Monday, November 4, 2013
Leaf Lessons
Ripe and bright yellow,
Eager to take this morning’s
Quiet chill sunshine fully to heart,
Hundreds of leaves are diving,
Spinning, floating, tumbling
To earth, to rest, to death.
Some are languid, broadside, ambling
Left to right, even lingering in the
Red Japanese maple awhile.
Others plunge with serrated knife edge or
Point directly down and flutter around a
Determined, descending stem.
Some let go and fall every which way;
Some dance, swoop and flip.
A few drop like stones, impossibly dense, or
Spiral in perfect geometry.
Though complex, tenacious, and beautiful,
All will fall, today or perhaps tomorrow;
All will fall.
Look: I will be
the laughing, twirling, joyful one,
All the way to ground.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
“Désiré” by Breughel
I am looking at a Breughel, not a Rubens, from my window seat at Désiré de Lille Tea Room. I would frame the artwork better by switching my own seat with the two ladies at a nearby table. Petite, well dressed, mature women. They both have silver hair, cut short and youthful. I think they are sisters catching up on family news, not just the what of it, but the why and the how, going deep inside the family stories to make meanings of new alliances and old fractures. They are wearing skirts and low heels. One wears glasses, one does not. The window begs to be bordered by their warm russet and brown brocades.
If they sit here in my place at the window table, the word Désiré will be just above their heads as read from the outside looking in. How would Breughel frame this? Will that word become the title of the entire piece? I like Breughel’s busy composites of folk sayings or parables. Each tiny scene is an illustration of some human foible. What is going on in my Breughel?
A woman walks into a shop labeled with a blue fluorescent sign. It might be a jewelry store. I can’t quite see from this angle. The name of the store is clear however. It is Choice. What is she going in there to choose?
Another woman, dressed in brown with short dark hair and glasses, walks out of a shop with a package over her arm. She is purposeful, stepping into the flow of pedestrian traffic to her right with eyes only for the next steps of the day. What is in her bag?
There is a large Buddha statue in the window of the shop she has just left. Buddha is holding a lit candle in his lotus-flower hands. The shop is called Rituals: Home and Body Cosmetics. Above and behind the Buddha is a board with writing on it. It begins . . . “Onze filosofie . . .”
Two women in slacks and short coats with their collars up walk a medium sized black poodle. We see only their backs as they walk from the center of the canvas off to the right. The woman on the left is older, perhaps the mother to the daughter on the right, the one with longer hair and slighter build. They aren’t touching, but their bodies say intimacy.
Two young men in shirt sleeves unload flats of water onto a hand cart just to the left of the center of the scene. Their bare hands grip the heavy trays.
A boy in a black coat is running, running through the scene. He is not alarmed, just late. Late to pick up a package from a shop closing soon? A package he has promised his mother he will bring home, but he was talking on his cellphone so long that he’s late. The twilight is shading down on him and soon that sharp scimitar, Magritte’s moon (in Breughel’s painting!) will be hanging over his head.
Tequila tempts passersby two or three at a time. Tequila’s final letter, the “A” is designed to look like the top of a minaret. The door of the minaret, as well as the spaces within the letter “e” and the letter “q” are filled with a deep pink, almost red color. What is Tequila offering besides a blush of intoxication? Costume jewelry, scarves, bags are visible along with an elephant and a giraffe. Outside on a pole a deep pink package tied with matching ribbon beckons with an exchange of imagination for possession.
The clerk of Tequila keeps busy in the tiny, spot-lit shop: folding and unfolding scarves, organizing small leather wallets in a display box. A mother and daughter, arm in arm, pause, turn away, and then turn back and enter the minaret’s door. They are darker than Northern Europeans. Are they from a minaret or from tequila? Drawn by the aura of the bustling shop, another woman enters.
A little family doing passagiata –two tiny girls, and mom and dad. A shopgirl on her cellphone making plans for the evening.
Which of us is Icarus, falling from the sky with melting wings from the dizzy heights and fiery sol?
Behind the tingle of the minaret’s door, is it the young woman in houndstooth trying on a scarf?
Or the young girl behind the Buddha who has just blown out the candle?
Or the young blond woman with a stiff-legged walk?
Or the woman with graceful packages pausing beside the “60% Off Sale” sign?
Or is it me?
The young man carrying two suitcases, one red, one grey, crosses from left to right and then from right to left ten minutes later. Where is the woman who belongs to the soft things in the red bag? Is she lost, or is he?
This tea room is really a series of rooms, each one lined in framed mirrors and deeper, deeper into the perspective of distance mirrored back smaller and smaller.
Tequila! Tequila! Number 11, the magic windows, the magic door. Did the woman whose face I never see put one irresistible gem among the fake chains and baubles?
The boy in the black coat runs across the scene again, in the opposite direction. On this little street, Schrijnwerkers Straat, are we at the fold of time? Every action will have its mirror, its reverse, sooner or later?
It’s almost dark; our reflections go deeper within the lighted windows and enfold one another across the narrow street.
No one goes in or comes out of Hush Puppies despite the pastel-bright colors splashed across the windows. Perhaps Breughel’s eyes cannot see into pastels. We’ll ask Renoir for his view.
If they sit here in my place at the window table, the word Désiré will be just above their heads as read from the outside looking in. How would Breughel frame this? Will that word become the title of the entire piece? I like Breughel’s busy composites of folk sayings or parables. Each tiny scene is an illustration of some human foible. What is going on in my Breughel?
A woman walks into a shop labeled with a blue fluorescent sign. It might be a jewelry store. I can’t quite see from this angle. The name of the store is clear however. It is Choice. What is she going in there to choose?
Another woman, dressed in brown with short dark hair and glasses, walks out of a shop with a package over her arm. She is purposeful, stepping into the flow of pedestrian traffic to her right with eyes only for the next steps of the day. What is in her bag?
There is a large Buddha statue in the window of the shop she has just left. Buddha is holding a lit candle in his lotus-flower hands. The shop is called Rituals: Home and Body Cosmetics. Above and behind the Buddha is a board with writing on it. It begins . . . “Onze filosofie . . .”
Two women in slacks and short coats with their collars up walk a medium sized black poodle. We see only their backs as they walk from the center of the canvas off to the right. The woman on the left is older, perhaps the mother to the daughter on the right, the one with longer hair and slighter build. They aren’t touching, but their bodies say intimacy.
Two young men in shirt sleeves unload flats of water onto a hand cart just to the left of the center of the scene. Their bare hands grip the heavy trays.
A boy in a black coat is running, running through the scene. He is not alarmed, just late. Late to pick up a package from a shop closing soon? A package he has promised his mother he will bring home, but he was talking on his cellphone so long that he’s late. The twilight is shading down on him and soon that sharp scimitar, Magritte’s moon (in Breughel’s painting!) will be hanging over his head.
Tequila tempts passersby two or three at a time. Tequila’s final letter, the “A” is designed to look like the top of a minaret. The door of the minaret, as well as the spaces within the letter “e” and the letter “q” are filled with a deep pink, almost red color. What is Tequila offering besides a blush of intoxication? Costume jewelry, scarves, bags are visible along with an elephant and a giraffe. Outside on a pole a deep pink package tied with matching ribbon beckons with an exchange of imagination for possession.
The clerk of Tequila keeps busy in the tiny, spot-lit shop: folding and unfolding scarves, organizing small leather wallets in a display box. A mother and daughter, arm in arm, pause, turn away, and then turn back and enter the minaret’s door. They are darker than Northern Europeans. Are they from a minaret or from tequila? Drawn by the aura of the bustling shop, another woman enters.
A little family doing passagiata –two tiny girls, and mom and dad. A shopgirl on her cellphone making plans for the evening.
Which of us is Icarus, falling from the sky with melting wings from the dizzy heights and fiery sol?
Behind the tingle of the minaret’s door, is it the young woman in houndstooth trying on a scarf?
Or the young girl behind the Buddha who has just blown out the candle?
Or the young blond woman with a stiff-legged walk?
Or the woman with graceful packages pausing beside the “60% Off Sale” sign?
Or is it me?
The young man carrying two suitcases, one red, one grey, crosses from left to right and then from right to left ten minutes later. Where is the woman who belongs to the soft things in the red bag? Is she lost, or is he?
This tea room is really a series of rooms, each one lined in framed mirrors and deeper, deeper into the perspective of distance mirrored back smaller and smaller.
Tequila! Tequila! Number 11, the magic windows, the magic door. Did the woman whose face I never see put one irresistible gem among the fake chains and baubles?
The boy in the black coat runs across the scene again, in the opposite direction. On this little street, Schrijnwerkers Straat, are we at the fold of time? Every action will have its mirror, its reverse, sooner or later?
It’s almost dark; our reflections go deeper within the lighted windows and enfold one another across the narrow street.
No one goes in or comes out of Hush Puppies despite the pastel-bright colors splashed across the windows. Perhaps Breughel’s eyes cannot see into pastels. We’ll ask Renoir for his view.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Organic Sedimentation: Earth 2013
The first session of a quilting Block-of-the-Month class called “Fearless Improv” did more than introduce me to my ego-deflating “gremlin” and motivate me to build a stone wall (of fabric). The introduction by Stitch Your Art Out’s co-owner and quilting diva Kimberly Davis also empowered me to start another project, a rather wild and ill-conceived project, but something that had been haunting me all the same.
To the top of my imagination rose an “end of bolt” piece I had been compelled to purchase last summer from a home design workshop in Rhode Island. This fabric was calling my name. It has a creamy background with machine embroidered fish, starfish, and shells scattered on the sand. After cutting out several fish and shells, I went hunting for their environment among the treasures in my stash. Many fabrics auditioned, but only eight made the finals. I began to see this project as a banner with horizontal slabs of fabric studded with sea creatures—a cross section of sea floor.
I placed the last hand stitch almost exactly two months from the first cut. The banner is called “Organic Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” Without the burlap sack that once held organic coffee beans, it would have been called simply, “Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” The word “organic” printed in large block letters hints at the ironic tone that evolved along with the project. In addition to composing the piece with hunks of odd fabrics, I added—along with the fish and shells—scraps of other fabric images appliqued on each of the eight layers of sedimentation. For example, a small Santa Claus sank to the bottom layer. Images of planets, cars, lizards, and a kitten settled down through the sediment and stuck at various levels. I selected a backing fabric chosen by a child’s bright imagination long-ago. Each layer of sediment was machine quilted with different thread and in a different pattern as if time—not color and texture—separated them. The binding is a tale of sedimentation itself with various hues and patterns following one another.
As I was machine quilting the heavy banner, I felt a strong desire to add small objects to raise the sedimentation of human detritus above the nearly-flat surface of the quilted banner. Two dimensions were not enough to express the three-dimensional scene I envisioned. In about an hour, I collected from closets, attic, shelves, and drawers what I needed: lanyard plastic tangled with beads, tiny lego blocks, shark teeth, lace, bits of Christmas tinsel, pink buttons, small metal clips and bolts, and a plastic horse and rider. Junk? We humans are really good at it!
Once the binding was hand sewn, I moved my tax documents off the dining room table and spread out the banner to place and attach the objects. My collection was excessive and only about half of the items made it onto this piece. I am not sure if the placements are fanciful or cynical; maybe a bit of both. A red plastic cowboy about the size of a seam allowance now stands astride the planet Saturn with a nano-revolver in each hand. Is this humor, or is it a commentary on aggressively competitive space exploration? Fresh water fish leap to consume bright bits of trash, and a sardonic starfish sports a nautical button in the dead-center of its body. Not far off, a disembodied head smiles blandly on the multilayered scene. My (least) favorite piece might be the yellow plastic band that actually tripped me up on a sidewalk in New Jersey recently. I took a five-point dive and I bear the scars of this object’s innocuous/hazardous/careless placement in my path. The same could happen to any fish or mammal or bird anywhere on earth; there is yellow plastic enough for all! The banner is very personal, not at all pretty, quite heavy, and possibly unique in the history of the planet. My gremlin desperately wants me to hang it in the laundry room and forget about it.
Last fall I created another “environmental art” piece—a banner inspired by Hurricane Sandy. I wanted to suggest devastation with a theme of broken glass and destructive winds. I cut heavy brown paper shapes and then found fabrics to bring color to the glass and menacing heft to the wind. I gave this piece to my son, an environmental engineer who lives in New Jersey. He hung it in the third floor hallway right outside the room where I sleep when I visit. I love it, but my gremlin thinks I am the only one.
If you knew my father and mother, you would recognize elements of their crafts in my work. He was an upholsterer and she grew up in the garment industry in New York City. I’ve lived my whole life around sewing machines, fabric, paper patterns, and big shears. Buttons were the best rainy Saturday amusement we could imagine! As they started a family, my mother continued to sew clothing for me and my sister, until we were old enough to create our own dresses and suits and gowns. My father found recreation and relaxation from upholstery by collecting shells, driftwood, and leaves and creating unique objects with them: vases, baskets, mirror frames, ornamental magnets, and small sculptures. He was a master of improvisation! We often laughed at my father’s “projects,” as he called them, and this has been fuel for my gremlin. If I laughed at what he made, I deserve the same for my “projects,” don’t I? I see the similarities now, and I regret not appreciating his art more fully while he was alive. The creative inheritance and skills I learned from both my parents are alive in my work. Perhaps I am not improvising at all, but simply living and creating in the family tradition.
To the top of my imagination rose an “end of bolt” piece I had been compelled to purchase last summer from a home design workshop in Rhode Island. This fabric was calling my name. It has a creamy background with machine embroidered fish, starfish, and shells scattered on the sand. After cutting out several fish and shells, I went hunting for their environment among the treasures in my stash. Many fabrics auditioned, but only eight made the finals. I began to see this project as a banner with horizontal slabs of fabric studded with sea creatures—a cross section of sea floor.
I placed the last hand stitch almost exactly two months from the first cut. The banner is called “Organic Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” Without the burlap sack that once held organic coffee beans, it would have been called simply, “Sedimentation: Earth 2013.” The word “organic” printed in large block letters hints at the ironic tone that evolved along with the project. In addition to composing the piece with hunks of odd fabrics, I added—along with the fish and shells—scraps of other fabric images appliqued on each of the eight layers of sedimentation. For example, a small Santa Claus sank to the bottom layer. Images of planets, cars, lizards, and a kitten settled down through the sediment and stuck at various levels. I selected a backing fabric chosen by a child’s bright imagination long-ago. Each layer of sediment was machine quilted with different thread and in a different pattern as if time—not color and texture—separated them. The binding is a tale of sedimentation itself with various hues and patterns following one another.
As I was machine quilting the heavy banner, I felt a strong desire to add small objects to raise the sedimentation of human detritus above the nearly-flat surface of the quilted banner. Two dimensions were not enough to express the three-dimensional scene I envisioned. In about an hour, I collected from closets, attic, shelves, and drawers what I needed: lanyard plastic tangled with beads, tiny lego blocks, shark teeth, lace, bits of Christmas tinsel, pink buttons, small metal clips and bolts, and a plastic horse and rider. Junk? We humans are really good at it!
Once the binding was hand sewn, I moved my tax documents off the dining room table and spread out the banner to place and attach the objects. My collection was excessive and only about half of the items made it onto this piece. I am not sure if the placements are fanciful or cynical; maybe a bit of both. A red plastic cowboy about the size of a seam allowance now stands astride the planet Saturn with a nano-revolver in each hand. Is this humor, or is it a commentary on aggressively competitive space exploration? Fresh water fish leap to consume bright bits of trash, and a sardonic starfish sports a nautical button in the dead-center of its body. Not far off, a disembodied head smiles blandly on the multilayered scene. My (least) favorite piece might be the yellow plastic band that actually tripped me up on a sidewalk in New Jersey recently. I took a five-point dive and I bear the scars of this object’s innocuous/hazardous/careless placement in my path. The same could happen to any fish or mammal or bird anywhere on earth; there is yellow plastic enough for all! The banner is very personal, not at all pretty, quite heavy, and possibly unique in the history of the planet. My gremlin desperately wants me to hang it in the laundry room and forget about it.
Last fall I created another “environmental art” piece—a banner inspired by Hurricane Sandy. I wanted to suggest devastation with a theme of broken glass and destructive winds. I cut heavy brown paper shapes and then found fabrics to bring color to the glass and menacing heft to the wind. I gave this piece to my son, an environmental engineer who lives in New Jersey. He hung it in the third floor hallway right outside the room where I sleep when I visit. I love it, but my gremlin thinks I am the only one.
If you knew my father and mother, you would recognize elements of their crafts in my work. He was an upholsterer and she grew up in the garment industry in New York City. I’ve lived my whole life around sewing machines, fabric, paper patterns, and big shears. Buttons were the best rainy Saturday amusement we could imagine! As they started a family, my mother continued to sew clothing for me and my sister, until we were old enough to create our own dresses and suits and gowns. My father found recreation and relaxation from upholstery by collecting shells, driftwood, and leaves and creating unique objects with them: vases, baskets, mirror frames, ornamental magnets, and small sculptures. He was a master of improvisation! We often laughed at my father’s “projects,” as he called them, and this has been fuel for my gremlin. If I laughed at what he made, I deserve the same for my “projects,” don’t I? I see the similarities now, and I regret not appreciating his art more fully while he was alive. The creative inheritance and skills I learned from both my parents are alive in my work. Perhaps I am not improvising at all, but simply living and creating in the family tradition.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Summer 2013 in Three Moments
#1: “Distance Plus Motion”
From my moving kayak this morning, I saw
two ranks of trees sailing in opposite directions across a hillside where
yesterday there stood a solid wall of green.
The upper stand of trees sailed slowly south, while the lower sailed
majestically north, a verdant voyage
challenging my notion of the land and
animating a façade once stiff with wood.
#2: “Morning Marvelous”
This morning’s marvelous is quiet and small:
an owl contemplates life and resists entropy,
a bit of orange flashes among the trees,
a red boat floats against tall reeds.
I turn my boat towards home and small bubbles rise to show the way.
At my doorstep, a yellow butterfly.
#3: "Short Summer Summary”
Traveling, unpacking, checking boxes on a list, transitioning, walking, waiting to begin, purchasing, arranging, moving, stirring, contemplating, anticipating, waiting to end, escaping, fixing, sewing, puzzling, walking, watching, making new lists, paddling, finishing, filling out forms, turning things on, reading, turning things off, supplying, connecting, preparing, giving, walking, packing, returning.
From my moving kayak this morning, I saw
two ranks of trees sailing in opposite directions across a hillside where
yesterday there stood a solid wall of green.
The upper stand of trees sailed slowly south, while the lower sailed
majestically north, a verdant voyage
challenging my notion of the land and
animating a façade once stiff with wood.
#2: “Morning Marvelous”
This morning’s marvelous is quiet and small:
an owl contemplates life and resists entropy,
a bit of orange flashes among the trees,
a red boat floats against tall reeds.
I turn my boat towards home and small bubbles rise to show the way.
At my doorstep, a yellow butterfly.
#3: "Short Summer Summary”
Traveling, unpacking, checking boxes on a list, transitioning, walking, waiting to begin, purchasing, arranging, moving, stirring, contemplating, anticipating, waiting to end, escaping, fixing, sewing, puzzling, walking, watching, making new lists, paddling, finishing, filling out forms, turning things on, reading, turning things off, supplying, connecting, preparing, giving, walking, packing, returning.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Watching Me Watching You
As I approached the Amtrak ticket window at Newark Penn Station this morning I smiled at a woman already in the queue. She carried a handbag and rested her other hand on a neat black leather backpack atop her suitcase. She returned my smile. In some strange recognition between strangers, we acknowledged each other as equals, “Hello” answering “Hello.” “In a pinch, you can turn to me.”
The exact same encounter happened to me at the Amtrak counter in Boston's Back Bay station four days ago. Women recognize their peers in age, class, and circumstances almost instantly. It's part of a survival instinct when traveling alone. Just like instinctively noticing where the exits and restrooms are, women will identify the peer who will be a potential ally if danger approaches. Later that same day, as the train approached my station, a woman entered the train and seemed quite anxious. She asked if the seat next to me was free and we chatted until I got off ten minutes later. She was apprehensive about this train ride, her very first. “People in Texas don’t have this opportunity,” she said. I reassured her and she seemed relieved as much by my presence as by my words.
On both ticket-purchasing experiences in recent days, I observed a woman in difficulty at the counter. For the ticket agents, these may have been just samples of many long narratives that unfold during the day. In Boston, the protagonist was an international woman with minimal English trying to buy a complex ticket that might have been impossible. She was short, dark-skinned, and elderly—three strikes against her in addition to the language barrier and limited resources. She was holding a zippered coin purse at the counter and I wondered if she would pay for her ticket with small bills or possibly even with coins. The agent must have expressed doubt about the feasibility of her desired route, because the customer responded in broken English, “I go this way many time.” The agent tried again and then wrote a number on a slip of paper, handed it to the woman, and asked her to wait while she sold tickets to the few of us with immanent departures. I saw the price of $148.20 on the piece of paper and then my narrative boarded a train and diverged from hers.
At Newark Penn Station this morning, the woman facing her trial at the ticket window was young, white, and blonde. She had five or six bags at her feet. Not suitcases, but canvas and plastic bags with their handles tied together. She was in an extended conversation with the agent. She told him she had just been released from rehab in a mental hospital and she needed to get home today. Her voice was urgent and highly distressed, almost panicked. She rested her cheek against the palm of her hand and pleaded with him. He asked for her name and typed it into the computer. Perhaps she had a reservation but no identification? He couldn't give her the ticket without ID. When he asked for a phone number, she quickly gave him a number and told him that her ex-husband was at that number and he could give any information needed. The agent ultimately directed her to the police, “Go around the corner and turn left.” She hooked all the bag handles with her fingers and walked off. When I left the ticket counter, I was relieved to see her in conversation with a policeman. I felt some tug to get involved, but I didn't.
Meanwhile, off to my left was a row of men who may or may not have had tickets, but who were sitting along the outside wall of the waiting room on a bench marked (as they all are) “Seating for ticketed passengers.” They were watching, too. They were not watching the big board for their track number to appear. They were not watching the lines at the ticket windows to pick the fastest one. They were watching out for one another as they stepped outside and then returned to the warm station and the benches. They were also watching the passengers sitting on the other benches. I wondered if they were watching to see if someone dropped something that they could pick up and use or sell, but when a package of cigarettes fell out of the pocket of a passenger opposite me, one of the watchers got up and gestured to the man until he saw his cigarettes and retrieved them.
Another of the watchers called out, “Blossom! Blossom!” and I looked to see who might respond. I was not quick enough to catch sight of Blossom passing by.
Leaning against the information booth in the center of the waiting area and looking out over all the benches and all the people was a uniformed policeman. He scanned the room attentively. What would happen if he were not watching? And the three young soldiers in buff camouflage uniforms that I saw as I came down the escalator at the Port Authority bus station on Tuesday morning? In the universe of humans watching other humans, we may have turned the page from watching to surveillance.
The exact same encounter happened to me at the Amtrak counter in Boston's Back Bay station four days ago. Women recognize their peers in age, class, and circumstances almost instantly. It's part of a survival instinct when traveling alone. Just like instinctively noticing where the exits and restrooms are, women will identify the peer who will be a potential ally if danger approaches. Later that same day, as the train approached my station, a woman entered the train and seemed quite anxious. She asked if the seat next to me was free and we chatted until I got off ten minutes later. She was apprehensive about this train ride, her very first. “People in Texas don’t have this opportunity,” she said. I reassured her and she seemed relieved as much by my presence as by my words.
On both ticket-purchasing experiences in recent days, I observed a woman in difficulty at the counter. For the ticket agents, these may have been just samples of many long narratives that unfold during the day. In Boston, the protagonist was an international woman with minimal English trying to buy a complex ticket that might have been impossible. She was short, dark-skinned, and elderly—three strikes against her in addition to the language barrier and limited resources. She was holding a zippered coin purse at the counter and I wondered if she would pay for her ticket with small bills or possibly even with coins. The agent must have expressed doubt about the feasibility of her desired route, because the customer responded in broken English, “I go this way many time.” The agent tried again and then wrote a number on a slip of paper, handed it to the woman, and asked her to wait while she sold tickets to the few of us with immanent departures. I saw the price of $148.20 on the piece of paper and then my narrative boarded a train and diverged from hers.
At Newark Penn Station this morning, the woman facing her trial at the ticket window was young, white, and blonde. She had five or six bags at her feet. Not suitcases, but canvas and plastic bags with their handles tied together. She was in an extended conversation with the agent. She told him she had just been released from rehab in a mental hospital and she needed to get home today. Her voice was urgent and highly distressed, almost panicked. She rested her cheek against the palm of her hand and pleaded with him. He asked for her name and typed it into the computer. Perhaps she had a reservation but no identification? He couldn't give her the ticket without ID. When he asked for a phone number, she quickly gave him a number and told him that her ex-husband was at that number and he could give any information needed. The agent ultimately directed her to the police, “Go around the corner and turn left.” She hooked all the bag handles with her fingers and walked off. When I left the ticket counter, I was relieved to see her in conversation with a policeman. I felt some tug to get involved, but I didn't.
Meanwhile, off to my left was a row of men who may or may not have had tickets, but who were sitting along the outside wall of the waiting room on a bench marked (as they all are) “Seating for ticketed passengers.” They were watching, too. They were not watching the big board for their track number to appear. They were not watching the lines at the ticket windows to pick the fastest one. They were watching out for one another as they stepped outside and then returned to the warm station and the benches. They were also watching the passengers sitting on the other benches. I wondered if they were watching to see if someone dropped something that they could pick up and use or sell, but when a package of cigarettes fell out of the pocket of a passenger opposite me, one of the watchers got up and gestured to the man until he saw his cigarettes and retrieved them.
Another of the watchers called out, “Blossom! Blossom!” and I looked to see who might respond. I was not quick enough to catch sight of Blossom passing by.
Leaning against the information booth in the center of the waiting area and looking out over all the benches and all the people was a uniformed policeman. He scanned the room attentively. What would happen if he were not watching? And the three young soldiers in buff camouflage uniforms that I saw as I came down the escalator at the Port Authority bus station on Tuesday morning? In the universe of humans watching other humans, we may have turned the page from watching to surveillance.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Sounds of Place: Budapest Keleti Station (2007)
The Budapest train station called Keleti is gigantic and beautiful. Inside Keleti Station today it is confusing, hot, and crowded, and we are waiting for an overnight train to Krakow. I have loved train stations for a long time because of the vibrant aura of travelers setting off on a journey or arriving at a destination. Grand Central Station in New York City is a very special train station for me. It represents my claim on my own life, starting a new existence right there at the center of the universe!
Centered in this station in Budapest, between tracks and ticket booths, there are two old-fashioned “big boards” with metal cards clicking over to display the times of arrival or departure of the trains along with the origin or destination, notes we can’t understand, any delays and how long, and finally, the datum that completes each line, the track number.
Every couple of minutes, the board begins to transform itself. One by one, beginning at the top, each element of the line of information will begin rotating to repeat, momentarily, the line below it. For just a blink of an eye, the two lines are identical, and then the elements of the second line begin to flip to bring up the train just below it. This movement is nearly constant as track numbers and other information is updated. At any moment, some element is flipping through all of the small metal cards with all of its potential readings to stop at the exact right one.
The “big board” entertains us in anticipation of the track posting which will catapult us into action towards the arriving train. The sound of all that clicking mesmerizes us, rivets our attention. This sound is like rosary beads clicking, like many fast, small marbles snapping against one another, like thick, flexible plastic cards shuffling, like heavy dry leaves rustling in the wind in October. It is similar and yet unlike any of these. If the mechanical big board holds still and silent, for even a moment, everyone watching it is still, we all stop breathing for an instant, for a heartbeat, until the rapid flipping begins again.
I tried to figure out who or what is behind this hypnotic system, but can’t quite imagine! This system predates computers, but is it computerized now? Of course, the next iteration of big boards will be digital displays, practical, but not as dynamic or interesting to watch.
In addition to this repetitive, resonant sound locking on a brain frequency that immobilizes us, we are also enchanted with the names of destinations that flip through our sights each time a line moves up the board. Potential destinations from this spot in Budapest flip over each other, revealing and concealing jewels and tapestries, markets and minarets, rich aromas and strange twisting cries. Today we are NOT going to Nagykáta, Zűrich, Sopron, Hatva, Moszkva, Szolnok, Sűlysáp, Koŝice, Pëcs, Graz, Berlin, Zagreb, Hamburg, Belgrade, Thessalonika, Dormond, or Bratislava, or any of the places with names so complex I couldn’t capture them from the short glimpse on the big board.
Our train finally appears at the bottom of the big board as the departure time of 18:30 takes the bottom line below 18:25. Before we are assigned a track number and achieve the top line, I am already nostalgic for the sound of the big board at Keleti Station in Budapest.
Centered in this station in Budapest, between tracks and ticket booths, there are two old-fashioned “big boards” with metal cards clicking over to display the times of arrival or departure of the trains along with the origin or destination, notes we can’t understand, any delays and how long, and finally, the datum that completes each line, the track number.
Every couple of minutes, the board begins to transform itself. One by one, beginning at the top, each element of the line of information will begin rotating to repeat, momentarily, the line below it. For just a blink of an eye, the two lines are identical, and then the elements of the second line begin to flip to bring up the train just below it. This movement is nearly constant as track numbers and other information is updated. At any moment, some element is flipping through all of the small metal cards with all of its potential readings to stop at the exact right one.
The “big board” entertains us in anticipation of the track posting which will catapult us into action towards the arriving train. The sound of all that clicking mesmerizes us, rivets our attention. This sound is like rosary beads clicking, like many fast, small marbles snapping against one another, like thick, flexible plastic cards shuffling, like heavy dry leaves rustling in the wind in October. It is similar and yet unlike any of these. If the mechanical big board holds still and silent, for even a moment, everyone watching it is still, we all stop breathing for an instant, for a heartbeat, until the rapid flipping begins again.
I tried to figure out who or what is behind this hypnotic system, but can’t quite imagine! This system predates computers, but is it computerized now? Of course, the next iteration of big boards will be digital displays, practical, but not as dynamic or interesting to watch.
In addition to this repetitive, resonant sound locking on a brain frequency that immobilizes us, we are also enchanted with the names of destinations that flip through our sights each time a line moves up the board. Potential destinations from this spot in Budapest flip over each other, revealing and concealing jewels and tapestries, markets and minarets, rich aromas and strange twisting cries. Today we are NOT going to Nagykáta, Zűrich, Sopron, Hatva, Moszkva, Szolnok, Sűlysáp, Koŝice, Pëcs, Graz, Berlin, Zagreb, Hamburg, Belgrade, Thessalonika, Dormond, or Bratislava, or any of the places with names so complex I couldn’t capture them from the short glimpse on the big board.
Our train finally appears at the bottom of the big board as the departure time of 18:30 takes the bottom line below 18:25. Before we are assigned a track number and achieve the top line, I am already nostalgic for the sound of the big board at Keleti Station in Budapest.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Ring the Bell
At Jinming Temple on Saturday I held three smoldering incense sticks in the sticky humid air and bowed in four directions to the Buddha, beginning with the East. I inhaled the smoke and then opened my hands and heart for a blessing.
A few hours later, I paid two renminbi to sound the massive bell in an inner courtyard of the Confucius Temple. A small log was wrapped in red cloth and suspended by two ropes. I pulled it back, posed for a photo, and released the log toward the bell and the boom reverberating through flesh and bone and air. I paid another five renminbi to hold mallets and play three rows of graduated bronze bells, a very big drum, and a Chinese zither. My five minutes on that stage were not enough to perfect my style, but to confirm a vision that this might have been my role in a past life at this temple.
On Monday, I climbed every available stair in the weaving workshop garden; the geometric and smooth ones as well as the water-shaped, rough and uneven ones, filling all my frames with texture. I looked and longed toward the roof garden that was inaccessible to my ascending desire.
I confess that I am the one who touches sculptures despite signs that say “Do not touch,” and on Tuesday, I touched the lucky turtle, and the elephant, and the camel, and the lions. They were stone both before and after, but I was not.
At the gate of Linggu Temple on Purple Mountain, I ate slippery cold noodles of bean paste with shredded carrots and cucumber, sauced with sweet, pungent, and spicy. Though I held my sticks upside down, no one noticed my splashy style.
Today, I plan to touch silk and jade, perhaps to great excess. When the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome rings the final bell in my head or heart, I will be ready.
A few hours later, I paid two renminbi to sound the massive bell in an inner courtyard of the Confucius Temple. A small log was wrapped in red cloth and suspended by two ropes. I pulled it back, posed for a photo, and released the log toward the bell and the boom reverberating through flesh and bone and air. I paid another five renminbi to hold mallets and play three rows of graduated bronze bells, a very big drum, and a Chinese zither. My five minutes on that stage were not enough to perfect my style, but to confirm a vision that this might have been my role in a past life at this temple.
On Monday, I climbed every available stair in the weaving workshop garden; the geometric and smooth ones as well as the water-shaped, rough and uneven ones, filling all my frames with texture. I looked and longed toward the roof garden that was inaccessible to my ascending desire.
I confess that I am the one who touches sculptures despite signs that say “Do not touch,” and on Tuesday, I touched the lucky turtle, and the elephant, and the camel, and the lions. They were stone both before and after, but I was not.
At the gate of Linggu Temple on Purple Mountain, I ate slippery cold noodles of bean paste with shredded carrots and cucumber, sauced with sweet, pungent, and spicy. Though I held my sticks upside down, no one noticed my splashy style.
Today, I plan to touch silk and jade, perhaps to great excess. When the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome rings the final bell in my head or heart, I will be ready.
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