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April 20, 2008

Trains, Ships, Splints, Knives, Whalesongs, and the Pope

People constantly ask "How are you?" and "What is new?" I know the questions are rhetorical, but I'll reply anyway.
How I Am and What Is New:
1. Went to an eccentric lecture on 5 garbage scows lost in a storm at sea, in 1892, near New York Harbor. The meeting, for ship and rail enthusiasts, took place in an old loft on Walker St.--the nearly extinct kind: dusty, raw, grey with age. The vast, unfurnished space was divided down the middle by a wall with a narrow doorway at center. The doorway was bisected at clavicle level by model-railroad tracks that ranged in an oval around a thousand square feet of space. If, unawares, you poked your head through the aperture, an oncoming locomotive might flatten your nose. Someone switched the trains on, and the clamor of wheels on rails (miniaturized as they were) sounded like a sudden, violent rainstorm. Everyone gasped and automatically glanced up, as if expecting an indoor downpour.
2. A few Sundays ago in Soho, I tripped on an uneven chunk of sidewalk. Tangled in leashes, I went off-balance and down hard. Back home I went downstairs to the café to get ice for the damaged finger. One of the young waiters, also a lifeguard savvy about First Aid, probed, queried, and determined the finger probably wasn’t broken–-more likely sprained or disjointed. Wrapping it in ice proved cumbersome, leaky and, yeah, cold. A little later I learned of a dancer’s remedy: wrap the injury in cold cabbage leaves, which worked better than ice. My hand, half of which was the color of mashed blueberries, felt like it was in a baseball mitt. Within 15 minutes the cabbage sacrificed all of its prana, chi, ki, and shakti to my hand and was completely wilted. I made a splint from a coffee stirrer and tape. But without the splint, the end of the finger still dangles, so perhaps I should see a doctor after all. Maybe.
3-A. On a recent Thursday at noon, on the south edge of Washington Square, two huge men with knives ran across my path, bloody and screaming, just about killing each other. No cops in sight, despite the formidable police trailer always parked there to dissuade drug dealers. (Whether the trailer ever is occupied remains a mystery, for the windows are covered with newspapers.) As fast as they'd appeared, the thugs tore off to continue their mutual mayhem and maiming elsewhere. Then:
3-B. The very next week: same day, same time, same spot, I was swept up in some kind of Earth Day celebration. A sizable parade of, presumably, NYU students -- girls in nothing but body paint (or less), and guys in Speedos (one gold lame´) -- appeared out of nowhere, chanting and dancing in the chilly sun.
4. On a Sunday during this same time, a three-masted, fully rigged clipper ship dreamed its way down the Hudson. The Stad Amsterdam. She’s on YouTube, if you want to see her.
5. Yesterday, went to a seminar on whales, whalesong and New York City, at the 42nd St. Library. Speakers from Harvard, Princeton, NYU. Of course my favorite lecture was the one about Moby-Dick. I heard some fascinating insights, such as why Melville has Ishmael (and the novel) start off from Manhattan, rather than New Bedford. And why Melville, who knew better, called the whale a fish.
6. Outside P.S.234 on Greenwich Street is a story-bookish garden--probably home to gnomes and elves as well as pigeons and rats. Now in delicate bloom, the prima donnas are two cherry trees in fountainous pink-tulle ballet skirts. At one end of the garden, like a stage prop, is a roughhewn, clapboard birdfeeder that looks like a forgotten camp shack in the Catskills, and the frilly flowers are like characters out of Gilbert and Sullivan County.
7. This morning the Pope and entourage arrived at Ground Zero, an event that silenced all of Tribeca and Battery Park City, as thoroughly as if humanity had been erased. The West Side Highway, usually an inexorable rageway, was so quiet you could hear the click of canine nails on asphalt. You could hear traffic lights change. Half an hour later, the world began again, like a crowd of movie extras responding to the cue: "Background! Action!"

Posted by Jane on April 20, 2008 3:04 PM

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Posted by: Claudia at April 28, 2008 8:02 AM

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