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September 27, 2005

Honest to Dog

Caleb, Tracy and I can't walk down the street without at least a few passersby, in apparent shock of recognition, squealing, "Lassie!"

I no longer try to explain that these little collie lookalikes are neither collies nor "miniature collies" (there's no such thing), but a distinct breed called Shetland Sheepdog, or Sheltie, bred small in Scotland centuries ago just as Shetland ponies were. When stuck behind a flock stalled at an impasse, they have been known to leap on the backs of the sheep with their dainty paws, walk to the front of the herd, jump off and lead them out. Another inbred quality is their
shrieky barking, not great in the city but desirable on the North Sea coast; it would be advantageous to hear them, with their rescued strays, above the thunder of crashing waves.

The dogs and I live with two felines: a tabby called Izzy, short for Isabel (and recently nicknamed Wabi-Sabi because of her VERY imperfect homely beauty); and the jet-black, sloe-black, ebony-black, constantly chortling, mysteriously elegant Poe.

The other day Poe went missing. Looked high and low, but no Poe. Remembering hearing about dogs being able to find a piece of old chewing gum under 3 feet of snow, I rallied Caleb and Tracy for the hunt. "Dogs, go find Poe!" I commanded. I followed them to the front studio. They pointed long noses into one of the sculpture shelves. Sure 'nuff, there was the unseen Poe, curled on the roof of my miniature Temple of Dendur. "Good dogs!" I said, with originality. They gave me their versions of a shrug and a "duh!" and returned to napping.

Poe has just one bad habit. She moves small important papers from one end of the apartment to the other. Paychecks, photos, slides, receipts, etc. end up in the strangest places. She also enjoys emptying trash cans by toppling them and dragging their contents all over.

Caleb, who is on the aloof side of affectionate, did something unusually endearing the other day. I was talking to a friend at the Washington Square Dog Run, and Caleb was sitting by my side. While my attention was diverted, he used his nose to fling my arm over his shoulders.

The first couple of weeks after I brought Izzy home from Kitty Kind she hissed, bit and scratched. Finally I phoned the cat rescue place and said, so that Izzy could overhear: "Sorry, gotta return the tabby. I've run out of band-aids and patience." They said fine. Afterward I gingerly approached the curmudgeonly cat and from a safe distance said, "Izzy, you're soon to be a Was-ee. You're going back." She blinked at me with her peridot eyes. She didn't snarl. I came closer and ventured an experimental pat. For the first time she purred. From then on she's been as sweet as sucanat. Maybe I should call her that. Every night she sleeps on my pillow. From time to time, in the wee hours, she stretches out a politely sheathed paw and gently strokes my face.

Caleb, who is 4, was my first pet. As a puppy he taught me many tricks. My favorite is fetch. I throw a ball, he retrieves it and carefully, decisively, precisely plants it between my shins. He does that every time.

I just heard about a dog who jumps on a chair to open a high kitchen cabinet, from which he purloins a fresh bag of treats, CLOSES THE CABINET, jumps to the floor, and devours the treats. His last act is to hide the empty telltale bag.

What do your pets do? Please log any animal antics below.

Posted by Jane on 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2005

A Trip To Staten Island

If you keep a diary, you can post descriptive jottings here under "comments." The following, an excerpt from "Journal of a Junk Junkie," was written before the charred remains of the old Staten Island ferry terminal was replaced by its present lucent incarnation:

I go to Staten Island now and then, to experience the river more directly, and to escape the cacaphony, the geometric confinement of Manhattan. Walking down Broadway, I think of Walt Whitman doing the same. At the end of leafy Battery Park, with its public sculptures and over-explicit war memorials, juts the vast curved wreck of the old terminal, whose arcing facade rhymes in shape (and once, in bronze-green color) with Miss Liberty's famed crown. Passengers wait below, in the shadowy dank limbo of a holding room that vaunts, through the twin black breaches of its slips, a shock of blaze-bright river.

The pitching, flat-footed ferry is the cadmium yellow of a taxi, or the inner yellow of a certain two-tone daffodil. The throng and I pour aboard. Bikes and cars are stowed cozily below. The boat gushes off with a great horn blast (a kind of maritime grunt) and leaves the black-toothed pilings in a foam of wash. The air smells large, oily, fishy. On board, everyone's noises (shoe-shine hawker, amplified songstress, rap-rhythm battery salesman, beer concessionaire, etc.) is engulfed by the boat's vibrant drone. I leave the churchy pews to go out on deck. I hang over the rail and watch the mesmerizing water, a stiff, steel-gray silk decked with frothy boas and furbelows. Vast old Brooklyn and penalesque Governor's Island glide by. The Verazzano Bridge is etched faintly in the distance, no bigger than an eyelash. Abruptly, just ahead, looms a hulking barge bearing a tonnage of boxcars. (After adjusting to distance, most nearby things seem huge!) On the right, the Statue of Liberty salutes dreamily. Aft, the city, with its dazzling tabletop clutter of chrome and brass and steel, dwindles into a utopian poster . . . then a post card . . . then a postage stamp - as enormous, shrill gulls ellipse and circumflex astern.

In no time we dock at St. George; the ferry sideswipes the pilings, churns up the river like a steamboat, and shudders gracelessly into a berth. The ark empties into a reverberant cathedral of damp gloom which, like the depot on Manhattan's side, has become an aviary of pigeons. Ah, the country!

Posted by Jane on 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2005

Observations At Large -- and Small

This theme is a visual analogue to my first blog-a-logue, "Overheard in Passing." I'm always on the lookout for odd visual phenomena seen around town. Please post your own observations of visual paradox here. Two examples:

(1) Role Reversal:
Seen uptown--Young mother and little girl, hand in hand. Mom wearing overalls adorned with colorful patches, hair in two blond, beribboned pigtails. Her 3-year-old in somber gray attire, hair neat and demure. Very amusing. Or scary. Made me wonder what their relationship is like.

(2) Tipping the Scales:
Recently, at Barnes & Noble I crowded into the back of the cavernous, standing-room-only lecture room, to hear John Irving read. I scrunched up to wedge myself between two tall men. My view of the podium was flanked by two large ears, a brown one and a pink one, both soft and velvety like parted theater curtains. Between them, in my telescoped view, stood the tiny author, far far away, his voice hugely AMPLIFIED. On either side of him was an enormous literary poster heralding novels about the very subject of smallness and enormity. On one side, MOBY DICK's vast toothy mouth encompassed not only the dwarfed Pequod, but Mr. Irving himself; on the other side, hapless Lem GULLIVER lay lashed to the ground, guarded by a throng of Lilliputians who, at 6" small, heed standard dollhouse-doll scale. And the subject of the reading? That too involved scale: a BIG book on an extremely intimate subject, once perhaps whispered about behind closed doors, now broadcast to the masses.

A few years ago I wrote a book that deals with scale, The Art of the Miniature (Watson-Guptill, 2002). Ostensibly it is about creating miniature environments out of found objects (e.g., a splinter of wood from a warehouse loading dock becomes a miniature loading dock, fractyl-style!); but in truth the book is about microcosms and macrocosms, and their relevance to human spiritual transcendence.

Recommended reading: The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard; Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

Posted by Jane on 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2005

reading room

went back to my college; the new library (not there when I was a student) has glass walls and pillows on the floor. here is my impression of it.

Posted by Jane on 8:24 PM | Comments (0)

Bulletin Board Tags

René Morgan came in to see me today and is now teaching me how to work this blog thing. One thing I said to him was, "If a web log is a blog, does that mean that a web link is a blink?" He liked that. Anyway, the subject of this blog is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes totally incomprehensible tags, always with phone numbers (now emails), that are meant to be torn from the fringe of tearables (terribles?) off public bulletin boards. Here are a few I've collected. Following each entry is my own comment. You are invited to post your own findings and/or comment on any of mine.

Like, if you have nothing better to do.

+ Berna's Clean (well, I should hope so)
+ Living Intimately (too much information)
+ Eclipse Elliptical $300 $250 (I was waiting for it to go on sale, whatever it is)
+ Metabolism Breakthrough (does it hurt?)
+ Who Is Moo Shu? (Damned if I know)
+ Support Computers (like a support bra?)
+ Clean Air (only in Montana)
+ Pen Cap (huh?)
+ Flyer Distribution (with or without pilot license?)
+ Computer Guru (help me get back to my 'om' page)
+ Turkish Lesson (only one?)
+ Brain Scan — Reading Experiment (?)
+ Braids (what about 'em?)
+ Take (I admit I took this from a Japanese restaurant, so it may be someone's name; but I could also interpret it as "on the take")
+ Ecstasy Now! (what more is there to say?)

I showed you mine; now let me see yours. See you next blog-a-logue...

Posted by Jane on 7:53 PM | Comments (0)