Tales From A Hard Day's Night: Mieux La Chance, Que L'Address (Better Luck Than Skill)

The last of a brief series on one October week in Her New York's.  

We opened at the end.  

We close at the beginning. 

I had prepared.  Just In Case.

Batteries, two transistor radios, two flashlights, kitchen matches and Jade Mountain match books.  Many yahrzeit candles.

The old rotary cooper-wiring landline phone plugged in and operating.

The gas stove from the 1940s cooking.  With gas. And since we were a short building, with water for coffee or tea or hard boiled eggs.

I had prepared.  Just In Case. 

Then Just In Case happened.

I was prepared.

But there was no way I could have prepared for the luck of love and friendship unfolding evenings  into storytelling and quiet conversation.

**
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Tales From A Hard Day's Night: The Light At The End Of The...

Tales From A Hard Day's Night: Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?

A brief series on one October week in Her New York's.  Doris Day didn't show up.  But the rest of us did.

Some went door to door, checking on those who were a bit older (but only by a couple of years) just to make sure flashlights had batteries and the ancient landlines were working.

Still, others gathered around the coffee cake that was supposed to have headed to the West Village that day, but now needed to be eaten before it went bad.  

Which could have been at any minute so we ate almost all of it.

A couple of us ventured out to charge at a friend's the many gadgets  essential to our lives and send out important emails and information, but lets face it, we were all on facebook within 10 minutes. 

It was the travel back that stunned us.  Not that we had just seen lights and had internet access for the first time in days , but that, as we headed home out of the land of the power,  before us rose a wall of visual silence.

Finally home in that stunned darkness, the candles got lit, and many dusty bottles that had been hanging around high shelves in many apartments got plunked down and opened, just to see how many had turned into rubbing alcohol.

Tales From A Hard Day's Night: Darkest Before The Dawn

A brief series on one October week in Her New York's. Another day without power calls for tough decisions and tougher actions. Cooking.

Even with our Olympic-like speeds of opening and closing the refrigerator,  the food was headed to bad.

So everything that still could be was cooked or baked.  Of course, burning guaranteed anything icky would die.  It also guaranteed a visit from a worried neighbor that on top of everything else there had been another fire.

Burnt brownies are, in fact, quite tasty.

With bowls and pots and extra bottles of wine, we gathered upstairs before evening fell in the staircase. What seemed like just minutes later the sky was pitch black, our faces were flushed with wine and all the food had been eaten.

**
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Tales From A Hard Day's Night: The Light At The End Of The...

A brief series on one October week in Her New York's. We open at the end.

Seven days and a couple of hours after the storm beat up families, homes and neighborhoods, furious walls of water filled streets, and the Con Edison power station exploded the city into darkness, the world not only lit up with electricity.  It lit up with hope and relief.


Related Posts From 2008

Shona Tova, Shona Tova, a voting day for all of us, Shona Tova

Gave Proof Through The Night That Our Flag Was Still There

Sunday Memories: Once Only Memory, It Returns

Happy New President! Shona Tova!

Coming Soon: Tales From A Hard Day's Night

But, first...

Bills must be paid.
Food must be bought.
Candle wax must be scrapped off.
And oh. That laundry.

Rain Delay: Her New York Still In The Dark

We are the lucky ones.  Power might not be restored for days.  There are those whose homes won't be restored for months.  And who knows about the subways...

Here in Her New York,  there are gas stoves and landlines.   A friend's home uptown offers electricity, showers and repowering of cell phones. 

Meanwhile, until power is restored and storytelling resumes, sending love and prayers to all of Her New York throughout the tri-state area.

Not Just Any Old Port In Any Old Calm Before Any Old Storm

I had just finished typing the period at the end of that first sentence when we heard an explosion and the power disappeared. Thank you to El for her hospitality today so that we could all plug in and turn on.


 ***
It was Monday.  Figuring streets would be quiet and stores closed, we took a walk.

The Open Pantry was open.  Why wouldn't it be? was Themis's shrug of an answer.  The Pantry had weathered the East Village for the last four decades.  It was always open, come rain, come shine, come anything.  "Come back and take a picture when Pete is here," Themis said.

Themis and Jose

The Stage was packed, not a seat in the house, everyone storing up on pre-storm pierogi, cutlets and burgers. 

So an emergency smoked mozzarella from Russo's was the next best thing, catching up on medical procedures and gossip about customers who were always surprised they could swing by later and pay if they didn't have enough cash on them.  Any gluten-free pasta in the future? A sigh, and then "No. Just dried pasta".   I stared at the refrigerator case filled with the best ravioli, tortelli, and spaghetti in the world. 

 

The mozzarella lasted a day. 

**

The Open Pantry

Stage

Russo's Mozzarella and Pasta

Encore: Peace Be With You

Originally posted on November, 17, 2011, the Programme of Assistance now faces an uncertain future for lack of funding. Today, on the 67th birthday of the United Nations, this Programme offers hope for the promises of the Charter - a world filled with peace and justice.

The United Nations

And Peace Be With You.

**
The longer road begins with a word, a word that opens the possibility of everyone being welcomed to the table. And one hopes the word and words that follow build that welcome. Sometimes it is called the law. And sometimes that law welcomes justice to the table.

There is this programme available all around the world that teaches the teachers the word and the many that follow.

Programme of Assistance in the Teaching, Study, Dissemination and Wider Appreciation of International Law

Home Away From Home

The office kitchen, like one's bed, gets more time with us than the arms of our lovers.

GUEST ARTIST: Sunday Memories: Joni's Coney

A woman truly from Her New York, Joni is once again Guest Artist.

There's an old Argentinean joke. 

Q: Why do Argentinean men go up in airplanes?
A: To see what the world looks like without them.

But, here in Her New York, you go up in an airplane and all you want is to go back down and go  home.

***

These photos may not be used without permission from myprivateconey.com

Encore: When Does A House Becomes a Home?

Originally posted July 31, 2008

During long days away from home, what makes home "home" becomes, in between the pressing needs of chores written down on a list, a wonderment of longing.
 

***

From my bubby's home, via my childhood's home.


From a friend's house no longer wanted.


From the street - placed carefully so that everyone passing would know it was up for grabs.


From an abandoned yeshiva summer camp.


From a long-lost cousin and painter in Moscow, smuggled to me in the late 1970s before Gorbachev and glasnost.


From a roommate who moved west in 1979.


From a neighbor. (The pillows were $2.50 each at a Church basement sale on 37th Street.)


From Florence's ex-girlfriend.


1. From Florence's other ex-girlfriend - a recipe from Florence's mother-in-law given to said ex-girlfriend one evening in 1947 at my parents' apartment in Knickerbocker Village. 2. From a temp job in 1978 - Mapplethorpe portraits of Lisa Lyon's biceps. 3. From a former boss in 1997, an internet joke of a meditation on killing someone to reduce stress. 4. Magnets from my roommate who lived here at 17 and has, in her forties, since returned.

Morning Has Broken

Sunday Memories: God Is In The Dominoes

How to start
more than ten less than twenty years

the wry comments
the deadpan delivery
the funniest line ever written and said in a play
the occasional beers
that awful memorial funnier than any black comedy but with more wincing
knowing the long march the bloody boxing ring called writing
preserving memories about healthy resistance to awful people
the kindness of listening 
the determination to find love
the best short story ever written about aching
the fearless traveling
the leading by example
the words that unfolded those intimate moments of living until goodbyes were said
showing up to celebrate Florence's life after a redeye flight
the willingness to help with an email to his cousin
which led to an email for a position
which led to a six hour test and interview
which led to a freelance position that would never had been considered ever in a million years
which led to another one
and another one
and another one
which led to doors constantly flinging open into healing

which led to
a happiness
a gratitude
a peace
a love
a life
impossible to imagine more than ten less than twenty

**
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Migratory Patterns

It's been almost more than a handful of autumns, that beautiful season unfurling like surprised love.  A long day of new challenges and old words ends, and the same walk happens, usually towards home along an avenue as familiar as the mottled history with an childhood friend.

There is one spot, though, that isn't meandered through.

A hidden corner where, that first fall, I sat by a fountain and billions of Christmas lights and remembered the brief moments when Florence would hold my hand, not as an old woman fighting mad her body was leaving her, but as a mother, ambivalent at caring, remembering her own broken heart, and hoping something, even a maternal gesture, might make it easier.

That first fall I would stop by that fountain and cried.  However few those moments were, I understood no one in the world would ever hold my hand like my mother.

**

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As A New Fall Begin, Old Hopes Return To The Halls Of Peace (An Encore)

Originally posted November 11, 2011



The Halls Of Peace are often unadorned.

One just hopes they are well lit, not just with strong bulbs, but with good intentions to seek common ground and the heart and soul of the other.

Sunday Memories: Another Park Another Sunday

It was like finding the ring I found that day in another park.  I was just minding my own business when I looked down or up or right or, in this case, left.

This park, a block-long garden that had been loved into being by volunteers from all over the neighborhood, was filled with chickens and extra other birds and lots of dirt and plants and flowers and people digging things, and little wonderful corners to sit down in and listen to other things besides annoying cell phone conversations.

And in one of those sweet corners, I found this stone table, this old stone table with dark grey squares and light grey squares, just like the one I leaned against one hot summer in 1964 or 5 and announced my undying love for Allen to the old men playing chess, not knowing his people and my people didn't marry during those olden days.

Times have changed.  The stone table waits for new players.

**
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Taking The Long Way Home

Marty and Goggla

Just because you weren't born here doesn't mean you don't belong here.

That's what I told Tripping With Marty when he announced he was going back to Peoria.

(I don't know where it is and I know I could google it, but I think I need to keep the mystery alive.)

So we all gathered at Odessa to say hello and then to say goodbye.

Nineteen years ago, Marty landed in a roach infested hotel room on the upper west side.  Roaches or no roaches, he didn't wasted a moment, doing more in this city than a dozen writers could have done in the same amount of time, daring to go where no imagination had gone before.   "A lot about being a New Yorker is going beyond the fear," he said in a voice that had walked into 365 noisy dive bars.

But over fried beige foods and brutally funny off-the-record-stories of a New York no longer on the streets, diaspora emerged. 

Rent, even his rare kind, was high, work was scarce, and, like all of us who belonged here, it was getting tougher and tougher to watch our home be erased bit by bit, street by street, artist by artist.  The diner counter, the bar stool, the affordable apartment where we had found one another was joining the fate of ice caps and the rain forest.  And that roach infested hotel was now a luxury something or other.  How, then, could a writer or painter or musician or dancer or for that matter anybody who belong here, stay here?

"Here isn't Here anymore," the Mariner said, splitting the last piece of a latke.

No.  Here was now virtual.  Here was in blogspheres and email, texts, and tweets.  Perhaps where we belonged was not a state, but a state of mind.  And perhaps that place could be anywhere.

Like Peoria.

**
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Sunday Memories: The Sign Of Times That Were

In the middle of a miserable, rainy, packed rush-hour Lexington Line IRT, two people offered me a seat.  It took a couple of days to realize they were about 30 years younger than me.  It only took a few seconds to say thank you and sit down.

I hate standing.

But Florence,  easily 20 to 30 years older than I am today, would refuse the multiple offers a cute white haired old lady always got, stamping her feet indignantly "No!".  As if the offer challenged her ferocious lunge at another day to recapture the lost time and the old dreams.

The Poetry Of Peace In Motion

Many called for unified action, others called for compromise and one or two called for different forms of destruction, though only between the lines.

But this leader of a small island, beleaguered by crisis and challenges, sang words of peace and dreams and sent blessings to the City of New York for welcoming in, once again, the gathering of hope for a better world. 

**

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Back To Work