of The Strangers Gate. And although I don't normally like orange at all, I disagreed with the woman walking the massive poodle that they should be green. And as I walked the dog at night beneath them, and the rain poured over them, flattening and buffeting them in a way the sunny wind did not, I felt a kind of awe, and peace, and in the presence of something good.
And frankly after day after day of ugly and cynical, it makes me happy to be witness and part of something that someone made, as a gift to me, just because it was beautiful.
I was sitting at work looking at the photos I had uploaded from my phone, and I showed them to a fellow teacher. "Look!" I cried. "There they are!" Now, the "they" in question were photos of the large orange frames of the as yet unfurled Gates that I had taken on my morning dog walk. There they stood, glistening in the sunrise.
She snorted. "I don't get it. What's the point? Why are they doing that?"
"Because it's beautiful! Look at them!"
"But they're only up for what -- like two weeks? What's the point of that?"
"Umm, it's an installation," I replied. "installations are temporary, you know?" At times like these I feel like I'm working in a don't-get-it zone. I mean, she's a teacher, right? Right? Whatever.
Later I recounted this to my friend, the brilliant poet John Keene. He laughed. "Life is ephemeral. You'd think a science teacher would get that."
Then the reports come pouring in from my friend in Chicago ("I saw a critic on the news saying they weren't really art but a mechanical feat") and from Australia ("Everybody seems to hate them" -- this in a most charming accent --"The Times had a scathing review") Then at breakfast this morning with my brilliant visual artist friend and her lover, they were both commenting on the very smart and negative critique of the Gates in the aforementioned Times. Wha?
So, since Kwas said I should, here is my take on the Gates:
Everyday, twice a day for the past year and half, I have walked my dog through Central Park, in all kinds of weather, rain or shine, warm or blistering cold. A few months ago, as I blearily dragged myself up to the Great Hill, I noticed these little metal stands placed at regular intervals along the path. At the end of each of these metal stands was a nightmare orange plastic triangle, put there so that you wouldn't inadvertantly trip over these things. They were after all, almost the same color as the path, and at night you could stub your toe on one and take out your whole ankle, they are that hard and heavy (I tried, in true participatory new yorker fashion to move one, unsuccessfully). I asked a fellow dog walker what the hell they were and he told me they were for some "art exhibit." Now, having spent the best part of the last six weeks in hospital-funeral-landia, I was understandably out of the loop. My neighbor, S., told me excitedly, "Yeah! Christo is doing this thing called the Gates! It's going to be awesome! And right in our park!" "It doesn't seem that exciting to me," I responded. "At the moment, "It seems damn ugly." "That's not _it_," she snorted. "It's a whole something else."
Well, it is a whole something else. There is something to be said for living with the Gates. Maybe something that doesn't happen if you don't live with the park, see its seasons and know its contours. I watched as those hideous little plastic orange things were taken away and replaced by the massive frames, that was awesome enough. Then I stood out with everyone else that cold Saturday morning and watched them being unfurled in the sun, one by one, as people cheered, and took photos and the dogs played on unaware. And I walked beneath them that night, in the quiet, as they murmured in the wind. And the next morning I went to the top of the rocks at the Great HIll, and then down around the pond to the waterfall, and watched them winding through the stone dark trunks of trees to the other side of the park. I caressed the fabric to report on their texture to J. in San Francisco, something like muslin or taffeta, not a tarp; and if like a shower curtain, then a very very expensive one. I took photos and sent them to N. in South Africa so she could see shadows of the branches on them when the sun is in the east and they are illuminated against the steps of The Strangers Gate. And although I don't normally like orange at all, I disagreed with the woman walking the massive poodle that they should be green. And as I walked the dog at night beneath them, and the rain poured over them, flattening and buffeting them in a way the sunny wind did not, I felt a kind of awe, and peace, and in the presence of something good.
And frankly after day after day of ugly and cynical, it makes me happy to be witness and part of something that someone made, as a gift to me, just because it was beautiful.
First and Random Thoughts
Okay, trying this again. Why do I keep losing my posts? I am just going to publish it now and if it has typos fine. And in my unending attempt to inspire myself with insipid minutiae I've gleaned along the writing trail, I remember the story of those fine writers who wrote a novel, then put it in a desk, and rewrote the whole thing without looking at the first draft. This, apparently, was not a mark of insanity, but of genius. So, I'm in good company. Ha.
Understandably, my brain is bruised by the foghorn from below that I thought at first was a grounded tugboat, but which turned out instead to be an oil truck trying to blast a double parked SUV out of our narrow lane by laying on his horn for like an hour. Good luck. This is probably the same idiot who spilled the oil in our basement that stunk so bad that we had to keep all the staircase windows open for a week in two degree weather. Thanks, dude. I love New York.
So why did I decide to join the burgeoning ranks of blogdom? I was inspired by all these teacher blogs (links forthcoming) that I have been reading lately. However, I hadn't seen any from middle school ELA teachers in the NYC DOE (Doh!) and thought I'd add my two cents to the pot. (If you know of any, let me know!)
Secondly, (hmm this is starting to look suspiciously like an essay for the 8th Grade ELA exam) I have been experiencing a massive writer's block lately, and since I style myself a writer, this has caused no small existential crisis. I was last writing in a small blue journal with a black and white dog on the cover that I bought to entertain myself while I was sitting at my mother's bedside in the hospital to quell my anxiety and capitalize on all the stories that constantly danced to life in that bizarre half-world. After my mom died a few weeks later, I wasn't able to get it together. Well, in lots of other ways, too, but more on that later.
And why soucouyant (sue-coo-yahng)? She's my favorite character from Trini folklore. What could be more fierce than a woman who takes off her skin at night and travels across the sky in a blaze of fire? Eh?
Understandably, my brain is bruised by the foghorn from below that I thought at first was a grounded tugboat, but which turned out instead to be an oil truck trying to blast a double parked SUV out of our narrow lane by laying on his horn for like an hour. Good luck. This is probably the same idiot who spilled the oil in our basement that stunk so bad that we had to keep all the staircase windows open for a week in two degree weather. Thanks, dude. I love New York.
So why did I decide to join the burgeoning ranks of blogdom? I was inspired by all these teacher blogs (links forthcoming) that I have been reading lately. However, I hadn't seen any from middle school ELA teachers in the NYC DOE (Doh!) and thought I'd add my two cents to the pot. (If you know of any, let me know!)
Secondly, (hmm this is starting to look suspiciously like an essay for the 8th Grade ELA exam) I have been experiencing a massive writer's block lately, and since I style myself a writer, this has caused no small existential crisis. I was last writing in a small blue journal with a black and white dog on the cover that I bought to entertain myself while I was sitting at my mother's bedside in the hospital to quell my anxiety and capitalize on all the stories that constantly danced to life in that bizarre half-world. After my mom died a few weeks later, I wasn't able to get it together. Well, in lots of other ways, too, but more on that later.
And why soucouyant (sue-coo-yahng)? She's my favorite character from Trini folklore. What could be more fierce than a woman who takes off her skin at night and travels across the sky in a blaze of fire? Eh?
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