Soup

A couple of weeks ago, as I passed an apartment building down the street from where I live, I saw a familiar brand name on a box near the trash cans: Progresso.

I eat a lot of Progresso soup. On nights when I stay home it’s one of my most common meals (well, that and peanut butter). I’m not very diligent about cooking, so it’s an easy way to feed myself.

Something about seeing the Progresso brand name on this box made me walk over and check it out. And there, next to the trash, was a gold mine of unopened cans of Progresso soup. I couldn’t believe it! Two unopened eight-packs of soup and four loose cans.

Naturally, I picked it all up and lugged it home.

OK, I know it’s kind of gross to pick up food that was next to someone’s trash. But this is canned soup -- what could be wrong with it? I checked online to make sure there was no product recall or anything like that, and it seems fine.

A can of Progresso at my grocery store costs about $3. So by my calculations, I found about $60 worth of soup that night. I’ve eaten five of the cans and I’m not dead yet.

I’m exercising my inner “freegan”!

(Photo: E. 28th Street, Jan. 2008)

The Mezzanine

Years ago, in journalism school, I learned that “there are no boring stories - only boring reporters.”

I’m sure this phrase was intended to motivate us to be creative writers, even when we were writing about the new sewer plant or the renovation of city hall. It was supposed to make us not hate our jobs while we yearned for greater journalistic heights.

I just finished a book that reminds me of that expression: “The Mezzanine,” by Nicholson Baker. It’s a short novel about one man’s lunch hour, and his trip on an escalator from the ground floor of his office building to the mezzanine.

If there’s a book that better conveys the richness of our day-to-day lives, I’m not sure what it is. Baker writes about going to a drug store, buying a bag of popcorn, developing a dependence on earplugs. And in all of those themes he finds essential kernels of humanity, beautifully complex descriptions and interrelationships.

All around us, life is so rich. Lying in bed as I write this, I see innumerable layers of detail that my mind ordinarily glosses over. The softness of my blanket, for example -- its faintly detergent smell, its sandy beige floral design, its origins in the Moroccan market where I bought it 15 years ago. The smell of my coffee -- the distinct sharp aroma of these beans brought to me by a coworker from Colombia, so much richer than my standard supermarket brand. My purring cat, with her half-closed green eyes and dubious genetic origins -- the lucky result of a union between two street cats in Tampa, Fla., 13 years ago, and both feline parents probably now long dead.

“The Mezzanine” is an exercise in seeing all of this, and seeing the ways our minds process detail, diverging from the main narrative in side-trips of description and fantasy (expressed in the book by expository footnotes). Check it out. It’s a great read.

(Photo: Reflections on E. 28th Street, Jan. 2008)

Voting

Well, voting was hell yesterday. Not in terms of crowds or disorganization -- though there were both -- but in terms of the choice that needed to be made.

I was on the fence between two candidates right up until I pulled the lever. All morning, as I worked out at the gym, showered, dressed and ate breakfast, I weighed the pros and cons of each in my mind, and I went back and forth several times -- just as I have for the past several weeks and months. Two very different people with different approaches, and both appealing in their own ways. It was a sort of right-brain, left-brain dilemma -- and which side of my brain should I listen to?

I did make a choice, obviously. And almost as soon as I did, I rued what seemed lost by not voting for the other candidate. But I also know if I’d voted for that one, I’d regret what I’d lost by not choosing the first.

What a luxury, when you come right down to it -- two candidates strong enough to make me WANT to vote for them!

(Photo: Trees reflected in the Conservatory Water, Central Park, Feb. 2008)

Lara

Last night, as I was going to the Zendo, I stood near an older gent busking on the subway platform with an accordion. I’m a sucker for accordions -- I have no idea why -- and as you know, I’m also a huge fan of ‘50s and ‘60s pop culture. Thus, if an accordion player launches into “Lara's Theme” or “Never On Sunday,” it is virtually a personal rule that I must give them a dollar.

Of course, that’s just what this guy did. After hustling a little too rapidly through something from Tchaikovsky he started “Lara's Theme” (from the movie "Doctor Zhivago," and also known as “Somewhere My Love”). I gave him a dollar, quite happily. Then there was an awkward period when every time he started something new he looked at me for approval, because I was his only acknowledged fan, and after a few songs I was glad when the train came.

When I was a kid, I had a music box that played “Lara’s Theme.” My grandmother had given it to my mom as a gift, and after a few years my mom -- not particularly the music-box type -- passed it on to me. It was shaped like a victrola, with a gold aluminum horn, and the box was clear lucite so you could see all the little parts working when the music played. I had it for years, though over time the horn got dented and the lucite box began to come apart, so much so that eventually it interfered with the mechanism and “Lara’s Theme” was forever silenced.

At least, from that particular source.

(Photo: Bleecker Street, Jan. 2008)

Eating, Walking

Wow! What a weekend! I’ve had the busiest social schedule EVER. I was out for every meal: Dinner with Jan and Marcus on Friday; brunch with Kate and Katherine on Saturday, along with some pals of Katherine’s from Switzerland; dinner and a play with David and Gregg Saturday night; brunch with Mark and two of his friends on Sunday; and dinner with Sybil, Jesse and Nina last night. For me, that’s very atypical. I’m usually enough of a homebody that I stick around the house for a peanut butter sandwich at least once during the weekend.

On top of all that, I did lots of walking and exploring. Katherine, Kate and I walked all through Williamsburg, Brooklyn, possibly the richest repository of street art in the entire city, on Saturday. I probably took about 200 pictures, and edited them down to 120 or so for Flickr. We found some really great stuff.

And yesterday, when the weather turned warmer and we had a beautiful clear, blue sky, I walked from 16th Street in Chelsea to 77th Street on the Upper East Side, cutting a diagonal across midtown and resting with a book by the boat basin in Central Park. More great photos!

The Super Bowl is a non-entity in my life, but last night as I lay in bed, the city suddenly seemed to go wild. When there’s any big game I can occasionally hear crowds cheer, but this was different -- a sustained bout of yelling and horn-honking. I thought, “Well, we must have won!” It went on so long that I got dressed again and walked up the block just to see what was happening -- and it was pretty much madness all around, people running around in the street and spilling out of the big sports bar on the corner of Third Avenue. I could never get that enthusiastic about football, even with a few beers in me, but it was fun to watch. Go Giants!

(Photo: Graffiti, Elizabeth Street, Jan. 2008)

In the Empty Room of Perfection

Love
Opened my eyes to the amulets
Of trees--
Green leaves, falling miracles,
Falling, one by one,
On the street. In Japan we bought

White porcelain tipped into palm-eyes
And icicles, pots shaped like
Peach stones and glazed in sky blue.
We touched the rims of the world's glaze
But arrived without anything. Then

You gave me my own room without old things,
Without decorations, without paintings
That hang on the walls
Only to become new walls themselves, without
Shapes that interfere
With what I must be.

My dreams were unshaped and unpainted. I
Lived with the fantasy of the sea -- shaped
Always on the verge of words. You--
Looked for emptiness the way lovers seek sleep,
Burned currencies
And seeds of your own beginnings. How easy
For us to change into fire-birds, fly
Past history, oceans, striking against the sky
With our own new wings. Now--

Shall we return where we came from?
You be the brush that strikes.
And, burning inside, still burning, I'll
Live as the flaming kiln that shapes the pot.

-- Sandra Hochman, "Love Letters from Asia," Viking, 1968

(for poetry day)

Accident

Well, apparently I’m not taking a break after all. Sorry about that -- false alarm!

I don’t know why I was feeling so harried earlier this week. I woke up Tuesday morning and thought, “I just can’t do this blog right now!” So I posted that message, and then lo and behold, the harried feeling passed -- just as all feelings do -- and I felt the urge to keep writing.

Last night on the way home from work I passed an accident scene. It appeared that a woman had been hit by a car. People were gathered around her, helping, and the police were there. I could hear the wail of an approaching ambulance. So I just kept walking. I felt odd cruising past, but then, what could I do?

New Yorkers have a reputation for being hardened, but I think it’s more that we’re just immensely practical. We assess a situation and determine quickly whether it warrants our involvement -- and in the city, the bar is high.

A couple of years ago I walked past another accident, where a deliveryman on a bicycle had been hit by a taxi. Passersby were kneeling beside the deliveryman, and others were standing behind and in front of the taxi so the driver couldn’t leave. I was impressed by how responsive people were. I stopped for a moment, but again, I could do very little -- and in fact I advanced a terrible idea, asking if we should move the man out of the middle of Lexington Avenue. (Others wisely said no, we shouldn’t try to move him.) So, see, even when I do stop, I’m probably not helping much!

(Photo: Graffiti wall, the Bronx, Jan. 2008)