Signs of The Times

Speaking up, writing it down.

April 25th, 2012

I was quite surprised earlier this week on my morning bus ride to work. As I took my usual glance at the 'I Am Troy Davis' sign off the Bruckner Expressway -I noticed the scaffolding of a new sign etched over it. I bolted upright in my seat, yanked out my camera and shot it - only later realising that I'd caught the artist standing in front of the defaced 'R'. 

I zoomed in the camera image trying to figure out what the new sign would say, but could only make out the skeleton of the word 'free'. I didn't have too long to wait - by this morning it was done. 'Free Mumia 2012'.

April 27th, 2012

Closer to home, my neighbors are protesting the work on Pelham Parkway South service-road.The addition of a sidewalk (in itself a good thing) has resulted in a narrowed roadway which the homeowners have deemed dangerous. They responded with crude signs spray-painted on sheets and strung like bunting on their front porches. The sidewalk is now up, the signs are down; an adjustment to a new normal is underway.



In a closely related situation,The Pelham Parkway Preservation Alliance has been up in arms over the proposed removal of 80 century-old trees, one supposedly dating back to the Civil War. The tree removal will make way for more the above-mentioned road work. Protesting since 2010, the PPPA was actually able to get a restraining order against the city (a stay of execution for the trees), save 30 trees outright (cap the removal at 50), as well as get a say-so on which individual trees would be removed.

They have also secured the city's agreement to the replacement planting of 246 large saplings.

PPPA protesters

I don't know much about Troy Davis or Mumia except that their plights have fired someones outrage and prompted them to take action. I make no attempt to equate these protests about people with the ones about trees and sidewalks except to acknowledge that they both arise from the violation of something important to the people concerned. What moves the heart moves the hand. 

Pelham Parkway - city road with a 'country' feel. These trees may soon be gone.

Spring Things

    1. A good book

    2. A good look

3. Hard work

 4. Handiwork

 5. Touchstones

  6. Cobblestones

From top:

1. Stendhal's Cures for Love

2. Inner tube tire sculpture - 59th and Fifth, NYC

3. Laying down the sod, Bryant Park

4. The new lawn! - Bryant Park

5. I've taken this photo 'Bryant Park Daffodils' every spring since 2005. Here's 2012's.

6. Fifth Avenue and 70th street on a perfect spring day...

Silent Protest

The Bruckner Expressway is an unglamorous stretch of road which I travel twice a day to enter and leave Manhattan. Bruckner sunsets can be pretty if you are looking out toward Randall's Island, and there is something to be said for the orange reflection of the setting sun on South Bronx windowpanes - but not too much. There is however, one point of interest: a homemade 'billboard', painted in yellow with a black background - which changes from time to time to reflect the artist's outrage over one issue or another.
Currently it reads 'I am Troy Davis'. The door which opens onto the roof straddles the 'R' and the 'O'. 

The previous message was painted around August 2010 in response to the increased racial profiling of Hispanics in Arizona and the proposal that all Americans ( read Hispanic Americans) carry proof of citizenship on their person at all times.The painted message in response to that debacle read 'No human is illegal', which is now a movement unto itself. 

Even though the specific case of Troy Davis has faded into the background, something about the billboard still feels immediate and pertinent. Maybe its the words 'I am' facing off against the impersonal whir of traffic and the stark city lanscape which makes me want to pay attention, or at least acknowledge the sign even though I've seen it many times. We all have to declare ourselves in the midst of a din, and must do so even if there's no one listening.

Haiku Moments - I

Last year, my friend Daniela and I participated in a "renku" - a string of haiku composed by each of us alternately in a sort of response to the one which went before. We used Twitter as the interface and ended all of our tweets with the hash tag #renku in an attempt to 'file' them in sequence.

We were writing from two very different geographical locations: she, from somewhere just south of the Canadian border, and I, from New York City. Our interfaces with nature and season were likewise considerably different. 

The Haiku form leans heavily on specificity of place, season, and simple observations as an expression of the 'haiku moment' - some sublime experience which the poet then attempts to encapsulate within three lines and seventeen syllables.

We had decided to go eighteen rounds, which we did over the course of nine months. Because each haiku in the chain feeds off the previous one, presenting them in pairs is not necessarily the most meaningful way to share them, so here are the first three:


 #1 D (3.30.2011)

Light snow falls

on the coffin along with dirt—

on the sod, a robin hops…

#1 L (3.31.2011)

Fallen branches  

some with buds  

snap underfoot.

 #2 D (4.4.2011)

A red sunrise—

Coffee sweet with birdsong—

And snow, again…

Photo credit :Ruled by Neptune

Bonding over Banzuke

Finding common ground on the TV

What is it about aggression, confrontation and acting up (not to mention, acting out) that men find them entertaining 'reality' television? I don't know. My taste in TV runs from the mystery of The Antiques Roadshow to the adventure of Rick Steve's Europe to the nail-biting suspense of House Hunters International. When I want to relax, I watch P.Allen Smith's Garden Home or New Scandinavian Cooking.

 In stark contrast, the men in my life (when there is no English League Soccer or NBA game on) flip from channel to channel searching for the most mindless, regressive sort of programming they can find. While I'm over in the corner campaigning for "How it's Made" or "Mythbusters", they're discussing the relative merits of  'Hardcore Pawn', 'Lizard Lick Towing', and' 'Storage Hunters'. They try to tell me these are different shows, but there are a few things one can count on: finger pointing, quickly escalating confrontations, bleeped expletives, forcible removals, and the like. 

Then there's the 'World's Dumbest...' franchise. Finish that any way you like: bank robbers, convenience store heists, high speed chases, carjackings, drivers, stunts - there is no end to the folly. This gem is hosted by a revolving roster of has-beens and small timers - several of them with rap-sheets. There's Tonya 'Whack-a-Knee' Harding, Danny 'Been-There-Done-That' Bonaduce, Gary 'Cold-Busted' Busey, not to mention Daniel 'I'm-No-Alec' Baldwin.

I was just about to give up on finding common ground when we stumbled upon 'Unbeatable Banzuke' and 'Ninja Warrior' - Japanese extreme-sport game shows complete with hyper-enthusiastic Japanese commentary. There's no trash talking or posturing - there's no time. Completing these obstacle courses takes every ounce of the competitors' energy and focus. The action is exciting, awe-inspiring and just plain fun to watch- pure performance without the side-show. In last night's episode of Ninja Warrior, American parkour enthusiast and freerunner Levi Meeuwenberg was the only one to make it to the third stage of the course. Speed, strategy and suspense meet grace and beauty - we all get something to cheer about.

Photo credit:Derek Hyamson

http://twistedsifter.com/2011/03/25-incredible-parkour-photographs/

Super Tuesday Tea Leaves

The race for the Republican nomination is in full swing with four runners left...er right. In their attempts to handicap the race and parse the rationale for voter choice, the pollsters and the media are making extensive use of entrance and exit polls. These are so effective that they dovetail quite well with the actual outcomes.

Last week we were watching the race for Michigan when a sampling of the exit-poll questions came across the screen. The one that got my attention was 'Are you a born again Christian?'
I never thought I'd see the day when that question would be relevant in any setting outside of a tent revival, but here we are.

How good a predictor of a person's choices are any of their personal attributes, opinions, predelictions, habits or traits? We don't know, but the answer must be 'very good' given the time, money and energy being invested in gathering data from every corner of our mundane little lives.
No detail is so small or obscure that something cannot be inferred or gleaned from it. This is the company the devil keeps, after all.

So in addition to one's 'born-again' status, the pollsters may soon want to know the answers to the following questions:

1. How do you feel about sweater-vests?
2. What's your blood type? Blood color?
3. How much would you wager on a casual bet?
4. Which do you prefer, silver or gold?
5.Would that preference apply to jewellery or currency - or both?
6. How much is your Tiffany's credit line?
7. Do you have a Cadillac and a horse at each residence?
8. Serial monogamy, polygamy or 'till death'? 
9. Widowhood aside, how many marriages would you say were too many?
10. If offered the option, would you live on another planet?

This data can be crunched, twisted, spun and massaged into a rock solid prediction, or at least something to feed the news cycle until the heir becomes (a bit more) apparent.

And the Winner is...

The Oscars are being awarded tomorrow and I'm almost through with my marathon of movie watching.
In the last week I've seen My Week with Marilyn (delightful), A Dangerous Method ( gripping), Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (brave), The Rum Diary (enjoyable for nostalgic reasons), and  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (anticlimactic). I've now seen all nine best picture nominees, and most of the movies with best actor/actress nominations.

I found this year's crop of movies overall to be slightly less stellar than last year's, but still there were movies I enjoyed so much that I'll see them again. I've already watched The Descendants twice, ditto for The Artist and Midnight in Paris. Add to this list of favorites - My Week with Marilyn.

So here are my choices, not the ones I think will win - just the ones I like the best.

Actor in a leading role - George Clooney (The Descendants)
Actor in a supporting role - Max Von Sydow ( Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
Actress in a leading role -Michelle Williams ( My Week with Marilyn)
Actress in a supporting role -Berenice Bejo (The Artist)
Best Picture -Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I had been resisting Extremely Loud from the start. I was afraid to watch the 9/11 movie - after all we New Yorkers saw the original uncut version over and over on the news for days and weeks after the event. Many of us lived it in 3D: I personally know of one firefighter who had an extremely loud and incredibly close call in one of the towers, and I know of several Wall Streeters who had to run for their lives. My mother had to walk home from Manhattan to the Bronx on that day, as did thousands of others when transportation was shut down, however I (with a combination of very good luck and a little common sense) was able to avoid being close to the action on that day. I was late for work and was standing on an elevated train track when the first tower was hit. I saw the smoke, and took the next train heading back home.

I finally watched that movie today - the story of a boy dealing with the loss of his father, aided by a whole city of villagers. He finds so much through his loss, which is a great lesson for anyone with the guts to try and learn it (which is why my one word for this movie was 'brave').
The movies are a great way to escape - but they rise to what I think is their highest calling when they  actually help us to face something,

Life, Life... Life

Last weekend I watched the movie 'The Tree of Life' and found myself unmoved.
Well, that's not strictly true. I found the concrete story engaging, but the attempts to reach for a  'bigger theme' irritating.
The movie seemed to be an attempt to place the short span of human life into the larger context of the universe - but images of outer space, cells dividing and even dinosaurs interspersed with scenes of swirling colors, light, sky and forests seemed to me like overkill.

An afterlife was imagined on film which made all wrongs right and took away the pain inflicted and suffered in earthly life, but I found it unsatisfying, unable as it was in its ephemeral lightness to counter the grittiness of the flesh and bone existence depicted.

After all this is the only side we know about, however incompletely, right?

This weekend, I saw the movie 'A Better Life'. This was a small movie which didn't try to draw any bigger circles than those implied by the situation depicted. It was the story of a Mexican-American boy on the edge of young adulthood, living with a father who was himself outside the fringes of social legitimacy. In the time they have together before he is deported, the father manages to teach his son lessons in ambition, perseverance, mercy, decency, faith, sacrifice and hard work. After the father is deported, his son has to decide whether to join mainstream society or fall into lockstep with the gang members who have begun to press in on him.We are never quite sure that he will, but he chooses the better life.

Coincidentally this past week, for the second time in his life, my son asked me "Have you ever thought what is the meaning of existence?" 

When he'd asked it the first time maybe a year ago my heart leaped, but this time it sank.
Suddenly I didn't want him grappling with this question for which I didn't have an answer, let alone the answer.
His father's theory is (and I quote): "You're born, you live, you die and there is not much meaning to it". His grandmother's theory is (verbatim): "It's a struggle to be born, a struggle to live, a struggle to die - and we'll know the meaning of it 'by and by'."

So what's the meaning of life? You're born, stuff happens to you, you feel stuff, you think stuff, you do stuff. Sometimes you stop and wonder about all the stuff, looking for patterns so that you can figure out what kind of stuff might happen next. And sometimes - in frustration, in boredom, in despair, in wonder or awe, in the craziest (or maybe the sanest) moment of your life you put all the stuff aside and turn toward yourself. And it's then that you ask, what is the meaning of existence?

My son wanted to know - did I ever wonder, did I ever ask.
Slowly I replied, "Yes, I have."



Photo: Corrie White - Liquid drop art: Mushroom and Jellyfish

Letting It Be

Do you wish you could leave the past behind? Really leave it behind. Just walk forward without dragging it along like a piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe?

I do.

Of course, despite all the talk these days about leaving 'smaller footprints', it's quite impossible not to leave some evidence of where you've been, but how about not bringing so much of that dust into the next room with you; or into the next moment?

It's an Eastern idea that negative emotional memory tends to accumulate in our cells and our organ systems: anger being stored in the liver, sadness in the lungs, stress in the stomach... fear in the kidneys. (Hey, where do the positive emotions go?) And as usual, we westerners seem hell bent on proving that we are the best at stockpiling it.

We drag that dust along for a variety of reasons - lack of awareness, incomplete processing of experiences, fear of change, the need to make others feel guilty, and plain old denial or a refusal to accept things.

Isn't it funny that refusal to accept something should bind us to it? 

Or, that what we become attached to should desert us?

What if things are neither here nor there? What if it's just our wanting them to be here too much that makes them seem far away; or our pushing them away that makes them seem so threateningly close?

No amount of rationalizing will completely quell the urge to seek what we want and resist what we don't want - but when we get stuck, letting things be as they are might be the only reliable way forward.

AP Photo/dapd, Winfried Rothermel

Carnage

Well, this was refreshing - a movie set almost exclusively in one room, with four people who meet to discuss the beating ( one whack with a piece of wood) of one of couple's child at the hands of the other. The movie is set in Brooklyn - in the gentrified Brooklyn Bridge area which is now essentially, (culturally at least) an extension of Manhattan. Civility quick gave way to a veiled blaming as both sides sought to uncover the 'sins of the fathers' which could have caused the event which played out  between their two eleven year olds.

The aggressor's father (Chistoph Waltz) appeared to use his blackberry as an appendage as he did damage control for the pharmaceutical company which he represented; his wife (Kate Winslet) was preoccupied with her appearance, constantly stroking a lock of hair across her forehead, and deftly re-applying lipstick mid-sentence without the aid of a mirror. She, appropriately enough, loses all her composure when she throws up on the coffee table art books belonging to the victim's mother ( Jodie Foster), a highly strung perfectionist, and quite possibly, an alcoholic.  The victim's father (William C. Riley)  seemed like a teddy-bear - apparently affable, but cold-hearted enough to release his daughter's pet hamster into traffic because he was sick of the noise it made at night.

Loyalties slackened as the dynamics of each marriage became evident - the two couples became four individuals, aligning themselves in various ways from moment to moment; wives against husbands, moderates against liberals; alliances made and dissembled in the course of the heated conversation.The  thin veneer of civiility gave way to raw viciousness, exposing each person's insecurities and angst, before snapping tightly back into defense and accusation again.
There was no resolution, they still didn't decide at the end of all of that talk how to deal with the situation of the playground violence, which seemed mercifully expedient by comparison.

Showtime

 


I've continued making my way through the list of movies I want to see before the Oscars are presented on February 26th. I'm well on my way - having seen seven of the nine Best Picture contenders and 14 movies overall. My favorite is The Descendants with The Artist ( which I've seen twice) a close second.

Most inane movie - Melancholia.
Most predictable ( despite all the suspense) - We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Most delightful - Midnight in Paris
Most uplifting - 50/50
Most depressing - Margin Call
Most fun - Bridesmaids
Most gut wrenching - Jane Eyre

My original list of 33 has been reduced to twenty-ish.
On the near horizon:
The Tree of Life
A Better Life
Carnage
and the documentary "Pina"

To the movies!

It's Oscar Season!

It's Oscar Season - one of my favorite times of year. The nominations come out in 3 days, and the Oscars will be presented in 36 days giving me more than enough time to catch the 33 or so movies I want to see by that time.
My initial list was compiled from the Golden Globe nominations - but I expect there may be one or two more that need to be added.

Of the movies I've seen so far, the stunner has been 50/50. Anna Kendrick and Joseph Gordon were great as psychotherapist and cancer patient/ client. Seth Rogen was an annoying foil for the seriousness of the subject matter, but his greater purpose was revealed in a touching, but decidedly un-sappy scene. The music for this movie was beautiful, too.

There are always parallels between the movies for any given year and they are already in evidence: 50/50 and A Dangerous Method ( with psychotherapy references), The Artist and Midnight in Paris share references to the roaring twenties. And, Moneyball and Margin Call ( look, they even rhyme!) are about sports stats analysis, and the beginning of the end on Wall Street. Both involve the use of data to do some type of 'handicapping' : in one case, for a baseball team...and in the other - the crippling of the financial markets.  Yes, many parallels - and I'm sure the more I see, the more I'll see.