Beachcombing Tassel

I’ve been a dedicated beachcomber nearly all my life. When I go to the beach, my favorite thing to do is wake up in the morning and walk the tide-line before anyone else is out and about (and before the sun gets too hot). That’s when you find all the best shells, and the birds are out feeding, swooping and diving for fish.

Of course, for any kid growing up in Florida, beachcombing is second nature. My family used to go to Longboat Key every summer, and I walked the beaches there for hours with my brother and step-siblings, finding coquinas and conchs and sand dollars.

In 1993, when I lived in Morocco, I took an overnight trip from my village to Sidi Ifni, a former Spanish enclave on the Atlantic coast. There I found masses of old beach glass, and picked up blue, green, brown and white blobs and orbs, all softly polished by the waves.

In Essaouira, also in Morocco, I found incredible shells and wave-smoothed rocks on the beach near the collapsed Portuguese fortress that inspired Jimi Hendrix to write “Castles Made of Sand.”

As small as my one-room apartment is, I’ve saved these items and more -- shells from Madagascar, Ghana and New Zealand; a smooth piece of pink granite from Montauk Point on Long Island.

So when I recently visited the charity Web site Made4Aid, which auctions crafts by my friend Sally and other volunteers, I was intrigued by her beachcombing tassel. It seemed to match my aesthetic really well -- the natural fiber and the shells and glass.



“I learned to make tassels a couple of years ago at a workshop - they're dead easy to make actually,” Sally told me. “I made this one because my niece Amy wanted me to teach her how to make them, so she came over for a bit of a tassel-fest. And having been recently on holiday and beach-combing, that’s why it became a beachcombing tassel.

“The materials are mainly recycled and ‘found’ -- sisal and other threads from car boot sales and charity shops. Bits from the beach in England and Jersey, beads from a shop in Brighton, some beads from old broken necklaces too... and the tiny key is from a box of little keys which was my grandfather’s.”

Well, I couldn’t resist bidding, and I’m happy to say I won my tassel, for $18.20 including postage. It just arrived in the mail yesterday and I gave it a proud place on my wall. I originally planned to give it as a gift, but now I think I might keep it.

I wondered if making it a wall ornament would be depriving it of a more useful purpose. But Sally said she had no special use in mind.

She said, “I see tassels as purely gratuitous!”

Updates

New York has been rainy and gloomy this week. I’ve been enjoying my new desk by the window, though. Rain outside makes me feel cozy inside, even when I’m at work.

Here’s a little update on things:

1. My friend from Tampa, who I was so worried about offending, answered my note of apology yesterday. Among other things, she said, “Honestly, I have no memory of you saying that. If I got mad every time somebody from New York said something obnoxious about Florida it would take an awful lot of energy. You like tall buildings, I like seeing stars at night. To each his own.” Well, amen to that! Funny how I produced a crisis in my mind that apparently didn’t exist at all. Have I learned nothing from my Zen practice?

2. I’m reading “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” and loving it. I’m about halfway through, and I literally can’t wait to come home at night and read.

3. Last night I got a free ticket, courtesy my friend Bill, to see “Superior Donuts,” Tracy Letts’ new play on Broadway. It is EXCELLENT. Letts is a brilliant playwright. Never a dull or dragging moment, and terrific performances all around, led by Michael McKean.

4. My stalker has yet to identify him or herself.

5. Jesus sums up the health-care industry.

(Photo: Bank window, E. 27th Street, Oct. 2009)

Lucky Larry

Did you hear about Larry, the 70-plus-year-old lobster luxuriating in a tank at a seafood restaurant in Rockefeller Center? Apparently a columnist penned an article about Larry and won his release. He'll be returned to the ocean near Maine.

I think it's great that Larry's life has been spared. The 11-pounder's alternative, according to the articles, was to be eaten by a rich lawyer or banker for $275.

But it seems interesting to me that we'd spend so much time and ink on a single, old lobster. What about the younger, more sprightly and virile lobsters that have longer lives ahead of them, more reproductive power, more of a future?

The columnist wrote: "Surviving to such an age, having dodged lobster traps all his life, doesn’t he deserve some sort of 'get out of jail free' card?" But does being old, in and of itself, entitle Larry to life any more than any of the other poor clawed beasts in that aquarium?

As Dave already knows, I have a thing about cooking lobsters. I love the way they taste, but I'd free them all if I could. They just look so pathetic, stacked atop one another in those tanks, with their claws banded shut and their eyes and antenna swiveling aimlessly.

I'm no vegetarian purist -- I eat chickens and fish, and I recently ate crab legs at my Mom's house. There's nothing wrong with flexibility and an occasional luxury. But I do try to stick mostly to plant food, and I wish humans were better, as a species, at weighing our needs for survival against the lives of other creatures.

(Photo: Greenwich Village, October 2009)

Brain before tongue

Have you ever said something you really, really wish you hadn’t?

Of course. Everyone has. My latest example came at brunch on Sunday with some friends. It may seem mild to an outsider, but I feel really bad about it.

One of my friends lives in Tampa, my hometown, and was in New York for a visit. About ten years ago, after I first moved to New York, I made a couple of offhand remarks in front of her about not wanting to live in Tampa again, or not liking Tampa relative to Manhattan. She took great offense at these remarks and said I was being snotty, basically.

Well, at brunch, my friend was saying that there are no good seafood restaurants in Tampa. Dave turned to me and joked that we should open one. And I said, immediately and without thinking, “I don’t want to go back to Tampa!”

As soon as the words left my mouth I wanted to reel them back like a fish, because I knew they would offend my friend. Sure enough, I haven’t heard from her since the brunch, though I did send her a brief note of apology yesterday.

Sounds mild, right? And honestly, I’m of two minds about the whole kerfuffle. On one hand, what I said is absolutely true – I don’t want to return to Tampa. I also don’t mean that as a judgment of my friend’s decision to remain there. On the other, I can see how she might think, “Well, now that he’s moved to New York he’s just looking down his nose at us.”

It's not even that I dislike Tampa -- I enjoy visiting, and my desire not to return isn't meant to be scornful of the city. All I’m saying is, it’s not for me. I’m not even sure I’ll stay in New York forever – I just don’t want to go back, you know?

Anyway, I’m probably making more out of it than I should, but I feel kind of stupid about the whole thing. I wish I’d just held my tongue.

(Photo: Mushrooms in the East Village, Sunday.)

Sunny Sunday

Yesterday was the perfect opposite, weather-wise, of Saturday. Crystalline blue skies and drier, cooler air -- it was a dream of a day. Dave and I had brunch with some friends and then went walking in the East Village, following roughly the path we took on our first date more than six months ago. It was sort of our little way of commemorating the time we've spent together.

We visited two parks -- Stuyvesant Square, where we watched an energetic brown dog stalk squirrels with his eyes, and Tompkins Square Park, where there was some kind of Halloween costume contest for pets. We saw a ballerina dog and a super-hero dog, a dog dressed like a bumblebee (with an owner to match) and a dog in a biplane, a la The Red Baron. One dog had a pair of stuffed gloves stuck on his back and a sequined sash -- I couldn't figure out what that was about. A gay stegosaurus? Anyway, it was funny, but also slightly cringe-worthy. How do the dogs feel about those silly outfits?

Last night I took Dave and his friend Stephanie to dinner. Stephanie watched my cat while I was in Florida on my last two visits, so this was repayment. We went to Resto, a Belgian restaurant near my apartment, and my verdict is that the beer is spectacular and the food is hit or miss. (I went there once before and had the same reaction.)

(Photo: I found these leaves on the way to the gym in the morning.)

Rainy Autumn

This was the view from my apartment yesterday. It rained nearly all day, so I stayed in and cleaned, read and relaxed. I love nothing more than staying inside on a rainy day and enjoying the sounds of the rainfall.

I'm reading "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," which someone on Facebook recommended to me. It's an interesting book but it's also huge, so I may be reading for a while! Still, it's an Oprah book, so it must be good.

I got some somber news from my mom this week: A guy who grew up next door to me died of a heart attack a few weeks ago. He was eight years older than I was, and he went to private school while I went to the nearby public school, so I didn't know him well. But I remember visiting him when I was very young, and given that he was only 50, it's shocking to think of him dead. As an old friend's grandmother always used to say, "You never know!"

Stalker

Every once in a while I take a peek at my Site Meter, to see how many visitors my blog has attracted lately. Usually the number is ridiculously, ego-crunchingly low, and in fact, like many of my blog pals I've noticed diminished readership over the past six months or so. (I wonder what's going on out there? Blog overload?)

Anyway, my Site Meter also shows how people arrive at my site -- via a link or a search engine, for example. On Thursday I noticed something surprising: Someone was repeatedly coming to my blog by searching Google with my full name. They were then browsing my blog archives quite a bit, from the looks of things.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think it's cool that someone is checking out my online creation. But who out there is looking specifically for me? Who even knows my full name? (There probably aren't a lot of Stephen Gager Reeds in the world, so they must be looking for me specifically, and most people know me as Steve.) They also use an AOL browser, for what it's worth.

To make matters stranger, someone has been browsing my Flickr account for photos of me and my mother.

Stalker, reveal thyself!

(Photo: Two giant street art pieces of Madonna, who knows a thing or two about stalkers, Meatpacking District, Oct. 2009)