On the Bus
I had planned to take the Casino Bus yesterday to visit Suzy at the beach, but Suzy cancelled. Now, I've been looking forward to the many pleasures of a weekend at the shore for several weeks. So not to be deprived, I found an alternative. Yes, dear readers, of all the fabulous things I could be doing right now with Suzy (boating, kayaking, biking, sipping cocktails) it is the bus ride that I chose to replace. Last night I took the bus to the wilds of Hudson Valley to see a dance performance.
It was not just any dance performance, but I'll get to that later. First I want to talk about the bus. If you know me, you know that I have a special relationship with the bus. When I moved to San Francisco, I sold my car and insisted on riding MUNI—a plan most SF residents considered silly as well as inconvenient, if not dangerous. I envisioned a series of essays about exploring the city via the #19 bus but it didn't take me long to figure out that people did not want to read about standing in the freezing wind at Market and Van Ness waiting for a bus among vagrants and drug addicts.
In NYC, I ride the subway. I guess you could say I miss the bus. How else to explain my preferred mode of travel to Cape May, Philadelphia, the Jersey Shore, and now Dutchess County, New York. Well, also it's cheap—and last night, free. Bard College, the Hudson Valley presenter of a fabulous summer arts series, provides a bus from Manhattan in order to fill the seats in its theater two hours north of here. At the last minute yesterday, I decided to book a seat.
Now, this fabulous summer arts series has a gourmet quality outdoor cafe. Also, the air in the Hudson Valley smells of, well, nature. So with high expectations for a lovely summer night, I put on a little dress, hopped on the bus, and leaned back for the ride, pondering the possible menu selections.
But (and you could see this coming, right?) it was Friday night and everyone in Manhattan was headed north out of the city. The two hour bus ride took an unprecedented 3.5 hours. We arrived 5 minutes before curtain. The show took exactly one hour with no intermission and then I was back on the bus with a grumbling stomach.
But bus rides are amazing, especially ones filled with art lovers. I made new friends: a novelist who used to write for television (60 Minutes and others) sat next to me, and an intriguing woman from my writing workshop was with her partner and I got to know her a little better.
And the show was incredible. Post-modern choreographer from the 70s, Lucinda Childs, restaged
Dance, her 1979 multi media collaboration with Philip Glass and artist Sol LeWitt. The work has not only withstood the test of time, it was better than most new work I've recently seen.
And then there was that moment when I stepped off the bus and onto the lawn in front of the Gehry-designed
Fisher Center (its gleaming roof reflecting the dusky sunset). The air was just as sweet and fragrant as I'd remembered. That's the bottom line of this story folks. Five and a half hours on the bus for one minute of fresh air. That's life in Manhattan for you.
Benny Green Love
Even better than going out to Jack's for morning coffee is catching a late jazz show on the spur of the moment. I can't believe my luck with this strategy. Rarely am I disappointed. Last night Anat Cohen was playing Benny Goodman at the Village Vanguard.
It's easy to forget in the daily commotion that I live in the heart of New York's great jazz heritage. The Vanguard, The Blue Note, and Small's are all located within a few blocks. So I rarely follow the schedules or make advance plans. Last night I happened to check the Vanguard's website and saw that Cohen, a young female clarinetist was playing.
Now the other thing that's cool is that when you're a single, the Vanguard seats you down front at a shared table. I sat as close as humanly possible to Cohen and watched the music snake through her spine and out the horn. It's a full body affair. I'm not musically trained and last night it was a revelation to see each member of this amazing quartet use his whole being to make music.
But the real surprise of the evening was
Benny Green on the Steinway. I was eye level with his hands and I've never seen anyone play like that. (Maybe if I'd been around to see Monk.) He cranked his elegant shoulders and lightning shot out of his finger tips. A lanky, reed thin redhead in a gray suit and Converse all-stars, Green would have stolen the show from anyone less talented than Cohen. Together they were aces.
After every piano solo, Green would acknowledge the applause by turning his head to profile and giving a nod. Because of my seat, that nod put me directly in his line of vision. I was so close I could see the creases on the back of his neck. And when he left the stage, he flashed a smile at me. Me! I'm in love. What a geek I am.
The group has two more nights at the
Vanguard. Don't miss it.
Independence Day
Holiday weekends in NYC are great. a. You get a day of paid time off, and b. Everyone else leaves town.
Life slows down just enough to sit on the bench outside Jack's and watch the baby carriages (do you think that was Sarah Jessica and Matthew's newborn twins that a nanny just wheeled past?) and pet the English bulldog puppy that is wearing a cone on his head because he just had eye surgery.
The gym isn't too crowded either, tho the staff insists on washing the floor with a street cleaning machine in the middle of your workout. You don't mind waiting behind the woman at the dry cleaner who is removing her shirts from hangers and folding them one by one while the Chinese woman behind the counter giggles and indicates she doesn't know how to operate the credit card machine. You haven't made it in before closing for weeks. And you're particularly chatty with the pet supply guy who may possibly know more about you than anyone else in this anonymous city.
Back home, the UPS man is working on the holiday and has delivered the pound of dehydrated organic blueberries you ordered that will last 18 months in a cool dry place. Standing in the sweltering tropics of your apartment, you're thinking your timing is off what with fresh blueberry season just around the corner. Dehydrated blueberries are nearly weightless. Who knew how many there would be in a pound?
And now, the treat you've waited for all week. You get to open "Lipstick Jungle," by Candace Bushnell. Pure trash and perfect for a holiday weekend.
The Long Walk Home
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I'm protesting the MTA fare hike by walking. It's not that the increase from $2 to $2.25 isn't justified or that I can't afford it, but I strongly believe it's just wrong to collect the needed funds this way. Essentially it's a tax on the poor and a negative environmental move.
When my office was closer to home I walked to and from work every day. Then we moved, and it took five extra pounds before I realized how much I missed my daily commute. I'm now taking great pleasure in exploring SoHo and Tribeca. Mornings are street cleaners and construction crews, kitchen help sharing a smoke outside a cafe. Tonight, West Broadway was hopping with the cocktail crowd. I never knew this community garden existed at Bleecker and LaGuardia.
I'm sure my small gesture will go unnoticed by City Hall, but at least the reverse is not true. I now pass by the beautiful building every morning.
Modern Love
The first page I turn to in the Sunday NY Times is
Modern Love. It's a personal essay, a form of writing I've never quite mastered tho I met every other week with my first person writing group in San Francisco for nearly 5 years. Today's story by Simon Van Booy is no better written than any other, and honestly they're all a little schmaltzy. But there is a line today that seems as if it were written as a special message for me.
The narrator is talking to the young daughter he is raising alone. He's shaving and being mindful to not mess up her school clothes with shaving cream:
“Please keep me company, Madeleine. But don’t get too close.” Then I laughed, realizing that what I’d said characterizes the nature of my adult relationships.I identify. This ability to speak the mind of the reader is what makes a personal essay—when it is successful—so good.
Happiness
I just discovered
The Happiness Project, a book, blog, way of life touted by Gretchen Rubin. I've only given it a quick look so far, but I just so like this idea. I'm especially happy to see this line in
A Happiness Manifesto: Outer order contributes to inner calm.
On my way now to drop off two bags of cast-offs to The Housing Works. This week I cleaned one closet, one wardrobe unit, and two kitchen cabinets. Wonder therapy for stressed-out work head.
Summit Meeting
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There was one rain-free evening this week and a group of astonishing women took to the rooftops of the Upper West Side to celebrate. We went through a large quantity of red wine (we'll live to be a hundred, according to the latest research on benefits of fermented grapes) and among other things, heard an incredible tale of Fellini the cat who survived on his own for more than 30 days in an evacuated apartment building across from the collapsed World Trade Center. His owner braved security and hazards to his health to leave food and water for the missing cat.
Chris held us spellbound as she told us the story of what happened in that apartment building on 911 and the 22 months before the residents could return to their home. "But the cat," I said. "What happened to the cat?" Sure enough, Fellini was reunited with his owners and has survived to a ripe old age of 20.
Last Night on 10th Street
"Life is just getting too damned hard," said the man walking in front of me. He looked to be in his 80s, hair neatly parted on the side, seersucker suit jacket over pressed khaki pants. His companion was of the same era but taller with a lumpy face. It was 10 pm on Father's Day. Their pace was slow but purposeful. They were headed home. From a dinner party? A concert? "What with my eyesight and my hearing, I have to really focus," he said.
We were walking past the building where the underground electrical explosion happened last December. The second floor residents were all evicted two weeks before Christmas and the windows are still boarded up. The pet supply store and bakery have reopened, but the shoe repair shop remains dark. you have to watch your step as you pass the gate to Patchin Place. The curb dips into a driveway there and the cement is one big pockmark.
"I'm in the same boat," said the companion. "I'm in the same boat." I powered past the two men at this point. I was on a cookie run to the bodega on Greenwich, wearing sweatpants and the baggy t-shirt I sleep in. I like it about NYC that no craving need go unattended, regardless of the hour.
"You didn't have to repeat yourself."
"I didn't think you heard me."
"I heard you," the reply faded out behind me.
Life as Art
In the 70s I wrote a term paper with the thesis that marriage is outdated. Call me reactionary—my own too-early, brief marriage had just ended and it was easy to blame my personal dissatisfaction on society at large. But I might have been onto something. Now, in 2009, writer and performance artist Sandra Tsing Loh is doing the same thing. You can read her piece for The Atlantic
here.
While you're at The Atlantic, be sure to view Loh's video as she entertainingly presents another parallel to my life: stacking all her worldly possessions into an 8-10 storage unit. On my trip to San Francisco last month, I ended my own version of what Loh deems a mid-life rite of passage: I emptied out my storage unit. I'm 10 years ahead of Loh—I've moved on to the next stage and maybe this time I can figure out how to translate my quotidian life into an iconic event for my generation before Loh beats me to the punch.
Matthew Dickman, "All-American Poem"
I'm reading
Matthew Dickman's All-American Poem and am amazed by how wonderful it is. Actually, I'm daunted. I'd like to write something that could make me feel this way. I'd like for somebody like Tony Hoagland to say this about MY poetry:
"...the poems are about as athletic and winsome as a giant American spaniel at the beach--jumping into the water, chasing the Frisbee, digging a hole to China, burying your cell phone.... Matthew Dickman's all-American poems are the epitome of the pleasure principle...free and easy and unself-conscious, lusty, full of sensuous aspiration, tarted up in metaphor, getting Cirque du Soleil fingerpaints on everything."
Here's an example that was in
The New Yorker, but The New Yorker never publishes the best ones. My favorite so far is "V." Go out and buy this book, even if you've never read a poem in your life. This is the place to begin.
Sunday Morning With Wilco
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Distance has a way of making love understandable. —Wilco (Yankee Foxtrot Hotel)
"You don't come to New York for the lifestyle," said Rachel over Sangioviese last night at Alta. "You come here to do something."
Oh yeah, I keep forgetting. I came here for a paycheck! (And not to sell myself short, NYC has fed me in many ways.) Last week in San Francisco, it seemed every other person I spoke with was barely hanging on financially. That's the conundrum. I had deep conversations, laughed with my girlfriends, worked out at the gym, and the food...! It's easy to feel that life is perfect when you're away from the day-to-day concerns you've left behind at home. But many are struggling to hang onto that SF lifestyle I so adore: the air, the light, the people.
I'm not the only one feeling a tug between coasts. Ana Louisa (pictured) is part of a bicoastal family: J lives and works in NYC; S in San Francisco. They've been doing the back and forth thing for holy cow, yearly 9 years now. (Tom and I did it for a year and a half before he died and it wasn't easy.) Now that AL has joined them, it's mostly J who travels.
Doug and Barb have kids and now an adored grandchild on the East Coast. They feel the tug too. I dined at their table in SF last month and in Brooklyn last week.
Leanne emailed me this morning from Vancouver to answer my question: are you ever coming back? She fled abruptly two weeks ago for her part-time home because it was raining in NYC. Now she's having such a great time, she doesn't want to return, but there's a guy here...you know the story. Money and love, love and money.
Neil Simon and Charles Simic Make an Odd Couple
If you like the intimate Off-Off-Broadway theater experience, but not the hit or miss playwriting that often goes with it, may I suggest
Barefoot in the Park this weekend at Spoon Theater. I saw the dress rehearsal last night and thought it was charming. No limbs severed or baby's killed—just wholesome Neil Simon fun. (It helps that the oddball upstairs neighbor, Victor Velasco, is played by a good friend.)
Seems like I've been spending a lot of time at the theater recently: Irina's Vow, The Wooster Group's La Didone, Hair, Avenue Q, Ruined, Desire Under the Elms—plus The Astaire Awards presentation last Monday for dance in film and on Broadway. I don't mean to turn the main focus of this blog from poetry to theater, but I do think all the arts feed each other.
Charles Simic's most recent book is currently at the top of my nightstand stack: "That Little Something." Now that I've heard him read in person several times, I can hear his beautiful Czech accent and carefully enunciated words in my head. "Charles Simic's writing comes dancing out on the balls of its feet, colloquially fit as a fiddle, a sparring partner for the world." —Seamus Heaney
