Tenth Avenue, May 2007

Here's one of my favorite graffiti taggers once again, the one I call "3E." And on the center column there's the outline of a surprised looking cat. I've posted all these tags before, here, here and here, but not accompanied by such nice lines and shadows.

I called the plumber yesterday and presented him with a perfectly reasonable argument for why I should not have to pay his outlandish fee. He seemed rather unmoved, though he did promise to get back to me. Meanwhile, I've gotten used to the idea that maybe this is just what plumbers cost, and I might have to cough it up. Ugh.

My brother's poor old dog, Utah, who I mentioned here, died last Friday. My brother has been really broken up about it, as you'd expect. He and I talked on Sunday, comparing notes on loss - I lost a beloved pet in 2005, my 16-year-old cat Howard, so I told him about the stages I went through and the feelings I had then. I think it helped him see that his feelings aren't unusual. He described himself rather poetically as a planet that has lost its moon.

Hester Street, May 2007

So I got the bill for my recent adventure with the plumber. For installing a new kitchen faucet and fixing a minor glitch in the flushing mechanism of my toilet, the bill came to - drumroll please - $443.11.

Oh. My. God.

They're trying to bill me $157 for parts alone, which is interesting, because the faucet they installed is available for $62 at the hardware store across the street. And what they did to my toilet was so minor it's hardly worth mentioning.

They're also trying to bill me for the time they spent driving around town to buy a faucet that they said they'd bring with them (and that's available at a retail store about 100 yards from my front door).

So, as anticipated, the adventure has not concluded. I'm going to call them this morning and explain to them why I am not paying that much. We'll see how it goes. I really long for the mythical day when you could call a service person and that person would come and do an honest job and charge an honest amount.

Madison Avenue, May 2007

This cracked me up - a cheerful spring planting that has to be chained to the standpipe. It's the intrusion of the practical on the aesthetic. And it's so New York.

Had another busy day yesterday. I spent the morning reading and doing computer stuff, and then went to Dumbo in Brooklyn for the afternoon. Dumbo is actually an acronym that stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. It's a waterfront neighborhood that's somewhat similar to nearby Williamsburg - once popular with artists, it's now gentrifying, but there's still lots of interesting street scenery.

I went to a bookstore/art gallery and had some coffee at a local cafe, and of course took more pictures, which at this rate I'll get around to posting in a few weeks!

E. 29th Street, May 2007

Since I'm always going on about what's happening outside my window, I thought you might want to see the view: the fire escape, the horse chestnut tree on the right, the brick wall and windows of another apartment building across the courtyard. If I get close to the window and look up and to the left, I can see the Empire State Building.

I retrieved the colored glass ornament from my grandmother's house in Hyattsville, Md., after she died nearly 20 years ago. She actually got it in the 1930s in Cape Cod - it was made by a local artist from colored beach glass, all fused together with lead. It weighs a ton.

Yesterday my friend Rob and I went up the Hudson Valley to Cold Spring and Beacon. We took the train from Grand Central and spent the day wandering through antique shops. I found a great postcard of the Williamsburg Bridge from 1903 that I bought for $4.

We had lunch at a diner in Beacon called the Yankee Clipper, where they made a killer vanilla shake. I also had time on the train to read a bit of "The Berlin Stories" by Christopher Isherwood, which I've been reading for about two months now - I keep getting distracted, though I like the book. Consider this the beginning of a concerted effort to finish it!

W. 18th Street, May 2007

I had a great day yesterday! More walking, walking, walking - I wound all through Chelsea and down into the West Village and then wound up in SoHo. I took bazillions more pictures. Flickr is going to start charging me twice the normal fee!

I just love getting out and exploring. One of my goals was to go check out Frank Gehry's new building at 18th Street and the West Side Highway, a beautiful milky structure that rises up in a neat collection of curved planes and horizontal lines. It looked really nice against yesterday's pale sky.

I know Gehry is all the rage in the architecture world - in fact, he might even be a bit overexposed - but his work really IS amazing and unique. You can tell a Gehry building right away.


Anyway, in between all this walking and photography I also got in a trip to the gym and a trip to the Zendo.

And I bracketed the day with an interesting cinematic experience: In the morning I finished watching "Fahrenheit 451," which I'd started the night before, starring Julie Christie. (A bit tedious, but some interesting '60s style.) And then in the evening I saw Julie's most recent release, "Away From Her," a film about Alzheimers Disease that despite its subject matter never resorts to easy manipulation. Interesting to see the exceptional Julie Christie in two films in one day, at opposite ends of her career (thus far). And she still looks amazing!

Third Avenue, May 2007

Yesterday as I was leaving the company cafeteria, carrying my cup of morning coffee, I rounded a corner and nearly ran into a man coming the other way. I had two reactions: Instant annoyance at his presence, and a need to define for myself why he was in the wrong place while I was in the right.

It's not really important where we both were in the hallway - in fact, according to traffic rules, I was probably the one in the wrong place. What was interesting, to me anyway, was that dual reaction and how quickly it came.

I think many New Yorkers live with a sort of perpetual low-level annoyance at people around them. There are just so many of us, crammed so close together, and we're always in each other's way. When I go to other cities I marvel at how spacious they feel compared to New York.

The instinct to blame him was a surprise, at least to me. There was a reflexive close-mindedness to the idea that I could be in the wrong. What inner insecurity or defensiveness brought that on? And even if I felt I had to deflect fault myself, why didn't I think of it merely as the unhappy accident it almost was, the result of blamelessly shared trajectories?

Of course, I didn't express any of these reactions - I just smiled and apologized. But how quickly our minds can classify and judge!

Wooster Street, May 2007

I sat last night when I got home from work - opened the windows wide, put the cushion on the hardwood floor and let the sounds of the city wash over me.

And what a racket - the birds! They weren't singing, exactly - more like peeping, cooing and squawking. There seemed to be a frenzy of evening activity, maybe a time for feeding and socializing before roosting for the night. And it all seemed to be happening in the horse chestnut tree outside my window.

I heard doves, for sure, but I'm not sure what else I was hearing. Sparrows? Starlings? The sounds were more assertive and less musical than the morning songs I hear as I write (like now).

When I sit I don't close my eyes - part of the practice is staying connected with the world, and after all you don't want to fall asleep. I was facing the window, but gazing downward toward the floor. Still, there was so much commotion outside that sometimes I just had to look up and see what was flapping around on the fire escape.

And poor Armenia was beside herself with excitement. She sat on the window ledge, big-eyed, barely containing a plaintive meow every time a dove strayed near.

Was it distracting? Well, sure. But sitting doesn't have to be silent. You just let the sounds become part of the experience, let them come and go, each squawk and coo passing with each breath. You don't hold onto them - which is what I was doing when I began thinking about which species I was hearing. Instead, you just let each sound pass so you can really hear the next one.

I'm so lucky to have this apartment, with a tree outside and so much life in the courtyard.