Jasmina

Yesterday, the air was cold and clean, drenched in winter sunlight.  My friend Margaret Clark stood at the door greeting people.  She was dressed in hot pink.  We spoke for a few minutes about inconsequential things.  I wasn't in a hurry to go up the stairs, so stepped outside for a moment just as Janette and her son Luke showed up.  We walked back in together.  More and more people began to arrive at 775 Washington Street.  Well dressed people wearing  black; cashmere and leather and silk.  Margaret said, I've been to bar mitzvahs here, and even danced here when it was a nightclub in the early 90's. What is it today, I asked.  Primarily a photography studio, she replied.

Finally I took to the stairs, and then up a cement ramp that curved to the right.  On the landing, a slide show projected onto the large white wall.  Jasmina Anema in all her glory; dressed in gold lame with matching gold sneakers, wearing a two piece bathing suit, laughing and giggling, her long braids, her wide smile.  A six year old girl.  I stepped into the main room flooded with sunlight.  Row upon row of white chairs, and in the front of the room, a little white coffin and two large sprays of roses.  Jasmina's mother, Thea, seated in the front row on one side, on the other side, Jasmina's birth mother and family. 

Jasmina had a fought a year long, much publicized battle with a particularly virulent form of leukemia. Tragically, she lost that battle last Wednesday night.  This was her funeral.  I walked up the aisle, gave my condolences to Thea, and stepped up to the coffin.  There was Jasmina dressed as a fairy princess, the coffin lined with toys and a picture of her with President Obama.  Nothing prepares you for this.  Soon the service started.  Many people spoke, musicians played, two of Jasmina's friends from school sang Twinkle, twinkle little star.  My heart ached for Thea.

I only knew her casually through Margaret, but throughout the years, I heard all the stories, all the adventures of Thea and Jasmina; how they traveled around the world, how Jasmina knew Dutch and Mandarin, their summer house in the Catskills.  Margaret told me the story about how Thea stitched up a mermaid costume when Jasmina had to undergo a painful procedure at the hospital. When I saw them together, I was humbled, they were such a pair, mother and daughter, bonded for life.  The love was palpable. But now it was over.  At one point in the service, a man sang a song about how lonely he was going to be, and suddenly the birth mother burst into tears, inconsolable. 

I thought about how incalculably generous Thea was--- inviting the birth family.  And it was strange to see adults and children who looked so much like Jasmina, but who never really knew her.  Thea reached out to them at some point during Jasmina's illness. They bonded.  I couldn't get over Thea's courage. I thought how strange, sad and even wonderful that there were two mothers at this funeral for a little girl.  Both had, in their own way, lost their child.  But Thea was the true mother who raised her, loved her, and who, day after day, stood by Jasmina's side and never gave up.  She never spent a night alone in the hospital.

There was no religion at this funeral.  No priest.  No 23rd Psalm.  No drive to the cemetery.  Instead in a photography studio flooded with late winter sunlight, a mother and her community grieved the loss of a remarkable and beautiful little girl.  My heart is still breaking.

Real New Yorkers

We are not thrilled when celebrities start to frequent our favorite coffee shop, bar or restaurant. We are not thrilled at all. In truth, the locals, the real New Yorkers--- we like to keep to ourselves. Celebrities bring in the outside world; the tourists, the trash and the folks from New Jersey which means the white stretch limos can’t be far behind and that ain’t never good.

Everyday, no matter how far we have travel, we always carry one if not two bags. The bag might be a tote, a backpack, a briefcase or a signature blue Tiffany shopping bag, but guaranteed this aforementioned bag contains some or all of these items: a water bottle, a pair of sneakers, a lap top, a book intellectual enough to impress the strangers on the train, but not a book we would actually enjoy, a snack maybe an apple or a box of raisins, an umbrella, a folded up newspaper, a pair of socks, a hat, spare change, a hair brush, a lipstick, hair spray, hair gel, and of course a Metro card.

We regard all night restaurants, bars, laundromats, grocery stores, pharmacies, bookstores, dry cleaners, salons, and coffee shops as our God given right.

We always have a subway strategy which evolves and refines itself the longer we live here. For example; I decided 15 years ago that I could improve the quality of my life by at least 35% by avoiding Penn Station, and I haven’t looked back. BTW: I avoid the big monster stations, like Times Square and Herald Square, and get on the first or last car.

Walking around the city in a torrential downpour or snow storm does not faze us . Every smart New Yorker (and there are no dumb New Yorkers) has all the appropriate foul weather gear. We all have warm hats, waterproof shit-kicking boots, a collection of umbrellas--- all black--- and if all fails, we tell magnificent lies when we call in sick because the weather is so bad.

Every New Yorker has an emotional connection to a building, a bridge or park that borders on the perverse. Said structure will bring tears to our eyes, inspire us to sing sad songs, and visit when we are drunk or lonely or both. For me, it’s the Brooklyn Bridge. I love it beyond all reason. When I am zooming along the FDR in a cab, heading south, as the Manhattan, then the Brooklyn Bridge come into view along the river, lit up by lights b/c of course its very late---- is a moment of the purest bliss.

Real New Yorkers NEVER stand in line to get into a nightclub or a restaurant. We NEVER wait months to get a reservation. The very idea is preposterous. We stand in ENOUGH lines--- we would rather go to the movies on Monday night or Wednesday morning just to avoid standing in line.

Let me repeat: Real New Yorkers NEVER stand in line unless they have to.  Got that?  Good.

The Vodka Party

Dear Diary:

On New Year’s Day I went to a vodka tasting party in Chelsea. Hosted by a high level executive in the insurance industry and a literary agent (mine), there were academics, artists, bankers, lawyers, editors--- gay, straight, married and otherwise. A real NYC mix of highbrow, middlebrow and even a couple of village idiots. I started off the evening with a vodka tonic and made my way over to the sushi station. While munching on raw tuna and yellow tail, I struck up a conversation with a man who is an English Professor at a well known university and also a member of the MLA (Modern Language Association).

Let’s call him Carlos. I asked Carlos about the troublesome hanging indent still required for all good bibliographies. I said--- is it true it’s about to become obsolete? Heading down the same lonely road as whom and thou and shall? In a lofty tone, he replied that he was on committees that didn’t deal with such matters. But surely I persisted this is important? He conceded that yes MLA style books are still their bread and butter, but clearly couldn’t be bothered with the fate of the hanging indent. Fair enough. Then I asked him what the MLA thought about texting--- is it changing the shape of language? Is it good or bad? More loftiness, more condescension. WTF?

I moved on. Sat next to a woman who could’ve been me, but with money. Pretty, blond, “of a certain age.” Boiled wool pants, cashmere sweater and scarf, gold jewelry, rust suede boots. Oh, a banker at JP Morgan. She lamented about how her and her colleagues were afraid to say the “B” word out in public. About how the whole industry was unfairly targeted. That it was a myth that the industry is rife with criminals. I asked if her bank received a bailout. She said, Yes, but along with other solvent banks such as Wells Fargo, they took it even though they didn’t need it. Why did you take it, I asked. Because it would’ve looked bad if we didn’t, she replied, we’ve already given the money back. When she began to complain about how friends of hers lost so much money, couldn’t send their kids to ivy league colleges, etc. etc. I bailed. That was something I just couldn’t listen to.

Besides, the main event was beginning. The vodka tasting! Waiters passed around trays containing shots of mystery vodka. We were to grade it according to clarity, bouquet, taste, and finish. Determined to remain sober and avoid a horrendous hangover, I took tiny sips in my assessment of all four vodkas. We all knew beforehand that one was made with soy, one was made with grain, and one was made with grapes. They hailed from Florida, Poland, Vienna and France. Not surprisingly, my favorite was from Poland (mother’s milk), but the over-all favorite was from France, P. Diddy’s vodka of choice, Ciroc Ultra Premium.

When the tasting was over, I switched over to a lovely pinot grigio. As I fixed my hair and my lipstick in a bathroom adorned with contrasting marble tile, a stainless steel shower and a towel warmer, I thought, I will never live like this. I will never buy a one bedroom apartment in Chelsea, buy the studio next door, knock down the walls, redo the floors and hang track lighting. Many people were interested in my career as a feminist writer, as someone who’s been produced on Broadway, Off Broadway, NPR, as a woman who writes erotica--- and at this gathering in Chelsea, on the first day of a new decade, the dividing line wasn’t class or money, but art versus commerce.

Clearly there were two camps. We admired each other. We each secretly envied each other. And I’m sure we were all glad to be going home to our own homes, and our own lives. I thought about the banker from JP Morgan who said, its entirely possible that one or two “bad” people making bad choices can bring down an entire economy and still wondered if this really could be true.

photo: SnowCrystals.com

Merry Christmas

Trinity Church in downtown Manhattan.

Light in December -- The close up

The same attenuated light on the same corner.  Not a view of the sky, but the street.  Same shot. Next to the Lebanese restaurant, but now, in the foreground, you see a young girl in a pink coat  in a grove of miniature Christmas trees. Framed by taller trees in the background.  Her brother and father hovering nearby. But it's almost like they are underwater, as if the light is filtering down from the surface of a river or an ocean.  The trees become anemones with red velvet ribbons.  

Light in December -- The long shot

The corner of Clinton Street and Atlantic Avenue. To the left is Key Food, grocery store that sells pots of flowers and now Christmas trees outside on the street.  To the left of me are small shops; Middle Eastern imports, an acupuncturist, a salon, and an empty medical office that has become an impromptu gallery;  oil paintings and photographs hang on the walls in the otherwise empty space. 

Notice the sun going down in the southern sky at 1:00 in the afternoon.  Across the street; a Lebanese restaurant, apartments overhead, dry cleaners on the other side of the corner.  But look at the attenuated light down on the street.  The hot light in the sky.  In the next photo, I got a close up of the same shot: 

The Barn: Where form meets function and hallucinates

The exterior of the Barn is weathered hemlock and straddles the side of a hill and a narrow dirt road in the Catskills. Unassuming, it is almost like a shadow on the land, yet it is three stories tall. Built in 1900 for cows and tractors, it has assumed the air of the landscape around it. Porcupines, deer, bear and hummingbirds circle the perimeter. Walking down the hill, away from the structure, the forest is almost primeval; littered with beech and hemlock, violets, and evergreen, and small patches of sunlight. The silence at night is absolute. Except when the wolves howl.

This is the exterior; haunted, elegant, from another century. Abandoned.

The interior tells a far different story. Visual artists, Marc Travanti and Margaret Clark purchased the land in 1989. It had been abandoned for decades. The barn was part and parcel of the arrangement. This began a transformation of the interior and the surrounding grounds that continues to this day. In 1989, the interior was only a dirt floor, 20 feet by 40 feet, open to raccoons and other wild life. Margaret slept with a gun when she was alone.

Marc began his transformation of the space by building a stone table, down at the fire pit, held together with mortar--- which exists to this day. He also crafted a tree stump; upholstered the top of it with violently red fur. He calls it “Fur Nature.” It looks like it has been created for a hobgoblin or a wood sprite, or a drunken visitor from out-of-state. At one point, Marc and Margaret built a huge tree-house in the adjacent woods, large enough for dinner parties of 15. No longer used--- it has long since disappeared into the forest.

Over the years, they’ve built up two floors, adding staircase and skylight. They’ve completely insulated the first floor and installed stove, sink, and bookcases. Raccoons, bats and mice were forever banned, and Margaret no longer needed a hand gun for protection. Now there are windows (found on the streets of the East Village) on the back wall in sly geometrical patterns; elongated rectangles, deco-inspired circles, interspersed with squares. Sitting in the backyard at the original stone table, against a roaring fire, I’ve often looked up and admired their composition. Think of Mondrian married to a light sculpture.

Marc refurbished a large oak table for the kitchen by building out an extension from all four corners. This created a border for hand-pained tiles. One image is a hunter holding a chainsaw with a tree growing out of his head. Or a man at a computer screen with a woman watering his head. In the Surrealistic style of the “exquisite corpse,” different people painted the torsos, the limbs and the heads on one tile. Some of them are fired decals. Freida Kahlo lurks on the periphery. Another table is in the picassiette style; its surface a landscape of broken ceramic plates deeply embedded in grouting.

Travanti made lamps from found objects, mostly tin cans. The infamous “Brain Lamp” began with a century old rusted can, and a red light bulb. He added a round ceramic shape with holes punched out. Plug it in, turn it on, and its part Twilight Zone with a touch of Duchamp. My favorite however is “Dirty Girl.” She is a kitschy creation from the 1950’s or 1960’s; a ceramic doll dressed in pink, probably a ballerina, now permanently tarnished with the patina of a half century.

The entrance to the Barn is a huge wooden door that leads into a cavernous foyer; the ceiling is thirty feet tall. Light emanates from stained glass windows set into the second story. Light also emanates from two cylindrical church lights hung by heavy chains. The interior is raw plywood. Initially Travanti enhanced the knots with marbles. Then he began using biomorphic ceramic shapes; red, yellow, blue, orange. Bright primary colors glued into the wood; a thousand eyes. Finally, Marc wallpapered one wall with pages from an 18th century guide to flora and fauna.

Today, Margaret’s studio is on the first floor and overlooks the woods. Marc’s studio is on the second floor under a stained glass window. The environment is also their canvas. It is a place where every once in a while, form follows function and hallucinates:

A church window in a century year old barn, a tree stump with a red fur top, a night light that is a glow-in- the-dark-brain, a circular window embedded with broken bits of pottery, and finally a candelabra hanging from a tree branch in a clear patch of the forest.

This is the Barn of earthly delights.

note:  Marc asked me to write this for his website; http://www.marctravanti.com

I don't know what I've been smoking

I don't know what I've been smoking, how I've changed, or what's in my Kool-Aid, but I've been avidly watching the World Series.  I think it began b/c the Wolf, aka my brother, is a huge fan.  On the night of the first game of the series, I was outside Yankee Stadium.  Inside the madness.  Blue and white as far as the eye could see.  A buzzing, brimming, bobbing sea of humanity all focused on one thing and one thing only; the game! And all of a sudden, I became a fan. 

I walked  over to a vendor selling souvenir caps.  I asked, how much.  He grunted, 20 bucks.  I said, how about ten?  He smiled, waited a moment and said, How about you go across the street and pay 25 bucks, and five bucks for a cup of coffee while you're at it.  I smiled back.  Total New York moment.  I forked over the money.  Surely this will be a talisman, I thought, a good luck charm that I will mail to the Wolf. 

At home, I turned on the game, for the first time in my life.  Was mesmerized by the Phillie's pitcher, Cliff Lee.  Swooosh.  He threw the ball.  Swwwiiinng----  Jeter, Matsui, Damon, A-Rod, all the Yankee superstars struck out. Who was this man?  He dominated the game like a magician, like he was high on crack, like he was king.  The Yanks never had a  chance.  Now I'm hooked.  Game 4 tonight and you better believe I'll be there.  They're up by three games.  If I mail the hat to the Wolf in time, I believe they'll go all the way.

photo: wallyg

Tales from a hot city: Summer 1995

Peformance Space 122.  The year is 1995 or it might be 1996.  I was the Box Office Manager, then Director of Communications.  One warm summer night, Min Tanaka, a Butoh inspired dance company from Japan was scheduled to perform. As the Box Office Manager, I stood right in the doorway over looking dirty, filthy, sublime 1st Avenue.  Elizabeth, the 40 year old marijuana dealer waltzed up and down the avenue; she specialized in dime bags of mediocre weed.  She was someone you could always depend on.  The usual suspects began to arrive; East Village boys and girls with mohawks, black shit-kickers, tattered T-shirts, red lipstick, the occasional gray hair, the occasional straight couple.  When out of the blue, a long stretch limousine appeared, framed by the red doorway.  Out popped Sean Lennon and his mom Yoko.  That's Ono.

Sean took the lead, bounding ahead of his mother and another man (bodyguard? boyfriend?).  He said, We have reservations.  And handed me a hundred dollar bill for $20 in tickets.  His mom hung back, eyes downcast.  She wanted so desperately to not be recognized.  As if.  Her son, however, was a big aggressive.  A bit entitled.  I waved them in.  As if they would pay.  We all knew they were coming.  We were all agog but b/c we were also jaded New Yorkers, we didn't say a word.  They glided up the steps of the hundred year old school house--- definitely leaving the luxury of the stretch limo, incongruously parked--- waiting---- alongside Elizabeth, the drunks, the trash and the stink of the city.

Image: Chinese Malaysian dancer, Lee Swee Keong.  Xinhua Photo, 2008

County of Kings at The Public Theater

Check out my post on County of Kings,

Lemon Andersen's hip hop 

coming of age story

that explodes onstage at The Public Theater:

Brooklyn Heights Blog

More scenes from a hot city: Catholic Church

A crumbling Catholic Church on Avenue B. Part ghost-story, part love-story; imagine the wedding between the tall handsome Polish immigrant, now in the military--- who meets the blonde beauty of his life--- my parents. The year is 1953 or 54. The facade is bright and fresh. The park is completely different. There might even be flowers. Perhaps they go across the street after the wedding, have a beer on Avenue A. Maybe I've been there myself.

More scenes from a hot city and a story as well

Props to Joe Strummer, whoever he may be, and y-ever he was anointed with this mural on East 7th Street between A and B. I do know that it was the first bar I went to in NYC, 1989. I'm always glad to see its still in operation, although the name seems to change weekly, so I shan't include it in this post. But it's easiest enough to find---along the southern end of Tompkins Square Park where anarchy still reigns supreme; junkies, street kids, artists, crazy people, young families, wild dogs and once a great horned owl.

True story. Saw a crowd gathered, looking up, a tall towering tree. I said, What's going on? A lady said, It's a great horned owl. And I looked up, way up, and standing tall on a high branch of a huge tree, sat the owl. As if she hadn't a care in the world--- completely unaware that she was surrounded by a worshipful crowd of human beings. And yesterday, no owl--- but Joe Strummer, peering out from behind his shades on another Africa-hot August afternoon. The kind of day where you sit down and watch the carnival. Because it is multitudinous.

I confess:

In the early 90's when I worked at P.S. 122, I'd eat my burrito here. I would stake out the Polish ladies. Sit next to them. I just wanted to hear them speak. My mother is always here. I see her: La-la-Lottie, pretty blonde, who lived across the street in a 5th floor walkup, heading out to Coney Island, with her friend, Francis. And here I am, a half century later, snapping pictures, having brunch. Checking out Joe Strummer and other wild life.