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May 27, 2006

Intrusions, Recollected in Tranquility

Night gathers in: a tented, cochlear quietude. A holiday has emptied the city. A rain has burnished the roads into shiny otter bodies. The animals sleep: cats curled in Celtic knots; dogs stretched out, gently twitching with dreams. Despite the classic peace, I’m still vibrating from the intrusive clangor of crush-hour. Huddled masses, yearning to be gone, had squeezed in on all sides. With no escape, I took refuge in the subway ads.

Pregnant? We can help! Dial 800-NOT-PREGS.
Anal Warts? Let us do the trick! Dial 900-GET-DOWN.
Torn Earlobe? Not to worry! Dial 900-LOBEJOB.
Hemorrhoids? Don’t sit them out! Call us!
Bad skin? Call Dr. Zitsmore. Convenient Midtown Location.
Lawsuit Fraud? Guess Who Pays? You Do!

Some may shun such ads as intrusive, and ward them off behind The National Enquirer or Vanity Fair. But seasoned New Yorkers are resigned to intrusions, both physical and psychic. Printed on a security-company van is the announcement: “FREE INTRUSION DETECTION�--a bit intrusive in itself. The notion of personal space is relegated to the realm of mythology, or wishful thinking. Subways are the epitome of intrusiveness. You must endure ear-splitting rackets emanating from other people's Ipods. You get pushed and trounced. The average body takes up one-and-a-half subway seats (those negligible dips along the steel bench), so you’re apt to share your allotted indentation with the buttock and thigh of a perfect stranger, or two.

It’s hard even for a reclusive type to avoid intrusion—as its victim and/or perpetrator. My habit of foraging is a case in point. Whenever I needed objets trouves with which to perform bricolage, I’d wait for nightfall, then hunt the streets. Decades ago it was easier; the neighborhood, still industrial, was largely deserted. Curb-clotting dumpsters were filled with surprises, like the contents of an entire building that was renovated or razed: maybe 40 years of office furniture, curling brown ledgers, a lifetime of assiduous ciphers. No harm in appropriating desk drawers in which to build dioramas, but perusing confidential, if defunct, records did seem a bit intrusive.

And before the esplanade was built, I’d comb the landfill along the Hudson River. One listless day, with no one around, I spied a junked electrical box, and tramped over rubble, wildflowers, tractor parts and weathered lumber to get it. Just as I reached for my prize, a deep voice bellowed: “Ma’am! Oh Ma’am!� I swept up the box and kept walking. Doubtless eager for a breather from his guard-shack, the uniformed giant trailed me to the road. “You’re intruding on private property,� he called. “Who, me?� I gasped, the purloined box in hand. He said, “I saw you take that thing from the site.� I babbled: “It looks like garbage to me. Doesn’t it look like garbage to you?� I must have taken the guard off-guard: his accusatory frown turned into one of curiosity. He took the box and examined it. Just a rusty old thing. He said, “This is Battery Park, lady, you can’t just come in here and take things.� I explained, “I make art out of found objects. What do you think? Is this trash, or someone’s property?� Apparently stumped, he handed it back. “Keep it,� he said drily. “Maybe I’ll see it again some day…in a museum.�

Once (eureka) I found a stash of beautiful lacquered sticks in a refuse bin outside a shoji shop in Soho. I gathered as much as I could carry and returned the next night for more. But someone had beat me to it and was already at the furtive browse. Hey! I protested silently. Was he after what I was after? Filled with a proprietary sort of panic, I hoped he was a minimalist, and would take minimally. Then I saw him: a scratch-bearded, wall-eyed, filthy, crazed Dickensian wreck. My greed waned. Maybe he needed the sticks to burn in a trashcan, for warmth. Deferentially I said: “Any good wood?� Steadily unfurling odors, he glared at me and roared, “Wood? What wood?� “Well,� I said, “what are you looking for?� Squinting at me with disdain, he snarled: “Gold, sweetheart! Gold!� And with that I backed away, loath to intrude on his hoard.

Posted by Jane on 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2006

SOCIAL LIFE (a story based on actual events)

Tribeca, 1980. Getting coffee at the bodega, I run into a neighborhood painter named Roy. I know him to nod to; walking my malamute Aleut, I sometimes see him with his shepherd, West, on West Street, or up on the West Side Highway: The truncated, disused elevation has become something of an unrestricted dog run. Roy apparently has forgotten my name, but he mentions, as an offhand invitation, a party tonight on Vestry Street. I give a “maybe I’ll drop by� shrug.

Around 9 I enter a big loft space. A throng of Isadora Duncans is leaping about in flapping Moroccan pantaloons, flying scarves and kurtas. The occasion, I learn, is a bon voyage for someone named Jacqueline, off to teach dance at the U. of Melbourne, Australia. I head for a paint-encrusted trolley converted into a temporary buffet: Twin Gallo gallons (red and white), punch bowl, Jarlesburg, Triscuits, pretzels, chips; pastel palette of dips as viscous as rabbit-skin glue. Hanging around the food are poet-types in black and purple with faces like albino rabbits, bodies like Scandinavian flatware. But most are artists, in splotched jeans half-devoured by turps and stand oil. As for me, I’ve been so busy lately with my factotum non-career, I haven’t painted in two weeks. But dress the part: Pearl Paint t-shirt, watch cap, old denims, and spattered penny-loafers with subway tokens in the slots.

Averse to dancing and noise, I pour a Yellow Mellow Vodka and wander off to explore the rooms on the outskirts of the loft--partitions defined by unpainted sheetrock or paisley bedspreads hung from string. Art is everywhere--the gloomy first bursts of dubious potential relieved sporadically by Fauve and Nabis posters. Pinned to one wall (a quilt) hangs a row of postcards—traces of someone’s cross-country itinerary. Another cluttered makeshift space defines a kitchen, of sorts. Many of the books, in stacked crates, are in duplicate or triplicate—telltale signs of somebody’s multiple relationships. The john is huge and gray; jerry-rigged shower with a plastic drop-cloth curtain, strange toilet on a plinth. No sink: toothbrushes are in the kitchen, in a Bustello can.

Back at the refreshments, I swallow another Yellow Mellow. To my surprise, a guy beckons me to dance. It’s too noisy to say no. Reluctantly I put down my cup and try to approximate all the proximate arabesques and pirouettes. My partner shouts, “Are you a professional dancer?� revealing that either (1) he’s drunk, (2) he has no sense of movement, or (3) I am faking it okay. His name is Gabriel (I think); he’s in architecture school somewhere.

Pretty soon the balance fluid in my inner ear is spinning like Blue Whisk in a Maytag. I keep losing him. When the music abruptly slows and the decibels drop, he pops in front of me and takes me in his arms. The song is “I Only Have Eyes For You,� by the Flamingos. Suddenly I’m back in Miami, in seventh grade.

When a mid-afternoon rain-shower surprises us out on the Phys. Ed. field, we’re usually sent to Study Hall for the rest of the period. Today, no such luck. We’re herded into the gym, which is unctuous with humidity, trapped air and residual sweat. To our dismay, we’re forced to dance. Above the groans and giggles, the desiccated Phys. Ed. teachers (white Bermuda shorts and polo shirts, whistles on cords around crepey necks, faces like leather handbags) warn: If we try to skip, we’ll get F’s in Effort and Conduct.

The gym is rife with pubescent reluctance. I’m poised to fight-flight-freeze. Barely 5’ tall at age 12, I’m paired with a huge, damp boy with oily black hair. We face off uneasily. A slow song scratches to a start over the staticky PA: “I Only Have Eyes For You.� Mine are fixed on his yellow-checked, clammy, whale-like midsection. The boy wraps a log-like arm around my waist, engulfs my right hand in the Mazola-moist cavern of his left. He smells like Arby’s roast beef. Awkwardly, in the malodorous atmosphere of Shenandoah Junior High, we begin to shift from side to side.

Then, he starts getting creative and his dips deepen. Who does he think he is, Ricky Ricardo? Now I’m leaning so far to the left that my right saddle shoe lifts high above the concrete. My foot dangles in midair, waving like a skyscraper-suicide with second thoughts. I am powerless. The boy is oblivious. The Flamingos croon on and on. I feel like a flamingo myself, wings clipped, teetering on one knobby leg. One thing for darn sure: I will never in my whole life ever go to another dance… but…

It’s not so bad, eighteen years later, shuffling anonymously to the same song, this time with both feet down. Gabriel and I circle about the crowded room and find ourselves in front of a huge built-in wardrobe with missing doors. The shelves are crammed with wooden shapes and dusty-rusty tools which remind me of the sculptures I’d just seen at the Louise Nevelson retrospective. An entire floor of the Whitney was divided into three rooms painted one color each: black, white, and gold. The monochromatic sculptures, in their color-coded rooms, almost disappeared. As did I, dressed in black, lingering in guess which room.

Mrs. Nevelson arrived wearing gold and white, a wide-brim hat and her famous centipede-like eyelashes. A subdued hubbub lasted until 11, when she quietly slipped away. Hanging over the first-floor landing, I saw her climb into a long black car idling on Madison. She drank something in the back seat, with three dark strangers—studio assistants? Sons? Their faces glowed like embers in the streetlamp. One of them, I swear, looked like a boy I had an unrequited crush on in tenth grade, who never even knew my name. Now, come to think of it, I can’t remember his.

Posted by Jane on 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2006

Bread and Hay

Before the Central Park Zoo moved its large animals to the Bronx, I often detoured through, taking notes. Here’s a passage written one afternoon many years ago.

First, naturally, I look for the lions. They’re indoors in their smelly jail–surly lion and lioness basking end-to-end, tails overlapping, hardly moving but for an occasional MGM yawn. They regard me askance out of slotted yellow eyes. Their cage faces five or six gorillas meditating in a row, who ignore the aping behavior of human visitors. One ape devours a stalk of celery like a pencil sharpener consuming pencils.

In the elephant house, Tina is pacing a double cage in slow figure-eights, silent as a cat. According to the sign, the Asian pachyderm is twenty-four years old. Her keeper comes in and sits on a metal chair. He is stooped and wrinkled, with a pointed yellowed moustache like vestigial tusks. Tina stops pacing. She plunks her trunk into her water tub and takes aim at me. The old man rasps intimately: “Tina. Tina. Put – the – water – back. Do not spray, Tina. Thatsa girl. Put it back.� She complies. The water streams out of her nose and back into the trough. The keeper rewards her with a bundle of hay, which she balefully observes as he stands to pitchfork it into the cell.

A second zookeeper appears, a thick man with thick black glasses and a dim expression. Communication with his colleague is devoid of eye contact and largely through mime. But he too has words with the elephant. “Gotta snack for ya, Tina,� he says, and produces a loaf of white bread, which he proffers two slices at a time.

Tina places the bread delicately in her mouth, like a girl sneaking a breath mint on a date. She does not seem to chew or swallow. When the first slices dissolve, Tina rakes in some hay–then beckons for more bread. Then more hay. Her heavy head swings from bread to hay and back again. The thick keeper says: “See that? She can’t make up her mind.� I reply, “I think she’s making herself bread-and-hay sandwiches.�

Then I go to see the polar bear. He’s hot in the 34-degree March breeze, padding in silent ferocity between a fiberglass glacier and thick black bars. Those pads are as big and black as frying pans, and seem to sweat. He confines his pacing to the very edge of his baked Alaskan stageset. So sad. His morose image stays with me as I turn away.

Beyond the zoo, the sky is a splotch, the sun a smudge and all the streets have a mean gleam. At home, for a long time, I write impressions and I draw images. I write, then draw, then write again, but without the calm precision of Tina consuming her bread and hay.

Posted by Jane on 8:10 PM | Comments (0)