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May 26, 2007

Dog – Smog – Blog

Truth to tell, there was no smog, but I can't resist rhyming triplets.
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After a hot night with 3 fans blowing upon four shedding quadrupeds and me, the dogs and I went early down to the North Cove. No sooner had we settled on a stone bulwark than we were hailed by a petite woman with a young blue merle sheltie named Twyla. The lady, who came from Colombia, and I exchanged sheltie stories and then, inevitably, tales of 9/11. On that day she’d been alone in her apartment, a block or two from the towers, with a broken foot and her 90-year-old mother. After the attack, Battery Park was evacuated, of course, but the two women were stuck. For six long weeks, with no means of escape or communication with the outside world, they and their two shelties at the time (soon after 9/11, they contracted cancer and died) subsisted on the older woman’s supply of Ensure. When the dust settled, quite literally, they finally were rescued.
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I still hear such stories from time to time.
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The marina gradually was waking up, with bronzed sailing instructors readying a fleet of small boats arranged along the wharf like so many pointed-toe shoes. Yachts were being groomed like racehorses. Increasing numbers of people ambled about, with the inevitable container of Starbucks in hand.
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I sat near the marina wall, its two poetic snippets welded in open letters of steel in a single continuous line. Over the Whitman quote, a homeless woman, who was nursing a wounded foot just then, had hung out a copious amount of laundry to dry. Whitman’s words were all but hidden, but I could fill in the gaps: “City of the world (for all races are here. All the lands of the earth make contributions here). City of the sea! City of wharves and stores – city of tall facades of marble and iron! Proud and passionate city – mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!” On the other side of the breach, Frank O’Hara aptly proclaimed: “One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes – I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store, or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.”
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Just beyond the eloquent railing, a large walking tour in matching black t-shirts with white logos fixed its attention on a guide. He gestured to the Wintergarden, and explained how that great glass structure had collapsed along with the towers, but had been rebuilt. “And now,” he said, “we’ll go inside for a good view of Ground Zero.”

Posted by Jane on May 26, 2007 11:20 AM

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