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June 27, 2008

Slipping Glimpsers, Loafers & Dingledodies

“We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.” – Michel de Montaigne
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“All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)” --Gerard Manley Hopkins
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“Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within yourself.” – Rainer Maria Rilke [cf. Whitman, “I loafe and invite my soul.”]
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“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Emerson
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“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)” -- Whitman
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“In life, never do as others do…. either do nothing, just go to school, or do something nobody else does.” --Gurdjieff’s grandmother to him, on her deathbed. -- Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
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“But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes “Awww!” – Jack Kerouac
~
“Y’know the real world, this so-called real world,
It’s just something you put up with, like everybody else.
I’m in my element when I am a little bit out of this world.
Then I’m in the real world – I’m on the beam.
Because when I’m falling, I’m doing all right;
When I’m slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting!
It’s not when I’m standing upright that bothers me;
I’m not doing so good; I’m stiff.
As a matter of fact, I’m really slipping
Most of the time, into that glimpse.
I’m like a slipping glimpser.
--Willem de Kooning

Posted by Jane on 7:59 PM | Comments (1)

June 21, 2008

SOLSTICE

Just past 8:00 a.m. by the Colgate Clock, across the Hudson in Jersey City, easily readable because the octogenarian timepiece is fifty feet in diameter.

This morning, on the first full day of summer, the river is glassy, quiescent, dimpled like cellulite. Its pattern is deceptively simple, etched with thumbprint whorls and nearly invisible rings that come and go, imminent and transcendent, from surfacing fish or unseen insects or something else.

In the distance: a barge with a tug, like a nuzzling cow and calf.

At the North Cove marina, the Ventura is about to leave for a trip up the Hudson, to Tarrytown. On the floating gangway, Patrick (“Captain Pat”) Harris, the owner of the sloop, comes over to pet the dogs.

He says people can bring their pets for a sail anytime, for an extra dollar each (www.sailnewyork.com, 212-786-1204). Why leave the family at home? he smiles. With all his passengers aboard, he returns to the yacht and the boat casts off.

As the Ventura slides out of the marina, a mate at the bow blows on a conch, the most archangelic sound.

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

June 13, 2008

The Artful Dodger

"Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."

-- William Blake

Went to an art opening the other night in Soho, a respectable show of tasteful paintings, pleasant, well crafted, glib. The kind of art that does brilliantly over a leather couch in a magazine spread. I left and walked east, to Elizabeth Street where north of Prince is a storefront with a miniature of itself in the window.

I went on to the Lower East Side, to the next opening, at the Cake Shop on Ludlow. In that window, a plastic lawn-deer (wearing a black wig) basked on a collection of superannuated cassette tapes arranged like floor tiles. Inside, paintings of interiors, by my young friend Sophie, hung across a long wall from front to back. Her palette was disciplined, quirkily somber, the perspectives experimental. No easy solutions here, no glibness; the work caught you unawares, like a shivery glance askance. I admire such authenticity, poetry versus product, like a twist in a ribbon, a skip in a song, a chip in china or a rhyme got wrong.
+
From a dour guy in black glasses I bought some cold green tea. I hung out in the back near a large window with a view into an empty courtyard. The crowd, two generations younger than me, was not looking at the art. Some of the boys emoted lonely uncertainty. The confident ones with dates all had a hand on a female knee. Two oblivious fellows typed on laptops side-by-side. Their faces glowed like luminous dials in the glare of their screens. At a teensy table an obese girl exuberantly nibbled the point of a triangular slice. I put in my earplugs and mentally critiqued the paintings. Half an hour passed and no Sophie. The din trumped my earplugs. I left this spectacle for the jammed streets.
+
A chalkboard sign at a bar on the Bowery beckoned: “Happy Hour. Have a Night You’re Sure Not to Remember.” Soon I came to the New Museum, open tonight late and free. The chartreuse-green elevator was enormous, as most museum elevators are. Its two stainless steel doors mirrored and multiplied the occupants like Alex Katz cutouts at a cocktail party. The art in the white spacious galleries was largely multimedia, irreverent and coy–but nothing I hadn’t seen before. Less interesting, I thought, than the incidental rooftop views beyond the strangely narrow corridors and stairs.

Posted by Jane on 9:07 PM | Comments (0)

June 7, 2008

A Newborn Ferry Terminal

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Early this morning, across from the World Financial Center, I was startled to see a brand new, partially constructed, glass-gabled, cathedral-regal ferry terminal being coaxed into place by two large tugboats, a red and an orange, while a little white-and-blue Push Tug stood by, aft of a barge, rather like an observant midwife. Conceived in Louisiana, the ferry had been floated over from Brooklyn, only a few hours before. As part of the berthing process, there were a couple of immense barges, like inert brown sea cows, whose hodgepodges of barge-clutter--domes, cylinders, spheres, wheels, rectangles, trusses, rope-loops, etc.--resembled the standards of Precisionist iconography.
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The little Push Tug was so close to the railing at the esplanade that I could talk with the captain as if gabbing with a neighbor over a picket fence. I seized the chance to ask about something I should have resolved before my parents died. Had he ever heard of a “Tracy Tug"? “No," he replied, "not specifically; but it might be the name of one of the old-fashioned McAllister tugs, like the one at Pier 17. They all had girls’ names." I said, “While my mother was in the hospital, waiting for me to be born, she said she watched the Tracy tugs from her window, trawling up and down the Hudson. She became so fond of them that she considered naming me Tracy. I never thought to ask her more about it, and I’ve not been able to find any reference to Tracy Tugs. Anyway, it’s a moot point, because after all that, she named me Jane.” The tugboat captain gestured with an elaborately tattooed arm and said, “Well, now, that’s this tug’s name. Her name is Jane.”
~
(But spelled Jayne.)

Posted by Jane on 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

June 4, 2008

Only In New York?

When: May 17, 2008
Where: Hudson River esplanade
Who: woman in group
Attitude: neutral
QuoteUnquote: “He won a medal before he died, but never put it on his ribbon bar.”
*
When: May 23, 2008
Where: Clark St. Station, Brooklyn
Who: Old man to his old wife
Attitude: Chagrined
QuoteUnquote: “I picked up the check by accident.”
*
When: May 29, 2008
Where: Near the river
Who: woman with large dogs
Attitude: Frustrated, unable to control their jumping
QuoteUnquote: “Bad dog! Sit! Sit! I’m the alpha, not you!”
Commentary: (Yeah, right.)
*
When: A while back.
Where: Somewhere downtown
Who: One small boy to another
Attitude: Matter-of-fact
QuoteUnquote: “When you’re ten, you become a pre-teen.”
*
When: June 4, 2008
Where: Central Park West and 79th St.
Who: Two girls.
QuoteUnquote: Girl A: “I know you don’t like taxidermy.”
Girl B: “I think I’m getting over some of my taxidermy issues.”
~
When: June 7, 2008
Where: Starbucks, on Broadway near Walker
Who: One barrista to another
QuoteUnquote: "They give us workers free therapy because this job makes everyone crazy."
~~

Posted by Jane on 2:19 PM | Comments (1)