real vision is the ability to see the invisible

“The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui, vanish ...”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

_________
corner of my eye © 1977

clear the room

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, An End Has a Start ... and the Editors (no publishing relation ... nudge, nudge, wink, wink ...) are indeed rock stars (in every good sense of that word), touching all parts. Performing live they are in constant motion (lead singer Tom Smith, in particular) and absolutely enveloped in their creations. Their songs allow one to feel all that music allows us to ... in the studio, they created and released a new album that hit upon every corner of the brain. Over a year ago I gave up tickets to see them, and I am glad (for several reasons) to have had the time to sit back and wait to see them. It has been a long time since I've been to a concert where I experienced personal joy of the music and the public expression of the person who created it with equal intensity. It is a rarity I will cherish.
_________________

editors © 2007 duluoz cats

the keepers of the walls took away my veil

“My grief lies all within,
And these external manners of lament
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
That swells with silence in the tortured soul”
- William Shakespeare

I've long debated whether or not I wanted to post anything about the upcoming 5th "anniversary" of September 11. Anniversaries are a tricky thing for me to begin with, as my past experience with them has been much maligned. When considering writing any commentary on the day (even in a well-intentioned and sincere manner) I still find myself simultaneously at a loss for words and completely overwhelmed with emotion. And certainly, without an answer. But on the eve of the "anniversary" of Hurricane Katrina and the horror that unfolded in New Orleans and throughout the South, I am thinking of this today. It is all fragmented still. Still.

So, where does one begin? I have lived in New York City my whole life. It is my home. My only home. I am proprietary in my ownership of that. I have few friends who can claim the same and they make up three of my five closest (though one of the others was born here and only moved away after college). So in the aftermath of that day, when American flags started flying everywhere and "I Love NY More than Ever" signs were posted all over the Dakotas, I felt more than a twinge of distaste. Fair or not. That's not my point. That was my feeling. I wanted to wrap my city in my arms and protect it, not simply from terrorist fanatics, but from our home-born ones as well.

And so, I didn't write about it. I've retold the tale a dozen times since that day, it's become a morbid connecting point when meeting new people, the "where were you when Kennedy was shot?" question of my generation. I can give details of how the events unfolded themselves for me that day. An argument with my then spouse, a quiet walk to the train mixed with the frustration of that and the joy at the beautiful blue-skied day. Noticing the "Vote Here" signs on the school doorways. Settling in at work a little earlier than usual, checking some proofs, skimming my email. A knock on my door and my good friend John telling me a plane had hit ... nervous laughter from both of us as he had heard it on Howard Stern (and why is it that otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people listen to him? Another thing I'll never understand). And then, some minutes later, the second plane and the realization on our faces gave way to everything that we would learn to understand weeks later. And then the attempts at information, where is everyone you love?; trying to access websites; make phone calls, send email--most of them unsuccessful--then heading outside to see what ever could be seen; the quiet sideways glances as we watched the TV screens in the lobby of the bank in our building; the choked cries when the first tower fell. Returning to my office, talking to my best friend and crying, "they're both gone" a few minutes later (while secretly being relieved at the balance that provided for my order-needing brain.). Meeting up with my husband, walking up Second Ave, staring intently at the Chrysler Building expecting it to disintegrate before me, walking across the 59th Street Bridge (reconsidering the lyrics to the song). The complete silence of thousands of people walking home. Tentatively looking over my shoulder toward downtown to nothing but smoke, feeling guilty after I did, as if I were rubbernecking on the highway. Stopping in a bar, for news and a drink. Hearing the trains start running on the el. Getting on the 7 Train to Shea and exiting at Flushing Meadows and my hometown. Just the two of us (and a couple of minor thugs, who gave me some concern, but turned in the opposite direction of us). And again, the silence. The stillness. The LIE as empty as the day asphalt was first set down. How my heart jumped when the F-15s flew over. The stillness of the air in their wake. And the silence.

This list of moments are compiled as simply as I can place them on a page, the events as they unfolded for me, trying not to sound too melodramatic, while not (no, never) making it seem anything less than what it was. What it meant. But, essentially, it tells nothing. I can go further and say that I see the headlines on every newspaper the next day. I still have them in a little box under my bed. I ached over them when I packed them away before my move. Morbid mementos that hit me harder at their being unearthed again than some other more "personal moments." But to write of all of this for public consumption? I'm not sure that it won't find me with some regret and sense of disgust with myself. Because it accomplishes even less outside of providing a cathartic self-reflection. My day, in the end, was rather "uneventful" as far as those who were in NYC that day. I am a native who somehow managed to get away unscathed as far as not personally knowing anyone who was murdered that day. Though my second hometown, Rockaway, was gutted (as the majority of male residents were [and are] either firefighters, police officers, or stock brokers).

I've briefly lamented the silence of the literati after 9/11, despite, as I have written, understanding it. But, at some point, I wanted ... no. I needed to read the story from outside of myself because my own thoughts and emotions had bore themselves deep inside. I needed the consolation and understanding that I get from authors I admire, who are more eloquent and precise at placing words together to express that which is universal. It took me three days to even cry, it took me weeks to even talk about it in a manner that wasn't reminiscent of watching a documentary reenactment--black & white and grainy and barren of feeling. I cringe at the phrase "the end of irony" almost as much as I do when I hear "let's roll," and perhaps it was the silence of our wordsmiths and the proliferation of our photographers (as well as our own eyes) that moved me away from the text page as it did (and perhaps, is the answer for why I continue to avoid it) and helped me to fall in love with pictures (there was a meeting of some sort of Magnum Photographers that day, so many of the best photojournalists in the world were around to document) and how they can sear into us what our mind's eye tries to spare us from. For words have truly failed us; and they have failed the best of us when looking at this day. They continue to fail us in ways that they don't fail others who have lived through similar traumas.

This is incomplete. I may (despite myself) continue this in another post. For now, there is this (an incredible visual archive), and newly, this on Slate, and for the past five years, there has been this, which has always been the most close to me. Change.

darkness is only driven out with light

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” - Richard Wright
I am channeling the Amish currently, and appropriately, as I'm off to visit their Pennsylvania hometowns. Close to a week without electricity in an outer borough in the city that calls itself the "center of the world." Perhaps the news vans on my block (that have just now--four days later--awakened to the rather extensive predicament my hometown finds itself in) can bring us back into the twenty-first century by the time I return.

their clothes are after such a pagan cut

My mom and I spent a very hot New York summer Monday treated to a special private tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's feature exhibition AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion. We were provided with this special treat by my ever-fabulous partner-in-all-things-cutting, ms. jessimae, who was one of the creators of its breathtaking displays. Needless to say, my mom and I were in heaven--a walk through the halls of the Met empty and echoing, plus an opportunity to hear all about the behind-the-scenes tales on a topic connected so closely to something dear to our hearts.

The exhibit offers a stunning conceptual continuum of English costumes, while it focuses on British fashion during the years of 1976 to the present, it uses 18th and 19th century works, juxtaposing them in a luscious mix of knowing historicism, postmodern irony, and self-conscious tradition. Each room is candy for the eye--with little touches you might miss if you don't have unlimited time and an unencumbered view (and the inside knowledge of your personal tour guide)--like the elaborate necklace with viles of semen (now changing colors as the years go by--ewww and neat). The clever placement of the modern and the classic truly speaks to how a culture can represent and shape itself through imagination. An unapologetic Anglophile myself, the love for all things English is nothing new, the whole of Europe found itself enamored with the small plot of land in the 18th century as it became the center of the Enlightenment and reason--and the fashion is an result of this intellectual expression. Plus, seeing the Alexander McQueen Union Jack jacket that he designed for David Bowie (and realizing how skinny the man is) is just plain cool.

Featuring works by such notable designers as McQueen, John Galliano, and Vivienne Westwood, the dresses, jewelry, and saavy pulls of art from the Met's archives, the exhibit is a wealth of audaciousness. If you haven't yet seen it, you have until September 4 (a great way to spend Labor Day weekend). But, if you can't make it, don't miss a listen to John Lydon's "God Save the Queen" podcast.

there's a lot of people leaving town now

“You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.”
--Maria Callas

the way the sun defines the silent streets

There is a scene in Sophie's Choice (the movie) that takes place on the Brooklyn Bridge. It is a scene that does not appear in the novel. The three main characters (of the book and the movie) Stingo, Nathan, and Sophie are celebrating Stingo's writing. For the moment they are each free of the troubles that strike their minds. With Champagne in hand, Nathan, from above, hanging on to one of the bridge's massive cables, toasts:

"On this bridge, on which so many great Americans writers stood and reached out for words to give America its voice. Looking toward the land that gave them Whitman and from its Eastern edge dreamt his country's future and gave it words ... On this span of which Thomas Wolfe and Hart Crane wrote ... we welcome Stingo into that pantheon of the Gods ... whose words are all we know of immortality."

Dreamt his country's future and gave it words ... whose words are all we know of immortality. Is there a lovelier way to express the joy of passion and creativity? I hope not, it would be too much. And it is my thought here that these words flow easily when one stands high on that bridge's span, with the incomparable skyline (even in its 1950s form) as muse in the background.

Thoughts on writing and books are all a jumble these days. So I've been looking a little closer to home for how it is all done. As an outer borough resident, I admit to a certain amount of defensiveness about my hometown, about the often accused (but wrong) belief that the only creative minds live in Manhattan. I'm an unapologetic Queens native, I find myself both irritated and relieved (it will keep the "pretty people" away) by the let's-acknowledge-a-good-reason-that-Queens-shouldn't-yet-be-used-as-landfill-again pat-on-the-head articles the NY Times prints every couple of months. Because, let's face it, if you live in NYC and you don't live in Manhattan you might as well live in Staten Island or, g*d forbid, Jersey. And throughout the decades of cliched hopefuls in all media coming to this city in the hopes of "making it," the one thing in common they have is their emergence from whatever burg they've come from into Manhattan. Certainly they do not arrive in Queens. Not even Brooklyn. (Though they may find their success a long time in coming and wind up in one or the other in order to afford the rent ...)

Brooklyn. If you are able to at least afford there, you may maintain some credibility. Apparently. But, I have never understood the allure of the place. Brooklyn. It simply doesn't appeal. Except in fiction. Because at least it has some real weight from its depictions in novels. And while I ruffle at the Times' condescension, even I understand that Queens is has been immortalized by Gatsby as the "valley of ashes"--which, is Fitzgerald's description of Corona and Flushing Meadows Park, the town my family and I are from. So I wanted to take a look at what else one might find as far as offerings using the backdrop and imagery of Queens (we do not have many landmarks here that serve to inspire such quotes as above). And, while what I was able to uncover was somewhat slim, it is not a completely barren landscape. Here are a few:

Paradise Travel, Jorge Franco Ramos - A tale of Colombian immigrants arriving in New York and living in Jackson Heights.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Dito Montiel - A Memoir, though I include it anyway, as we should all know by now how uncertain they are ...

From Rockaway, Jill Eisenstadt - Not a favorite of mine, and I was quite hard on it in my High School paper book review of it, however, while its subject matter is rather trite (bored teenagers getting into trouble), it's backdrop is certainly unique (as is Rockaway as part of Queens).

And we even have a couple of publishing houses and our own Book Fair (and our own month for celebrating books, apparently, April. I missed it, as I imagine most of us did ...):

Q-Boro Books - Jamaica

The Spirit that Moves Us Press - Flushing, Morty Sklar, Editor (and wonderful poet)

And lest we forget, Queens gave you The Ramones and Kerouac lived here (right above what is now Kalish Drugs on Woodhaven Blvd.), too.

that makes life worth living for the ordinary

I don't know if I'll be able to respect myself in the morning after this post, but, so be it. It's spring and the trees are delicate green and I am finally able to walk outside without automatically cringing at the chilled air. I did not wear black today, and everyone made comment, but I did not feel self-conscious. I believe I may have entered an entirely other realm. Maybe because it was "Take your Child to Work Day" and I had friends' babies placed in my arms every five minutes (not something I usually find any comfort in ...) and spent my lunch hour being fed Cheerios by (how time flies) one-year-old X on the grass in Central Park. Maybe it was because I was able to just do my job (which is a joyful one) and not deal with the murk of office politics (we should have babies everyday).

Whatever it was about today, everything about it just made me happy. And to celebrate children, happiness, and budding trees, I thought I'd post a note today about a wonderful children's book Art & Poetry Series that Welcome Books published in the mid-nineties. And much like that mix of springtime and babies, the editors at Welcome took beautiful poems and songs and equally lovely artwork and matched them up just as naturally. I own, no surprise, Dance Me to the End of Love, which uses that most romantic, nay, giddy as Leonard Cohen gets, songs, and combines it with the ever bold, bright, and joyous (and sensual) images of Henri Matisse in that comfortingly familiar, for me anyway, slim page count and oversized trim. A tactile experience that automatically makes me feel five-years-old again.

The Art & Poetry Series has been out of print for a number of years, however, each of the books is set for re-release, and this time I will not miss snatching up a copy of the perhaps doubly romantic May I Feel Said He, the edition that takes that playful e e cummings poem and one of my favorite artists, Marc Chagall, with his misty-floaty imagery--and creates perhaps the only combination that is sexier, more lyrical, and giddier than the above.

Oh, I'm going to have a helluva hangover because of this tomorrow ...

so it is the basic law of life

A friend recently sent this bit of text to me, and I had never encountered it before. As with all things mysterious about the brain and its functions, I was truly tickled by it:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a
wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the
frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The
rset can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll raed
it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn
mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but
the wrod as a wlohe.

Ah, chaos. If only the mind could find a set of keys so easily in a disheveled room as it can read the above paragraph. I am struck by redundancy. I notice, when reading--for any reason, be it pleasure, a subway advertisement, or to edit--it is one of the first things I pick at. But, generally it appears to me on a less intricate level. Never so much to the letter, as it were. Having never been good at math, I find the fact that my brain is so good at structure--planning, dates, organization--odd. It seems to come from some unknown piece of myself, yet it is one of the first things people notice about me.

In any event, the trick to the above (though there really isn't one), is that a good reader is able to successfully comprehend the text as written because only the internal letters have been randomized. Essentially, there is a logic to the disorder (there is enough information for one who has some essential knowledge) the mind is able to reconstruct the information so that it makes sense; it can extract, deconstruct, and rebuild before you even realize it has done so.

And amid another twist of connections, this evening's conversation, that at some point turned to the events of September 11 (I may dare touch on the novels that have appeared recently about this date, but I am not certain I can do so without some personal regret for it), brought to mind the children's book Unbuilding by David Macaulay. Macaulay is a fascinating artist and author who is known for is intricate explorations of the mechanics of everyday things. Macaulay's work, though written for children, is extraordinarily complex. His line art is minute and exacting in its detail. He takes items, usually architectural in nature (though also the human form), and he explains their essential being. For him, the forms he examines must be deconstructed in order to be understood--order to chaos for comprehension. Unbuilding takes the Empire State Building and undoes it. Bolts and all; in specific sequence.

There is a spread in the book (and also on the cover) that is a view looking downtown from what appears to be about 40th Street. And the Twin Towers, in their linear certainty still stand. Later, in a similar spread, they are obscured by clouds, and the Empire State Building is half dissolved (and there is one last image of this at night). I remember having the random thought after the first tower fell that, it couldn't stay that way. They both had to fall. To have one and not the other, would have been some kind of cruel rearrangement.

To those of us
who don't always
appreciate things
until they're gone

[the dedication for Unbuilding, published 1980]

pictures at an exhibition

Arthur Leipzig focused his camera lens on New York for over fifty years. One of our city's first "street" photographers--a native, born in Brooklyn in 1918--he first stalked the alleys and night clubs as a staff photographer for a local paper PM. His work as documentary photographer is an all-encompassing history of the city. His unflinching work shows New York as it was (and is) rough around the edges, magnet for the rich and beautiful, and prison for the down-and-out. Using a police radio he installed in the trunk of his car, he would often arrive at crime scenes before the cops, capturing the raw violence of the day or night. His images of the streets, on assignment or on his own, show how acutely in tune he was to the life of the city--he understood intrinsically its streets, its poverty and poetry, its glamour and drama. No matter the event, his affection for his home is on view in every snap. Leipzig was never one to look for "the moment" in his work, rather, he sought to evoke a larger sense of humanity and emotion and time and place of his subjects. In the Preface to his book Growing Up in New York he wrote:

"The city was my home. As I look back at the work that I did during that period I realize that I was witness to a time that no longer exists, a more innocent time. While I know that the city has changed, that the streets are dirtier and meaner, the energy that I love is still there. No matter where I go, I keep coming back to photograph New York. Of course the 'good old days' were not all sweetness and light. There was poverty, racism, corruption, and violence in those days, too, but somehow we believed in the possible. We believed in hope."

"Simply Add Boiling Water," 1937 © Arthur Leipzig