It Was Her New York: Ruth (1929-2010)

Painting by Myron Heise (section)

Grew up in a cold water flat in the back of a candy store in Brooklyn, maybe Greenpoint. Self-educated, she put universities to shame and thwarted the New York Times crossword puzzle every day of the week. Believed in a world based on social justice and married for love, a man who the eve of his daughter's birth put on a tuxedo because that's how important such an event was.

When she became a widow she took over the newspaper stand in Times Square that was her husband's who had inherited the business from his father. That's her in the right hand corner wearing the red sleeveless shirt. Myron Heise, an artist and one of her employees at the stand painted it.

We knew her as the hippest mother on the Lower East Side. She had style, was filled with verve, wore great earrings and she traveled to Italy, a place I knew composers of the 1600's once lived, but not a place I knew living people visited. At least not the people in our neighborhood.

This cold Sunday, her loving family, her adoring neighbors, her loyal friends, her fellow travelers, the community she built through a ferocious dedication to learn, understand and connect gathered at her house. And with a reminder to not use the word "hopefully" her life was honored.
***

Tis a Fearful Thing

It is a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.

A fearful thing
to love, hope, dream:

to be--

to be,
And! to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

and
a holy thing,

a holy thing
to love.

For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

'Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing,
to love
what death has touched.

--Anonymous

Sunday Memories: Metamorphosis

It was 1996 when we sprawled across my bed and pondered how to keep our feet moving toward our destiny. Our hopes were young. She said a writing group but one that's about everything in our lives. I said every three weeks because two were too short and four too long.

Other than the times there was a death in the family (2) or a tough break-up (more than 2, less than 5), we met in person or on the phone every three weeks and in several hours old goals got discussed and new goals got made. Before we knew it, fourteen years had past and the old twists and turns from ferocious effort and breathtaking kismet had brought wild dreams into startling realities.

Perhaps to the outside world, we changed or stayed the same. But to us, we just became ourselves more and more and more. Sand in an oyster we are now pearls.

my comrade and my friend, Josslyn

"Every Mile Is Two In Winter"*

Stores going....


...or gone.


But winter on Sixth Avenue never changes.




*George Herbert (1593 - 1633)
English clergyman & metaphysical poet

The Secret Worlds....

Sunday Memories: My First Time

How the past new years eves were spent I have no idea. There were no celebrations in our home, no watching our parents dress up for some party and no loud horns blowing at midnight. In our neighborhood, new years was celebrated in the fall and the only horn that blew was the shofar at sunset announcing the new year had begun and the fast of the Day of Atonement could be broken.

Then came high school in another neighborhood with kids from other neighborhoods. It was very exciting. Especially when one classmate announced that her brother who went to another school in still another neighborhood which had even more kids from even more neighborhoods was going to invite his friends and she could invite her friends and it would be a real co-ed new years eve party.

Then it got even better. The brother and sister lived right by Central Park and there was going to be a rock band playing so we would even go dancing. Boys, dancing, new years eve. This all added up to one thing. Kissing.

Other than my insistence that Florence kiss me or my kissing my father good-bye in the morning, kissing-kissing was non-existent in my corner of the Lower East Side. However, Didi, a classmate who was also invited to the party had kissed. She dragged me into the girls bathroom of the 6th Avenue Horn and Hardart.

"Ok! If he [imaginary love of my life boy] goes like this..." and she tilted her head inches away from mine..."then you go like this..." and I tilted my head the other way.

"Now, if he goes like this..." and she moved straight into my face..."Then you tilt like this..."

We practiced. Tilting one way and then the other always stopping inches away from one another. I was 13 years old. I was ready.

The parents were welcoming but the only thing that mattered were the boys. It began to rain as we headed to Central Park. I don't remember anything about the music except that it called all of us to dance and dance and dance in tons of puddles and the cute boy with the sweet smile was great to dance with.

What happened after that belongs to the fog that embraced me for years before and years after, surrounding any event that was overwhelming and too upsetting to me. But some vague details remain. There were some negotiations with the other boys and girls to allow cute boy and me kiss in the bedroom the boys were suppose to sleep in. And that first kiss and the couple we got in after were dazzling and breathtaking and I felt things I had never felt before and was really really enjoying myself when a tall lean and very angry parental figure appeared.

The party was over.

It Was...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...






...it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...






...it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...






.,.it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...


It was....

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
English novelist (1812 - 1870)

May the New Year offer us all a time we always dreamed of.
CO Moed

The Art of Undressing

It was a good question.

Standing there, dripping wet from freezing rain, O'Keefe pointed out that with such lousy weather and cold subway platforms and packed subway cars and overheated apartments (but never when you wanted heat), it was hard to know what to keep on and what to take off at any given moment.

Was there ever room in rush hour to hold one's coat on one's lap? Did coats get fatter since we were kids sitting in our polite wool coats on the IND line? The puffed coats we now all seem to wear make us look like packing peanuts in a box.

What about taking shoes off at friend's doorways? I remember taking off boots if the weather was awful, but not other times. Now custom seems to dictate all kinds of footwear taken off in all kinds of weather which also seems to dictate wearing socks or feet not horrendously shabby.

There seemed to be no answer except to overheat or strip.

Sunday Memories: The Road Less Traveled

It's a vague memory from another time and place. But I dimly recall our odd little family - a mother father older sister and me - striking out into the empty city on Christmas Day.

It wasn't our holiday and for weeks we had relinquished the streets to activity only done for our birthdays. Now with everyone tucked into family traditions never done in our home on any day of the year, we walked the streets and traveled the subways relishing a city solely ours until New Years.

Blood On The Tracks

It was so cold and so late and so far uptown, too far uptown when it was that cold and that late.

Everyone did the precarious tipping over like a little teapot and stared down the dark tunnel hoping the IRT would zoom into sight because all our eyeballs were magnets and it couldn't resist the pull.

That's when I saw the MTA guy walking the tracks, swinging his lantern and flashing his flashlight.

He moved slow, scrutinizing every inch of all the metal and concrete and third rail and pools of floating garbage. Nothing broke his slow, steady stride, not even the rat running across his path in an attempt to avoid him. Behind him were three other men, also swinging lanterns and flashing flashlights and walking slow.

I got that sinking feeling of oh shit the way they're walking no train will be coming like forever.

Then in slow motion the first guy turned and waved his lantern.

Out of nowhere, a train had appeared.

All the guys strolled toward the pillars. The train tooted its horn.

"Hey, what are you looking for?" I asked.

He wasn't even near his pillar. Just stopped and gave me a long look. Then said, "Everything."

At his feet was the body of a dead rat lying in a pool of blood.

"Like that?" I asked

Another long look. The train was practically in the station. "Yeah. A lot of those."

And with that he disappeared into pillars and the blur of a train headed downtown.

It Was Like Grand Central Station In There*

"Where do I get the subway?"
"How do I get to New Haven?"
"Where do I get the subway?"
"Is it on track 42?"
"Where do I get the subway?"
"How do I get to JFK?"
"The subway is where?"


"I'll walk you there."


"Look! Look!"


*the common description of any place crazy busy mischugah

Sunday Memories: Playing Telephone

This is a telephone.

Florence's apartment has one just like this in her kitchen.

You stick your finger in one of those holes and then rotate the dial for each number of the number you are calling.

You can walk and talk on this phone as far as the cord goes.

A long time ago, like in the 1970's, when the phone company owned everything, this was the official phone of the apartment. Any extra phone, you had to pay extra. Nobody paid extra. We all had illegal phones. All wired up to this main phone with splices and electrical tape. If the phone company suddenly appeared at your door you had to quickly dismantle all the jerry-rigged illegal phones and hide them.

One time the guy showed up unexpected and I got my hair wet so he'd think I had been in the shower and that's why I kept him waiting outside the door, but really I was dismantling our extensions. And another time the phone guy grilled me for 5 minutes insisting there must be other phones in the house because he couldn't believe three girls could share one phone that resided in a then bedroom. I insisted we were all very close and could. He knew I was hiding ill-gotten equipment.

Then everything changed and the phone company owned nothing. The height of modern technology was pushing buttons instead of sticking fingers in holes. That and longer cords. Then things got crazy and you didn't need cords or wires at all.

Now, you don't even need a home to have a phone.

What I love most about this phone: during the blackout and 911 it still worked.

Saving Small Businesses One Video At A Time

Gosh it makes me warm and tingly all over. Well, off to shop at KMart!

... but seriously folks. In my railing against the erosion of my city, I too must ask myself about my decisions of where I shop. More and more I am steering myself away from the bigger national chains and spending what little money I have at the local stores. And some of the small locally owned stores are thriving because lots of us are asking ourselves those hard questions.

So, if you can grab a meal at your local luncheonette verses that at a national chain, go ahead! The counter guy probably will give you extra and remember you the next time and the time after that and soon he'll remember your birthday, your ex-boyfriend, your mother, and that you love the bacon really crispy and the egg cream really sweet. When did that ever happen to you at a Quiznos or Uno's? Hmmm?

They Came From Outta Town- Part Four

Blogger Smoke and Gaslight got on a train one day, arrived in Grand Central Station, walked into a building and got a job. She knew she had come home.

Then something happened. One day here or there one word led to another which led to one place and then another, which led to a box opened, a dusty book discovered, a building explored, and before she knew it, a man, 75 years dead, became her tour guide as she traveled through the mysteries of this city.

http://smokeandgaslight.blogspot.com

Sunday Memories: When Third Street Was Still Third Street

Before Third Street Music School moved to 11th Street and before it became a shelter run by the radical Catholic Worker, this is where we spent years of Saturdays and a couple of Wednesdays.

The block was no different from all the other blocks in the neighborhood - tenements and lots of dog doo on the sidewalk. With one exception. The Hell's Angels which mean it was the safest block in the East Village. Except if you fucked with them. Once someone parked near the bikes and accidently touched one of them. The bikers picked up the car and dropped it down and almost beat up the driver who was just a father dropping his kid off at the music school.

That rarely happened since most of us got to Third Street by bus or train.

Trudging past the Angels from the Avenue A bus stop, sidestepping the doo, and once tits were evident, sidestepping the bikers' looks, Saturday was an entire day of misery filled with theory classes, violin lessons, and orchestra rehearsal.

But in the cracks between all these obligations we raced up and down Second Avenue, sneaking into the exotic pet store, pooling pennies together for treats at the small and solitary candy store, and once in a blue moon blowing everything on a hot dog at the other famous kosher deli place on 5th Street. Karen's father said that if you checked any of the garbage cans on Second Avenue you'd find the bologna sandwich that Florence had made me for lunch. We never went further than Moishe's which was closed for Shabbas anyway.

The best part of the day was when our motley crew of mostly girls gathered at the top of the landing. There the handsome neighborhood boy sat making sure everyone got everywhere they needed to go. A viscous game of knucks would ensue, leaving bloody knuckles and swooning hearts and secret crushes which in my case didn't abate for years.

What Really Happened In Rear Window

Nothing.

If you weren't James Stewart or Grace Kelly and let's face it no one in New York below 14th Street or above 86th was, that rear window was where private disappointments, thinking the darkness meant they were alone, screamed at one another, and silent prayers of despair and desperation floated up the air shaft with hopes there was a god listening.

Meat Fest 2009

A week of chasing cow and pig with one or two chickens thrown ended in exhaustion and a slow trip across the street to the good but not silly expensive Japanese restaurant.

It was her annual trip.

Already someone, a New Yorker of more than 50 years had, in hopes of luring her home, told her about an apartment in Brooklyn. "Williamsburg! and the ceilings are 11 feet high and the rent is only $750!" Such deals are murmured as if it were World World II and the Axis powers train lines were going to be bombed.

She pondered over squid legs and crunchy eel if moving here from the cornfields would dampen inspiration. After all, when she did her annual visit she often went to more Museums than I had all year.

Sunday Memories: Sunday Visits

It started when on Saturday I tried to walk down the street with Robyn under her umbrella. As I changed sides not to bump into my friend's bag, I suddenly lost sight of her. From deep within me I heard Florence's voice calling to Robyn "Where are you?"

"Oh! I sound just like my mother," I said.

"Where are you?" is what Florence would demand as she sat in that beat up old black chair watching again Singing in the Rain again or Sister Act again.

Unless I was taking a picture I'd usually be sitting next to her, knitting or jotting notes.

Her hand would skitter out from under the blanket and look for mine while never taking her eyes of the screen of a movie she couldn't remember having just seen a week earlier. The minute she'd find my hand, she'd know where I was and hold it tight.

Any knitting or note taking I was doing would cease. And we would watch the movie I did remember seeing over and over and over again and the tap dancing would tap and the singing would sing and the rain would rain and the trains outside would go by and the Sunday afternoon air would be not still or filled but just be Sunday air.

In this picture, it is the rare time she didn't care where I was. Joni had been able to get to New York to visit. And Florence wanted to show her this great movie. "Singing in the Rain! Have you seen it?!"

So this time, after turning it on for her again I got to get up and take a picture of something I knew would never ever happen again.

Home Sweet Home Is In The Bag

The safety sought and occasionally found in Home haunted Florence and me for many years, often appearing in our reluctance to leave the house or the throwing out of old objects.

When attempting to introduce a bath mat that wasn't from 1963 or unstained shower curtains that actually matched, Florence's terror of losing something that reminded her of all her years in that apartment exploded in rage and heartbreak and pain, even though all I was doing was introducing a couple of clean shower curtains and a bath mat that wasn't a petrie dish.

But almost like a person who cringed before a camera fearful their soul was being captured, the tossing of her old belongings felt as if history was being ripped out of her. It took weeks of angry exchanges before one day without warning new things were suddenly Home.

In embracing odd and familiar beloved items from her estate - a spatula, a coffee table, the wine opener - I too felt parts of her and parts of me affirmed, still there, brought home. Each thing made my apartment feel like a safer place to be, a home where decades before in desperate hope the pain would end, I had repeatedly curled up in cupboards or corners or benches seeking a safe moment of Home. When O'Keefe suggested replacing her old oversize coffee table with another, I sobbed, the thought of losing what was left of Florence too great to bear.

Tonight as emails flew back and forth to the new person in what once was Florence's home, the kitten, found in a box in the rain on Queens Boulevard, sought a corner of Home for himself - my bag, which often signaled I was leaving him alone for too lonely too long an amount of time. This evening, hearing rain begin outside, without question or pondering he recognized the warm space he needed to have stay, a guarantee his mommy/can opener would stick around a bit longer and that he'd be safe for a while.

Even The Cat Was Found On The Street

You left things on the street. You picked things up from the street. It was the New York Ikea when Ikea was still just in Sweden and New Jersey.

Beds, chairs, mattresses, bureaus, shelves, knick-knacks, desks, cupboards, plates, cups, coats, even shoes. Florence had many, many chairs gotten from departing neighbors, Coney Island vendors and street corner garbage heaps. I had many many chairs and surprisingly many many tables from departing roommates, stoop sales and street corner garbage heaps.

But now even if the items are left to be taken on sidewalks or by trash cans, even if there is a note that says TAKE ME, I feel a hesitancy, an embarrassment as it were that thirty years after furnishing my first and only home from the remnants of other people's lives, I am still too broke to buy things new.

In the final sweep of emptying Florence's apartment, things have come in and things now wait to go out, this time maybe to a friend, or neighbors.

Or if left on the street corner, maybe to someone still brave enough to pick it up and take it home.

The cat of course stays.

Sunday Memories: Where I Still Could Find Her

O'Keefe asked me to explain all this.



I said I was trying to illuminate where New York and Florence still were themselves even as they faded from recognizable forms.



And now a year after Florence died and New York continued in its odd way and the home I grew up in now looks like a nice apartment for other people we never were, there are places still here and there, still persistently themselves ....



....that I go to to feel at home.