« January 2008 | Main | March 2008 »

February 25, 2008

Bizarre Bazaars and Flea Market Forays

For months I’d wanted to make the flea-market rounds to look for small, well-proportioned picture frames not available in shops anymore. In my search, if I should chance upon a model bark or brig as well, that certainly would be a boon.
~
On Sundays, eccentrics emerge from their brickwork lairs as if from hiding. On the subway: A stout, cheerful, grizzle-haired African-American with a young face and no eyes talked steadily to himself in a genial way. At the flea market uptown on Columbus Ave: A sweet-voiced old woman wrapped in a shawl, sorrowfully affronted by her tumor-glutted face. One or two sporadic loners drifting by with unidentifiable animals in small, cloaked carriers. A spry old coot in Civil War garb (undoubtedly his accustomed togs) selling antique comics. When I asked if he had the Classics Illustrated Moby-Dick, he fervently flipped through two or three racks and admitted he was out; but wasn’t the movie great?
~
Some vendors slept over paltry wares, others scooted about in self-important zeal. I was the brunt of one used-book seller’s irascibility when I thoughtlessly breached a barricade of cartons for a better look at a remotely-placed biography of Lytton Strachey. The public reprimand prompted my hasty exit from the rank grotto (on weekdays, a cafeteria) and outside, to see the schoolyard vendors’ offerings. Whether in daylight or dim fluorescence, buyers and sellers had a shut-in pallor. I probably did as well.
~
Onward to Hell’s Kitchen; that market sprawls listlessly along 39th St. between 9th and 10th Aves. It begins at an ominous disused bus ramp, at the edge of Port Authority. The neighborhood is so desolate, it seems to be at the end of the world at the end of time.
~
In front of a pile of condemned buildings was a chain-link fence, freshly painted a tropical aqua, incongruous in such a benighted realm. Market pickings were slim. I was curious about a thickish wooden box with removable sides held together by green-oxidized hooks. At the bottom was a square of raised designs, like a printing block. Might be good to put a painting in, I mused, found the stall-keeper (young, bearded, emaciated), and asked what the object was and how much did he want. He drawled: “Oh that’s a butter mold,” and hastily added, “But you could just as well use it for maple syrup.” Not for $35, thanks.
~
I did find three promising wee wood frames, which for $12 the overburdened seller was willing to part with. (Upon dismembering the inexplicable pictures at home, I discovered in one a sort of ambiguous love note addressed to “Moss,” which ended demurely with an admonishing quote from Luke.)
~
Back-packing my frame purchases, I went from the southwest edge of Port Authority to the brink of the Lincoln Tunnel; then south to 25th Street on 9th Ave. and east to 6th, still at the end of the world at the end of time.
~
A man passed carrying a heavy old beat-up picture frame. He must have picked up that I was in a “frame” frame of mind, for in mid-stride he called, “Want it? I was just taking it to the trash.” Reflexively, but already dubiously, I put it under my arm. Entering the garage-turned-jumble-sale I leaned over a moldering table as if to examine some forlorn knickknack and surreptitiously propped the clunky frame against the table leg. I imagined someone later asking the bemused vendor for the price.
~
The people I encountered may have appeared odd, but the merchandise, as I’ve said, was generally not. That day I sifted through countless collections of dispirited detritus: packs of old thumb tacks (some missing from the cards leaving rusty holes); an unfeasible snarl of embroidery floss; a basket of blackened keys; piteous figurines. I was tempted by nothing but an Australian postage stamp, picturing a whale under glass in a tiny soldered frame. But not for $25.
~
Flea-marketing was better twelve years ago, when I made the rounds as I began my Magic Flute series. Wondering how to make 18th-century opera sets, I emerged from the subway and saw a big red sign: MAGIC. I thought, OK, Magic, where’s Flute? On the heels of that thought I spied a wooden flute, just like Tamino’s oak one. OK, I thought, Magic and Flute: how to make operatic prosceniums? In seconds I found some fancy-curly-carved picture frames pleading to be painted silver and glued around the stages. I was on a roll, and it didn’t hurt to be standing in the shadow of the Masonic Lodge, across the street from the Mozart Café.
~
On this far less fruitful flea-market venture (I never did find a bark or a brig), I walked a lot from place to place. When I did use the subway, I read bits from “Benito Cereno,” perfect in its utter strangeness for the incalculable strangeness of the day.

Posted by Jane on 1:57 PM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2008

Overheard in Passing, a.k.a., “And I Quote”

When: Fri. 2/1/08
Where: Varick St.
Who: Two middle-aged women
Attitude: Resigned
And I quote: “I got my mother’s rear end – a fat dimpled mess.”
~
When: Sat. 2/16/08
Where: West Broadway, Soho
Who: Troop of aging day-trippers
Attitude: Flat
Man: You have to eat it within 3 days, else it starts tasting funny.
Woman: Yeah, they probably don’t even put preservatives in it.
~
When: Fri. 2/22/08
Where: Franklin St.
Who: Young woman on cell phone
Attitude: Earnest
And I quote: “If you call him and you’re being normal, but he’s not being normal, I’d make it a short conversation.”
~
When: Sun. 2/24/08
Where: Columbus Ave. & 76 St. Flea Market
Who: A vendor in the crowd, in the silence following a loud crash
Attitude: Deadpan
And I quote: "You dropped your handkerchief."
~
When: Sun. 2/24/08
Where: 9th Avenue and 32nd Street
What: A large sign over an enormous parking lot
Attitude: n/a
And I quote: WARNING: There is not a "better parking spot around the corner."

Posted by Jane on 8:58 AM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2008

Timely Advice from Walt Whitman

Synchronicities are nice little cosmic boons that seem to happen all the time. For instance, I happen to be reading Silas Marner, which I haven't looked at in 30 years. Coincidentally, the movie I unwittingly chose to watch, after I put the book down last night, was “A Simple Twist of Fate.” As soon as Steve Martin pulled out that drawer to reveal his hidden hoard of gold I thought, “Aha! This may be a reinvention of Silas Marner.” And so it was.

In the same way, it’s a kick to chance upon some literary passage that supports one's dilemma-du-jour. This morning, for example, I’d been editing some freshman essays, all of which were thickly problematical. Good expository writing is clear, concise, and well-structured. These papers lacked all three qualities, but had mounds of malapropisms, rafts of redundancy, and oodles of gratuitous detail (the color of leather needn’t be reported as brown, unless it isn’t brown).

I needed a break, and went to our new Barnes & Noble, which serves the neighborhood not only as bookseller, but also study hall, day care center, and caffeine refueling station. I aimed for the latter plus a revitalizing browse.

I randomly selected a volume of Whitman’s prose to look at and sat down right under Walt’s portrait up at the ceiling (next to Melville's). Out the panoramic window, the hard rain was melting the snow, which, in small flattened humps, lined the bone-colored curb like molars on a lupine jaw. Through the shaggy pelting rain, the lit yellow windows of the school across the street shone like the black-slitted eyes of a wolf.

I thought of the writing difficulties of so many college students. That last-straw essay, a personal narrative, had been riddled with redundancies, clichés and hifalutinisms so dense, there was no chink for me to enter, no space for me to share in the matter. I’d advised the student to allow his readers to participate. And to resist over-explaining the obvious. And to desist from gratuitous editorializing. And to stop appending “unfortunately” to every catastrophe and event of unambiguous misfortune, as in this inspired bit: “Unfortunately, after the volcanic eruption, there were no survivors, and everyone in the city died.”

I opened the borrowed Whitman sampler. My eye fell on an entry from Specimen Days -- advice to a young writer. Walt explains that the business of a poem (or personal essay, I thought) is to put the reader “in rapport” so that his “brain, heart, evolution, must not only understand the matter, but largely support it.”

That’s what I had meant to say, but of course Walt said it better. I do take credit, thanking the fates and Barnes & Noble too, for finding it just then.

Posted by Jane on 9:17 PM | Comments (0)

February 5, 2008

Late Light into Night, in Chelsea

"The long hotel, acutely white,

Against the after-sunset light..."

--Arthur Symons, Color Studies, 1895: "At Dieppe"

So many painters of landscapes cite in catalog essays a bare and fundamental “interest in light.” That’s like a physician claiming interest in anatomy. That is making Lite of Light.

Hopper painted light in an original way and also said original things about it, like how street lamps at dusk turn city into stageset. Frank O’Hara wrote of the pleasure of neon in daylight and of light bulbs in daylight. It is a cliche even to say the subject of light never should become clichéd since light is always different, from one experience to the next.

Late today I was walking in Chelsea just before the light began to dwindle. An unexpected hush in the street intensified the pre-dusk drama. No one was about, not even any traffic. I went west on 23rd Street, toward Eleventh Avenue. The sky was lucent blue, an eggshell. It was both strong and fragile -- dominant in intensity and fugitive on the verge of change. It occurred to me that dawn and dusk, like childhood and extreme age, signify transition, while day and night, like maturity and death, seem relatively fixed, or at least steady or prolonged.

I came to a long, low warehouse with a stepped façade and bricked-up windows. It could have been painted by the precisionist Sheeler, the way it stood flat against the sky. It looked alien, detached, desolate – a cityscape by Ault. The painted lower half popped white in the incipient dusk. In mid-distance, beyond the warehouse, a peaked water tower barrel looked like a paper cutout, backlit. A tree silhouette etched itself into the radiant sky, all the countless complex twig ends sparking with flinty energy. This was rare, sere beauty. A mystery.

I watched the sky darken in imperceptible grades. Turning back, I walked north along Tenth Avenue, still alone in my lull as the sky finished steeping. When night claimed its check upon the day, the traffic started up with honk and shout. A filling station leaked fluorescent firelight. From some dark alcove drifted a whiff of clove from someone's kretek cigarette.

Posted by Jane on 10:07 PM | Comments (0)