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.

HAND-TO-HAND-COMBAT! LIFE OR DEATH DECISIONS! SLOW CAR CHASES! IT'S THANKSGIVING, THE MOVIE!!

This really happened.

It was right before Thanksgiving and like a billion other people, my friend ordered dessert from Veniero's on 11th Street to bring to the family gathering in Pound Ridge. It was probably pumpkin pie, or pastiero di grano or maybe even a cheesecake with little cannolis on top.

This woman is very attractive and she is over 30. Maybe even over 40 but her seamless attractiveness is elegant and well appointed. Oprah's makeover couldn't improve on her classic outfits, highlighted with tasteful touches of contemporary accessories.

So... as she waited on the long line she grew a bit tired. Noticing a bunch of round tables stacked along the wall, she sidled up to one and gently, as only elegance and class could, sat down.

The woman behind her, generously described as perhaps not very attractive and very unhappy about not being attractive, snapped I'M IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY AND YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SITTING ON A TABLE. My friend politely pointed out that these were tables being stored, not being used for service. At that point the counter guy called "Next." Which was my friend.

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO TAKE A NUMBER yelled the Unhappy Woman. My friend pointed out that not only did she have a number, she had the one they were calling and off she went to pick up the family dessert. Turning to leave she came face to face with the Unhappy Woman who then... punched her.

"Why'd you do that?" the counterman asked.

My friend quickly left and joined her husband in their car. As she began to tell him what just happened, the Unhappy Woman ran out of Veniero's and began yelling at the car. Windows rolled up and doors locked, her husband began to drive away. My friend pleaded for her husband to go slow because all they needed was for him to run over the foot of the Unhappy Woman as she followed the car down 11th Street yelling things at them.

That Thanksgiving Dinner the dessert was brought out to many ooos and ahhs.

"We almost died for this cake," the husband said.

A brief discussion ensued. Did the Unhappy Woman attack my friend because she was Asian? Did she attack my friend because she was Asian AND pretty? Or was this Unhappy Woman just basically nuts?

Nothing was decided. So they ate the cake.

I HEAR IT WAS HER BIRTHDAY

Not really knowing the circumstances of her birth on November 24, 1923 or 4, I have no idea if she was celebrated when she arrived. Possibly not. Her father was a World War 1 veteran who wasn't very nice and her mother, erudite, educated, multi-lingual, worked as a practical nurse because as an immigrant and refugee from Russia, it was what she could do. Her father not much in the picture in between hospital stays and abusive behavior, resources her mother had went toward the basics and then Florence's music lessons.

Poverty and unhappiness perhaps didn't lend itself to birthday parties with pretty cakes but stories of how much could be done with so little offer some hope that maybe there were birthdays she really enjoyed.

It was her 65th birthday that my sister did it up right with Florence's first birthday cake. A real cake with icing and flowers and her name and candles to blow out. As it wasn't something we ever got as kids, giving her this cake was a big deal. I found the candles - a 6 and a 5 - in a drawer of one of her tables when we cleaned out her house.

Sunday Memories: Words To Live By

Held in place on the refrigerator since 1981 by the "US OUT OF EL SALVADOR" magnet (which makes one wonder if we ever didn't go someplace we shouldn't have) the postcard reads:

Melba resolves silently never to eat again for as long as she lives.

Ode To The Office. Empty Or Otherwise

Thirty years of working in an office gotta account for something.

Hidden moments and unexpected beauty in the place we spend most of our lives.












Previous Homages to the Office:

Ode To The Office, December 2008

and

The Office Series

GUEST ARTIST, ROBYN: Communicating Across Difference

Robyn -- writer, actor, public presentation coach -- runs SPEAKETC.COM and has lived in New York for almost 30 years. I have yet to walk down any street with her and not see her run into someone she knows. Once in a single block stretch she said hello to seven different people.



The other day I saw an amazing communication on the NYC Subway. I was headed uptown. The train was crowded enough that I had to stand, but not the suffocating type of crowded that makes you question your sanity. A very tall African American man started walking through the car. Let me pause to let everyone know that I am African American. Anyway, this tall gentleman had the distinct body language of someone who wanted some kind of interaction/altercation. And for those of you who may question this observation, don't. I'm really good at body language and don't make these assumption lightly.

As this same man passed by me, my umbrella touched him and he jerked around to stare. I, being the well seasoned New Yorker, did not make eye-contact and I felt him decide that he wasn't going to pursue that particular altercation possibility. As he walked by, I eyed him carefully, wondering, dreading, who he was going to "mess with” cause I and everyone else in the car knew, he wanted to "mess with” someone. Most of the other riders in the car, did what I had done earlier and focused their eyes anywhere but in his direction. All except one.

A slightly vertically challenged Caucasian guy stood balanced in front of the subway car door facing in. The black guy stopped and stood directly in front of him. Facing him, staring at him. If the white guy looked down, he'd be staring at the man's crotch. If he tried to look any other place, it would be far too obvious that he was avoiding eye-contact and that would smack of fear and vulnerability. I sucked in my breath. I dreaded what might happen next. BUT, before the black guy could say anything or send out too many hostile vibes, the white guy, noticing the black guy's cap said: "Bronco's fan?" And what do you suppose the black guy did?

He began to grin from ear to ear. He raised his arms, and did a little dance around the car. The riders who'd been avoiding eye contact, started to look up and smile. He let out a whoop about the Broncos and he and the white guy engaged in a passionate discussion about football, Denver and the recent game. The subway reached its next stop, the black guy got off but not before giving the white guy a high five and parting advice about his team. I felt like I had witnessed one of the most compelling demonstrations of the basic idea behind Nonviolent Communication. (NVC)

NVC believes that people take action based on universal human needs. Sometimes these needs lead to positive actions, sometimes they lead to negative actions but the person is just trying to get a basic need met and will use any strategy available. I feel like this African American man had the need for connection. He wanted to connect to another human being badly. One strategy he was used to using was intimidation but that day, on that subway, a very confident, compassionate (or perhaps naïve) individual offered him another way to connect by offering him conversation about a shared interest.

The white guy and I got off at the same stop. I hadn’t realized it, but his girlfriend had been in the same subway car seated across from him. They got off chatting as though nothing unusual had occurred. I wanted to say something. Ask him how conscious the decision he made had been? Let him know how impressed I was with his ability to deflect a potentially uncomfortable encounter into a conversation. But I didn't. I didn't want to draw attention to something that had seemed so natural to him. I just hope that I can remember and learn from that example.

Sunday Memories: You Say You Want A Revolution...

It reads:

"imperialism sucks
march on washington november 15, 1969"

It was here on the kitchen wall in 1976 when I moved in.   In those days, the house was painted in purple and red and yellow and more purple and maybe blue but it was hard to tell. 

One day in 1980 a woman visited, friend of a friend of a friend of a roommate. She had either designed the poster or knew who did. She found it funny to see it tacked up by tape over the toaster.

I always thought it was an abstract painting with no meaning - just acid trip colors until 20 years into looking at it I realized there was the shape of a man in chains and blood and grief and oppression.

Recently I got a frame from Ikea for it.  I'm not sure what took me so long.  But when revolution no longer marches on Washington,  it should be framed.