Have You Seen Zoe?
I was unwilling to risk another sleepless night so I took a pill.
After a fairly strenuous previous day I had anticipated a night of deep dreamless sleep but found it elusive. That day by 2pm. I had ingested two Bloody Marys, three frozen Margaritas and one lavender infused gin lemonade drink and here let me pause and say oh God bless that wonderful Margarita machine, you were a marvelous and I would go so far as to say essential part of my survival and happiness while roughing it for four days with as many as 33 other rummies in a decrepit and sometimes spooky three story former ballerinas compound deep in the Adirondacks. After the heavy early morning drinking I and five others attempted a 5.5 mile hike of a somewhat strenuous nature (up and back down Slide Mountain. Three had to turn back once it became obvious that completing the hike would make catching their bus back to NYC unlikely). Midday hiking on a hot muggy day is hard to beat I say facetiously and as the sweat poured down my face and soaked my body I counted off one Bloody Mary, two, and so on. I did though after the hike feel an energy akin to elation, which was however short-lived, as once back at the compound I again began pouring down frozen Margaritas and then, inexplicably, lifting heavy objects, cinder blocks and such, and also wondering, why is there such a stigma about drinking Bloody Marys late in the day, I hate that, because, they are, properly made, perhaps the most delicious drink in the history of tomato-based drinks.
The pill I took last night—which combined with just a splash of Johnnie Walker Black puts you in a pretty much guaranteed state of temporary death for about eight hours—begins and ends with the third to last letter of the alphabet. My lame attempt at subterfuge is because I don't want to glorify brand name drug use, or make it too easy for others to replicate my decision making, which can occasionally be listed under the title ill-conceived, or stupid, if you find that easier to spell, nor do I want to condemn it too harshly, this decision to ingest drugs, lest those revelers (I have your names written in my “notebook”) who regaled relentlessly through the night my wakeful aching body as they “sang” and danced and engaged in ponderous discussion under the influence of um, whatever that stuff is that makes you alert and uncommonly vivacious until 7 in the morning after a previous day and night of heavy drinking and exercise, think that I am holding a grudge (the fact that your names are scrawled with delirious hand in my notebook is not intended to make you jump in the night every time you hear some strange noise, and wonder, was jimlouis serious about that “notebook” or is he just spoofing, he's a real kidder, but also, he's kind of got that edge that scares me sometimes? Do you thinks he's one of those whack jobs that snaps one day and then they find these notebooks scrawled with all sorts of weird shit?) I would love to help you answer those questions, set your mind at ease but...did you hear that? Did someone just turn our doorknob? Hey does your drink taste funny? Mine tastes a little like it has 1200 mics of LSD in it, naw it's probably ok.
So the pill worked, perhaps too well (I got my desired dead dreamless sleep), and when Bernadette nudged me this morning, back in NYC, to ask do you need to move the car, I said or croaked, possibly squeaked, a yes and when she said it was 8 I thought, that's a nice number and I could probably use about 8 more hours of sleep. When she asked did I want her to move it I gave an adamant no, it's not woman's work afterall, I mean, there's just things she wouldn't understand about growing up on the streets...I won't go on in this vein...it was the beginning of an attempt to obliquely reference something that we did last night, which she made me promise, or maybe promise is too strong a word, that I wouldn't mention, while we baby-sat for a kid named Atticus. But despite the aforementioned lack of or at least occasional lack of good judgement I think now it will be best if I just admit that we watched Dirty Dancing on the TV . It was the best I could do with the system I had to work with, of which the DVD part along with the multiple remotes had so flummoxed me that I just gave up on it. The movie we had intended to watch, which was much the artier film, with accomplished actors, and buttloads of nuance, was the type of film you would be proud to discuss, drunkenly or sober, with just about anyone. I can't remember its name and as far as I know it is still stuck in that machine with the word “cannot” flashing on the display.
I exited the building and when you do that you are like immediately smack in the C part of NYC, which luckily accepts the walking dead as normal parts of its makeup, but in preparation I had put on my billed cap and positioned it low to hide behind instead of the bleary eyed drunk pill popping hiding sunglasses that other Nykers might prefer. There was however no accessory to hide the fact that I could not walk all that well and I just did the best I could. That pill had really kicked my ass. It felt as if not just my shoes but perhaps my pants and underwear were on backwards. And to get to the Jeep, which uncharacteristically was parked all the way over on Houston near the FDR, with literally only thirty seconds to spare before a meter maid dropped from the sky and zapped me for sixty, I had to run or rapidly limp (I should have mention earlier about the Adirondack block of cement that viciously attacked my left baby toe) the last two blocks while holding up my beltless pants in the most subtle fashion I could manage.
Usually when I start out writing I have some kernel of an idea inspired by one simple, ordinary sighting from a day, but what I say or how obviously it is connected to the original kernel can be hard to discern. Today I thought it was going to be that boy child I saw on Norfolk, the last of a group of seven kids leashed together single file. A previous group of leashed children had been led by a few moments earlier and it usually makes me smile, these leash or wagon train led groups of children in NYC, but this morning it made me laugh out loud, not at the boy per se but after he had passed and I had processed all of it: the cuteness of the group, and certain of its members individually, the way they walked or what they wore or when they waved at construction workers, and the fact that the doll the boy was carrying was Elmo's best girl friend, the tutu-wearing Zoe, who is a figure very close to me for reasons...save your breath...I'm not telling you, well, all of it seemed connected and part of that spiral of life that makes writing about it seem worthwhile. But I don't see how I really got Zoe into this one. I'll check for Zoe on the next edit.
...more recent posts
An Unhinged Screw
A couple of screws were loose, or three in fact (the third had come so loose as to fall down into the hot water supply line, and was at least partly responsible for the vibrating pipes that the Restauranteur was complaining about) and the hot side washer, without the screw, was just lying free against the stem, and/or the seat, working in a fashion but not that well. The other two screws were not themselves actually loose but the handles they were supposedly securing definitely were not as you would want them, functioning yes, but shaky. What appears to have fixed this wonkiness of the handles is longer screws, although they would certainly also work better if the female housings, into which go the hot and cold side splines, were deeper. So in fact, there were no loose screws, although the one that had fallen down into the supply line had I guess you could say gone through the process of being loose. Completely free of its mooring though a thing is not really loose anymore, but free. Turning the hot water valve to off and unscrewing the stem and then cupping my hand around the exposed valve seat and turning the water back on caused the missing screw to shoot up through my hand and into the sink (and I had thought ahead and closed the drain stopper.)
But earlier, in the morning, not knowing ahead of time that I was destined for failure, if not a permanent one, and as it seems this faucet has been nothing but trouble, I went out in search of a new one. Not wanting to go back to where I had gotten the one that has caused all the trouble I used my new found interest in subway travel to justify a trip on the F train to 23rd Street, where there is a Home Depot. But I'm looking for a faucet with big lever-type handles to accommodate disability plumbing code requirements for restaurant bathrooms and I'm not seeing these at Home Depot. While the employees there are helpful enough they cannot really answer my question regarding the finer aspects of NY plumbing code, so I collared a couple of guys dressed in coveralls speaking to each other in what sounded like maybe Croatian, and interrupted them to ask were they plumbers. I'm not sure they were but the one of them seemed to like the idea of it and said, in perfectly unaccented English, uh yes, we are. But I'm probably asking the wrong questions based on what is clearly an imperfect understanding of plumbing. As I walked away from the Croatians a Home Depot employee trotted up to me and suggested I go to one of two area plumbing supply stores.
So from 23rd Street between 5th and 6th I'm heading to 18th Street between 7th and 8th. And I'm daydreaming right out of the gate and end up on 8th Ave and know by the time I get to 18th Street I'm going to forget my orientation (seems implausible from here but at the time I was just thoroughly disconnected from a visualization of the grid) and not know whether I should turn left or right.
The last time I was in this neighborhood was months ago to meet a group of friends for a buffet of intestines and such. After the meal Bernadette and I had walked for awhile with a couple from the group, two artists, and once remembering that I felt pretty sure I would run into the man, and I did, just one block later. We chatted briefly, not really awkwardly but with a mutual inclination towards wrapping things up so as to avoid the awkward silence. He was clearly not as prepared to see me as I was him, and for a moment afterwards, walking away up 8th Ave., I wondered if perhaps I had conjured him to appear from some thin air, and now that my back was turned, he was transporting back through that thin air to wherever he had been before the rude interruption, and once back there was shaking his head in befuddlement, wondering, and not for the first time, too much acid in the eighties?
I can tell right off that this is not a place that particularly welcomes with open arms retail customers, it is a plumbing supply for contractors mostly, and I wait patiently while two employees doing absolutely nothing avoid having to deal with me. I have written all over me man with stupid questions who will waste your time. And I do not disappoint. I am, as advertised. And I leave empty handed, accepting slowly the failure that is defining my morning.
And so, over eager to get back on familiar ground I descend again into the bowels of the subway, but into the wrong entrance and realize only after I've swiped my card that none of the options in front of me are ones I want. Instead of heading back downtown I travel a few stops uptown on one of the numbered lines, and exit at 42 and Broadway, Times Square. It is a bit of a GollyGee, New York City moment, the entire sides of buildings are flashing advertisements at me, so I stay put, lean against a building and pull out the little device which continues to prove its hesitance to pick up a wifi signal when I most need it to. The signal is necessary to make any of my various mapping programs work (there is one that tells me which subway to take), and when they do work, they really work quite well. When working they allow me to achieve the best of both worlds. Not when I'm on an important mission to fix a faucet but on one of my many days off, it is for me a great thrill to venture out from a starting point and find myself through circuitous routing, completely disoriented. And then later, if my electronic maps are working I can in responsible fashion come back to earth, get myself oriented, and back to home base. It is kind of like a hobby for me.
But you can't engage in your hobbies every day. Once in awhile you need to fix a faucet and is too much to ask that in pursuit of this goal that everything works just the way you want it to? Which is a dumb question. No, there actually are dumb questions.
Now though, still leaning against the building, I realize I am in the early stages of paralysis, I have given up on the pretense of searching for a signal but am still staring downward, using the little device only as a prop, scoping out the hundreds and hundreds of passing shoes, my favorites this year and by favorite I mean least favorite is the open toed high heeled sandal espadrille hybrid. They seem to have too much and too little going on at the same time. The only thing that would make me like those shoes is if they came with built in wireless routers, so that every time I saw a pair I could also be using a mapping program to help me get the hell out of Times Square. I mean, I'll come back another day when I have more time.
I have by now stared long enough at a static version of the miniature subway map on my device to feel less daunted by the task of moving forward, and so find myself imbued with a surging confidence which has me walking back down steps leading below the sidewalks of NYC. I'm not sure what I got on, maybe an X or an R line, but it took me close enough, I got off on or near Prince St. and walked back easterly. And as with the many times before when suffering from disorientation in the west, realizing I had arrived at the Bowery made me feel calm, and home again.
In the restaurant which is closed for Monday's I performed the up above aforementioned and had that faucet working, well, let's just say better than it has in awhile. Right smack dab into the dubious expression on the face of the just arrived Restauranteur I said, no really, works great, try it out. She did, said hot damn. Neither one of us believes it will stay fixed forever. There will come a day in the foreseeable future when I will have to go back out there searching for a new faucet.
A couple of screws were loose, or three in fact (the third had come so loose as to fall down into the hot water supply line, and was at least partly responsible for the vibrating pipes that the Restauranteur was complaining about) and the hot side washer, without the screw, was just lying free against the stem, and/or the seat, working in a fashion but not that well. The other two screws were not themselves actually loose but the handles they were supposedly securing definitely were not as you would want them, functioning yes, but shaky. What appears to have fixed this wonkiness of the handles is longer screws, although they would certainly also work better if the female housings, into which go the hot and cold side splines, were deeper. So in fact, there were no loose screws, although the one that had fallen down into the supply line had I guess you could say gone through the process of being loose. Completely free of its mooring though a thing is not really loose anymore, but free. Turning the hot water valve to off and unscrewing the stem and then cupping my hand around the exposed valve seat and turning the water back on caused the missing screw to shoot up through my hand and into the sink (and I had thought ahead and closed the drain stopper.)
But earlier, in the morning, not knowing ahead of time that I was destined for failure, if not a permanent one, and as it seems this faucet has been nothing but trouble, I went out in search of a new one. Not wanting to go back to where I had gotten the one that has caused all the trouble I used my new found interest in subway travel to justify a trip on the F train to 23rd Street, where there is a Home Depot. But I'm looking for a faucet with big lever-type handles to accommodate disability plumbing code requirements for restaurant bathrooms and I'm not seeing these at Home Depot. While the employees there are helpful enough they cannot really answer my question regarding the finer aspects of NY plumbing code, so I collared a couple of guys dressed in coveralls speaking to each other in what sounded like maybe Croatian, and interrupted them to ask were they plumbers. I'm not sure they were but the one of them seemed to like the idea of it and said, in perfectly unaccented English, uh yes, we are. But I'm probably asking the wrong questions based on what is clearly an imperfect understanding of plumbing. As I walked away from the Croatians a Home Depot employee trotted up to me and suggested I go to one of two area plumbing supply stores.
So from 23rd Street between 5th and 6th I'm heading to 18th Street between 7th and 8th. And I'm daydreaming right out of the gate and end up on 8th Ave and know by the time I get to 18th Street I'm going to forget my orientation (seems implausible from here but at the time I was just thoroughly disconnected from a visualization of the grid) and not know whether I should turn left or right.
The last time I was in this neighborhood was months ago to meet a group of friends for a buffet of intestines and such. After the meal Bernadette and I had walked for awhile with a couple from the group, two artists, and once remembering that I felt pretty sure I would run into the man, and I did, just one block later. We chatted briefly, not really awkwardly but with a mutual inclination towards wrapping things up so as to avoid the awkward silence. He was clearly not as prepared to see me as I was him, and for a moment afterwards, walking away up 8th Ave., I wondered if perhaps I had conjured him to appear from some thin air, and now that my back was turned, he was transporting back through that thin air to wherever he had been before the rude interruption, and once back there was shaking his head in befuddlement, wondering, and not for the first time, too much acid in the eighties?
I can tell right off that this is not a place that particularly welcomes with open arms retail customers, it is a plumbing supply for contractors mostly, and I wait patiently while two employees doing absolutely nothing avoid having to deal with me. I have written all over me man with stupid questions who will waste your time. And I do not disappoint. I am, as advertised. And I leave empty handed, accepting slowly the failure that is defining my morning.
And so, over eager to get back on familiar ground I descend again into the bowels of the subway, but into the wrong entrance and realize only after I've swiped my card that none of the options in front of me are ones I want. Instead of heading back downtown I travel a few stops uptown on one of the numbered lines, and exit at 42 and Broadway, Times Square. It is a bit of a GollyGee, New York City moment, the entire sides of buildings are flashing advertisements at me, so I stay put, lean against a building and pull out the little device which continues to prove its hesitance to pick up a wifi signal when I most need it to. The signal is necessary to make any of my various mapping programs work (there is one that tells me which subway to take), and when they do work, they really work quite well. When working they allow me to achieve the best of both worlds. Not when I'm on an important mission to fix a faucet but on one of my many days off, it is for me a great thrill to venture out from a starting point and find myself through circuitous routing, completely disoriented. And then later, if my electronic maps are working I can in responsible fashion come back to earth, get myself oriented, and back to home base. It is kind of like a hobby for me.
But you can't engage in your hobbies every day. Once in awhile you need to fix a faucet and is too much to ask that in pursuit of this goal that everything works just the way you want it to? Which is a dumb question. No, there actually are dumb questions.
Now though, still leaning against the building, I realize I am in the early stages of paralysis, I have given up on the pretense of searching for a signal but am still staring downward, using the little device only as a prop, scoping out the hundreds and hundreds of passing shoes, my favorites this year and by favorite I mean least favorite is the open toed high heeled sandal espadrille hybrid. They seem to have too much and too little going on at the same time. The only thing that would make me like those shoes is if they came with built in wireless routers, so that every time I saw a pair I could also be using a mapping program to help me get the hell out of Times Square. I mean, I'll come back another day when I have more time.
I have by now stared long enough at a static version of the miniature subway map on my device to feel less daunted by the task of moving forward, and so find myself imbued with a surging confidence which has me walking back down steps leading below the sidewalks of NYC. I'm not sure what I got on, maybe an X or an R line, but it took me close enough, I got off on or near Prince St. and walked back easterly. And as with the many times before when suffering from disorientation in the west, realizing I had arrived at the Bowery made me feel calm, and home again.
In the restaurant which is closed for Monday's I performed the up above aforementioned and had that faucet working, well, let's just say better than it has in awhile. Right smack dab into the dubious expression on the face of the just arrived Restauranteur I said, no really, works great, try it out. She did, said hot damn. Neither one of us believes it will stay fixed forever. There will come a day in the foreseeable future when I will have to go back out there searching for a new faucet.
Thumbing
It is not that easy anymore to find an unlocked wifi signal sitting in your car waiting for the clock to tick, ok this guy in front in of me keeps moving up a little, and now he wants to move back, so his pal can get a space, I am accomodating, I mean it's not like I need all the practice I can get wth this thumb typing. I'm no Mr BC that's for sure. That guy is a thumb typing wizard. Recent studies show internet use causes fractured thinking. I fractured one of my ribs recently. Ten nineteen, we are almost there. Cleaning lady is coming today so perhaps I will take my sorry ass to Moma. After I scare the cat five floors down into the basement by turning on the vacuum cleaner, so she doesn't attack the cleaning lady. Holy cow this building maintainence guy, the one parked in front of me, just ask me for directions to a plumbing supply and I knew of one, a credible establishment, except for that sorry faucet they sold me which sits now in the restaurant bathroom. Ok times up, and then some.
It is not that easy anymore to find an unlocked wifi signal sitting in your car waiting for the clock to tick, ok this guy in front in of me keeps moving up a little, and now he wants to move back, so his pal can get a space, I am accomodating, I mean it's not like I need all the practice I can get wth this thumb typing. I'm no Mr BC that's for sure. That guy is a thumb typing wizard. Recent studies show internet use causes fractured thinking. I fractured one of my ribs recently. Ten nineteen, we are almost there. Cleaning lady is coming today so perhaps I will take my sorry ass to Moma. After I scare the cat five floors down into the basement by turning on the vacuum cleaner, so she doesn't attack the cleaning lady. Holy cow this building maintainence guy, the one parked in front of me, just ask me for directions to a plumbing supply and I knew of one, a credible establishment, except for that sorry faucet they sold me which sits now in the restaurant bathroom. Ok times up, and then some.
How To Throw A Ball
Walking around a big city on a crisp cool day near the beginning of summer is like watching the scenery from an air-conditioned movie theatre, with a box of popcorn, some Junior Mints, maybe Milk Duds if you can get them. You feel protected from the ugly (I'm sorry but I cannot suspend disbelief) reality of heat and steam and those mysterious flying particles that seem to come exploding from the corroded insides of exhaust pipes. Those ones that land and stick on the gooey wet exterior of your eyeballs and can at their worst ruin a part of your day, if vision is important to you, or at their least make you look bloodshot, bleary-eyed, unfortunate, perhaps even untouchable; certainly undesirable.
Say what you will about the conversation of weather, about how mundane is the subject matter, but it is or can be so important to people, I think, because of how profoundly different it can make you feel. If there was a pill that could make you cool on a hot muggy day...what?...oh there is...?...what...?...how much...?...can I buy them in a smaller lot...?...a sample?...sure, that would be nice...ok...well, assuming there was not a pill that could make you feel cool on a hot muggy day, and then one were introduced, I think it would be very popular, assuming you could run down to your neighborhood drug store to procure it. As it is, for those of us who haven't discovered the pill, we whimper all drag dog on hot days, maybe cringe and huddle on the cold ones, and, at some point we must talk about it. What I have said so far though, is about all I have to say about the weather, which today was pleasantly cool and just plain lovely really, the air was lovely today, still is in fact, and I will go so far as to say it was better than was the air two days ago. I have made a value judgment.
Which does not make a lick of difference to that woman who was hit by the bus near the corner of Grand and Clinton today. The school kids coming in to get pizza while I finished up my two slices told the proprietor about it. He had been sticking his head out the door and looking up the street but until one of the kids said, oh yeah, a lady got hit by a bus (the kid seeming neither concerned nor excited), I did not know what he was looking at. I remembered the few minutes earlier the impatient honking of motorists and feeling slightly annoyed but mostly glad I was not them, and then after learning that they were honking, essentially, at a woman down on the ground in front of a bus, I was even more glad not to be them. Now in my life there were two opposing forces working. The one was the simple, uncomplicated goodness I derived from the pleasant weather and the delicious pizza, and the other was a generic sense of concern for a fellow human being, who had in a most cliche fashion actually been hit by a bus.
That's the example people use when they want to illustrate that we cannot know the mysteries of the future, who knows I might get hit by a bus today, they say, never really meaning it literally. But when I finished my pizza and got back out on the street there it was, that thing that is usually just a figure of speech, someone hit by a bus. I did not want to seem disrespectful by gawking and at the same time I did not want to seem too blase about someone else's misfortune. So I paused briefly, craned my neck a little. and felt at least a little comforted by the speed at which this woman was being attended to (she was already on a hard stretcher board).
In the end it is something you just file away, in between the mostly awful headlines you read that morning and the unknowable future that awaits to fill up the rest of your day before you fall asleep. It is filed between the memory of a nothing fancy but well-prepared slice of pizza, and that large group of kids you saw in the park just a few minutes later. They were being taught, in groups of five, how to throw a ball.
Walking around a big city on a crisp cool day near the beginning of summer is like watching the scenery from an air-conditioned movie theatre, with a box of popcorn, some Junior Mints, maybe Milk Duds if you can get them. You feel protected from the ugly (I'm sorry but I cannot suspend disbelief) reality of heat and steam and those mysterious flying particles that seem to come exploding from the corroded insides of exhaust pipes. Those ones that land and stick on the gooey wet exterior of your eyeballs and can at their worst ruin a part of your day, if vision is important to you, or at their least make you look bloodshot, bleary-eyed, unfortunate, perhaps even untouchable; certainly undesirable.
Say what you will about the conversation of weather, about how mundane is the subject matter, but it is or can be so important to people, I think, because of how profoundly different it can make you feel. If there was a pill that could make you cool on a hot muggy day...what?...oh there is...?...what...?...how much...?...can I buy them in a smaller lot...?...a sample?...sure, that would be nice...ok...well, assuming there was not a pill that could make you feel cool on a hot muggy day, and then one were introduced, I think it would be very popular, assuming you could run down to your neighborhood drug store to procure it. As it is, for those of us who haven't discovered the pill, we whimper all drag dog on hot days, maybe cringe and huddle on the cold ones, and, at some point we must talk about it. What I have said so far though, is about all I have to say about the weather, which today was pleasantly cool and just plain lovely really, the air was lovely today, still is in fact, and I will go so far as to say it was better than was the air two days ago. I have made a value judgment.
Which does not make a lick of difference to that woman who was hit by the bus near the corner of Grand and Clinton today. The school kids coming in to get pizza while I finished up my two slices told the proprietor about it. He had been sticking his head out the door and looking up the street but until one of the kids said, oh yeah, a lady got hit by a bus (the kid seeming neither concerned nor excited), I did not know what he was looking at. I remembered the few minutes earlier the impatient honking of motorists and feeling slightly annoyed but mostly glad I was not them, and then after learning that they were honking, essentially, at a woman down on the ground in front of a bus, I was even more glad not to be them. Now in my life there were two opposing forces working. The one was the simple, uncomplicated goodness I derived from the pleasant weather and the delicious pizza, and the other was a generic sense of concern for a fellow human being, who had in a most cliche fashion actually been hit by a bus.
That's the example people use when they want to illustrate that we cannot know the mysteries of the future, who knows I might get hit by a bus today, they say, never really meaning it literally. But when I finished my pizza and got back out on the street there it was, that thing that is usually just a figure of speech, someone hit by a bus. I did not want to seem disrespectful by gawking and at the same time I did not want to seem too blase about someone else's misfortune. So I paused briefly, craned my neck a little. and felt at least a little comforted by the speed at which this woman was being attended to (she was already on a hard stretcher board).
In the end it is something you just file away, in between the mostly awful headlines you read that morning and the unknowable future that awaits to fill up the rest of your day before you fall asleep. It is filed between the memory of a nothing fancy but well-prepared slice of pizza, and that large group of kids you saw in the park just a few minutes later. They were being taught, in groups of five, how to throw a ball.
May Days
They were rapt attendees of a new age coffee symposium. And I was the keynote speaker. The crowd was of such a number that you would not bother to count them all. And I marveled each and every one with my enthusiastic delivery regarding the simplistic yet superior mechanics of the isometric pressure powered piston driven espresso machine, no batteries, no electricity needed, just hot water of a temperature that these recent days in New York could almost be achieved by simply leaving tap water on your kitchen counter. Whoa now you say, one subject at a time, are we talking about air conditioners or coffee makers?
We could talk about neck braces just as well because this morning from deep inside the uninvited coffee reverie I was jolted into the present by a guy rear ending me on Norfolk St. It's parking day and with recent construction projects in the area and the subsequent loss of an entire half block of spaces, the competition is that much more intense. But I'm out there claiming a space, safely distant from the fire hydrant behind me, just trying to manage, with a modicum of dignity, the flashing imagery of the recent past, and perhaps move forthwith into a fantasy world very possibly including wild sex with aliens from the planet Section 8, when bam, this guy in a silver station wagon runs right into my bumper. The jolt--it was pretty mild, and truly, if anything, my neck feels better than it did before the bump—caused me to look up from the small hand held device positioned between my legs and from which with a stroke of my index finger I catapulted cartoon birds from a sling shot through the air and onto a variety of structures in hope of toppling them. Then I looked in my rear view mirror, and then my side mirror, and finally I just stared off into space before snapping to, at which point I looked down between my legs again at the newest structure on the tiny glass screen, and flung with my finger a small bird that could with a tap be turned into three even smaller birds, none of which by themselves could topple much of anything.
I don't know that I am fond to consider that a NY meter maid might today have been my angel of instant karma retribution for the (at worst) rude knocking into my bumper, but as it played out the guy who bumped me got out of his car and was gone for only a minute, which was unfortunately for him time enough for a meter maid to drive up alongside his vehicle, see he was not inside of it, and in the flick of an electronic ticket recording device, cost him 60 dollars. He came back in time to complain but once the ticket is electronically recorded there is no turning back. I did hear her say she was sorry before jumping into her vehicle and driving off, so at least my angel was a polite one.
There are at this time of the year a number of people talking about air conditioners, including Bernadette and I, and while on the surface it might seem a simple matter, as it turns out there are a great many intricacies to consider, such that the best one can hope for, I think, is a day like today, which is a cool and refreshing break from the recent hot and muggy record setting weather for Mays in New York. It is today a day cool enough to imagine oneself say three months in the future, when any considerations of hot weather remedy are surely in any case going to be short lived ones.
They were rapt attendees of a new age coffee symposium. And I was the keynote speaker. The crowd was of such a number that you would not bother to count them all. And I marveled each and every one with my enthusiastic delivery regarding the simplistic yet superior mechanics of the isometric pressure powered piston driven espresso machine, no batteries, no electricity needed, just hot water of a temperature that these recent days in New York could almost be achieved by simply leaving tap water on your kitchen counter. Whoa now you say, one subject at a time, are we talking about air conditioners or coffee makers?
We could talk about neck braces just as well because this morning from deep inside the uninvited coffee reverie I was jolted into the present by a guy rear ending me on Norfolk St. It's parking day and with recent construction projects in the area and the subsequent loss of an entire half block of spaces, the competition is that much more intense. But I'm out there claiming a space, safely distant from the fire hydrant behind me, just trying to manage, with a modicum of dignity, the flashing imagery of the recent past, and perhaps move forthwith into a fantasy world very possibly including wild sex with aliens from the planet Section 8, when bam, this guy in a silver station wagon runs right into my bumper. The jolt--it was pretty mild, and truly, if anything, my neck feels better than it did before the bump—caused me to look up from the small hand held device positioned between my legs and from which with a stroke of my index finger I catapulted cartoon birds from a sling shot through the air and onto a variety of structures in hope of toppling them. Then I looked in my rear view mirror, and then my side mirror, and finally I just stared off into space before snapping to, at which point I looked down between my legs again at the newest structure on the tiny glass screen, and flung with my finger a small bird that could with a tap be turned into three even smaller birds, none of which by themselves could topple much of anything.
I don't know that I am fond to consider that a NY meter maid might today have been my angel of instant karma retribution for the (at worst) rude knocking into my bumper, but as it played out the guy who bumped me got out of his car and was gone for only a minute, which was unfortunately for him time enough for a meter maid to drive up alongside his vehicle, see he was not inside of it, and in the flick of an electronic ticket recording device, cost him 60 dollars. He came back in time to complain but once the ticket is electronically recorded there is no turning back. I did hear her say she was sorry before jumping into her vehicle and driving off, so at least my angel was a polite one.
There are at this time of the year a number of people talking about air conditioners, including Bernadette and I, and while on the surface it might seem a simple matter, as it turns out there are a great many intricacies to consider, such that the best one can hope for, I think, is a day like today, which is a cool and refreshing break from the recent hot and muggy record setting weather for Mays in New York. It is today a day cool enough to imagine oneself say three months in the future, when any considerations of hot weather remedy are surely in any case going to be short lived ones.
Travel By Train With Albert
We had, Bernadette and I, I think it was two years ago, taken her father to the Air and Space museum out by Dulles airport in Virginia. There he had seen, and I photographed him in front of, the very same version, or a very similar version of, the Russian Mig that had shot holes in the PBM Mariner aircraft of which he was a crew member, during the Korean conflict. Well, he survived, married his love, had wonderful children, and that's all that matters, if that's the way you want to look at it.
This past weekend we—Bernadette, her younger sister the Restauranteur, me, and her father, whom I am going to name Albert, and not because it could be considered short for Albatross—flew out from LaGuardia to a little place in Arkansas to hunt for quartz crystals, in what I think is a continuing effort to reap the power of said crystals to somehow cleanse this man of his less than stellar luck when he is thousands of feet in the air inside metal tubes with wings flown by men, as Albert said—he has neck-ties older than, and which contain all of us, the faithful and the faithless, the annoying, the fat, the skinny, the sleepers, and on our return trip not one, but two, crying babies.
From point to point on the way out, from the Lower East Side of New York to the Hot Springs motel run by that reluctant pair of Scottish moteliers, the seconds and minutes added up to 17 hours. After a weather related bump from the first flight out of LaGuardia we were back in NY eating breakfast on Clinton St. just after seven a.m., but when the second attempt got us out of what was a really spiffy small airport above Scarsdale by 2 p.m., we figured things were looking up.
After landing on the runway in a cloudy, somewhat tumultuous lighting streaked Atlanta, the pilot informed us that the airport was shut down and it was a lucky thing we had been allowed to land at all. We were stopped still on the tarmac for an amount of time that while unfortunate, did not really extend into a length that could be considered unbearable. Of course, after you've been on the runway for awhile you have no way of knowing just how long you will remain so certainly the idea of unbearable is within reach.
When the plane, with brakes on and engine idle low, began shuddering violently in the wind, we felt pretty certain we were going to miss our connecting flight and so started thinking about what we would do in Atlanta for one night (the stewardess suggested we not stay in any hotel near the airport as the entire area was patrolled by evil hooligans who intended only harm upon the innocent), or whether or not renting a car and driving to Arkansas was feasible. After checking the distance we determined driving was not a great idea, and also, if we had driven out of New York at five that morning and headed for Arkansas we would still be about five hours behind where we were now. So we figured we would stick with this flying thing for a bit longer, the sooner we got to Arkansas and dug up a Golden Healer for Albert, the better.
The ribbing directed towards Albert was intended and taken as good natured but this idea of his bad airplane related mojo was starting to grow on me. There were other recent bad experiences in his flying past, which Bernadette reminded him of. Out loud or to ourselves we all conjured up that specific Twilight Zone we thought best applied to our situation. For my part, despite his believable talent in getting us better seats at better prices, I was just glad William Shatner was not on our flight.
All was well though, for all flights were delayed and thus we caught our connector to Little Rock and got to the car rental counter at least forty-five minutes before they shut down. We drove that night into Hot Springs to end one long travel day.
The rock digging experience is another story. I have a long history of digging in the dirt so that benefitted me. It was hot as hell in Arkansas though. And if you want a clearer picture of a depressed economy, just go to one that was fairly depressed prior to the most recent economic downturn and it becomes clearer still, clear as a Male Crystal, not that the cloudy Female doesn't tell her own story. The economic story in Mt. Ida, Arkansas is communicated through the nearly vacant or shut down motels that you see, and there is little need for the communicative assistance one might achieve from a Double Terminated Crystal to get that point across. There were times during the trip though that a Double Terminated Female might have been useful in aiding us with its mythic properties. If I had dug one up I might have asked it should I fly from Little Rock to Memphis to LaGuardia on Tuesday. It might have said, I will give three of you but not the fourth one opportunity to not only postpone the Memphis to LaGuardia leg, but to profit from it.
Oh come on, like we were going to leave Albert to fly by himself back into New York. I mean, I did not have fortune telling assistance, so when the offer came for three of us to fly later, get 400 Delta Dollars a piece and lodging for our trouble, I only half seriously considered it.
Later, in the air, the crying babies are not really that bad, and besides we were apparently going to miss all weather and come in smoothly on schedule. And, if I may just give Albert one last good natured ribbing, I think perhaps had he been on a different flight (although maybe albatross is a little harsh) we would have come in smoothly. As it was we were coming in on time and with no apparent trouble until right at the last minute, out of the clouds—I swear this is true although I did not tell anyone about it until now—came that Mig from Albert's past, I would say for one last haunt but really who can be sure it will be the last we see of it. I saw it only briefly, its wingtip picking up the only speck of sunlight in the dark sky. It glinted right at me, like a Herkimer Diamond (which is by the way a crystal that can only be found in upstate New York.) Long before the plane starting bouncing and then climbing erratically, straining, I mean you could feel it trying to accelerate faster than it was truly able, I had noticed that we were not descending like we had started to but in fact were angled upward. No big deal, how often do you actually get into a New York airport without at least one extra pass? And I remember how quiet it had gotten there at the end, just before the thought of dying had pervaded my thinking. It had taken the jostling of the plane to lull the babies. The babies did not really know that planes are not supposed to jostle like a big ole riveted metal grandpa. I think they were just happy for the distraction and possibly the beneficial change in air pressure, so that their inner eardrums quit hurting so horribly.
All this excitement aside I had not really seriously considered that this was to be the last hurrah of any of us. I mean who knows, maybe that Mig I saw out the window was just in the area for an airshow. That is possible.
No, it took the comforting words of the steward to calm me into a state of terror. His wording, that if the pilot were not now so importantly busy he would be on the speaker himself telling us what was happening, that as soon as he got a break from getting over the shock that he had to actually fly this plane instead of just letting it coast in on auto-pilot, ok the last bit is my words, but he did say, this steward, I kid you not, that we should not panic. Which looking now at the word on the page it seems to me evocative of nothing like the definition of the word. Yet, hearing it spoken by an airline employee, on an airplane that is acting even a little bit erratically, really punched the word up with a refreshing literalness. The Restauranteur said later she remembered him using the words “wind shear,” which are also words I would add to the short list of things not to say on an airplane while it is struggling a bit to stay a float, ok, maybe I would add a float to the list as well since we were probably at least briefly over the Atlantic. Eh, you know, I'm here writing about it so how bad could it have been? Not really that bad. Not Terror at 20,000 Feet bad. Maybe I'll do one quick Google search for Migs in US airspace, but then I'll be done with it.
We had, Bernadette and I, I think it was two years ago, taken her father to the Air and Space museum out by Dulles airport in Virginia. There he had seen, and I photographed him in front of, the very same version, or a very similar version of, the Russian Mig that had shot holes in the PBM Mariner aircraft of which he was a crew member, during the Korean conflict. Well, he survived, married his love, had wonderful children, and that's all that matters, if that's the way you want to look at it.
This past weekend we—Bernadette, her younger sister the Restauranteur, me, and her father, whom I am going to name Albert, and not because it could be considered short for Albatross—flew out from LaGuardia to a little place in Arkansas to hunt for quartz crystals, in what I think is a continuing effort to reap the power of said crystals to somehow cleanse this man of his less than stellar luck when he is thousands of feet in the air inside metal tubes with wings flown by men, as Albert said—he has neck-ties older than, and which contain all of us, the faithful and the faithless, the annoying, the fat, the skinny, the sleepers, and on our return trip not one, but two, crying babies.
From point to point on the way out, from the Lower East Side of New York to the Hot Springs motel run by that reluctant pair of Scottish moteliers, the seconds and minutes added up to 17 hours. After a weather related bump from the first flight out of LaGuardia we were back in NY eating breakfast on Clinton St. just after seven a.m., but when the second attempt got us out of what was a really spiffy small airport above Scarsdale by 2 p.m., we figured things were looking up.
After landing on the runway in a cloudy, somewhat tumultuous lighting streaked Atlanta, the pilot informed us that the airport was shut down and it was a lucky thing we had been allowed to land at all. We were stopped still on the tarmac for an amount of time that while unfortunate, did not really extend into a length that could be considered unbearable. Of course, after you've been on the runway for awhile you have no way of knowing just how long you will remain so certainly the idea of unbearable is within reach.
When the plane, with brakes on and engine idle low, began shuddering violently in the wind, we felt pretty certain we were going to miss our connecting flight and so started thinking about what we would do in Atlanta for one night (the stewardess suggested we not stay in any hotel near the airport as the entire area was patrolled by evil hooligans who intended only harm upon the innocent), or whether or not renting a car and driving to Arkansas was feasible. After checking the distance we determined driving was not a great idea, and also, if we had driven out of New York at five that morning and headed for Arkansas we would still be about five hours behind where we were now. So we figured we would stick with this flying thing for a bit longer, the sooner we got to Arkansas and dug up a Golden Healer for Albert, the better.
The ribbing directed towards Albert was intended and taken as good natured but this idea of his bad airplane related mojo was starting to grow on me. There were other recent bad experiences in his flying past, which Bernadette reminded him of. Out loud or to ourselves we all conjured up that specific Twilight Zone we thought best applied to our situation. For my part, despite his believable talent in getting us better seats at better prices, I was just glad William Shatner was not on our flight.
All was well though, for all flights were delayed and thus we caught our connector to Little Rock and got to the car rental counter at least forty-five minutes before they shut down. We drove that night into Hot Springs to end one long travel day.
The rock digging experience is another story. I have a long history of digging in the dirt so that benefitted me. It was hot as hell in Arkansas though. And if you want a clearer picture of a depressed economy, just go to one that was fairly depressed prior to the most recent economic downturn and it becomes clearer still, clear as a Male Crystal, not that the cloudy Female doesn't tell her own story. The economic story in Mt. Ida, Arkansas is communicated through the nearly vacant or shut down motels that you see, and there is little need for the communicative assistance one might achieve from a Double Terminated Crystal to get that point across. There were times during the trip though that a Double Terminated Female might have been useful in aiding us with its mythic properties. If I had dug one up I might have asked it should I fly from Little Rock to Memphis to LaGuardia on Tuesday. It might have said, I will give three of you but not the fourth one opportunity to not only postpone the Memphis to LaGuardia leg, but to profit from it.
Oh come on, like we were going to leave Albert to fly by himself back into New York. I mean, I did not have fortune telling assistance, so when the offer came for three of us to fly later, get 400 Delta Dollars a piece and lodging for our trouble, I only half seriously considered it.
Later, in the air, the crying babies are not really that bad, and besides we were apparently going to miss all weather and come in smoothly on schedule. And, if I may just give Albert one last good natured ribbing, I think perhaps had he been on a different flight (although maybe albatross is a little harsh) we would have come in smoothly. As it was we were coming in on time and with no apparent trouble until right at the last minute, out of the clouds—I swear this is true although I did not tell anyone about it until now—came that Mig from Albert's past, I would say for one last haunt but really who can be sure it will be the last we see of it. I saw it only briefly, its wingtip picking up the only speck of sunlight in the dark sky. It glinted right at me, like a Herkimer Diamond (which is by the way a crystal that can only be found in upstate New York.) Long before the plane starting bouncing and then climbing erratically, straining, I mean you could feel it trying to accelerate faster than it was truly able, I had noticed that we were not descending like we had started to but in fact were angled upward. No big deal, how often do you actually get into a New York airport without at least one extra pass? And I remember how quiet it had gotten there at the end, just before the thought of dying had pervaded my thinking. It had taken the jostling of the plane to lull the babies. The babies did not really know that planes are not supposed to jostle like a big ole riveted metal grandpa. I think they were just happy for the distraction and possibly the beneficial change in air pressure, so that their inner eardrums quit hurting so horribly.
All this excitement aside I had not really seriously considered that this was to be the last hurrah of any of us. I mean who knows, maybe that Mig I saw out the window was just in the area for an airshow. That is possible.
No, it took the comforting words of the steward to calm me into a state of terror. His wording, that if the pilot were not now so importantly busy he would be on the speaker himself telling us what was happening, that as soon as he got a break from getting over the shock that he had to actually fly this plane instead of just letting it coast in on auto-pilot, ok the last bit is my words, but he did say, this steward, I kid you not, that we should not panic. Which looking now at the word on the page it seems to me evocative of nothing like the definition of the word. Yet, hearing it spoken by an airline employee, on an airplane that is acting even a little bit erratically, really punched the word up with a refreshing literalness. The Restauranteur said later she remembered him using the words “wind shear,” which are also words I would add to the short list of things not to say on an airplane while it is struggling a bit to stay a float, ok, maybe I would add a float to the list as well since we were probably at least briefly over the Atlantic. Eh, you know, I'm here writing about it so how bad could it have been? Not really that bad. Not Terror at 20,000 Feet bad. Maybe I'll do one quick Google search for Migs in US airspace, but then I'll be done with it.
Golden Healer
No Muddy Clothes/No Crystals
This is private property I intoned in my pitifully inept attempt at sounding Scottish, so that I could relate to Bernadette the morning tidbit.
I had been sitting on the steps leading up to the pool, debating whether or not I should risk ringworm by petting the motel cat, when a van pulled into the lot and parked. A man and a woman exited the vehicle. I must admit that I unfairly profiled them to be maintenance workers as this was a motel in Arkansas, and they were black, and it was not quite yet seven in the morning and nobody checks into a motel at seven in the morning.
As they approached I swallowed a sip of warm coffee and croaked out a gravelly good morning and then in response to the man's question I said I was doing ok, was just trying to wake up. He then began asking me things to which I had no answer. I told him that really I had no idea what was what, or for that matter where they could park or when they could check in.
It was then that the female half of the proprietor couple came out from the dwelling attached to the pool area and alerted all of us--me, the cat, and the black couple, that this was private property. Now I must admit that initially I just assumed this was plain and simple good old fashioned racial intolerance, damn the century, we still don't allow no blacks around here, but as I write this, on a miniature device, seated in the provided chair out front the room, number 5, with my boot rested up on the front bumper of the shiny, rented Dodge truck, I am seeing two fellow guests exit their rooms and one is black and the other is Mexican, so out the window goes my racial intolerance theory.
But earlier by some freak of default I had been deemed the master of linguistic interpretation and was thereby adopted to be the translator.
The Scotts were now in full tandem force and after they said something the black couple would look at me with raised eyebrows and I would give them the regrettable news, and it was all regrettable, and they would shake their heads. The best I could offer in way of commiseration was the most subtle of smirks and a barely noticeable sideways tilt of my head.
In the end the black couple just disappeared into the abyss of the unwanted and misunderstood and I had another cup of coffee and waited for my party to coalesce so that I could drive the all of us from these Hot Springs on in to Mt. Ida, where we would in due time meet an array of interesting crystal miners and collect in various fashion some interesting specimens .
This is private property I intoned in my pitifully inept attempt at sounding Scottish, so that I could relate to Bernadette the morning tidbit.
I had been sitting on the steps leading up to the pool, debating whether or not I should risk ringworm by petting the motel cat, when a van pulled into the lot and parked. A man and a woman exited the vehicle. I must admit that I unfairly profiled them to be maintenance workers as this was a motel in Arkansas, and they were black, and it was not quite yet seven in the morning and nobody checks into a motel at seven in the morning.
As they approached I swallowed a sip of warm coffee and croaked out a gravelly good morning and then in response to the man's question I said I was doing ok, was just trying to wake up. He then began asking me things to which I had no answer. I told him that really I had no idea what was what, or for that matter where they could park or when they could check in.
It was then that the female half of the proprietor couple came out from the dwelling attached to the pool area and alerted all of us--me, the cat, and the black couple, that this was private property. Now I must admit that initially I just assumed this was plain and simple good old fashioned racial intolerance, damn the century, we still don't allow no blacks around here, but as I write this, on a miniature device, seated in the provided chair out front the room, number 5, with my boot rested up on the front bumper of the shiny, rented Dodge truck, I am seeing two fellow guests exit their rooms and one is black and the other is Mexican, so out the window goes my racial intolerance theory.
But earlier by some freak of default I had been deemed the master of linguistic interpretation and was thereby adopted to be the translator.
The Scotts were now in full tandem force and after they said something the black couple would look at me with raised eyebrows and I would give them the regrettable news, and it was all regrettable, and they would shake their heads. The best I could offer in way of commiseration was the most subtle of smirks and a barely noticeable sideways tilt of my head.
In the end the black couple just disappeared into the abyss of the unwanted and misunderstood and I had another cup of coffee and waited for my party to coalesce so that I could drive the all of us from these Hot Springs on in to Mt. Ida, where we would in due time meet an array of interesting crystal miners and collect in various fashion some interesting specimens .
Jersey Shore Surfers
