Sunday Memories - Before The Days of Air and Conditioning

When it was a store front, the small theater had no air conditioning. Come summer the stage either went quiet or waited for deep night when the heat occasionally lifted a bit. The front door was always open.

The landlord raised the rent by a quatrillion gazillion percent and, after leaving a couple of tons of sand on the walls and in the basement, the theater traveled up four flights into another building. With no stoop to cool the stage, come the heat, the lights went dark.

Sunday Memories - Of Men and Mice... Part Four*

Today, reaching for a phone, it dawned on me that with the exception of one person, I was surrounded by people who had always dialed 212 or 718 or 917 or 646, and that the experience of picking up a phone and just dialing seven numbers had gone the way of the dodo along with some of my favorite diners, bookstores, cinemas, neighborhoods, streets, cities, and a few people I loved.

*and now for the joke
MAN ONE: Are you a man or a mouse?
MAN TWO: Put a piece of cheese down and find out!


Of Men and Mice...Part One

Of Men and Mice...Part Two

Of Men and Mice... Part Three

In The Still Of The Night The Sound of Silence...

Quiet was the absence of words, music, radio, and later, when we all went our separate ways and had our own homes, TV.

A New York silence, in a still night, was (and still is) filled with the noise of other people's lives. And the silence and stillness was (and still is) a muteness that came from watching lives we couldn't figure out how to replicate.

Sunday Memories: PS 110

They've cleaned up the brick and I hear they even have computers in the classrooms. In fact, one time a couple of years ago I met a little girl who was somehow related to one of my old classmates from the other side of the bridge and she sounded really smart which was definitely not the case when we were going there.

Today, walking down Cannon Street what I remembered was this spot by the side entrance. Where M.P., who I thought was my boyfriend, threw the first punch and I don't remember much except a teacher pulling us apart and then dragging me to the janitor sink to rinse off my bloody nose.

What I also don't remember is what happened after. If I was scared to go home or scared to go to school or if my heart was just broken.

Back Of My Neck Getting Dirt And Gritty

The subways were never a place to get cool until I was too tall to slip under the turnstile.

Now subway cars are floating respites through quiet corners of the city.

Cat On A Hot Tin ... Wait. We Live In An Apartment.

This is one spot he hangs out in these days. The other is behind the toilet.

A couple of days ago it was too hot even for a hairless cat. I turned on the air conditioning in the bedroom, cooled the room and then got the cat from behind the toilet.

He was limp and exhausted and when I placed him gently in the cool bedroom, he stretched out deliciously.

A few minutes later I went into the bedroom to get something and found the air conditioning cooling an empty room.

Where was the cat?

Right back behind the toilet.

Sunday Memories: Part One: Cindy - That Day We Met

An on-going series about my friend, Cindy.
Because she is so much a part of the heart and soul of Her New York


The Official Meeting happened when I was three, but Cindy and I must have passed each other in our respective carriages for years since she lived on the third floor and we lived on the fifth of the A Building in the Courtchyard.

She had several older sisters and I had one but I'm sure, judging from the wide gap in lifestyle our sisters did not play together. We were one second away from being considered gentile weirdos and they were Orthodox and, well, normal like the rest of the neighborhood.

In those days, either you got splinters from the old wood floors that had been there since the 1930s or you put down carpet or linoleum over all the wood. We didn't cover the wood.

And that's how, one day when I was three we met. The splinter must have been so deep and so large and my screams must have been so blood curdling, that Florence must have made a rare, and perhaps panicked, phone call because suddenly through my screams, I saw Cindy's mother appear in the bedroom doorway.

There was no way I would let her near me, especially in light of the very large needle she held, and my screaming wasn't diminishing because the pain of the splinter was growing.

Then Cindy stepped forward and thrust something into my hands.

It was a doll. A large girl doll and she was beautiful. I had never seen anything that extraordinary in my life. That's not what our parents spent money on. Clutching that doll, I let Cindy's mom remove a very large splinter.

All the cooing and caressing that follows serious operations followed. But all I did was clutch that wonderful doll.

In other neighborhoods, Happy Endings happen here.

But this was the Lower East Side in the 1960s. Because once everything was all over, Cindy stepped forward and before I knew it she took back her doll.

Maybe I wanted another crack at that doll but from that moment on we were fast friends.

We Are...

From Adriene

O. graduated from middle school last night. It was a nice atmosphere. All of the 100 8th graders were supportive of each other. They marched down the aisle into the auditorium one at a time. As each child crossed the stage they called out the child's name and cheered them on.

When one boy got on stage the entire 8th grade class stood and clapped for him. O. later told me that no one from his family came to the graduation so they were his family. When another boy came on stage they started clapping, stomping their feet and chanting - the boy started dancing freestyle.

Three of the boys that graduated were blind. They came into the auditorium, across the stage and back to their seat without assistance - no cane. Most of us didn't even know they were blind. Last night was a "good night".

My neighbor took O. and their daughter out to dinner at a sea food restaurant - they consider him family.

Ghost In The Machine

The building is on a 1903 map so it's old.

Still, some of us believe that when leaks appear in one place but not another and sometimes not even near a pipe, it's Schneller back from the grave to remind us we were all terrible tenants who flushed things we shouldn't have and broke the elevator with our bicyles.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - Encores of Early Posts And An Echo Of Freedom

In honor of a line in a prayer "I deserve the freedom to be all that I can be...."

July 2009
...And Dancing In The Rain

It wasn't that I had forgotten. It's just that I hadn't had to remember. But there she was, a little girl jumping and giggling and running and shouting in Wednesday's downpour.

When I was young and it poured humongous cats and dogs, Florence would send me out in maybe rain boots, maybe sneakers to play in the storm. I'd race around the empty courtchyard and jump and dance and skip and stick my face up into thunder and wind.

As of her decline deepened, the months and months and months turned into years and years, and to pass the time we would watch Singing In The Rain over and over and over again. The blessing of dementia allowed it to be an exciting revisit, one she didn't realize had just happened the week before.

Today, quickly snapping a picture as I futilely raced against getting soaked and miserably wet, I wondered if her quirky idea of playtime came from that passionate dance Gene Kelly did when he realized he was in love.

Rain Delay on the Fourth of July

Because Freedom is an elusive subject and some time is needed to capture her in a memory.

The Waiting Room

Bucko waiting to read at the Kettle



You wait for the words.
You wait for the structure.
You wait for the edits.
You wait for the characters to stop complaining about the words the structure the edits.
You wait for the colleagues to read and comment.
You wait to rewrite.
You wait to stop hating it.
You wait to stop loving it.
You wait to be finished with it all.
You wait to think you could read it.
You wait to be invited to read it.
You wait to go on.
You wait until it's all over.

And while you're waiting for all this, you are working like the devil on every word structure edit and complaining character.

Between A River And A Highway

It started to rain, but Lester's from Queens so he didn't care and Maya had been a New York dog so she would have been just fine with the West Side Highway up our butts and the so-called clean Hudson in our noses and full-geared weekend bicyclists zooming around us.

So, with an eye out for cops who might stop our little illegal spreading of her ashes, we took turns sharing about how Maya was the sweetest dog in the world, generous with her cuddles, wouldn't have wanted the pink candle, she was a girl, but a butch one, and how one day she let Lester know he had fucked up by looking him straight in the eye and then right in front of him pissing all over the floor.

Sunday Memories: The Journey Of A Thousand Sentences Begins With A Couple Of Words

And one night in 1994 the words "The Sad Air btw NY & Philadelphia stretches for years" tumbled out of a ball point pen.

Sixteen years later, after many rewrites, stretches of writer's block, and too many rejections, THE SAD AIR BETWEEN NEW YORK AND PHILADELPHIA, the second part of the WIRE MONKEY TRILOGY has come to completion.

And on June 30th at 7pm, I will read a chapter at the Writing House Reading Series at Kettle of Fish.

Please join me.

THE WRITER'S HOUSE READING SERIES
KETTLE OF FISH
59 Christopher Street
June 30th
7 pm

Her Cheers In Her New York

She's a regular at this Irish sports bar and restaurant where all the locals clinging to their neighborhood go to.

The waiter knows her name, her favorite booth, and the fact that she has been having trouble sleeping.

Even though she comes in almost every night and even though it is a casual establishment, she still dresses for dinner. A sharp suit, carefully selected button earrings with a matching necklace and bracelet and a very nice purse she obviously has had for years.

This bar is loud with jovial voices and announcers shouting scores and the clatter of burger platters, potato skins, grilled chicken, onion rings and fries. The waiter leans down to hear her describe the new sleeping pill her doctor gave her. He then helps her to her feet, kisses her good night on the cheek and guides her through the crowd of all the other regulars from the neighborhood, one where everyone knows everyone's name.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Why I Still Write

I still write because I am inspired and fired up by Ela Thier's workshops (I've taken several and each time my work gets better and better and better).

Otherwise, the joy from knowing how to build a story would have withered away from lack of knowledge.

If you want to attend a FREE evening workshop, then see below:


FROM ELA THIER:

Back by popular demand!

It's been over a year since I've offered a free screenwriting workshop. The time has come for another one:

If you haven't sampled my workshops yet and are wondering why everyone is raving about them, this workshop is free and open to the public. If you've attended my free workshops in the past, I've made many changes to my presentation and you're in for a treat.

Writers at all levels of experience are welcome to attend.

TIME:
Thursday, July 1
6:30-9:30

PLACE:
University Settlement Community Center
184 Eldridge St, Manhattan, NY

Reservations are required.

Six Brief Moments Of PS 139's Fifth Grade Graduating

Sunday Memories: The First Home

When the younger one was dying, even with her life filled with tons of decades fully rooted in a loving, embracing community in a city she wasn't born in, she wanted her older sister. They weren't on the easiest of terms or necessarily best friends. But even if nothing was left to it except her older sister holding her hand the younger sister wanted to go back home.

Years later, when the older one, in a California nursing home that looked like a country club, began to forget things like how to eat or why it was even important to eat, she would greet her brother every daily visit with the same question. When would they be going back to Henry Street? When would they be going back home? A cold water, rat-infested tenement. That was home.

He now clings to a spiderweb of little lists that are his daily memory. What doctor when. Who is coming on what day. Where did he put what he can't remember he was looking for. Yet siting on the couch uncertain of the last five minutes or the next five minutes, home becomes sharp and specific and stories about Home like those of his sisters come tumbling out.

It's A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood...

Ed, Mary and their dog, Butta hanging out on their stoop old school style the way the old ladies and sometimes the old men did on Grand Street in their beach chairs talking to everyone reminding them hey you are in our neighborhood you are in your neighborhood I'm your neighbor so I'm gonna talk to you whether you like or not and sure enough just like the old days in old neighborhoods all over the city, everyone talked back with Ed, Mary and their dog, Butta.

And Butta got a lotta love. As she should.

Time Flies When...

It was supposed to be a brief meal.

Four hours later, I was still laughing too hard to write down everything Dana said.

But she had been warned. When one encounters a better writer than oneself one can only rip off said writer in self defense.

On certain attempts of style:

"He combs his hair with a washcloth."

On the insults of aging and limited mobility:

"I could fool anything but a flight of stairs."

On the fact her doctor is moving her office right across the street from her apartment:

"I won't be late if there's no red light."

And last, but not least, on our favorite actor:

"He's a walking sex experience."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - Encores of Early Posts

SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 2008

Sunday Memories: In three acts G dies in Manhattan in 1993

I

He’s at Cabrini on 19th Street.

The nurse who loves him the most is six feet tall and has just finished becoming a woman.

She could pick Frazier up when he was bigger and now, as he dwindles into the bed, she still swoops him up into her arms and we can all see how much he has left from how small he is in her arms.

His family comes in from Queens to visit. Four of his six brothers are wearing his suits. They are either too tall or too short, too thin or too fat for the suits. Looking at them in Frazier’s clothes is like looking at Frazier in funhouse mirrors.

When they leave, Frazier turns to Michael.  “Couldn’t they have just waited until I died?,” he asks.

II

I turn the corner onto 14th Street to go to the wake at the funeral home and see the big straight brother who hates gay people beating the shit out of the thin delicate gay brother who in his own words is “a screaming queen”.

Somebody calls the cops.

The gay brother’s suit, formerly Frazier’s, is ripped in many places.

III

It’s the day of the funeral. I turn onto 14th Street to go to the church across the street from the funeral home.

Cop cars line the street. My heart sinks. It’s only 10 in the morning.  More trouble already?

When I get to the steps of the church I find out it’s just Law and Order setting up for a shoot later on in the day.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - Encores of Early Posts

Encore posting from the early days show the more things change, the more things...


Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Why I Miss The 70's


Like Brittany Spear's vulva, her wallet stuck out and begged to be taken.

I leaned over and said, "Miss, your wallet is going to be stolen."

She gave me that arrogant thank-fuck you of all those who moved here more than six years ago, but not before it was safe enough to walk down the street without getting your ass kicked in. 1996? 97?

I sat there and rued the day Florence caught me stealing, had me return the penny gum to the newspaper-candy store on Delancey, apologize to the owner and then made me promise never to steal again.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - Encores of Early Posts

Encore posting from the early days show the more things change, the more things...

Thursday, April 24, 2008

He Could Say It In Four Languages If He Wanted To


Rush hour, everybody rushing home.

Except for the nicely dressed lady lying on the ground by Greeley Square.  Between the serious men's clothing store and the Dunkin Donut.

There are a lot of people over her making sure her shopping bags and her purse are O.K. There is a cup of something by her and the security guy or police chief or whatever he is is talking into a walkie-talkie.

Me and two guys hang out on the curb by the flower pots and watch a skinny homeless guy shout at the crowd. He looks like the guy who kicked me in the ass when I bumped into him on a rainy day. Wouldn't be surprised if it were. This is his neighborhood.

The two guys said that she began to fall and the homeless guy caught her and was shouting GET HELP GET HELP and once non-homeless guys showed up and shooed him away he got upset. After all, he was there first and just because he was homeless didn't mean he was less of a hero.

The daily convoy of twenty-five blaring police cars roar up Sixth Avenue. None stop.

"She fell. Her heart, her blood pressure or diabetic. They give her an orange juice with some sugar. Look, she is fine."

A third man joins us. His patter sounds like poems made of rain on a roof. When I ask if it is Arabic, his friend nods. "I speak Danish too. And Spanish and English and Arabic."

We look across the street at the woman again. Two ambulances come as she sits up and talks on her cell phone.

One of the guys says to me, "We are nothing. A heart or something and we fall... we are nothing."

Sunday Memories: When We Were Young

The family was still in Bushwick...



...before the money really ran out, before the beatings got worse and more frequent, before they had to move to Henry Street on the Lower East Side...



...where the rats were bigger than Mitzi the dog.



In those Brooklyn days being left handed was not allowed. He was sent home for not knowing how to write with his right hand.

And of course on the first day of school, his name, a Hebrew one, was changed to an English one.

The Fountain of Youth

There was no such thing as bottled water. Just bottled cola. And maybe juice.

And these were the perfect height if you were little but now you have to do yoga to get closer to getting a drink. Which is still just as warm as it was then.

School's Out For Summer

Stairwells were the subways to our classes, filled with pushing and shoving, the dreaded chance collision with the boy everyone had a crush on, the bully everyone feared, or news of the big people's world like the older brother who came back from Woodstock covered with mud (we were all really interested in the mud part).

It was on that last day, everything draining out from the school these old walls and stair emerged into view.

Sunday Memories: Part Three: Home Where My Love Lies Sleeping

The last in a series to visit when on the road which is where I have been for a week or so.



Happy Memorial Day, a day where we honor fallen soldiers of many wars, some that happened between apartment walls, others inside a hidden broken heart.

Part Two: Home Where My Love Lies Sleeping

A series to visit when on the road....


...which is where I am for the next week or so.

Part One: Home Where My Love Lies Sleeping

A series to visit when on the road....


...which is where I am for the next week or so.

Sunday Memories: Part Six: Home Work

A series on the home we give our work.

Me. 1976.



How did I know I needed this corner? I didn't know what it was I was supposed to be doing in that corner. I wasn't anything but a kid who didn't know I was a kid, paying rent, going to a deadend job and only allowing myself to dream of a future when everyone else was asleep.

But something deeper and smarter than myself pushed me one night in those early days to borrow an old drill, get brackets and, while listening to Jean-Luc Ponty and aching from loneliness from a recently departed stab at love, put up shelves and start to fill them to stuff to remind me I was actually going to use that corner in all its incarnations for the rest of my life.

Part Five: Home Work

A series on the home we give our work.



Kosky

For fifteen years he has walked the gaunlet of competing lights from two Indian restaurants to get to his front door and to a room that on its own might be generous but stuffed with the important elements of an apartment - a kitchen, a bathroom, a small alcove pretending to be a bedroom but barely able to accomodate a bed - it is small. Quiet, filled with gentle curry smells, but small.

In the early days of internet, his dial-up would hog the phone line. So while the file was uploading or downloading, he'd run downstairs to one of the two payphones to discuss what was being sent and then run upstairs to check on the progress and then back downstairs to the payphone to continue discussing and then back upstairs...

Now the payphones are gone, internet whizzes through the air, and he uses a cell. And now looking around he yearns for just one separate room. Just one. A room where he can't see every corner of the apartment, or where, when he reaches his arms out wide, he doesn't bump into the kitchen.

Part Four: Home Work

A series on the home we give our work.

Victoria



It had originally been one of only a couple of rooms in an apartment in a building filled with squatters on a block with lots of drug dealers and she was a single woman.

But then the neighborhood changed, and she got a union day job and then a husband and then a baby and then another baby and then another apartment below and then one day twenty or so years later each one had a room of their own. And this room was hers.

And when she steps into this room to paint, either during brief weekend afternoons or on the night shift, fear of failure stays outside and she can go face a painting that is pissing her off.

There is nothing in this room she can do wrong.

The Night Shift

Sunday Memories: Part Three: Home Work

A series on the home we give our work.

Florence


This was the only place in the apartment she ever looked like she could breathe.

She started practicing between 9 and 10am. When I was little and on rare occasions came home for lunch, she would quickly make french toast and returned to practicing. When I got bigger and wasn't in risk of setting the house on fire, on those rare days, I made my own french toast.

After school it was my turn in that room and I practiced the piano (until one rare day I refused to) and the violin (which was the price I paid to not practice the piano anymore).

And when all that was done and some dinner put in front of me or my sister or both, Florence returned back to practicing until it got dark enough for neighbors to complain.

No one ever did.

Part Two: Home Work

A series on the home we give our work.

Adrian

I’ve made things ever since I can remember. By the age of 5, I was happily drawing perfect horses on demand for family members. In those days, crowded into a home with 7 other people, I drew anywhere and on anything I could get my hands on. Even then, drawing was an essential part of who I was

My first studio, the first space I could physically walk into, close the door and focus on only creating work was in New York 25 years later. Having cleared my world of many of the obstacles that repressed my art-making, it was here in this studio that I set forth to clear the mental obstacles that remained. More important than the drawings, videos, curtains and dresses that I made in that space is the personal growth the space allowed.

This is what my office space looked like in Brooklyn, NY, 2007.


This is what the space looks like in my head.


superadriancito

Part One: Home Work

A series on the home we give our work.



Goggla
(that's her on the computer screen)

So...I used to be a painter. That was back when I had a big apartment with room for a table, easel and natural light. Circumstances forced me to move into this smaller space, which was supposed to be for only two months. Those two months have stretched on for almost ten years.

Being in such a small space meant no room for setting up a work space for painting, so I started playing with my camera instead, which took up much less space, but still fulfilled my need to be artistic. These days, I'm 99% digital, but in the beginning, I used the bathroom for loading and exposing film.

This is a shared space, used by my partner during the day and me at night. There's only room for one person's project at a time, so when I need to print, cut mats or assemble pieces, he needs to go elsewhere. As there's not enough space to spread out, I work on one photo at a time. The real problem is storage, so I need to sell anything I make or there is not enough room to make more. The laundry cart functions as the mode of transport to the street or fairs, where I sell my work.

A few years ago, I began investigating the history of the building and that's when I grew very attached to the place - not because it has any significant past, but because it took me on a journey through the evolution of the city. With each new bit of history uncovered, I'd take my camera out to document my findings with the hopes of weaving together a visual story. Working out of the studio gives me a romantic connection to the roots of the Lower East Side where so many businesses were run out of tenements stuffed with families.

I grew up on the spacious west coast, truly believing the notion that NYC was the one place in the world where a young artist could come and make something out of nothing. I've lived in bigger and nicer apartments, but this is the one that connects me to the neighborhood and everything about it that I love; its history of entrepreneurship, activism, creativity and self-expression is what inspires me to get out of bed each morning. That, and the yowling of a hungry cat...

Sunday Memories: The Look of Love

Judith

She escaped from Hungary to England as the Nazis began to round up the Jews. In 1950, she sailed on the Queen Elizabeth into the New York Harbor.

It was morning and the crescent moon glimmered on the water.

The Lady beckoned.

The boat horns blew welcome.

Then the city unfolded before her eyes.

It was love at first sight.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: When It's His Birthday All The Angels Sing

And the world becomes even better than before.

The Look Of Love: Part Two

You can't really see them. But even in the gloom of a jazz club, I couldn't take my eyes off of them.

They matched from head to toe.

Shocking white hair and tanned skin that made them look like vibrant 70 year-olds in a vitamen commercial. Matching white shirts and jeans pretending to be dress pants and pretty shoes disguising their comfort function but not doing such a good job at it.

She looked like a nice girl, a good wife, a perfect helpmate, from a nice life, a safe neighborhod, a coordinated decorated home. He looked dashing and he looked like he knew it. The collar was jauntily turned up and I thought, oh this is a man who is fucking his secretary.

Then Beat Kaestli began to sing a song about a desert island, one made of touch and taste and moans and sighs and when Beat sang about kisses that could only happen on such a desert island I saw the dashing man send a glance to his matching wife that could only be saying how much he lived every word of that song with her.

The Look of Love: Part One

She wears the same soft outdoorsy clothes he does and their shoes are sturdy and hardy and probably very very comfortable and only the colors signify if they are sturdy-hardy-comfy girl shoes or sturdy-hardy-comfy boy shoes.

She strides ahead to the corner to wait for the light to change and he comes up behind her and gently nudges her elbow. Hello, his nudge says, I've caught up with you.

And she turns and smiles and he grins back at her and I see billions of seconds and minutes and moments shared and traveled through and that no matter where they are they get to turn and see that the other one has caught up and now together they can patiently wait for change.

Nobody notices them because they are too old to look like TV love. Love on TV only happens between the ages of of 15 and 22. Sometimes thirty. Occasionally forty. Never eighty.

I follow them for blocks because I need to see what real love looks like.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Thank You All For The Kitchen Series

Who knew how much of our hearts and souls spoke through a kitchen window?

Thank you all to the brave writers who sent in their pictures and words about such an intimate space and moment.

Sunday Memories: Part Nine: A View From A Kitchen

Last in the series, A View From A Kitchen explores what meets our eye when we look up from our dirty dishes or half-full coffee cup.

Me
A bit before 6am.

Even with the recently fixed and repointed bricks on the building facing the window, the view is exactly as it was 35 years ago. But the life inside the kitchen is completely different.

This is the view I had of the transvestite prostitutes catwalking the street as men in cars dreamed of a $10 solution to their lacks and woes.

This is the view I had of the angry crack pimps threatening the resident who dared to challenge their turf with bright lights and video cameras. (He eventually moved quickly from the neighborhood, having realized this was not a movie and he was not Charles Bronson.)

This is the view I stared out of one holiday evening, promising myself the next year would be different and then the next year I looked out again and promised myself that the next year would be different and then the next year and the next year and the year after that, promise after promise floating out and disappearing into thin air along with a sense of my future.

It's the view where I saw at 3 or 4am a woman run down the street in skimpy pajamas and a man also in pajamas run after her, grabbed her, drag her back to some fancy lobby door as she stamped her feet and flipped her hair back and forth. I didn't call the police because it looked like neither of them knew honesty or love. It just looked like a drama neither of them could change or leave.

And this is the view that, after a sudden and unexpected reprieve from having to work a full-time job, I looked up at one day and saw sunlight burst through for brief moments in late afternoon and, after 35 years, realized that any day the sun was out there would be a precious twenty minutes where my home became happy and calm, no matter who was in it or what was happening.

It is the view I hope only I have and that no one below has a view of me in slovenly sweats or sometimes even quite naked as I rush from the shower to put out the fire of a cooking pot accidentally forgotten.

It's the view that has told me how hard it is raining, or how windy it is or how close spring is by the huddled pigeons returning to roost and fuck and make many ugly baby pigeons right by its ledge.

This is the view I have stared out of, through loss and through hope, washing dishes only I used or washing dishes 16 friends used and its constancy has told me my own transformation.

And now, before 6am in the morning, this is the view I stagger to, exhausted, but not questioning, to open a can, reach for a bowl, and burst with feelings I had once only read about while my legs are bumped repeatedly by love for a mommy-can-opener.

Part Eight: A View From A Kitchen

A View From A Kitchen is a series on what meets our eye when we look up from our dirty dishes or half-full coffee cup.


Rebecca and Tim*

When I was ten or 11 years old, I became obsessed with the movie "Crossing Delancey." I'd never been to New York, and my only knowledge of the Lower East Side came from how it was portrayed in the film: as a gray, sooty place crowded with old Jews and handball courts. It didn't look particularly pretty, but it fascinated me, a kid growing up in the leafy confines of a Midwestern college town. Shortly after watching the movie, I drew a picture of a woman buying oranges from a neighborhood sidewalk vendor. She was dressed like the film's protagonist, but in my mind, she was me, or the me I someday hoped to be.

Shortly after I moved into my apartment, I realized that I'd moved into the picture I'd drawn over two decades earlier. I'm reminded of this every time I look out my kitchen window, which provides an unfettered view of the Williamsburg Bridge, the streets and trees that crowd below it, and the yellow brick towers that loom above it. That view places me unequivocally on the Lower East Side, and, as with the movie, allows me to observe New York through a heavily edited filter. I forecast the day's weather based upon the number of people on the bridge, know it's the Sabbath by the crowds of Hasidic families pushing strollers against an oncoming tide of fitness enthusiasts, and at night am reminded of the city's relentless, mysterious energy by the sight of the train rumbling to Brooklyn and back, lit up like an incandescent caterpillar against the darkening sky. On rainy days, the view from my kitchen window allows me to imagine I'm in a New York that otherwise only exists to me in Steiglitz photographs.

It is, in other words, my link to the past, both one that I never experienced and one in which I dreamed that my future would somehow be made in this city that at the time was as unreachable as a movie set, as alluring as tropical fruit glimpsed from a busy sidewalk.

***

*Post Script: Rebecca and Tim are the new eyes who look out the old windows of Florence's apartment. Those windows couldn't have been luckier.

Part Seven: A View From A Kitchen

A View From A Kitchen is a series on what meets our eye when we look up from our dirty dishes or half-full coffee cup.



Dana

You mean the Empire State Building?

Then there’s the bridge.

And the blue bottles – they’re European water bottles.

And the people rushing across the bridge.

At night it’s spectacular. They [at the Empire State Building] observe all the holidays.