Mingle Freely Rebuild

We are covered in snow. Here’s some pictures. (no need to log in, just click “view pictures” and then (maybe) “slideshow”)

It started Monday morning, as Hap and I bussed it crosstown to find this pizza place in Spanish Harlem. That didn’t happen, owing at least to the fact that I was unsure of the name and location of said pizza place. (update: Patsy’s on 1st Ave, at either 116th or 119th) That information can belpful…

By evening, Hap and I, and the intrepid fashionistas Lori and Lucy, plus JT were eating in a funny little Italian place in the west Village, so it didn’t matter anyway, right? The place was staffed with total Italian guys, one of whom shared with us that “da former Attorney General eats here! He lives on 5th Avenue!” I think that was meant to impress.

Afterwards, we split off and we come to highlight number two of the trip:

JT and Mick’s nighttime trek through Central Park. The Gates technically ended on Sunday, but they were hardly disassembled by Monday night and this foot of snow that has landed. So conditions were perfect for a walk in the park after dark (thanks, Charles Ives). And longtime adventure pal JT was the perfect candidate for this controversial outing. (you’ve heard it—stay out of Central Park after dark!) And I’m not even saying that’s bad advice. Nonetheless, we didn’t. I’m so glad we didn’t. Talk about a wonderland; the snow muted everything to quietude, with The Gates, no longer attended to, towering overhead, sentinels to a peaceful vacancy. Occasionally we would see other nighttime revelers, but mostly we blazed this way and that, and the snow feathered down all around.

The wind was no small thing, and it was finally evident the big job of the tennis ball people, as it was easy to call the “gates-keepers,” who carried extendable poles with tennis balls glued to the ends to gently free up fabric that had flipped over the frames. Now that the exhibit was closed, fabric is starting to become increasingly flummoxed by Mother Nature.

What a wonderful sonorous night. So strange to hear the sound of such solitude in the middle of this city of millions. Most people were tucked away inside, but in Central Park, there was wonder abounding. Eventually, I put away my camera as the snow began coming down in piles. We meandered our way along around the turtle pond, and then across the back of the Met, where inside, ancient Egyptian spirits slumber in the wrong climate.

SEE MORE PICTURES HERE! (no need to log in, just click “view pictures” and then (maybe) “slideshow”)

Sunday was a day of champion wandering by me and Hap. I remembered that I love this partnership because Hap is undaunted, like me, by logic or practicality, which can be crucial when it comes to successful meandering.

In the continuing theme of church wandering, I tried, tried, tried again to get up into the bell tower of Riverside Church. I’ve been trying to get back up there for five years! I thought this was the day, but I was wrong. It’s been closed since 2001, and remains so. The claim is that it will reopen next Spring, a claim that I’ve heard before, guys… Nonetheless, we got to linger around the fringes of the Ethiopian service, an otherworldly mixture of wonderful incense and singing. The Riverside Church visit concluded our tour of colossal socially just churches. We also visited Grant’s Tomb, and after seeing how huge the sarcophagus is, I think that the answer to the bizarre question Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb might be: lots and lots of people. G’damn they’re huge!

This was a day of buses. We took the scenic route (actually, I guess all day was the scenic route) Riverside bus down to the Upper West Side, stopped in at Barnes and Noble, so I could get replacement copies of my fave NYC pocket map, and then meandered our way down to Bleeker and spent the rest of our day there. I was a little dismayed, in retrospect, to find that I forgot to eat pizza all day long. That is a terrible gaffe which I shall attempt to make up for in our remaining days. In place of pizza however, Hap and I found piroghes. Also, I found a Kathi roll at Indian Bread, which I had to invest in, though it had been mere moments since downing a piroschke.

My favorite thing in NYC has always been standing around. This is an art that is not so appreciated in smaller cities, where standing around seems to draw attention and sometimes even suspiiicion. Not in NY. I got a prime opportunity to hone my standing around skills while hap procured some new Chucks. I held down the standing around duties.

After that, the day rather whirred by. Always lots of great discussion, though, and some reverie over Danish Modern design ended up dovetailing nicely with a visit to Moss, where you can definitely get a better fork.

We headed up to St. John the Divine, the world’s largest cathedral (if they’d ever finish it, that is) and I don’t think I was the only one who was thinking just of sitting down and letting Jesus heal my achin’ feet. The cavern of the interior always shushes me, as well as the modern perspective that is so often lacking in the old dead God places (yes, that’s a TV in the stained glass at left). It’s so epic that I always look up to make sure there aren’t clouds. In fact, sometimes I’m sure there are. Today it was kind of overcast inside, owing to the web of scaffolding occupying the back (2001’s fire damage, still being tended to). Just as I was about to sit down and bask in the quiet under the impossibly colossal columns, I heard a flute playing ‘Amazing Grace.’ It was a lovely meandering song wisping up to the rafters in this cavern, and as it trailed off, I saw a faraway figure who seemed to be gesturing for me to come over. Well, this is as close to spiritual calling as I was likely to get, so I obliged and waved Hap, Lori and Lucy along with me.

We arrived at a side chapel area and this Layminister was waiting for us and invited us to sit down for the Saturday Evening Prayer. I’m not sure I wanted to, but I said: “Do we get to sing?” and this unusually jovial guy said, “Well, not normally, but since you ask, I think we could chant the Lord’s Prayer!” Okay, I’m in.

So the four of us sat down—as the complete congregation for this guy’s service—and proceeded to participate in what was for me a completely unfamiliiar litany of prayers and recitations.

Cool…Ancient rituals…

Honestly, I was a little uncomfortable with this, but when I thought of a similar situations in a completely foreign spiritual practice, say, Hinduism, I was more comfortable. Ahh, thanks Mom and Dad, for my deep-seated Christian prejudices.

But there was something completely wonderful about this whole thing, and I’m not talking about the holy spirit. We were given specific instructions about what (and when) to read, we moved along briskly, which is good for my short attention span. Sort of paint-by-numbers worship.

Adding to the mystique was the fact that I had no idea how long this was going to take, but since it was 5:30 and the sign out front did say 10am-6pm, I though we were probably not going to be held by the holy all night. Eventually after a variety of litanizing, our guy was true to his word and we got to chant The Lord’s Prayer, which I quite massacred, from a tonal standpoint. I thought it was a great opportunity for improvisation, and who knows? I had fun.

Afterwards, the layminister jumped from behind his little pulpit for a little Q&A. He told us how the original bishop of St. John’s (who we were told was lying “in state” basically right next to us, which was a little weird) led a congregation out the doors one day and over to another church in Manhattan where a minister was chaining the doors to keep blacks out. As the story goes, the bishop of St. John’s and his congregation cut the chains on the doors of this other church, and drug the minister out into the street where he was fired on the spot.

I might go to church more if there was more of the dragging and the firing.

It was pointed out to me after a near-foray into Fairway, that I mostly like to go to churches and grocery stores in NYC. Earlier we did a tour of duty through Whole Foods at Columbus Circle, which was total madness. Imagine some form of food heaven, some sort of by-the-pound food mecca. Salads, meats, sweets, whatever. And literally tons of it. All for basically $6.99 a pound.

We wound around through possibly over a million people, oohing and ahhing after the fourteen different lettuces, the build-it-yourself tofu bar, the 12 stations of the Holy Watercress. (You see where we’re going with this, dontcha?) However, upon realizing that approximately half of the million or so people witnessing were actually in line, that we hit the up escalator and returned to the street.

Meandering along Broadway, Balducci’s was a different story, though. More great finger food, w/o the tide of humanity. And that serves well the Constant and Vital Search for Snacks that is my calling while in NYC, that NYC can so well afford, if not always my actual wallet. Still Balducci’s arranged for me this delight: one giant pan-seared scallop and a slab of sesame-something tofu.I had a minor pang asking for such slim treats to be served up pronto. With just a momentary lapse in eye-to-stomach ratio understanding, one could easily empty the bank. My requirements were that no fork be required, but I did feel a little bad disposing of the designer handle-bag, the custom air-tight container, the fork, the cloth napkin… Okay, so there wasn’t really a cloth napkin.

Groceries are my churches, probably. But churches are my churches, too. Once my friend Jeff, a similiarly minded, uh, secular spiritualist, confessed to his family church’s pastor that he liked coming into their church because it was a peaceful and serene place. And the pastor replied “That’s what we call the Holy Spirit,” which from a certain perspective is kind of dismaying answer that entirely missed the point of my friend’s appreciation of the space.

And I feel the same way. Churches are great—but mostly when they’re empty.

Here to see The Gates, and also as an Isle of You male mascot. I could do worse. Hi-jinks to follow!

In a few days, I get to go see The Gates, in NYC, on the closing day. This should be quite a sight, and I really am antipicipating. Thinking about it has reminded me how much I love Central Park. How it’s not like a city, or a park, or the woods. It’s something that is singular and different from those things. I used to like to find places to take naps in the sunlight when I lived in NY. And I used to do a minor running foray around the Reservoir.

Once, when I was in this running period, a wonderful thing happened. I would take the subway from 44th and 9th, up to 86th (I always though that was kind of funny, too—taking the subway to go running.) So, this one night, I was headed out the door, and noticed it was sprinkling. Okay, gotta get a move on, I thought. I got on the subway, and when I got off at 86th, it was totally pouring. I decided to run anyway, and ran through CP, until I was totally lost, and utterly alone. It was great. Slogging through the rain, not worried about any creeps, since they’d have to also be crazy to be out to get me in a total downpour. (okay, so I admit that, in NYC, this combination was a valid possibility)

Oh, I get to drink Mexican Hot Chocolate now at the neighborhood coffee shop, 3rd Street Coffee! It’s a thursday, which means I’ve been up since 5a (early morning r radio show! You can listen online, y’know), which means that by mid-afternoon, my brain is bubbling. and the only way to keep it correctly percolating, on this day is with some labor on the Campsie House including a trip to the dump!

Maybe I am. Maybe it’s the Neil Stephenson books I’m reading. I don’t know. But things seem to be accelerating. This whole blogsphere thing. the photoblog thing. the other information sharing things. I’m kinda swimming in it. It’s not that I love it particularly, because the learning curve is a bit steep and it requires time (too much) and concentration, and signing up for things, which always sets off my big brother alarms. But there is something happening that is new. The way people are communicating. You can call it cold and distant, if you want to be that way, but I don’t think that’s got it right.

Idea: There are these ways for people to share all sorts of notions, emotions, ideas, etc, and for those things to then be parlayed into … other things. I don’t know what to call them. It’s like instant zeitgeist. Imagine if you didn’t know Radio (upper case) existed, and you didn’t have a radio (lower case). You’d think the air was silent. But in fact, it’s full to the brim of information, ideas, music, (ads), flying around invisibly.

This blogsphere thing is like that, too. I’m just in awe of it. And like I said, I’m not exactly enraptured by it, but it is a new and powerful way of communicating and collaborating, of sharing and fermenting ideas and dialogs.

And in the same way that people my parents’ age struggle with “learning computers” (a hilariously overbroad concept, to anybody who “knows computers.”), many of my friends will struggle with the blogsphere. As an idea. Because you can’t see it. You can see blogs, but I’m still trying to get my head around how people and ideas zing back and forth, bouncing around among blogs, web sites, etc., etc., etc., etc.! That’s what I’m struggling with. Trying to understand what it’s capable of. And trying to use that capability to enrich my daily life. Also, I’m trying meditation. Just 15 minutes is a long time!

Threadless T-Shirts seem to bring you even more of that so-very-day-after-tomorrow online collaborating that is just absorbing my attention of late, for better or for worse. Best I can tell, you submit a tshirt design, and if it wins a rating contest, they’ll add it to their catalog and give you a cash prize. and the designs, they ain’t shabby!

So I’m finally starting to stumble across people in the blogsphere. I still don’t quite understand how it’s done, but that’s probably because I keep looking for a shortcut, an aggregator, because that’s what technology teaches us to do, right? “Find all my favorite blogs and create bookmarks for them!” I remember the first time I met Mark. He was doing telecomm/wiring/i-don’t-know-what work for this internet company I was working for in NY. He came around just when I was sure I was the only person in the office who’s body hadn’t been snatched. And he told me that I was “bright,” which, while not a “Southern adjective” (ha), was something I really needed to hear right then, since I felt like everybody in my office seemed to think I was quite dim. Yesterday, I had deja vu about this, at my bank— There’s this kid there who knows so much about music. And he’s working as a controller in a brokerage. I come in and I’m the only person who can say, “hey do you like that new _____ record?” It’s maybe just a moment of– signs of intelligent life in the universe. Which can be such a relief some days.