A snarled shout at the door of the subway train from a person keen on politeness–“Say ‘excuse me,’ God damn it!”
Archive for the ‘New York City’ category
The Holiday Spirit – Politeness Rules! (Hmmm….)
December 16, 2009Faux Fir, Birch, Time
December 5, 2009My little piece of Manhattan (way downtown) has been transforming itself. Faux fir, twinkly lights, and all manner of gilded Christmas ornamentation, have infiltrated almost every public space.
The decorations are intended to inspire Christmas cheer. Instead, they usually make me feel guilty, irritated. (So much to do, and now Christmas!) I sometimes think I’d just rather have big neon signs blinking, “Shop Shop Buy Buy”.
What especially bothers me are the white sprays of some kind of wooden (or plastic) branches that seem intended to represent birch.
I’m not sure what birch has to do with Christmas. (In fact, the branches may actually represent some variation of ice storm rather than birch.)
Their starkness, leaflessness, has a morbid quality. Even punitive–I think of the switches given to bad children by some European version of Santa Claus—the Italian witch La Befana?
The sprays of birch” may especially bring me down because the main place I see them is the South Bridge, an overpass over the West Side Highway, which is one of the prime viewing spots for Ground Zero. The stark white branches punctuate each window except for the one with the best bee-line view of the old World Trade Center site. (That last bunch of birches has been tactfully moved inward to an interior wall.)
The fire station directly across from Ground Zero is also festooned with a thick ornamented bunting. Tourists peer in its garage. The 9/11 Tribute Center next store sells teddy bears.
I know all of this is part of the natural progress of time—the transition of these few acres from unintended graveyard to must-see tourist sight; I’m sure it’s all good on some level, as well as inevitable.
So why does it bother me?
Simple snobbery? A bit. Some of the decorations seem kind of plasticky. Though actually, they are pretty nice for plasticky. Also re-usable. I can testify to this re-usability because they are exactly the same the year as the year before, and too, the year before that.
This, I realize, is what truly bothers me. The “before” element, the “last year” piece. It seems too soon for Christmas decorations to be up again; too quick for “before” to have become “again”.
(I’m not referring here to the fact that it’s too early to celebrate Christmas. That prematurity was also the same last year.)
No, what bothers me is that it’s too soon to be this year. Where did the last one go? I can come up with specific moments, but certainly not 525600.
The idyllic version of time passing shows leaves turning red, snow falling, that electric lime green of spring, black-eyed susans reaching out to a brilliant summer sky.
But here we are in downtown New York City. Faux fir sprouts, dead white “birch” splays, ornaments blossom.
All this time I thought those decorations were goading me to shop, but what they were really telling me was to pay attention. Right here, right now.
In the midst of that realization, I hurry on to work, late again.
USS New York
November 2, 2009
The USS New York sailed by Battery Park City this morning, an LPD-21 (whose name, I believe, means something like “landing platform deck”) stopping opposite the World Trade Center site. My camera didn’t work (or I didn’t know how to work it on a brisk morning), and settled for holding my shivering dog under my jacket, so I only have the “artist’s rendering” above.
The ship, in honor of New York, is made in part (probably extremely small part) from steel from the World Trade Center. The Hindu-temple-like stupas at the front are missile defense systems.
Bagpipes played the Marine corps anthem “From the Halls Of Montezuma”.
Fire boats sprayed blue and white water. (Their spray in the morning light, with the Statue of Liberty and huge grey ship in the background, and Hudson rippling on all sides, and ferry boats, and police boats, and little coast guard rubber style boats, was really quite beautiful.)
Eleven helicopters were counted.
Who Needs Water? Drilling the Marcellus Shale
October 17, 2009Ten Reasons (That Anyone Can Understand) Why New York Should Say No to Upstate Natural Gas Drilling.
1. You need water to make beer.
2. Even a cold bath is better than one that leaves you with boils.
3. Casino-Resorts without (a) hot tubs (that don’t leave you with boils), or (b) good beer (I’ve heard Adirondack is infinitely superior to Coors) tend to go bust.
4. Milk is good for your teeth.
5. Mountains are good for your soul.
6. When the animals go, we’re next.
7. It’s hard to create jobs in a place where you can’t drink, bathe, feed animals, or wash clothes in the water.
8. It’s hard to keep jobs downstream of a place where you can’t—oops! Correction. It’s hard to keep jobs in a place whose reservoirs hold water that can’t be drunk, bathed in, or used for any human or animal purpose.
9. Wyoming was once a beautiful state.
10. And I haven’t heard that it’s become the jobs capital of the country.
Six Reasons Why New York Should Say Yes to Natural Gas Drilling
1. I can take my one-time drilling lease payment and rent a trailer (maybe) somewhere a whole lot warmer than Upstate New York.
2. Those stupid dairy cows really build up a stench.
3. Coors is okay by me. (Better not drill in Colorado.)
4. Mountains make me carsick.
5. Those stupid, rich, New Yorkers—don’t they just buy bottled water?
6. They don’t use water to make diet soda, do they? Regular?
Late (Subway Blog)
October 6, 2009Late late late. What is it that makes some people (i.e. me) almost inevitably so?
It can’t be enjoyment of that sick feeling in my stomach, the itchy anxiety that runs up the inside of my arms, the vacuum roar in my throat.
I jump on the first train I come to, an E, even though it doesn’t go exactly to the stop I need. Then, at the next stop, a C—a C!— a local, but also the train that will stop at my station— pulls up across the platform.
I dash across. I make it through the old grey doors. I even get a seat.
As the E speeds off on the other track, the conductor of my C tells us that the train is being held in the station. We wait. He tells us again, just in case we don’t realize that we are standing stock still. The vacuum roar spreads from my throat to my solar plexus; despair fills my core. My little bit of lateness will now be a lot of lateness, and it is all my fault. Stupid stupid C.
The train finally begins to move, but slowly, jerkily, like a Conestoga wagon over a rutted ditch. The scene is somewhat different from the classic Western, however, due to the blackness outside the train and the gloomy fluorescence within. What I should say is that the train moves like a Conestoga wagon somehow transplanted into a cheap diner at 2 a.m.
I feel horrible. Yet, the despair caused by lateness is something with which I am well familiar. Why?
1. I tell myself it’s because I am busy. (But most people in this city are busy.)
2. I tell myself it’s because I can’t refrain from certain morning conversations, which, though irrelevant to the specific tasks of the day, are necessarily required for the construction of a “self” to get through these tasks. This doesn’t seem a good reason either since a certain share of these conversations are arguments, which (I hope) are not actually the building blocks of that sense of self. (I try not to wonder about that.)
3. I tell myself it’s because I don’t much like waiting. As a child of another overly busy woman who spent time in conversations aimed at bolstering the self in order to get through hard days, I did a fair amount of waiting when I was little. (The only problem with that reason is that I’m generally gleeful when early.)
4. Perfectionism? (Maybe. I do tend to sweep my living room just when I should walk out the door.)
5. Reluctance? (On certain work days, possibly.)
6. A need for specialness? A desire to prove that I’m lucky, blessed with extraordinary gifts of good fortune, such as clocks stopping, trains taking wing? (Hmmm…..)
Finally (finally), we pull into 42nd Street which is the station where I would have had to switch from the so much faster E, had I stayed on. The platform is crowded.
Ah.
If you are a New Yorker, you understand the reason behind that “ah”.
If you’re not: the full platform means that no other C has pulled up here recently; that, even if I’d stayed on the grass-is-always-greener other train (the E, or even if I’d jumped the express, the A), I would not have caught up to a C train before the one I am sitting on.
Which means that I have, today, taken the very quickest combination of trains available on the New York City subway system.
Ah.
I run when I get off, feeling blessed.
Funeral Homes v. Bob the Bagelman
September 26, 2009Recently I’ve had some rather stressful involvement with funeral and memorial arrangements. In the process, I’ve worked with (a) a funeral home and (b) Bob the Bagelman (who was suggested by the church where one funeral service was to be held as a source of food for an informal reception.)
Bob’s establishment is small, hot, crowded, dark, and does not have a telephone. Bob is rarely there, and his very nice wife, despite the fact that she stands behind the cash register, doesn’t seem to know the prices of anything. (Presumably, this statement does not apply to a single cinnamon raisin with cream cheese.)
The funeral home is spacious, breezily airconditioned, heavily upholstered, and ornately lamped. When people answering the telephone put you on hold, the recording talks about trust. The funeral home staff makes a point of being extremely clear about everything that will be done and not done, what’s needed, and what’s included. While there are several oddly named categories on the final bill, they are nonetheless separately itemized.
Bob’s business is a bit hectic. I had to call him several times on his cell phone before we could actually talk about the order. Each initial call I made was at a bad time—once he was chasing an ambulance with a relative in it (admittedly not his fault!), once he was delivering an order, once he didn’t have a pen. Even after we did talk, I wasn’t sure what to expect. And, frankly, what he ultimately delivered seemed to me to be overpriced even for New York City.
Even so, I somehow preferred the process of making arrangements with Bob. Seven reasons why:
1. Isn’t it obvious?
2. The funeral home insisted on payment in full in advance. Bob the Bagelman, who never even asked for my full name, told me to just drop a check by whenever it might be convenient.
3. Bob the Bagelman prepares food. You can put butter on it.
4. Bob the Bagelman, unlike the funeral home, does not try to sell a dress, with completely new underwear, for $465.
5. Bob the Bagelman told me that when it’s hot, people really go for fruit. I really don’t like to write about what the funeral home director said about heat.
6. Yes, Bob the Bagelman overcharged. Even so, he had a whole lot fewer zeros at the end of his bill.
7. Bob the Bagelman laughed at my feeble, but frequent, attempts to make jokes, while the funeral home director….well, isn’t it obvious?
Subway Sonnet – Train Chemistry – Light That Cannot Be Broken Down For Parts
September 23, 2009
Molecules (poem by Karin Gustafson, drawing by Diana Barco)
I updated this post for the dVerse Poets Pub prompt for poems about trains and am also linking to Victoria C. Slotto’s blog liv2write2day relating to poems about light. This poem is not a new one, but it was written on and prompted by the subway on a Monday, thinking about a beautifully sunny Sunday before.
This is a sonnet, a variation of the regular form 14 1/2 lines rather than the requisite 14. I added the extra couple of words at the end to combat that “patness” that sometimes results from a sonnet’s final couplet.
Molecules
Yesterday in the dim fluorescence
of subway car, I thought of molecules.
They seemed, in that greyed light, the essence
of life. I saw them stretched in pools,
sometimes seemingly limpid, other times
volcanic, fervidly swooping me
abubble, then mucking me into slimes
of laval woe, a test tube of to be
or not to be. Today, I’m by the sea,
and water, vaster than pools, sparkles
under light so immense it cannot be
broken down for parts, yet its particles
raise up the non-molecular part
of me, what refuses to lose heart,
no matter–
(All rights reserved. Karin Gustafson)
(The drawing above is by my dear friend Diana Barco, who illustrated my book of poetry called “Going on Somewhere,” available on Amazon.)
Check out 1 Mississippi at link above also.
Reasons To Live in Downtown Manhattan Post-9/11
September 10, 2009With 9/11 literally around the corner (I live a couple of blocks from Ground Zero), the perennial question once again arises in my mind. Why do I live in downtown Manhattan, (very) downtown Manhattan, post 9/11? Why would anyone want to live here post 9/11?
Here are some reasons
1. Fitness. You get a lot of exercise. There are a couple of Hudson River parks where, on a nice day, every spare inch is devoted to sport, i.e. soccer, lacrosse, ultimate frisbee, baseball, football, rugby, cricket, and the shielding of one’s self and one’s offspring from stray soccerballs, lacrosse wickets, baseballs, cricketballs, frisbees, and runners unable to stop their strides.
There’s also the esplanade by the river where you can jog, rollerblade, skateboard, ride your bike, or walk (with a careful eye out for joggers, skateboarders, the wiggly spandex fannies of backwards rollerbladers, and bikers who seem to think the esplanade, a slightly wider than average New York City sidewalk, is the perfect place to race).
Besides all that, the nearest subway stops are all several blocks and stairways away. So you can get considerable exercise just getting to your train.
2. Safety. Putting aside terrorism, downtown seems extremely safe. For one thing, there’s hardly anyone here at night. (There are no good restaurants. Another health benefit by the way–home cooking!)
The wind of the ocean also makes it too cold much of the year for muggers to lurk. (See Reason No. 3 about proximity to nature.)
Nor is there any place for criminals to park their getaway cars. And forget about running to the subway.
Besides all that, there’s a whole host of pedestrian walkways, meaning that residents of downtown can walk around texting without fear of causing a car crash. (A great safety feature in modern America.)
3. Proximity to Nature. The rivers, the harbor, are right here. And they are beautiful. Every season, every hour of the day.
Then there’s that wonderful sea breeze, errr… wind, which in the fall, winter, spring, you can feel from the tips of your toes right into the marrow of your bones.
Every winter, there are a few days of actual ice floes. (Not only in your toilet.)
Being so close to the river also brings a measure of safety. I mean, if there were another act of terrorism, which you can’t help thinking about it when you walk past Ground Zero twice a day, you could always dash out to the Hudson, right? Steal a boat? Hitch a ride with the Coast Guard as they zoom into the Marina to go to the Starbucks in the Financial Center?
Swim?
Maybe better keep your Starbucks card handy for barter purposes.
4. Smugness. Yes, it is incredibly annoying to have to scoot through the crowds at Ground Zero every day. (I really do prefer to call it the World Trade Center.) Yes, you do want to shake some of the ones who pose coyly. Yes, every time you see the hawkers’ pamphlets opened to photographs of the fireball of the second plane hitting the second tower, you really do feel sick.
Still, the whole passageway does give you a daily opportunity to feel a fair amount of unmitigated (except by nausea and rage) smugness.
5. Pride. All New Yorkers have the stubborn pride of the survivor. They had this long before 9/11; New Yorkers who have moved here since 9/11 probably have it as well. It has something to do with the general grittiness of New York City (probably too, the particular grittiness of the New York subway system.)
I did not live down here on 9/11. I did live in downtown Manhattan (but about thirty blocks from the World Trade Center rather than a couple.) And I did run down here on that day to look for a daughter who was in school a couple blocks from the towers.
Even so, I have not earned the full extent of grim pride of the people in my building who lived here then.
I do understand it though. And we, who did not live quite as close, but close enough, who smelled the smells, and breathed the dust, and watched the smoke, have some small share of it.
I would not call this pride a reason to live down here. But there is some benefit of being near a place that reminds me, when I am obsessively worrying, whining, frustrated, that there was a day in which I swore, if I found my daughter safe, I’d never complain about anything again, that my lifetime watchword would be gratitude.
6. Low Rent. Compared to much of the rest of Manhattan at least. For some reason.
ManicDDaily 
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