Snafu

No posts this week owing to a confluence of factors including no home internet, an emergency proofreading job, and various other savory and less-savory prospects.

Thanks due to Qathra for caramel apple cider with homemade whipped cream, and for wireless with which to doublecheck proper names for the proofing in question. (Orin Hatch? C'mon.)

My little town

When I was growing up, Greenwich Village was just about my favorite place in the world. In fact, the very Hudson Street that Jane Jacobs immortalizes in The Death and Life of Great American Cities was probably my favorite street. Guess even my ten-year-old self could tell that they were doing something right.

Later on in my teenage years, I acquainted myself with Brooklyn, and Park Slope took over the place that the Village had held in my heart (not the hippest choice, sorry, but it was mine). The Slope is sort of like a Village minus the river--the beautiful row houses, cute little coffee shops, funny little shops (I miss the Village's Tah Poozie so much), even the same proximity to a more warehousey district (though I bet Gowanus smells worse than the far west side). And, unfortunately, it exhibits some of the same qualities I don't like so much about the Village anymore--the encroachment of Starbucks, the superexpensiveness, the hoity-toity inhabitants (though Park Slope veers more to the childraisers than the fashion models among them). In fact, I have read so much about the Village, through various grumpy blogs (mentioned here) and books--and have observed so much for myself that Mrs. Jacobs's lovely neighborhood didn't remain the hotbed of socioeconomic diversity it was in her time (all those blog posts about Jane vs. Marc don't lie)--that my affection for the place has fallen of late.

So it was to my pleasant surprise that yesterday I was able to take a walk that reminded me of my old love for the Village. I was meeting S.-- on West 14th at 6, so I decided that walking up from work was as worthwhile a use of that hour as any. I went pretty far west, coming up Varick as it blurred into Seventh Avenue South and then cutting along the little windy side streets that eventually open up onto Eighth. Back in my Village-walking days I did pay some attention to architecture--a friend and I plotted for years that we wanted to buy a beautiful, ivy-covered townhouse on Commerce Street--but nowhere near what I do now. So I was taken aback by once again encountering the beauty of the place (particularly with its coating of snow). The streets are so cozy and the townhouses so pretty, but part of what really struck me on this go-round was the beautiful way that people had modernized their houses--the skylights, the improbable tiny windows, the connecting passageways between little house and littler house and backyard. Let's put aside the outrageous pricetags for a moment and appreciate a house like this or these. And check out the funny curved house in the background of the more charming corner building in the second link. What's up with that one? I must've walked by it 50 times in the past but never noticed it 'til yesterday.

I suspect the reason I left the Village (and Manhattan) was that eventually it seemed too small and self-contained. And Park Slope(/Brooklyn), broadly construed, is definitely larger, even if it's missing some of the narrow winding charm of the Village. And the smallness is probably the same reason I left Park Slope and ventured ever farther into Brooklyn. Sometimes I wonder if I will run out of new wandering grounds. But a return to Bedford Street on a snowy evening reminds me that there will always be a place for me.

PS

Should add that Ways of Seeing also contains a provocative section about gender relations, which is probably what set me thinking about my recent reading along gendered lines...

Books, books

I was excited this weekend to finally pick up The Finkler Question from the library, after rising to number one in the holds queue (I believe I was at 157 when I started). Already, just 20 or so pages in, it's markedly different from so much of what I have been reading lately--mystery novels and what (wince, wince) I can't help but call chicklit, or women's literature, or something like that. I worry that the difference is that the tone of Finkler is so, well, male in its descriptions of the meeting of a trio of friends from the perspective of a more-or-less perpetual bachelor. This is not to say that the women's lit is bad (Dreaming in French was pretty moving) or even that it's all for and by women (the author of Hummingbirds, a novel about NYC private school politics which I enjoyed more than I'd expected to, is male) but Finkler definitely has a different feel to it. It seems, at this early stage, as crudely stereotypically as I can put it, like a novel of Ideas rather than one of Relationships. We'll see how that bears out.

*

Another recent read that I found different in an eye-opening way was John Berger's Ways of Seeing, which I'd been wanting to read ever since I saw it on a display table at Williamsburg's always-chic Spoonbill & Sugartown. I first experienced a jolt of recognition about Berger when I realized the song "And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos" by The Story, a favorite of my high school years, was in fact a title of his. A while went by and I proofed a novel of his, but I suspect the real weightiness lies in the critical pieces (maybe I'll give Our Faces a try one day). Ways of Seeing made me contemplate art--especially oil painting--and its relationship to advertising in a whole new, and not terribly positive, light. (In short, art as commodity, as a demonstration of wealth, as a way to manipulate consumers into consuming.) I will remember what I've learned but try not to let it get between me and my anticipated enjoyment of the Barnes Collection in a couple of weeks...

Another poem, without formatting issues

Storytelling

Housecats catch birds

one eye to the sky

prowling the wilderness

of their everyday lives.

A stroll in the garden—pounce!—

then the parade of proud remains

past the back porch light

and into the kitchen. Cats slink

through impossibly tiny doors

only to lay fresh kills at your feet

for your delectation. Look

at me. This is what it’s like

out there. Go on, make a meal

of my travels. Roast

my enemies on a spit and taste

the savor of my triumph. Season

the tale with onions and don’t

forget the rosemary. Breathe

deep. This is my best

and only offer.

City Hall

Various ideas percolating, but how about just: wow.

Poetry month?

I wrote a poem but I can't get seem to format it here. If you want to read it, comment, and I will work something out. Cheers!