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November 23, 2006

Connections Through Time and Space

Recently I went to Beacon, NY, to the opening of a large group show which included three of my boxed constructions. “Rousseau� and “Matisse� replicate famous paintings (“The Dream,� “The Red Studio�) and restore the third dimension inevitably sacrificed in painting. The other diorama, “Charon’s Dock,� is a small all-white assemblage of industrial trusses, stanchions, arches, tracks, lath, mesh, etc.

Too early for the Poughkeepsie train (uncertain traveler that I am), I browsed around Grand Central, bought a picture book--Scuffy the Tugboat--for Tibor Gergely’s somber-cheerful ’40s illustrations. These presaged my journey--up a winding river, through industry and villages; even a glimpse of a lonely tugboat toy-tiny in the distance. While not “red-painted� like the eponymous tug (the life-size one was ghostly white), it did seem as intrepid.

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All aboard and through the tunnel. We spring out, into the metallic blue-gray dusk. After Harlem, a snaking stretch of wasteland. Bridges near and far; trusses and arches; ashy trees and murky factories all dim in the gloom. Night settles gradually, like the fade-to-black surcease of a picture on an old TV.

A youngish woman in a red bandanna sits next to me. She mentions being a Lakota Indian. I'm now reading a book by Joseph M. Marshall III, a Lakota of the Rosebud Sioux tribe. His voice on the companion CD resonates, his r’s hard and s’s sharp; he talks of elders, wisdom, wolves. Red bandanna’s story is like his: though a generation apart, both had been born to teenage mothers, raised on a reservation by tribal elders.

As a child I patently preferred Indians to cowboys. My interest in Native Americans was rekindled when Caleb, much like a wolf-fox, entered my life. Then Tracy joined our pack. A couple of years ago, a mailing arrived from the St. Joseph’s Indian School. From time to time they send lagniappes—the latest, a feathered dream-catcher keychain and a Native dream-catcher prayer.
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Stations flash by. Spuyten Dyvil: where I’d gone to kindergarten over 50 years ago. There I built wood-scrap boats, hammered nails around the decks for rails, sailed them on the floor. Riverdale: our first home—brick apartment house that seemed to be in a woods; a terrace, a driveway that bumped. We race by Ossining, Croton-Harmon, Peekskill, Garrison, Breakneck Ridge. This is the same river whose beginning I’ve lived by, to the south, for 30 years.

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At Beacon station, someone drives me to the gallery, a converted warehouse factory—inside, more like a museum, or a Norwegian icebreaking ship, or the Titanic. Gleaming white walls; nautical white and yellow rails; the hundred-year-old inner structure exposed, raw and rugged—actually rather like “Charon’s Dock,� which hangs on a wall. Amid three vast, open stories filled with art, I find “Rousseau� and “Matisse,� displayed on pedestals. People peer in, smiling. Watching from a distance, I feel like the parent of performing schoolkids.

As I wander around, looking at the art, I begin to feel I’m inside a giant diorama.

I remember thinking, at age three, that when you turn the radio on, a miniature band inside it begins to play. At five I thought Indians and cowboys lived in limbo inside the TV; they resumed their battles when you switched it on. These days, I'm thinking that art and nature waken just when you look at them. And that between times, suspended from observation, they gray out.

Posted by Jane on 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2006

GRACE UNDER (water) PRESSURE

This morning at 2 AM, Caleb started barking. I followed him to the kitchen. He growled and pointed in the direction of the hot water tank, which, wedged in a corner, is hidden behind the wrap-around floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I peeked through the gap between shelves and wall, alarmed by strange noises. But what I saw was worse – an indoor cataract.

A primitive affair, the tank lives behind the L-shaped shelves. Between the tank and the shelves is a waste-space for cleansers and rags, empty flower pots, winter boots. The floor there was sodden. Water was gushing from beneath the shelves.

I panicked and ran for a bucket and sponge mop. From 2 until 4 AM I sopped up fetid water. I emptied the bucket ten times. I called the landlord, who does not live in Manhattan. We both called the local plumber, whose answering service could not get anyone to come. Call the fire department, I was told. But there’s no fire, I thought.

Is this considered an emergency? Doubtfully I dialed 311. Three-one-one said dial 911. Nine-one-one got through to the fire department, and a man cried “Where’s the fire?� like in the movies. “Not a fire,� I hastened to clarify. “My water tank’s flooding.� The man said they’d send a “responder� right away. I envisioned someone driving over in a FD car, never dreaming it would be the whole fire truck megilla.

I waited and mopped and moped. The woman who lives below called. “Uh, Jane?� she began. “Karen, it’s the water tank,� I said. “Get out your buckets.� She said okay. She did not complain.

I thought: How can I turn a negative experience into something positive? My arms ached like an unpracticed oarsman’s. Sponge, wring, sponge. Run and dump grey water in the toilet. Sponge, wring, dump. Sponge some more.

Eckhart Tolle—I listen to his Cds every night. I ought to have soaked up his messages by now. He says: Stay in the moment, surrender to what is. Transcend the thought-forms of panic and dismay. Yes, I can. Rather than succumb to those instinctive yet conditioned dominant options of fear and frustration, I focused on the task: Mop. Wring. Dump. Suddenly, being in the midst of chaos was okay, an adventure.

Around 4 AM, Demitri, who lives two floors below, came up. He knew how to turn off the tank’s water and gas lines. The two-hour flood abruptly stopped, along with its scraping din. When the fire truck pulled up in its beacon-flashing glory, Demitri went down and sent it away. I said: What an ordeal this is! He replied: Comes with living on the physical plane.

We pushed and pulled the cumbersome bookcase out to the middle of the floor. But first we had to remove all the books. Such accumulation!

Demitri saved the day, or rather the night.

Unable to sleep, I scrubbed the storage nook, which I hadn’t laid eyes on since the last tank had bled to death, 14 years ago. Around 8 AM I took the patient dogs out. We bought soapless Brillo pads to plug the mouse holes, which had proliferated between tank explosions. Perfect, arched entryways, like in cartoons, and invisible in the sepulchral waste-space. Now they loomed in a row like a miniature aqueduct, an image not so far fetched in these circumstances.

The plumber ordered a new tank, but doesn’t know when it will be delivered and installed. Looks like I’ll be camping in for a day or two with cats, dogs, fewer mice, and no hot water. I have my tasks cut out: Quell the rancid smells with incense. Dust the floored books. Repaint the waste-space storage nook. Heat water on the stove for a sponge bath or two. And practice gratitude.

Posted by Jane on 4:29 PM | Comments (0)