Blogalogue

I was delayed again at the hospital. The tests had become increasingly long, complex, and uncomfortable. The journey from the Medical Center to the frame house in North Jersey where I still lived with my parents (though I was 35) was two hours by bus. But my parents would wait to have dinner with me; they always did.

Between the final blood and x-ray tests, I was put in a claustrophobic waiting room that aggravated the familiar metallic taste of dread. I did my best to ward it off by emphasizing, inwardly, my annoyance at this detention in these cold, close white rooms.

At last the nurse with the false smile slotted in my next appointment. Her eyelids gleamed silver above eyes as blank and lusterless as a statue’s. Relieved to be out of there, I descended in the slow elevator, another cramped and airless room, which stopped to collect three tall men. They were talking about an art opening that night in Bridgeport. They mentioned the name of the collector, which gave me pause.

One of my own prints was in that collection. An invitation to the opening reception was on my desk at home. For the past six months, sickness had usurped my art, and I’d had to put off working. Now, however, sudden elation seized me, along with a surge of vanity. My fatigue turned into almost forgotten vitality. I’ll phone home, I decided, and go to the show. “I have a piece in that collection,” I said, and the three men nodded politely.

On the Hampton Jitney there were only two other passengers, both women. Veronica was about 70, but I couldn’t tell Marie’s age. She looked like a teenager. They too were artists who had works in the Bridgeport Collection. With that realization, we formed a tacit bond, and talked nothing but art during the long ride.

We alighted at Bridgeport. A few queries put to locals led us without much difficulty to the Bridgeport Collection, housed in a mansion-turned-museum. I felt feverish with anticipation. In front of the main building was a gatehouse. A man beckoned to us from inside. He was of medium height with Eurasian features. His hair, still black despite middle age, was swept back in a modest pompadour. His eyes glowed like jet, and his thin straight lips smiled a haughty welcome.

He escorted us into a large ornate chamber and left us alone. The ceiling was very high. One wall was entirely glass. To my surprise, snow now was falling outside. Marching past the window was a parade of great black birds, their long iridescent necks doubling back in S-curves.

Marie, Veronica and I were curious to discover where our art was hanging, and where the reception would be taking place. We ventured into another ornate room with plush violet chairs. On a low table were two telephones, one black and one red, and I instinctively reached for one of them, suddenly remembering to call home. When I couldn’t lift the receiver, I realized with some embarrassment that the phones were sculptures.

The three of us continued searching for the party, which surely  must have begun by now. We entered a room dominated by a bed with a wrinkled white sheet. Some artist’s installation, I thought. On the sill was a strange plant with ruffled, wing-shaped leaves, flamingo-pink. The tall stems, a translucent, pearly green, were like the stalky legs of water birds. The white flower, when I bent to smell it, was odorless.

The Eurasian man came in and introduced himself as the Collector. He thanked us for participating in the exhibition. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” he began, his voice low and even, with a slightly hollow timbre, his diction precise. “I don’t often show the Collection,” he said, “as I care neither for society nor for critical regard. But here you are, the artists, and welcome.”

Timidly I asked, “Are our works on loan, or will they be purchased for the permanent collection?”

He looked surprised. “Didn’t you agree to contribute your work–an etching, I believe–to the collection? That was one of the terms of our agreement. You signed the consent form. All of you did–Veronica for her collage, and Marie for her painting.”

I couldn’t remember, and shrugged, smiling. In the brief awkward silence that followed I observed how thickly lashed his slanted eyes were. The shadows beneath his lips and jaw were olive- and nickel-hued. I laughed to myself, mentally painting his portrait.

“Come with me,” the Collector beckoned, and we followed him to a room filled with artifacts. On a carved table was a pewter box. He asked us to sit around the table. He opened the pewter box and I saw that it was filled with slide transparencies. He reached behind him and pulled down a screen. As he flipped through rows of slides in the pewter box, I could see through the picture window the black birds still marching back and forth in the snow.

The Collector randomly plucked out one of the slides, and his eyes met mine. He projected it on the screen. It was of my etching, the image of a winged horse, soaring at full gallop above a grassy paddock. I turned to meet the Collector’s gaze with an odd tranquility, understanding, then, that I’d not be leaving any time soon.

Two-twelve p.m., 1-2-12, Hudson River.

Twas the day after Christmas and all through the streets, not a creature was stirring, except for the rats. The gift wrap is blowing in glittery sheets, and at heights in the clouds, like torn-paper kites.

One of Macy’s Amazing Christmas Windows

When: 11/14/11 Where: outdoor café, Tribeca. Who: man to friend. Attitude: Smuggish. Quote: “Well, we survived.”

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When: 11/8/11. Where: Westbeth Flea Market. Who: Volunteer. Attitude: Also smuggish. Quote: “I knew Howard Johnson. He was a nice man.”

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When: 11/18/11. Where: Fulton St., Seaport. Who:  Tourist to wife and two kids. Attitude: Peeved and querulous. Quote: “Neither dog has been fed yet!”

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When: 11/29/11. Where: Thrift Shop, Hudson St. Who: Man to friend. Attitude: Loud complaint. Quote: “So let him sue me. It’s bullshit. I want my parts back.”

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When: 11/29/11. Where: Barrow & Greenwich Streets. Who: Man to friend. Attitude: Questioning. “I have gotten 180 points on this receipt. What does that mean? Friend: “Nothing.”

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When: 12/12/11. Where: 34^th and 7^th Ave. Who: woman on cell phone. Attitude: Exasperated, or maybe concerned. Quote: “Your body is starting to distintegrate! You should see a specialist!

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When: 12/13/11. Where: Post office on Hudson St. Who: Young Asian man to young Asian girl, who asked why he had three insurance policies. Attitude: Joking. Quote: “I don’t know; maybe my parents want to kill me.”

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When: 12/13/11. Where: Spring & Greenwich St. Who: One worker to another. Attitude: Incredulous and contemptuous. Quote: “‘How many blocks is it?’ she asked. ‘Miss,’ I said, ‘we’re on 8^th St. and that’s on 34^th St.’”

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When: 12/15/11. Where: Thirteenth Street. Who: Man to woman. Attitude: Lugubrious. Quote: “I walked here from Penn Station, and everybody all around was outraged about something.”

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WHEN: 12/17/11. Who: woman on phone. Attitude: Serious. Quote: “He was such a hypochondriac, all his life he worried about cancer, but he died when his tire blew out and he had a fatal accident.”

“… give peace to write and read and think.”  — Lucretius

~~~~~

To live here, in this desirable area, one must always fight multiplicities of urban irritations, except on holidays. Here is my pet peeve, or one of them: I hate sidestepping the legions of robotic, solipsistic, juggernaut, head-bent cell-phoners, who all seem hell-bent on barging into me.

Such was one of several irrational gripes, early this serene morning, on my way to the river with the dogs. Irrational, because there was absolutely no one out, nary even one cell-phoner. It is Thanksgiving Day, and I realized, with a guilty pang, that I should be counting blessings rather than hassles. That “should” sparked another mote of annoyance in me, irked by obligatory or admonitory cues. So I suppressed my self-humiliating annoyance by replacing it with this sobering gen: moments spent complaining, too, are subtracted from my portion of life, my helping of days, and there’s no going back for seconds, once they’re consumed.

Just as I was about to rationalize this thought, which I took as a reprimand, the dogs pulled me over to a rainwater puddle, for a drink. The little pool was sharp blue, like a shard of fallen sky. In it was an array of fire-colored leaves. It resembled a Thanksgiving centerpiece, and it also resembled a mirror. I looked in the looking-glass water. I saw myself as nature, too, subject to birth and growth and death–but with something extra as well—the option and ability to change my mind.

The last of the leaves I gather are brown,
weathered old tether-leather. I never rather
a longer summer, but lief welcome favored fall.

At Rockefeller Park, the leaves are now past-peak. Still, there are spikes of burgundy against acid yellow; bushes with blood red and green leaves larger than a giant’s hands. Indian summer duly came after the first frost. An October snow; in early November, that disarming return of summer.

Things seen: Among the flaming foliage, a flame-haired couple who maybe married to have that flame-haired baby. Last Tuesday, late evening, spilling out from a posh Soho cafe,  a bunch of youngish painters with large easels on the sidewalk, copying magazine pictures by artificial light. The most bizarre thing, on Wooster near Bleecker: an oldish woman, bare-breasted, strolling nonchalantly, a Dali mustache penciled across her philtrum. . . and overheard, at the West Beth flea market (the labyrinthine cellar stuffed with eccentric odds and ends, superintended by a passel of eccentric elderly, one of whom said: “I knew Howard Johnson. He was a nice man.”

Here is the latest addition to my ongoing collection of writing hints for students.

A carpenter’s toolbag: Vocabulary and the blessed dictionary.

If you were to hire a carpenter to build your bookshelves, and he arrived without tools, or was so uneducated in his trade that he uses a nail-file to cut wood and a bottle-brush to drive nails, you’d send him away and look for someone with sufficient equipment and knowledge to do the job. If you write an essay using an insufficient vocabulary, or misunderstand the correct definitions of the words you do use, you will be limited in your expressive and communicative capacities. In fact, you may accidentally mislead your reader into thinking the opposite of what you wish to convey. The same is true with connotative word choices.

Sugar on Potatoes: Connotations and the blessed thesaurus.

One reason to build a good vocabulary is to have many words in your tool-bag to choose from. Each synonym conveys a different feeling, association, flavor, color, musical key, idea. Is there a difference in “feeling-sense” between “house” and “home”? The writer’s choice of words is called “diction.”

In the same way, in describing a thin person, you might call him scrawny, skinny, sinewy, spare, slender, slim, or svelte – and those are just the “s” words!  All refer to leanness, but each has a distinct connotation.

Put a different way, choosing a word with an unsuitable connotation is like putting sugar instead of salt on mashed potatoes. Sugar and salt are both white crystals, just as scrawny and slender both mean thin, but sugar and salt, and scrawny and slender differ wildly in effect. Most people would prefer to be called “slender” than “scrawny,” wouldn’t you agree? Don’t you prefer sugar on your blueberries, and salt on your mashed potatoes?

(Note, however, that some experienced writers deliberately use a word of a  “wrong” or unexpected connotation for irony, emphasis, or shock.)

Example of connotation: Henry James begins Portrait of a Lady: “Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.” James could have chosen a word other than “ceremony,” such as ritual, rite, habit, custom, observance, routine, practice. Each has its own flavor. James chooses to color the simple domestic convention of having afternoon tea with grandeur, through “ceremony.”)

Thesaurus means treasury. Collect a treasure house of synonyms.