Ruminatrix
...more recent posts
Friday, Feb 28, 2003
It's the last day of the snowiest February in twenty years, we're still in the middle of the worst economy in at least ten, and no relief is in sight. This winter would have been much harder without dirt-cheap lunch-time Rx: The sinus-clearing $4 bowl of pho at Pho Bang, 3 Pike St, just above Canal. For shrimp pho, try the place on East Broadway (Pho 89?) just uptown of the Manhattan bridge. Neither is new, both are effective.
From the Everyman Library collection Poems of New York:
- Whitman in Black
For my sins I live in the city of New York
Whitman's city lived in Melville's senses, urban inferno
Where love can stay only for a minute
Then has to go, to get some work done
Here the detective and the small-time criminal are one
& tho the cases get solved the machine continues to run
Big Town will wear you down
But it's only here you can turn around 360 degrees
And everything is clear from here at the center
To every point along the circle of horizon
Here you can see for miles & miles & miles
Be born again daily, die nightly for a change of style
Hear clearly here; see with affection; bleakly cultivate compassion
Whitman's walk unchanged after its fashion
-- Ted Berrigan (1994)
Thursday, Feb 27, 2003
So the Studio Daniel Libeskind beats out the Think Group for the wtc redevelopment project. It's a victory if not for kitsch then at least for easy symbolism (Tour guide: "Yup, that spire is exactly 1776 feet high...") over Think's airy latticework, which will now remain merely a concept.
On the other hand: SDL's idea of exposing part of the original towers' foundation is pretty cool, adding an unusual (for New York) archaeological dimension to the design. New Yorkers -- as befits the denizens of any great city -- weren't shy about expressing their opinions about the plans, even if we had no say in the final choice. ("Woah, whaddaya think of this new Parthenon thing that's going up on the rock?" "Not much.")
Then again, Gotham doesn't dwell much on its past and it never has done so. And I have yet to hear anyone say that they really loved the old towers, as opposed perhaps to finding them impressive or handy landmarks, even during the two years when I worked down there in the financial district. So perhaps aesthetics are slightly beside the point.
Coincidentally perhaps, the New York Times today has two other unrelated large-scale architecture stories:
Albert Speer, (son of his namesake) is building a gigantic axis for Beijing's 2008 Olympic City. And Indonesia is planning a shopping mall by the massive eighth-century Buddhist temple at Borobudur in Java, a World Heritage site.
Frickin A
Went to Frick Collection yesterday with Paul & Bob (visitors from Maine) for a couple of hours. Bob has worked as a historian of Venetian art and knows his stuff. I just like looking at some of it.
My gut feeling: the steel magnate and plutocrat Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) probably didn't enjoy art very much, though he sure collected a lot of big names. Some attributions have been withdrawn or downgraded to "school of" status (though frame of the dubious, incomplete "Polish Rider" is still labelled Rembrandt); other works aren't particularly good (a weak Manet, butt-ugly Degas dancers), some just bad-to-mediocre (de la Tour, Piero). I hear the buyer cabling Frick "What you need to buy next is..." and the first thing on the market by, let's say, Tiepolo would be crated for the next steamer over. Have times changed? Perhaps today's magnates are less in awe of Old Masters.
There's little in the way of Impressionists (an unimpressive Monet) to lighten the Golden-Age formality. God, what a relief a few Cezannes would be among all this brown and black! (For example, there's a proto-Cubist sunlit view of Roman Forum at dawn by Corot). Frick bought lots of fomal portraiture (Gainsborough, Ingres), a lot of of fat old men (by Hals and Van Dyck) as well as bucolic/fleshy (Boucher, Fragonard) scenes. He had, for unknown reasons, several views (one an early Turner) of the gloomy ferry port of Dieppe on the English Channel. Did he have business interests there perhaps?
Would dinner chez Frick have been fun? No, I would prefer to party with Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner, even if her Vermeer is still being held being held for ransom somewhere.
But the Frick does indeed house honest-to-god masterpieces: two late Rembrandt self-portraits, two Vermeers, a fabulous Velazquez (a dour Philip IV), a couple of El Grecos (St Jerome), a pair of Holbeins (Thomas More and the pig-eyed chancellor Thomas Cromwell), two Titians, a Bellini (St Francis), a lovely van Eyck and a Bronzino. All worth an extended look, even if admission is a bit pricey at $12.
Reading: The current New Yorker has a long profile of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan by Philip Gourevitch and a profile of the awesome actress Frances McDormand by Joan Acocella. Neither article, unfortunately, is online -- why not do put 'em up as a civic service, Mr Newhouse? At the very end, McDormand recommends my favorite movie of the past several months: Rivers and Tides.
Note to self: If brevity is the soul of wit, future entries to this page will have to be much shorter.
Critics say that the United Nations it will lose "credibility" if the pseudo-Adolf Saddam is not removed forthwith. If not, we are told, the UN will suffer the same fate as the League of Nations (born Geneva 1919, died 946).
Of course, the US never joined the League at all, despite its being the brainchild of Woodrow Wilson. Key dates: Germany left the League in 1933; Expulsions: Italy, for its invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935; USSR for its war on Finland in 1939. Successes: International Court in the Hague founded; crises averted over Vilna (1920) Corfu (1923) and Mosul (1924 and that's yes its the same Mosul in northern Iraq). Signal failures: disarmament conferences, failure to prevent Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931). By the time of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) the League was all but irrelevant
So which other countries never joined the League?
...Saudi Arabia, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, And Bhutan.
Source Atlas of World History (Kinder & Hilgemann 1978).
Have a nice day.
Had a wonderful dinner at Alias last night with Paul, an erstwhile housemate of mine back in Cambridge Mass in the late seventies. (I think "erstwhile" is okay when to refer to events over twenty years ago). Paul and his long-time companion Bob, who now live on island in Maine, are in town for a few days to attend a wedding and do some sight-seeing. I may go with them to the Frick later this week as Bob is an art-history enthusiast (Renaissance Venice a specialty)
It was a pleasure to see them: Paul has had to retire early due to a conjunction of disabilities, but is still very active in their small town by Casco Bay. I would love to sail in Maine again someday and drop anchor in their bay.
Also baked chocolate-chip cookies with Theo Sunday. They were a little dry but I will have another try soon and use fresher chips.
Collateral Damage?
A couple of interesting articles in the NYT over the past couple of day. Monday's piece US Approach on North Korea Is Straining Alliances in Asia suggests that South Korea might be questioning the benefits of its fifty-year alliance. I did not know for instance that the Yongsan base, a major US facility, sits in the middle of downtown Seoul. How is placing a large base in the midst of a capital city and within artillery range of the DMZ a good idea?
And today Tuesday, the Times has a pair of articles on the risk posed to archaeological and religious sites in Iraq by war and/or bombing. I am not comparing the costs of damage to sites or shrines with the deaths of non-combatants, but there is a cultural issue here. And it will matter to many people whether such places are damaged or contaminated with depleted uranium rounds.
For it bears remembering that Mesopotamia and indeed all of of Iraq east of the Euphrates -- unlike the empty deserts of Kuwait -- is a cradle of Western civilization, riddled with sites of great historical importance. We deplored it when Saddam vandalized Shi'a shrines in Najaf and Karbala in 1991 in retaliation for the uprisings against him. We condemned the destruction of Bosnian mosques and libraries by Serb forces. Damage to such sites in Iraq would be a black mark on Western civilization itself.
I don't have good explanations for a three-month silence -- or none that would constitute a valid excuse. Yet I can't simply ignore it either. So for now I'll just say that this has been a very hard winter indeed, perhaps the hardest of my life. My overall mood has been at best saturnine (OED: "1 of sluggish gloomy temperament; 2 of, or affected, by lead-poisoning") and frequently much worse than that. This has not been conducive to the practice of regular logging. Or regular anything except sleep and broodiness.
The causes have been both internal (i.e. personal) and external (political). Somewhere in between these meet in the realm of the economic. Here's the rub: long-term unemployment doesn't seem to suit me any better than it does anyone else. I have found the slope from having some time off to having too much on my mind to leave the house a very slippery one. But I'll save the more personal stuff for another time; there will be opportunities.
As for today: attending the big anti-war non-march with several hundred thousand others in New York City on Feb 15th pulled me out (somewhat) of my blues. It felt good to be there to show dissent despite the freezing temperature. Even if we didn't stem the tidal drift to war.
Because a week later it's clear that the day of world-wide marches (millions from Melbourne to California) has altered policy neither in Washington nor in London. Mr Blair is apparently not for turning, even if the Labour Party and the British public is overwhelmingly opposed to his war. If memory serves, the main UK contribution in to the 1991 war (which I supported) was a series of low-level daylight ground attacks which led to the loss of several RAF pilots and failed to destroy Iraqi Scuds. Very spectacular and glorious but ineffective. Britain's participation in this adventure is more important for its diplomatic or symbolic value than for its "assets".
France, after its Security Council proposal to increase the scale of the UN inspection regime in Iraq drew applause, won't follow through with any particulars. Perhaps it has concluded that in any case the US is unlikely to tell the UN whatever ingredients it provided to Iraq back in the days when it was arming it to invade Iran. We can be pretty sure that those stocks won't survive any invasion and occupation.
Putin isn't saying much about what Russia's position is, but then they know who's gonna win the argument. They will, it appears, simply wait until Washington does what it intends to and reluctantly settle for whatever they can get out of it.
There's a glimmer of hope in Turkey's refusal to allow a northern front from its territory for invasion -- not much however since the difference of opinion is more about dollars in aid than an actual oposition to the policy.
I have gone on much too long here. But still I think one needs to say so even if one can't prevent it: this war is wrong and it is also wrong-headed. In 1804 Napoleon, not yet emperor, had an inconvenient opponent, the Duc d' Enghein, executed for treason. He was shot at night-time in the moat of Vincennes after a very brief court-martial. Napoleon's future minister of Police, the cynical Fouche, quipped that the shooting was "worse than a crime, it was an error." This impending war is a error in ways that will only become more apparent after it's over.
I'll log sporadically not daily but that's enough for one day.
"If I venture into the slipstream..." A place to start?
Van Morrisson spits it out: "My t-t-tongue gets tied, every every every time I try to speak..." From Cyprus Avenue on Astral Weeks of course -- the album he made while flat broke and very unhappy in Cambridge Massachussets in 1968, trying to break out of his old Them contract and start over in New York. I picked up a copy two days ago, on sale. Each song still speaks to me of breaking silences, and of getting under way: "step right up, fly it, try it, just-a like a ballerina..." Astonishing. And if it seems like hubris to quote Van Morrison, I can only reply that his "tongue gets tied" is from Hound Dog.
My fingers get tied (and insides shake just like a leaf on a tree) every time I try to get this page started. I first have to overcome a great resistance to getting going at all, then defeat a compulsion to re-edit over and over and over, to stop myself from finding some other task...Is the trick of it just to put it down and push the post button?
On the subway uptown the other day, thinking about this here page, a question bubbled up: Will writing a log be a "putting down", a congealing or freezing of thoughts? Or is it perhaps more productive to think of writing this as a "letting go", a release from my preoccupations and obsessions?
Let it go. Step right up, try it, fly it see what happens, dear reader
It's a beginning of sorts.