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June 12, 2007

Interruption

A desultory Saturday morning, warm and breezy. The dogs and I settle on a cool stone bench in Battery Park. I jot down these observations:

1. The lily pond is stocked with rushes and reeds again; tall thickets of hallucinatory water grasses and sedge; the hypnotic waterfall.
2. Female duck naps on a lily pad, bill beneath wing: every brown-patterned inch like marquetry.
3. In the murky pond loom huge koi: silvery white, tangerine, black, calico. Their scales are imbricate, like shingles or chain mail.
4. They break the slimy surface with waxy lips and trail me around the verge. A sign says do not feed.
5. Spiky, pink water lilies on violet-green sit-upons and the conical finials of tight white buds.
6. Pond reflects a marbleized sky and undulant skeletal facades.
7. Sparrows, all hopped up about something, excited as little girls.

As if on cue, two birdlike girls flutter over. They’re overjoyed because they’re hiding, because they’ve spotted my pretty dogs, and because they are seven. One is lissome and fair, a Botticelli beauty. The other is petite and dark, a Corot jeune fille. They ask to pet the dogs. We talk for an hour on:
a. Shyness. “Tracy is a bit shy,” I begin; they chime: “Me, too!”
b. Had I seen the turkey in Tribeca—and a whole flock in the park? (Good thing it’s not Thanksgiving!)
c. Hummingbirds. Did you know they flap their wings 100 times a second?
d. Guitar and piano music. Just learning.
e. A dog back home in France, named Loup.
f. 14 days of school missed because of modeling (Amber).
g. Helping grownups with computers all the time (Sophia).
h. Siblings: What it’s like to be the first of two (Amber), the second of four (Sophia), or the first of four (me).

Unimaginatively I ask: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Amber: “A housemate.” “A housemate?” “Yes. I want to live in a house with one friend and lots of animals.”
~
Just then Amber’s mother, with some younger kids in tow, finds the girls. I give Amber and Sophia my card. They dimple, and all move off slowly in a clamorous clutch.
~
When they’ve gone, I take out my notes and resume observing:
8. On the round arm of an iron bench, 3 flies in unison lift and land repeatedly.
9. Stray red balloon beginning to deflate, against cumulous clouds in a banner-blue sky.
10. Pigeon-tracks, etched when the cement was wet, immortalized as sgraffiti.
11. Glossy speckled starlings on grass lime-green in sun, viridian in shade.
12. The weeds and wildflowers, more mysterious than roses.

Posted by Jane on 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

June 7, 2007

Digression

I revisited Bronxville last weekend. As I trudged up the hill from the train station, I glanced back to relive an early memory. There was the redoubtable Hotel Gramatan, high on its hill, mostly obscured by massive trees. It still seemed in a snit, to my mind -- ever since the night in 1967, when some Sarah Lawrence girls climbed the mast-high sign and removed (or blacked out) the “EL” and “TAN,” transfiguring the sign to “HOT GRAMA.”
~
I walked past the familiar little village stores and across the Bronx River Parkway. I passed Brooklands, the grand and patulous old-age home on Palmer Rd. Its bent residents bowed over their blooms, just as they had when I'd first arrived and mistook the small floral rectangles for graves.
~
It was alumnae weekend at the college; I’d come for a reception for a painting show I was in, at the new art center just beyond the president’s residence. I entered the gate on Kimball Ave. and walked through the campus, surprised that absolutely no one was around; alums must have been in seminars. I went through the three joined buildings of the new dorms (as they were called when I entered as a freshman, 40 years ago). The uniform rooms were empty and silent, bunk beds stripped. I remembered the smell. I remembered how I used to be.
~
My first room was in the middle building of the three and was called, incongruously, “Garrison.” At first I’d had a roommate, but that didn’t work out. An ex-girlfriend of Bob Dylan, she had anticipated, by 20 years, East Village punk, with her dead-white skin, dyed black hair, violet eye shadow, ashen lips and black leather. Frequently she’d bring a boy in for the night. The first time that happened, I lost no time applying for -- and instantly getting -- a room to myself, across the hall.
~
Perhaps it’s universally instructive to reflect on one’s self-transformations between 18 and 58. It’s a chance to swap nostalgia for the tender concession of appreciation, relief, and yes, a little disbelief.

Posted by Jane on 7:57 PM | Comments (0)