Manhattan paean

The Slavic voices at Starbucks near the Asian straight black hair cascading off shoulders; the woman talking to herself or the sidewalk air loudly declaring 'I ain't that bad'; leaving the $37 for 24 hours garage on 110th, pivoting from Broadway to West End Avenue, the green lights in synchronicity, counting the cross streets down, even ones one way west to east, odd ones one way east to west, with a few thrown in for both directions, such as 96th; yellow cabs white NYPD black Mercedeses red Mustang silver VW; Verizon cable being snaked downward cranes upward; a city reinventing itself old new old new flashing like brilliant Times Square HD billboards; skimming the tops of skyscraping apartment buildings the splash of late-afternoon sun; amber then red light; honey locusts maples poodles schoolkids fire engines sirens; filigree pedigree wrought-iron gateways doorways window grilles and bas relief designs in concrete from the Gilded Age; uniformed doormen; strollers nannies headphones crosswalk scarf-wearers in the wind; grocery carts; bicyclists insanely threading a life-and-death needle of time and space and daring; tall apartment buildings by the trash transfer station with the tall stack by the car dealers where last time more than a decade ago I parked in a cheap lot with razor wire now gone; West End becomes 11th no one told me; the Hudson River Jersey light nearly blinding; breeze downtown; Lincoln Meatpacking Chelsea Piers; by the water; boulevard; contours; swerve; smooth. Manhattan.

Waiting for the Street Sweepers

On Sunday night I was fortunate to find a parking space on 107th Street, yards from leafy Riverside Drive and down the block from Broadway and West End Avenue. The space -- so close to where I'd be staying for the night -- was a surprise, and free.( Isn't this what we mean by gratuitous?) The only condition, so far as I could discern, was that my comfortably wedged-in vehicle had to be moved from this sanguine-spurring spot between the hours of 9:30 and 11 a.m. Monday, to permit and facilitate the cleaning of that northern side of this east-west street. (Manhattan's street grid is eminently logical.) Being neurotic (now, we like to call it OCD; for a decade or so it was anal-retentive), I checked the sign about parking permission at least three and four times and surveyed other cars to confirm further the legitimacy of this piece of vehicular real estate. A car in back of mine seemed to have one of those anti-theft attached to the steering wheel. So Nineties, I thought. Things looked safe and secure, but I'm not naive. Gotham is surely not free of all crime, nor is your hometown. I was very tired, so awoke as late as I could Monday. Blaring sunshine and body clock had votes on this matter. I purchased a Times and read part of the lead story on the Zimmerman acquittal and realized the demonstration I had encountered Sunday evening on First Avenue might have been the same one that converged later onto Times Square, as pictured. I was hungry. A bagel shop on Broadway looked appealing. I went in. Long lines. Slow progress. It was already 9:10. I pictured my car being ticketed and towed. I left. I went up the street to the Manchester Diner. I started to order a bagel but grew more nervous about that concept we call time. Just give me a corn muffin, please. And a tea. Breakfast tea. With cream. no sugar. I walked to my car. still there. Everything fine. But already people were moving cars to the opposite side of the street. A few may have been sitting double-parked in their vehicles. The promised furnace heat was only simmering at this hour. Picture a stream of cars lining up double-parked on the non-street-sweeper side of 107th Street. Perhaps influenced by the Times story and current events, I mused to myself about law. We pay attention to  -- or ignore -- laws as they suit us, do we not? There is obviously a social compact here. I am fairly certain double-parking in New York City is illegal. Imagine if your car was curbside and had to get out but was blocked by a double-parked car. But I did not see such cars ticketed. (Maybe they are, all the time. I don't know. I suspect these folks -- some perhaps paid to do so -- jockeying the cars are ready to move them.) And does the city want hundreds or even thousands of cars driving around during the street-cleaning times? What purpose would that serve? I dutifully moved my car to the opposite side, near but not blocking a driveway. I rolled my windows down. I ate my corn muffin, crumbs falling all over me. Who made this corn muffin? Where? When? How many were made? I drank my morning tea, as is my wont at home. Sitting here, you hardly hear the traffic in back, on Broadway, or anywhere else. Hardly any cars come down 107th. I perform my Times fetish ritual of reading all the articles on the front page, if nothing else. I browse through some of the Sports section. A disembodied hose is watering the plants at the base of a tree to my left. I do not want to get sprayed and close my window. The watering over, I reopen my window. I put the paper down and close my eyes. Starlings. Sparrows. No sirens. The road in front, which is the Riverside Drive before Riverside Drive, is quiet. Am I in the country? Where did all the sound go to? A hint of a breeze. Be mindful of breathing. And breathing out. As suggested by Thich Nhat Hanh. Offer myself and the world the hint of a smile. Try to smile. Try to hear your breathing. Feel it. Be it. Open your eyes. Turn the car on. Close the windows. Put on the AC. Turn right and follow Riverside Drive all the up to the Cross-Bronx. A brand-new vista offering the GWB and the Palisades. A brand-new road. Just for me.

life, affirmed

A sentence (a life sentence, at that):

Fresh from a stay at the Williams Club, walking down West 31st Street, on the shaded side, they saw a hotel, the Herald Square Hotel, with the word "LIFE" not interrupted but decoratively carved into the concrete face of the building in three different places, as if warding off suicides or affirming an existential state or simply dancing the good ol' joie-de-vivre, and then, several floors higher than those facades of LIFE (and we know how much life can be a facade sometimes), surprise! look! the word LIFE spelled out again in sure declaration, triumph, or inspiration, take your pick.

New Yawk pastiche gestalt collage

Moises Josiah playing "How Great Thou Art" on a musical saw at Grand Central Terminal, don't say Station unless you mean the post office

The woman sitting against a window on 44th near the Algonquin cursing, presumably, into her cellphone in Arabic or Syriac or Angerac

The square-jawed British woman at the Algonquin with a high-wattage smile choosing to forgo the shot of $90 single-malt scotch whiskey, overheard while I sipped my tea

The nighttime reflection across Bryant Park of the Chrysler Building in a Times Square glass and steel tower

Pedestrians strolling and tourists sitting in neon digitally bathed Broadway, not a haiku in sight

Endless pansies and infinite white tulips and purple tulips and white azaleas in the Central Park Conservatory Garden

Three or four people on a Fifth Avenue bench by the wall at Central Park intently huddling, hovering, praying

urban haiku redux, again

wrought-iron gateway

Central Park verdant lake fires

near Duke Ellington

Who Is Phillip Gleiden, Anyway?

When the doors to the U-bahn train in Berlin are about to open (or is it close?), a pleasant-sounding female voice intones at every stop:

Phillip Gleiden, bitte.

Who is this mysterious person?

And what will they do when they find him, or her disguised as him?

Sure different than the New York City subways, with the announcer shouting hoarsely something garbled, something like this:

Fawthalanceyeightyseventh Station! Next stop!

Don't Fence Me In

I admit it; I get a perverse pleasure in reading my local newspaper's weekly Police Blotter (that's the actual so-retro title). The Police Blotter is in the Neighbors section, appropriately enough, replete with its very own color-coded "Weekly crime map" with concentrations of crime dots like so much funfetti on a cupcake depicting those who merely got caught (for some reason, only burglaries and robberies).

To paraphrase Robert Frost, rather brutally and ironically: "Good neighbors make good fences." Of course, "fence" here relates to recipients or disseminators of stolen goods.

I think I am honest in declaring this habit started as an idle curiosity. Then it became more like an avid hobby. Then closer to a weekly obsession.

Before you rush to judgment about my alleged rush to judgment, allow me a modest attempt at self-justification.

Conjure up the concoction of shame, pity, or delight in spying a familiar name in these pages! Several years ago, I spotted the name of a guy who was about to drive his family (and, more important to me, my daughter) up to camp (that's our word for vacation home). He was charged with (when I worked at this same newspaper years ago, we were not allowed to say "arrested for" because of its tilt against innocence, but could say "charged with") aggravated unlawful use of a motor vehicle or driving with a suspended license, something like that. I only let my daughter go when I was assured that the charges did not involve alcohol-related offenses. To this day, I probably should've put the kibosh on letting my daughter get in a vehicle with this defendant. So, reading the Police Blotter yielded very practical results in such a case.

Twice, I have seen the names of people I knew who allegedly intended to purchase certain carnal pleasures that would be legal in certain civilized sovereign nations.

In all these instances, I think I successfully refrained from the smirk. My feelings were more like, "There but for the grace of God go I." You're rolling your eyes or shaking your head. Fair enough.

Naturally, there are other practical benefits to this exercise. I do want to know about my own neighborhood and its environs. Who wouldn't?

I do confess to scouting for the names of the prominent and famous, the high and the mighty. So far not much luck with that. Besides, my prejudice tells me the powerful can keep stuff out of the press, or keep from facing arrest in the first place. However, if they stain the Police Blotter, I'm dying to see how the news coverage would go. In this tabloid age, they're liable to face the other extreme, of disproportionate attention.

Needless to say, there are potentially tragic risks to this endeavor. Obviously, I cannot guarantee myself freedom from seeing the name of a loved one in fine print (a la Al Gore in today's news). Such is the price one pays for this penal voyeurism.

I am reminded of a question Barbara Walters once asked a panel of presidential candidates (1984, if I recall correctly). It was a daring question, one sure to be dodged. It went something like this, "We all know your strengths and assets; you'll tell us that. But what is your greatest weakness?" The only memorable (whether truthful or not) answer came from candidate Jesse Jackson, and it was along these lines: "The person in the wheelchair, we see that person's weakness. But for the rest of us, it's not so apparent. It's hidden, but still there. For me, it's the failure to articulate or communicate properly." (This may have been after his infamous reference to New York City as "Hymietown," so I don't want to gild the response too much.)

Nevertheless, the point is well taken, charged with a crime or not, we all have our faults, dear Brutus, whether in the stars, or not; whether in our genes, or not; whether in our, um, jeans, or somewhere else.

p.s. Speaking of blotters, does anyone even remotely know what an ink blotter is? We had them in elementary school, about 89 years ago. But, being left-handed, I found fountain pens to be troublesome. Maybe it was the start of my ADHD.

Bada-Dada-Boomerang

A few minutes ago, my ears heard the rumble of early Fourth of July fireworks a few miles away. Which got me reassessing, as any Laughorist would. Do I really enjoy fireworks?

Less than I thought, if I really examine my fireworks conscience. I've come to believe it's one of those things one is supposed to ooh and ahh over (one of those predictive happiness things explored by Daniel Gilbert). Granted, a few moments ago the neighboring Inner Harbor fireworks were merely an auditory apparition, not the visual array of chrysanthemums and umbrellas of neon-hued ashes punctuated by sonic bursts. I mean, fine, okay, I enjoy fireworks and all that, but I'm finding on closer inspection it's a predictive pattern. It's a social norm. I'm not convinced it's worth the traffic jam or mosquitoes or long day's journey into dark-enough dusk.

It's possible the fireworks I've encountered have been subpar, and that I must defer judgment until I experience Grucci-generated millennial, apocalyptic, transcendent fireworks in New York, London, Beijing, Berlin, or Boston. Maybe my fireworks encounters have been, shall we say, or-chasmic.

Which reminds me. Why do corny old movies depict orgasm via fireworks imagery, especially for females? (I may be wading into more-than-usual embarrassing waters here. For all I recall, that particular imagery was only employed in crummy 1970s porno flicks, or so, um, I've heard, not obscene.) Is that what the female-peak-sexual-nerve-ending-heart-stopping experience is like? Fireworks? Is it the sound? The visual configuration? The colors? The rocket's red glare? Somehow I doubt it (though I have no doubts that "their" experience is far more transporting than our male deal, except maybe for 1.4458 seconds).

I confess a vague, unpatriotic feeling, a hazy guilt about this fireworks, quasi-Freudian admission.

Maybe it's my age; perhaps it's my contrarian nature. It might even be that I've experienced more than enough spiritual, domestic, mental, or workplace fireworks, and don't need anymore.

Give me the verbal pyrotechnics of lustrous prose or poetry. Or sizzling correspondence. Or the belles lettres of fiery bloggers. Now, there's some fireworks.

(Be careful with those cherry bombs now, ya hear?)

Leave It to Beaver

A live beaver has been spotted in New York City, allegedly for the first time in about 200 years.

It was seen swimming in the Bronx River last week.

Of course, Times Square is not in the Bronx and has been all Disneyed up, but I'm pretty sure Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue featured lots of live beaver in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. But memory is tricky and selective. I could be wrong. Maybe it was all trick photography, and smoke and mirrors.

"Hello! Is this microphone working?"

"Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentleman. I'll be here Thursday, Friday, Saturday."

"Can you hear me back there?"

"Hey, Louie, throw those hecklers out, will you!"