Sometimes You Get To Go Back To Your New York

The minute I saw him taking a picture of the front door, I knew this was His New York.

The gate of 217 hasn't changed he told me. It was just like that when he was a young man of 18, fresh from Brazil, right after the war, working for the United States Consulate.

Of course, pointing up to the second or third floor, he had just a small room, enough space for a bed. The toilet and anything else he might desire was outside his tiny habitat.

It had taken him 18 days on a ship to arrive in a city so different then. After a very brief stay on Ellis Island - a letter from the Commanding Officer on the U.S. Base in Brazil made sure it was brief - he got a lift into the heart of the city.

"Where should I drop you?" asked the driver.

"At a square," he replied.

There, smack in the middle of the sidewalk, filled with the milling crowd of New Yorkers on the run to someplace else, was the sergeant from the very U.S. base in Brazil where his journey had begun. In a city of millions, what were the chances of him, all of 18, fresh off the boat, finding a familiar face at rush hour?

"I'm writing a book about my life," he told me.

"I can't wait to read it," I replied.

In the meantime, I quietly gave thanks that, while rushing to someplace else, late as always, blasting music, I too got a million-in-one chance to do something I rarely do. I stopped and asked a complete stranger about their own New York.

Sunday Memories: For My Sister's Birthday

Somewhere there's a pictures of my sister, Louise, then twelve years old, sitting at an upright piano in this bandshell. She won third prize in a city-wide competition of all the kids in public school taking music lessons and dance lessons. At least that's how I remember it.

That bandshell was part of all our lives when, the arts were in the public school system along with the three 'R's. So Louise being up there was normal. And because she loved playing so much it was normal she'd get a ribbon or a little statue or something heralding her accomplishments.

On a recent day of fading summer, while a ragtime band played nearby and babies and dogs bounced along to the swing, the chiseled inscription on the lip of the stage stood strong and unwavering. It was written in stone.

Presented to the City of New York and its music lovers by Elkan Naumburg

And just as it had welcomed my sister then, it welcomes now any and all the kids and parents and neighbors and passerbyers and anyone and everyone who graces its presence.

Welcome To His New York. Got Kidney?

This is Juan.

And he needs a kidney.

He's New York Mitchell Lama houses on 95th and Amsterdam. When he was growing up there, you still could see New Jersey from Amsterdam. Never lived anywhere else but New York (and you can't count those 8 months in Kansas City). His high school job was opening-the- doors-closing-the-doors at the Planetarium. TWA flight attendants, then glamorous heroes of the sky, in full length fur coats taught him the difference between a silly drink of vodka and orange juice and the sophistication of a kir royale. Christmas finery in those days was skinny jeans and a shirt unbuttoned down to there. Well, after all it was the 70's.

Then Tom met him.



Tom is not from New York. He's from Missouri. He moved to New York and went to a Buddhist gathering. Took one look at Juan and that was that. And that was 26 years ago. Tom is the only reason Juan lived in Kansas City for eight months.

I ask Juan, "What about you is New York?"

"I experienced everything. We didn't grow up with money, but I experienced everything."

This is my friend, Juan. And what I want him to experience is something he hasn't before - a new kidney.

So if you are B+ or maybe even O or O+ or 0- and you got a kidney, my friend needs your help.

And if you are not any of those things, would you help and pass this post forward? Post it to your blog, post it to your facebook, send it out with your pigeons, let your friends know.

Spread the word. And welcome to His New York.

The Lights of Autumn

Sunday Memories: The Last Days Of Summer

Coney, on a Friday morning


Before Google there were these guys.

Straight out of one of my adventure books, I'd watch, mesmerized, as they use mysterious rays to penetrate the earth's surface seeking, in waning days and emptying beaches, a buried treasure.

A Day On 23rd Street

It was the fifth thrift store and like most of the other places, dogs were allowed.

Several of us recognized each other from previous shopping stops where collaborative efforts and group participation was part of the process in making wise fashion decisions.

We were all on the ferocious hunt for something under $10 that made us look like a million bucks, only five to ten pounds thinner.

But finally after patient waiting by full racks, like many two-legged male companions, including the very tolerant one with me that day, Louie stopped for a break.

Save The Books!!! A New York City Kickstarter Project That Isn't A Film!!!!

The Quartchyard


Somehow, despite all, Clayton Patterson has given the history and the events of the Lower East Sides haven in his work, photos, films, videos and archives.

Somehow, despite all, he and Dr. Mareleyn Schneider have completed a three volume anthology, JEWS, A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE.

And somehow, despite all, including the distributing publisher not having the funds to print, only to distribute, they are determined to get this important collection published.

Clayton was kind enough to include the story I wrote about Cindy and home, The Land Of The Quartchyard in this magnificent collection.

Other pieces include:

• Emma Goldman – First Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side
• Jewish Boxing in the Lower East Side
• Public Baths on the Lower East Side
• Tuli Kupferberg: The Meaning of the Jew in the Dictionary of Anarchism
  

Irresistible!! So please join me in supporting this project by joining in and kick starting it!

Every bit helps!

Thank you so much!

Sunday Memories and Encore: Brief Peace in Late Night

A Tibetan Monk had been tortured for years by the Chinese authorities. When released the Dali Lama met with the Monk. His Holiness asked the Monk if he was ever afraid during those horrific years.

"Yes," the Monk answered. "I was afraid I would stop feeling compassion for my torturers."

Peace, wherever, whenever and however we can welcome it into our hearts and our world, should never become a memory.


November 18, 2010



It was past the world's bedtime. No one was really there.

Still, the remaining countries who had waited days to speak stepped up to the podium, and in the formal shoes of a tired man or the polite heels of a fatigued woman, addressed the empty seats.

World, they said, let's give peace a chance our country is hurting your country is hurting we are all hurting there is no need for this...

If the seats could have nodded they would have and they would have made sure something was done to make it better. But instead, each word bounced and banged against walls and ceilings.

We, the scribes, though, we made sure the words didn't shatter against hard surfaces.

We, the scribes, noted stressed stated said and urged.

We, the scribes, made sure even in empty spaces peace was recorded and thus given a chance.

You Could Even Hear The Food

Neither of us had realized what was different until the guy next to us at the bar said "Do you hear any loud rock music?"

There was none.

Which is why we had been able to eavesdrop on his fascinating conversations with his friend on his left about the 32 years at the Daily News working delivery...

...his neighbor on his right about the 1950's magazines he found in the trash right next door...

...and then finally turning to us about how the neighborhood had gone downhill it wasn't a neighborhood anymore and all these expensive restaurants how the hell can you eat with all that noise...

...and then his neighbor on his right joined in...

...and soon we were all talking, complaining, comparing, and one-upping...

"I got my mother's old New Yorkers."
"My mother IS an old New Yorker."

...Because that's what New Yorkers do. Talk to anyone anywhere we are. Like here at this old West Village establishment where it is quiet enough to taste to hear to connect.

Autumn In New York

St. James Place, near where Gramma lived, Jonathan, Raymond, and Stephen grew up, right by where Dad took us for pork buns, always on the way home from the ferry.

Sunday Memories: Luxury Is In The Eye That Beholds It

A new chocolate shop beckoned. Delicious plans were afoot. "Gourmet chocolate vending machines!" the handsome young owner shared.

Oh, but we had those too. Sprinkled across subway platforms, for a nickel, then a dime and then for a precious quarter, a small delight of luxurious heaven awaited.

Avant Et Après Le Déluge

Sunday Memories Encore: "Let the rain kiss you... Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops..." Langston Hughes

Even the homeless man wheeled his hand truck under the awning. But I threw myself forward hoping the clouds growing dark were lying or at least not telling me the truth for a few more blocks.

and then it rained and the two old ladies cared tenderly for one another as they prepared to step into the storm.



their love I cried later after the storm had finished.

Love Letters From The Most Beautiful Harbor In The World

Until I got on the Ferry I had forgotten how the smells and sounds were as intimate with me as Florence's music.

Lucy Is In And Giving Advice On Staten Island

It started with the ladies at the pool who needed swim tips and some goggles... And then someone said something maybe it was Karen and someone else said something else maybe it was Lorie and before you could say "Ask Anything - Free Advice" tee shirts were made and you know when you make a tee shirt that's it. You're committed. So one afternoon in between the comings and going of the Ferry, the sea rising and falling, the storm warning it was growing and the skyline wooing anyone willing to stop and look, Lorie and Karen set up shop and, from expertise hard-earned-hard-won because they know their borough their city their own lives, answered for free any question asked...

• What do I do first to start over after prison?
• How do I make peace with my adult daughter?
• Would God forgive me?

And of course the only question always there... love and love and love and... a marriage betrayed, a boyfriend loved, a girlfriend desired, a couple's confusion, a hope for union... and love and love and love and...* *Earth Wind And Fire-That's The Way Of The World

Encore - Sunday Memories: THE LOOK OF LOVE

Today is Judith's birthday. She is 90. The elegance and spirit from which she has built her life continues to emerge each day, paving the way for the rest of us to rise and become just as extraordinary.


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.

It Was Also Her City College. It Was Always Her New York

Mimi breaking the rules by not knowing they're there.



We saw each other around City College enough to recognize each other on the plane to China. It was 1986 so not many people were going there. There was a dormitory just for foreigners and I know there must have been other exchange students with curly hair just like her and me but no one immediately comes to mind.

There was maybe one western style hotel and a couple of discos if at all. One night we went to that disco. The club closed except for us westerners and the one memory I can really remember was watching Mimi and Jaffe danced to the song everyone had played from every Brooklyn stoop that past summer.

She was intrepid as much as I was timid so I went home after the semester exchange ended and she traveled to the ends of the earth when not many people were going there.

It Was Her City College. It Was Her New York

I would study all night and sometimes even the day before all night for the geology class we both had to take as part of our science requirement and she would show up at the Greeks - the only diner near campus - and plying us both with hot caffeine that might have been coffee, I would tell her everything that was supposed to be on the test and then she'd get a B while I barely squeaked by with a C.

Misha is New York and the subway and the street and Puerto Rican and Jewish and the Mitchell Lamas on Amsterdam when nobody lived nowhere and sushi was one place downtown and she is embedded in my home DNA there are words and dances and story-telling-on-you and lemme tell you when a New York Grrl tells a story it is not a quiet event so go some place else for soft elegance because when we laugh we laugh everything and our whole bodies burst.

A Special Sunday's Vows: First In The Eyes Of God And Now In The Eyes Of New York

Doug and Shawn got married.



Friends asked if they could play music for the party.



We all couldn't stop hugging them...



and hugging them...



...and hugging them...



It was a celebration of what America was and could be.

For where else, Rev. Sparks asked us, could a Baptist preacher marry two Jewish men in a bar on the Lower East Side of New York.

And after they cut the cake....



...all that remained at the end of the night was love, honored by friends and family and now, finally, protected by the laws of the land. At least in New York State.



Altar photo: Celeste McClain

The Playground

Me and Rags hang out at the benches both watching all the other dogs play. I get extra big friendly with the other dog owners so that maybe their dogs will play with Rags or maybe they'll make their dogs play with Rags. Which I don't think works with dogs. (It also doesn't work with kids but nobody really wants to cop to that.)

Eventually Rags barks at the gate and we leave and I remind myself repeatedly it's not my childhood, it's just a dog park.

Special Announcement: ITCH #13-THE MAGIC RABBIT Includes The Writing On The Wall

itch, an evolving artist forum cum journal/zine included The Writing On The Wall in their issue, #13-THE MAGIC RABBIT.

One of the few hard-copy journals surviving in these challenging times, itch servces the community of dancers and other artists in Los Angeles and beyond. Check out their website and take them up on their invitation to grow with them!

Sunday Memories: Mamalochen

"I'm goin' ta Coney," I tell Dana.

"Why?" she asks.

"'cause this Master's student is doing a documentary on home and New York and nostalgia and stuff and she asked if we could go to Coney to shoot some video."

"Oh. You're going to your Mamalochen."

And when I see these three after their morning-beach-sit I remember my mother tongue and the heart that goes with it.

This Is Pat and Rags' New York

Pat and I have lived next door to one another since 1976. Rags moved in much later. She was Stephen's.

Pat's the real thing.

Grew up in the Bronx, worked the newspapers when newspapers were still newspapers and journalists were still journalists. Knows everybody who's anybody who made New York reporting the kind of reporting they make movies about, including all those tough guys that actors imitate when they have to play a "real" reporter.

Jupiter is still in love with Rags but completely confused about it ever since Rags stopped ignoring him and started visiting us. So now Rags runs into the apartment, Jupiter runs away, Rags sniffs all the rooms, Jupiter runs after him, Rags eats all Jupiter's food, Jupiter watches, Rags runs out, Jupiter follows and then after Rags goes home or to the park, Jupiter sits at her door and sniffs for about an hour.

This is home and this is our New York.

Home Home Home On The Range

At Queensboro Plaza getting the N or the Q because the 7 isn't going into Manhattan on the weekend

The same MTA guy there when I got on the 7 to Main Street three hours earlier, still there on my way back still shouting into the megaphone...

"I'm just delivering the information they can receive it or not" but admitting 9 hours of this well he was just going to have to pray and give it to God when he sang in church the next day...

...and the gaggle of boys, speaking something I thought at first Korean but one gets sassy with me thought I'd be too nervous to tell him yes his hair cut was very attractive...

...and when I tell him I had the same cut in the 1980s including the shade in the back he figures out I was born in the 60's...

"I'm good at math, I'm Asian" they're headed to a party, they're from Tibet, they're arguing about which stop to get off, there will be girls there and they keep asking me which of them I thought was cute ...

...he seems like a good looking kid" and the kid going "I'm 19!" and I go "I'm old enough to be your grandmother, you're a kid"...

...and them all laughing and pushing and fixing their many different hair cuts trying not to look too fussy, I say to the sassy kid "you want to know how to get a girl interested in you? Listen to her" and him nodding but hoping he doesn't have to do much more to get her to kiss him...

...and then after the boys rush out to somewhere in Queens finally on the home stretch a family - the mom, the older sister who looked just like the mom, the fierce little brother, and the middle sister who had asked the screaming MTA guy for directions because her mother didn't speak enough English...

They sit down and I knit another pair of socks and the girl asks me what I'm doing and who I'm giving them for and the older sister takes out their new pet, a beta fish they got at the 99 cent store but it cost $7 they named her Vanessa...

...and that little girl smiles and I tell her about my fishes Esmerelda, Harold and Skuzy and her fierce little brother comes over because he wants to listen and they all get off at 34th waving good-byes and I miss them already...

It's all home as I go home.

Sunday Memories: The Last Time We Met We Used Pen And Paper

Twenty-five years ago, we were all in China together. We wrote on thin pieces of paper mailed in pretty envelopes with rarely seen stamps to friends and family who got our news maybe two weeks later and by that time the homesick may have past, a heart may have been broken after notes of hope read, and new adventures had in a foreign language.

The Aftermath Dedicated To Florence

Florence always said "sitting down is half the battle."

I never really thought she was sharing, just instructing. Giving me another piece of artist theory like the sight singing she drilled me in or the ear training we did every day until I was a teenager with too much fury to cooperate.

But she wasn't just talking to me. She was talking to herself, cooing at her own terrors and reminding them that once that butt hit the chair the rest would show up. All she had to do was sit down.

"Half the battle is sitting down," I'd murmur to myself as I ran through the city day after day, too frightened to face packed pages while there were friends still awake and meals to eat and second-hand furniture to consider.

Sitting down then came deep in the night when the air was cooler, the streets were quieter and the desperation to not go a day without writing stronger than the desperation to run away. And once the butt hit the chair the rest showed up pouring out of moving fingers while piles of life were discarded or pushed away for other times when sitting was not such a joy.

Sitting and sitting and sitting and one night, deep and late, something was finally finished.

Special Announcement and Alert from Chelsea Hotel Blog

Living with Legends: The Hotel Chelsea Blog, one of the most important blogs in New York City, contacted me this morning and asked for help in spreading the word on their recent posting.

The Hotel Chelsea, during its years as a true haven for artists and their friends, would often accept art work in lieu of rent. The recent looting speaks of something much deeper than paintings being taken off walls by new management. How a society responds to looting is significant of how civilized it is. Just as how "the greatness of a society and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals" (Mahatma Gandhi). Both are expressions of our hearts and souls and our respect for expression and life.

Thieves and butchers only work well in darkness and secrecy. So please help spread this post. To friends, neighbors, fellow artists, family, blogs and bloggers.

*photo by Hotel Chelsea Blog

Sunday Memories: Nina

Baby Nina

Oh it was exciting when Nina arrived.

The announcement didn't leave the refrigerator until she was deep into grade school and the stains threatened to eat up Bob and Carola's faces.

During toddler years, her finding the volume control on the remote meant any minute we'd hear a blast of 'Talking Heads' or some TV show. "YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF..." always reminds me of her. Just those words. At full volume.

Sax lessons were sweet to listen to. She had some swing. Then she switched to piano. Her recital at Third Street Music I kvelled the whole piece through.

Woman Nina

Now, while her folks are at a wedding, we hang out and watch PARENTHOOD, drink beer, eat Chinese food and talk about Lautrec and biology and having kids and gossip about the actors and the transferring of credit and all the while cliches whirled in my head and occasionally leaked out making me sound like every old lady on the lower east side.

I remember you when you were just this big

You have time you're young.

Oy.

There Is So Little Here That Didn't Travel Through Time And Space...

...to come together and make a home.

The chairs from Florence the table Dad made the lamp a gift from someone moving the sofa offered up for free the shower curtains from a now-closed store the plants from neighbors the Buddha from hope

In The Dog Days Of Summer...

...the Cat stays cooooooool. Just like a cooooooool cat does.

Sunday Memories: Otis's Ladder

It was left in the apartment early on, I think in the 70's. Otis brought it up to fix something or maybe I borrowed it. But it remained after he left.

A hulking presence - like a six year old boy who didn't understand why he was 6'8" when all the other kids in kindergarten were kids size - this ladder moved from corner to corner in the odd shaped hall, never quite blending into the wall, but still becoming part of the scenary.

However, its height was necessary in an old apartment of ceilings beyond reach and so it hulked about. At some point its rungs held the excessive number of shopping bags I felt were too pretty to throw away, but too pretty to use.

It was used maybe a couple of times a year when a bulb had to be replaced or the even rarer event of changing a light fixture. It didn't matter what you were using it for. The minute you stepped on it it wobbled and swayed, even if you were on the lowest rung. Only Joni had the presence of balance to meander about on the very top.

As space within and without opened and an old home cleared for new welcomes, this ladder, covered with history from before I moved in 35 years ago, was quietly taken to a storage closet, my name now taped to it. No one, but me, would remember it had once been Otis's.

They Don't Have Real Food Where She Lives

Cuz Patty needed deli and she only had a few days in New York.

Deli is in her blood. She comes from the same grandparents I come from, the ones on the Lower East Side surviving diaspora and poverty, domestic violence and disease.

Where she lives now, pastrami comes in plastic and is served with mayo on white bread. And the only blintzes in a ten mile radius is frozen and made of tofu.

So in 100 degree weather, we trekked to the Second Avenue Deli which used to be on 10th and 2nd but the landlord raised the rent and now it's on 33rd and 3rd and the minute we walked in we smelled the smells of food we knew like we knew the names of our ancestors.

2:17 pm


2:23 pm