« October 2005 | Main | December 2005 »

November 28, 2005

Write as Rain

Dear Reader,
Rain, or at least a steely, precisionist, congested sky, squires me right into a writing mood. In that kind of mentally priapic condition a letter may be launched of somewhat more interest than the ilk that begin: “Received yrs of the 15th with great interest / embarrassment / guilt� or “Hi there! It’s been a while!� or “Sorry it’s taken so long to reply. . . .� Or, worse, letters that resemble e-mails of puny pith.

So, for the sake of originality, I prefer to write on rainy days. However, the last time the streets were suitably amphibious—the trash baskets filled with skeletal, extirpative umbrella spokes (reminiscent of the species of dinosaur birds only nine-year-olds can name), the streets glistening like a black lab in a downpour—I was, as they say, “under the weather.�

Now that I’m on top of it again, there’s neither inky rain nor chalky snow with which to write. Indeed, the paper-white sky tempts with its scribbled branches, and the remnant sun shines like a faint oil-drop stain at the bottom of the page. I turn to another condition for inspiration, second only to rain, which is twilight. And, as I dryly write, it is in fact the start of martini hour uptown, cocktail hour midtown; Night Train hour downtown.

Along Canal Street, derelict pubs are in full happy-hour gloom (have been all day, if the truth be known): also in the dank backrooms of auto-parts shops and in decrepit storefronts of brick & copper flashing with names like Pornomore, which sell $3.99 triple-x videos, Rolexes, perfume adaptations, bootlegged Guccis and Vuitton knockoffs (any real ones likely knocked off some truck).

I visualize the creepy, crepuscular hotel bars of midtown at sundown. They must be brimming, by now, with beery businessmen engaged in the rush-hour ritual of postponing commutes. (Lincoln Tunnel, Metro North, Hoboken ferry, New Jersey Transit, Throgs Neck Bridge et alia will wait.)

And, with a stretch-limo of the imagination, I envision Park Avenue, its reassuring doormen and those amenable awnings that span from door to curb. You can see people awning-hopping when it rains. Anyway, the genteel buildings resemble parallel ranks of expensive men’s suits--muted plaids and stripes hung in double rows in some room-size walk-in closet. Beyond the suits are suites. There I visualize flutes filling with fizz, rocks tumbling into tumblers, fires being lit with Limoges lighters, cords of storebought logs.

Such, virtually speaking, is cocktail hour all around the town.

Living way down in the triangle below Canal, I occasionally visit midtown (for the hobby shops, MoMA and the Donnell), but rarely do I venture to that foreign country, the Upper East Side. There, in an atmosphere of elegant quiescence, eviscerated ladies spend afternoons on Madison--in summer, weighed down with cirques and torques of beaten gold; in winter, dwarfed by heavy, full-length pelts, which are good for smuggling (into bistros and patisseries) well-bred doggette pets small enough to groom with an eyebrow brush or a moustache comb.

Such privileged canines have more clothes than Barbie. Personalized (poochalized?) collars with pendants engraved with epithets and endearments. Handmade cashmere, mohair, Shearling sweaters and trendily hooded sweatshirts, all slotted for leashes. Leashes studded with filigree rhinestone pinecones. Velcro-fastened leather booties for when the iceman cometh to salt the walks. The barrettes, bows and furbelows prized specially by poodles and that breed with long, straight, ash-platinum hair, i.e., those New York Yorkies on York.

Au contraire, hardly affluent dog fanciers tend toward scarred Pit Bulls, scared Mutts, scary Rottweilers, German-Shepherd-Pinscher mixes, and a strange breed of ubiquitous stiff-fuzz, bald, bow-legged, gimp-pawed, goat-white mites with trickling Chaney eyes and pleated, pushed-in faces. Downtown you see far fewer accessories.

That doesn’t mean there are no exotic breeds south of Fourteenth Street. Just this morning I chanced upon a large, heavy-set man struggling with a small, black-and-white furball (contradicting the myth that humans resemble their dogs). This minuscule cutie was straining to meet Caleb and Tracy, who yanked me over like cabs zooming abruptly in on fares. As the threesome danced and sniffed, all human eyes, filled with typical resignation and dismay, glommed onto a hopeless mess of snarling leashes. (What is worse is when both leashes and dogs are snarling.)

After a moment I launched the challenging ceremony of disentangling, and applied the opening gambit that sets up the second query.

“Girl or boy?�

“Girl,� said the man.

“What’s her name?�

“Espresso,� the big man sighed, looking like he could use one.

“With that dash of white,� I ventured, “she looks like a macchiato.�

“Oh, no,� he corrected me. “She’s a Havenese.�

“Cute,� I smiled, not bothering to disentangle my meaning, having finally freed the damn leashes and eager to be off.

To continue with haute and modeste couture. Rich or poor, uptown or down, most New York dogs actually do sport raingear when it rains—whether the London Fog-Dog slicker, topped with smart tartan pom-pom tam and detachable bumbershoot . . . or garb fashioned posthaste from the Daily Post, damp shopping bags or plastic wrap. The choice of couture depends, I suppose, on the pup’s p[I]ed-igree-a-terrier.

With that, Dear Reader, mirabile dictu, it’s begun to rain.

Expect another precipitate letter later.

Posted by Jane on 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2005

How Are You? (And Who Are You?)

In Extasis, a marvelous documentary about Glenn Gould, the great pianist mentions two ways to get out of the body–through entertainment and through ecstasy. He describes ecstasy as “a delicate thread binding together music, performance, performer and listener in a web of shared awareness, of innerness.� This idea got me thinking about how those opposite approaches--entertainment and ecstasy--affect the quality of my being.

In my experience, the effect of entertainment is largely passive, vicarious, temporal, tiresome and illusory. It involves diversion, digression and division from my self. The effect of ecstasy, on the other hand, is active, timeless, direct and real. In it, I am, as the word implies, “beside myself� with joy--yet paradoxically united with my inner being. Rapture can be ignited by great art that leads us from scattered mundanity to an awareness of the singular, charged being-ness of spirit.

Another vehicle for attaining bliss is meditation. “How are you?� we constantly ask one another. Taken sincerely, the greeting could be extended to mean, “How is your inner state at this particular moment?� Most of the time I haven’t a clue, but meditation lets me know. Contrast spending the night at a big, noisy party--with being around plangent foghorns and the wail of passing trains. Compare the effect of the evening news--with how a Gregorian chant makes you feel. Notice your energy after a day at the mall--and how you feel in a park or a garden. Entertainment spins me outward and away, even as meditation, a practice of quiet ecstasy, spirals me home. A far richer nutrient than foghorns or forests ever could be, meditation erases time as it reveals the inner spaciousness that's always within.

Many think it’s hard to meditate. Maybe that’s because meditation interrupts our tendencies toward sleep, appeasement and pretense. The ego likes to check out, cop out, drop out and bail out, the opposite of what meditation achieves which, ultimately, is one’s original bliss. It’s harder to stay in the middle than to pursue extremes. Buddha awoke from his own drowse when he heard someone say that a musical instrument must be tuned neither too tightly, or the strings will snap, nor too loosely, or they won’t play--a metaphor for the middle way: neither overly ascetic nor excessively indulgent. Meditation is both easy and difficult; it is utterly natural, but I must sit with detachment and vigilance or I succumb to frustration or dreaming. My awareness of what IS must be constantly, subtly, lightly adjusted, like following the lead of a master dancer, to keep that relationship new, pure, unknown and wild. It is exactly like walking a razor's edge. Meditation, the greatest path to self-knowledge, is always fresh search, never research.

Ecstasy is evoked through works of genius in all of the arts. A few examples that have astonished me all my life: Mozart’s “Exultate Jubilate�; all of Bach; all of Hopkins, particularly “Pied Beauty�; Basho's frog; paintings by Turner, Matisse, Sassetta; buildings by Gaudi and Wright. For many people, creativity is an ecstatic experience, no matter the outcome. And everyone can meditate, to touch that bliss.

In Moby Dick, Melville says that it's “better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation.� In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna advises, “It’s better to do your own duty badly, than do another’s well.� Direct experience, with awareness--there’s no substitute. As the world's mystics all have suggested throughout all time, we must drop our habits of busyness, chitchat, and constant mentation--those shadowy surrogates for real life--and cultivate a preference simply to be. I take this hint from Whitman:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

--Walt Whitman

Posted by Jane on 8:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2005

Risible News Part II

Should you come across strange news stories or headlines, please send them in. Part I started with a story about tickling, so I’ll begin Part II with the same subject.

AD BRINGS “TICKLISH� SITUATION
Darlaston, England (UP!)—An edition of the local afternoon paper had a misprint in the help wanted columns and advertised a job as “experienced tickler� instead of “experienced pickler,� Nevertheless, the paper said, more than a dozen people applied for the job.

SWALLOW LOOKING FOR WORM IS ‘BOWLED OVER’ BY A BALL

HER CHICKEN WAS STUFFED
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia (AP)—A woman carrying a live but sickly chicken was stopped by airport customs officials because she had no permit for the bird, police reported. Suddenly the chicken died, and an autopsy revealed it had swallowed 79 pieces of gold. The woman was fined $250 for attempted smuggling.

MORE THAN 300 COINS FOUND INSIDE PATIENT
Physicians at Metropolitan Hospital operated yesterday on a 38-yar-old man and removed more than 300 coins and metal object from his stomach. The man [is] a mental patient at a state hospital… During the 2-hour operation, the surgical team counted . . . quarters, domes, nickels, pennies and subway tokens. They found broken thermometers, can openers, parts of knives, forks, spoons, nuts, bolts, a chain and keys. The surgeons reported there was no damage to the patient’s esophagus or intestinal tract.

A THIEF STEALS THE PADLOCK OFF BURGLAR-PROOF DISPLAY
Los Angeles (AP)—A burglary-prevention display at the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters has been temporarily removed from public view. Someone stole a burglar-proof padlock from the display.

EXTERMINATOR KILLED BY FUMES

RIFLE-CARRYING ROBBER MAKES OFF WITH DESSERT
Watertown, NY, May 3 (UPI). After he locked his service station last night, [a man] was confronted by a rifle-carrying robber…[who] forced him against a wall and took a white bag from the car, fleeing with what he apparently thought was the night’s receipts. The bag contained ice cream.

BURGLAR IN NEW MEXICO WINDS UP WITH RAISINS
Alamogordo, NM (AP)—Somewhere in Almagordo, there’s a frustrated, raisin-chewing thief. The police said someone entered the concession stand of a drive-in theater and unsuccessfully tried to open the floor safe with two serving spoons, and 8-inch crescent wrench, and finally, a beer can opener. The would-be robber left a note saying, “The Fox was here . . . some day I’ll figure out how to open this safe.� HE took nine 15-cent boxes of raisins.

THIEF’S THANK-YOU NOTE
Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP)—Robert Klein found a note in his father’s mailbox saying, “Stole your boat. Thanks.� He checked and, sure enough, his father’s 14-foot aluminum boat and trailer were missing from beside the house.

“COLD FACTS� TRIP UP THIEF
London (AP)—A man shivering violently in balmy weather prompted a police detective to investigate. He found that the man – a butcher – had three pounds of frozen meat hidden in his trousers. He was fined $130 and lost his job.

HOLDUPMAN DRAWS LINE AT TAKING CHEESEBURGER
San Francisco (AP)—A waitress at a local restaurant bought a cheeseburger to go, and found herself staring at a gun, with a demand for her money. She handed over $21, and the holdup man started to leave. Then he stopped and asked, “How much for the cheeseburger?� The waitress told the man, and he counted out the change from his loot.

PIGS LIKE POP MUSIC
Newmarket, England (AP)—Robin Upton, a Suffolk pig farmer, finds pop music keeps his sows contented and helps them put on weight. “They listen to the radio most of the day,� he said.

RACCOON MAKES PIG OF ITSELF
Lima, Ill. (AP)—When Marvin Wilson, a farmer, looked over a litter of eight spotted pigs nursing on one of his sows, he discovered a new piggy associate: a baby raccoon.

PET LION ENJOYS RIDING IN CARS
Anchorage, Alaska—(AP)—Princess, a 17-year-old African lioness, is a car freak. To keep her happy, Art Foster takes her for a spin once or twice a week in a specially rigged station wagon. Foster and Princess once stopped to pick up two hitchhikers near a swampy area. “The guy saw the lion, jumped over a snowbank and went across the swamp like an outboard motorboat,� Foster said. Princess is one of two lions Foster takes care of for the Leon Brown family. The Browns got Princess in payment for a debt.

PET CAT IN ILLINOIS THINKS IT IS A GOAT
Belvidere, Ill.(AP)—“Mister,� a Siamese cat belonging to the Edgar Zimmer Jr. family, has a peculiar culinary taste. He eats thermal blankets, hand-crocheted shawls, socks, T-shirts, blouses, sweaters, towels, scarves and the like. “It makes you so mad,� Mrs. Zimmer says. “We spoke to the veterinarian about it and we were told only that Siamese cats are very strange creatures. I’ve spanked him and he knows he’s naughty. He just goes and hides for a while and then sneaks around again.� Mrs. Zimmer says the cat never appears to get sick no matter what it eats.

Posted by Jane on 1:31 PM | Comments (0)