Dreams About Jumping
I am thinking about closing this blog down for a time. Perhaps revive it in a new form. The things that have occupied me lately do not fit in the Venn overlap of “interesting to my tiny audience” and “wise to make available to Google.”
I had two dreams.
In one, a brown, white, and black beagle jumped giant-high to land on a telephone line like a ninja. He cheerfully ran along it, chasing pigeons away into the sky.
In one, I was in a cave tunnel, facing a chasm whose far side was higher than where I stood. I didn’t think I could make the jump; but people behind me urged me on, and I counted steps and found how to push off and after three false approaches I ran (one, two) and jumped (three!) I expected to hit the edge and have to awkwardly mantle. Instead I landed with both soles safely on dry stone on the other side.
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Abbreviated Scenes
Dec 8, 2007
I’ve been reading The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I guess it’s my thing now to read “timeless classics.” I don’t mean to have a thing. But after reading Jaques Barzun, I realized how little of the literary canon I had directly experienced. So I ordered up the Life of Johnson, as I have mentioned; the essays of Montaigne, ideal bedtime reading, each brief and highly discursive; and selected works of Hazlitt, a somewhat lesser-known English man of letters who helped to revolutionize English prose style after the orotund Johnsonian period.
Now I could argue that my late interest in such arcana is a reaction to my professional reading, where the average paragraph has a lifespan of six months, and a work from 1995 qualifies as a musty classic. In the case of the old Europeans, that may be true. But in the case of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, there are two much better reasons: I wanted to put a long book on my phone, and I like reading about ancient Chinese guys beating the tar out of each other. Always have.
For example, at one point Sun Ce is fighting a war—mind you, it would be surprising if he were not—and in one battle he finds himself fighting an opposing general in single combat. After a few clashes, he unhorses the foe, then scoops him up as he flees and carries him under one arm like a sack of wheat.
Another opposing general, seeing his colleague captured, gallops up behind Sun Ce, aiming to put a spear in his back. Alerted by his troops, Sun Ce turns around at the last second and yells at the ambusher so loud that he dies. Yes, dies.
Then when he gets back to his own lines, Sun Ce realizes he had too tight a grip on his captive and crushed him. “After this,” the book says, “Sun Ce’s men called him ‘The Little Prince.’” Sun Ce later made a particularly grave mistake—the chapter is worth reading in its entirety.
The book is full of interesting little surprises like that—a lot of them are sheer feats of badassitude, like when Xiahou Dun is shot in the eye, pulls the arrow out with his eye still impaled on it like a cherry tomato on a kebab skewer, and rather than just throw his eye away like a piece of litter, he EATS it.
But there are also illustrative strategy lessons, plots and counterplots, open and secret diplomacy, and sometimes naked reminders of the unforgiving era. Yuan Shu starves to death after raising an army he can’t supply… still clutching the imperial seal he tried to crown himself with.
Dec 15, 2007
I’m waiting in line at the drugstore to pay for some batteries. The guy behind me is obviously on meth, hyperkinetic and talking to whoever will listen. Only thing he’s taking to the register is a packet of needles. “These aren’t for me! They’re for an old lady! 72 years old!” The security guard looks on impassively, without a smile or a frown.
Dec 24, 2007
I have Christmas photos from around town, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Not as many as I coulda, but not bad.
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Shotgun in my Duffel Bag
I had a dream that I was in a pro-wrestling-related debate with a friend, and to settle the matter I got a personal email from Hulk Hogan setting the facts straight. Through the assistance of a dream interpreter using the rich symbolism of the Medicine Wheel, I have come to understand that this dream means I should blog more.
The main reason I’ve been incomlazycado is that nothing much is happening. I’ve been working on the upcoming new company website, and a few other projects that aren’t really interesting yet if ever. I’ve taken a few new photos here and there, but not with any real dedication. Technology remains interesting, but only one of the six or seven readers of this site will have even an academic interest in the use of code-behind in Flex or the pros and cons of static and dynamic typing. Pro-static-typing people say it’s like a seat belt; anti-static-typing people say it’s like a straitjacket; nobody else cares.
Just now, I decided I should upgrade my blog to accept entries from emails, including photos and whatnot. I just have to have the discipline to do that without succumbing to the temptation to redo the whole blog from scratch (and then give up because it’s too much of a pain, which is what’s happened every other time I’ve decided to upgrade this blog). Sorry, RSS people, I’m still going to be stuck in 1998. Then again, the reason I didn’t implement RSS when I first made this is that the standards were in a bubbling foment. I could probably settle down and publish an Atom feed or something now.
Nobody cares about this technical crap through. Here: new photos.
The final photo in the set is my new Motorola Q9c smartphone. I’m 90% hyped about it: it just does so much stuff! Yes, I can talk to people on it, which is awesome by itself compared to 15 years ago (seriously, remember when “car phones” were high-tech?) But it’s also an honest-to-God miniature computer, it can do everything a computer can do. I can send and receive email, I can use Google Maps, I can browse the internet in a surprisingly readable and usable fashion, I can IM, I can check weather reports, I can listen to music, I can theoretically watch streaming video though I haven’t tried, I can take photos and videos (in that photo on Flickr, the phone is displaying a photo it took of the camera that took the Flickr photo!)
But the killer app? My laptop can use Bluetooth (a wireless communication method) to dial up to the internet through the phone, at a pretty decent speed, about equal to slow DSL. This means I can get web access on this laptop from anywhere my phone gets data service, which is virtually every industrialized area in the United States.
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Chinese Dismissal
From The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, of which a more in-depth report soon:
Looking up to heaven, Mi Heng sighed deeply, saying, “Wide as is the universe, it cannot produce one person.”
“Under my orders are scores of people whom the world calls heroes. What do you mean by saying there is no ‘person’?” said Cao Cao.
“I should be glad to hear who they are,” said Mi Heng.
“Xun Yu, Xun You, Guo Jia, and Cheng Yu are all people of profound skill and long views, superior to [historic strategists] Xiao He and Chen Ping. Zhang Liao, Xu Chu, Li Dian, and Yue Jing are bravest of the brave, better than [legendary fighters] Cen Peng and Ma Wu. Lu Qian and Man Chong are my secretaries; Yu Jin and Xu Huang are my vanguard leaders; Xiahou Dun is one of the world’s marvels; Cao Ren is the most successful leader of the age. Now you say these are not ‘people’?”
“Sir, you are quite mistaken,” said Mi Heng with a smile. “I know all these things you call people. Xun Yu is qualified to pose at a funeral or ask after a sick man; Xun You is fit to be a tomb guardian; Cheng Yu might be sent to shut doors and bolt windows; and Guo Jia is a reciter of poems; Zhang Liao might beat drums and clang gongs; Xu Chu might lead cattle to pasture; Yue Jing would make a fair reader of elegy; Li Dian could carry dispatches and notices; Lu Qian would be a fair armorer; Man Chong could be sent to drink wine and eat brewers’ grains; Yu Jin might be of use to carry planks and build walls; Xu Huang might be employed to kill pigs and slay dogs; Xiahou Dun should be styled ‘Cowardly General,’ and Cao Ren should be called ‘Money-grubbing Governor.’ As for the remainder, they are mere clothes shelves, rice sacks, wine vases, flesh bags.”
“And what special gifts have you?” said Cao Cao angrily.
“I know everything in heaven above and the earth beneath. I am conversant with the Three Religions and the Nine Systems of Philosophy. I could make my prince the rival of Kings Yao and Shun, and I myself could compare in virtue with Confucius and Mencius. Can I discuss on even terms with common people?”
Had he been born two thousand years later, Mi Heng could have had an excellent career in the rap industry. (Instead, he got beheaded.)
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Halloween Epilogue
I did try to make it out to the Halloween Parade, and although what I saw of it was awesome, it was so incredibly crowded that people were literally packed in against the barricades like sardines, to the point where, at one point, there was an honest-to-god panic. One person caught a bit of claustrophobia and it spread through the crowd until you have all these people pushing against each other yelling and trying to break out. I just sort of swayed with the crush and kept one hand on my wallet, but once the mood passed, I decided it was going to be a pretty good idea to just split instead of trying to keep craning my neck to watch the tops of floats.
On the way back, I saw a guy in a tiger outfit. I said to him, “For a second I thought you were a friend of mine. Then I realized it was a costume.”
See, that’s funny because it implies that I am friends with a tiger.
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Reviews, Oct-Nov 2007
XO Cafe and Grill, 96 Walker St., Chinatown, Manhattan, NYC
Babygzus, one of my Milwaukee cohort, would occasionally lament in a freestyle that “I still haven’t found cheese in my Chinese food.” I get the impression that it was an oddball metaphor: something that might be awesome, but we’ll never know, because it doesn’t exist. Tell that to the razor clams at XO Cafe and Grill. They arrived on the long flat shells that name them, baked in a cheese soufflé mixing cream cheese and cheddar in a tangy, if over-rich, double-bite.
The restaurant’s interior features beautiful inlaid wooden chairs, a sago-enhanced smoothie counter, and a mock tree that rises floor to ceiling, paper lamps hanging from every branch. I found it pretty damn charming.
While the clams were baking, I slurped down a bowl of congee, a rice gruel made with chicken stock and herbs. This particular congee was threaded with little duck slices, ginger slivers, scallions, and—another new one on me—a century egg. Yeah, see, they take duck eggs and bury them underground with lime and lye or something until they turn a deep layered black-green-purple, and then, get this, they eat them. I’d never quite had the courage, myself, but as it happens, they’re good. The texture of fish sausage, roughly, and a pleasant and not very overpowering savory taste, somewhere between egg and cheese. I’m going to start burying all my eggs before eating them, it seems to work out okay.
Doyers Vietnamese Restaurant, 11 Doyers St., Chinatown, Manhattan, NYC
This restaurant takes some luck to find, and without any outside reassurances or recommendations, it took a snap decision for me to enter it: like many of Chinatown’s lower-rent businesses, it’s in a basement, accessible only by a brushed-steel-walled staircase bracketed with neon signs and a menu enshrined in a display case.
On the inside, however, its decor is simple, even utilitarian: glass tops laid above tablecloths, linoleum floor, vinyl seat cushions, fake wood-grained paneling. Some ethnicity-specific art on the walls. The effect is cozy, more so for being windowless, I think.
Going by the review tacked to the outside door, I order the pork and shrimp summer rolls and something unhelpfully named “Shrimp Paste Grilled on Sugar Cane.” The summer rolls are excellent: as expected, shrimp, pork, and lettuce in a resilient translucent rice wrapper; but the shrimps were pleasantly arranged right under the wrapper, whole, and a mint leaf among the lettuce added a cool snap to the sweet peanut dipping sauce.
“Shrimp paste,” as it turns out, means a sort of shrimp forcemeat—they spread it directly on a sugar cane fragment and roast the whole thing, then the diner eats the shrimp right off the cane like pork off a barbecue rib. Despite the interesting presentation, the shrimp is just sort of spongy and bland. Addition of mint and dipping sauce helps only a little bit; I resorted to Sriracha.
Arunee Thai, 3768 79th St., Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC
This place is billed as the next Sripraphai, so rather than go to the first Sripraphai, I decided to laugh at all those fools caught in the past and go straight to the real deal.
The trip on the 7 from Grand Central to Queens is always a pleasant one: you come up from underground and watch the city transform around you. More graffiti, more Spanish and Chinese on the signs, more dirt. Ethnicities underrepresented in Manhattan come to take up the majority of the throng on the streets. As a result, the neighborhood around the 82nd Street Station in Jackson Heights is right up my alley. There are lots of envios de dinero depots, lots of Asian joints of all breeds, taco carts that display their credentials by not having any English on or in them, dingy ethnic bars all dedicated to specific towns or provinces of various motherlands. I don’t recognize most of the centroamericano or Pacific Rim flags I see in the windows.
I’ve been here before, to meet a girl for lunch at a Vietnamese place she described as “famous.” Maybe it is—I never caught its name, but although my attempts to roll my food up in the supplied summer-roll wrappers were comical, the food was serious. On that trip, I noticed the delicious menu photos of one of the Mexican places I passed; this time, I took down the name and realized it was the noted Taqueria Coatzingo. Must visit.
Arunee Thai itself is pleasant, comfy without being den-like, decorated artlessly but with minimal kitsch. The impression is of a spacious white-painted living room softened with motherly bric-a-brac. There’s a raised section in back for a larger party to sit around a table cross-legged. Maybe after my next [gang brawl] I’ll invite the survivors.
I ordered from the specials menu: soft-shelled crab with green mango salad. The salad arrived on top of the crab, so that its mixture of lime juice, fish sauce, raw green chilies, scallions, and cashews could soak the crab’s breading; the mango itself was shredded into crunchy green strips and folded into a loose nest offset by halved cherry tomatoes.
I had a chance to admire it while polishing off my tom kha gai, which was entirely competent but not remarkable. The mango salad was excellent, though, with heavy-hitting sweet, sour, and spicy flavors that made up for the crab, whose own flavor was mostly overwhelmed amid the salad and its own breading.
I have heard that the red curry is excellent, with a judiciously meted kick, so when I return, maybe I’ll post an update.
Side note: at XO Grill that day I had the house seafood congee, which included a weird little guy I have never encountered before. He had a little cluster of tentacles like a baby octopus, but attached to a big white body the size of a golf ball. He was firm, almost crunchy, but not very rubbery or tough. He kind of reminded me of a hard boiled egg white, actually. Anyone have any idea just what I ate?
Amazing 66, 66 Mott St, Chinatown, Manhattan, NYC
As a frequent solo diner, I’m noticing that at crowded Chinese places I often find myself seated sharing a table with a larger group; generally the language barrier keeps this from being as awkward as you might think. I just exchange friendly smiles and get down to the chow. Or in this case, exchange surrealist small talk as we realize that we’re speaking English and anti-English, while the native-raised daughter chatters on a cellphone in rapid-fire teenyboppish.
Pre: It still does feel a bit odd; it’s like being at the corner of somebody else’s family table at Thanksgiving. But I’m looking forward to the oxtail curry enough not to really care.
Post: As it happened, they were really friendly. I ordered the oxtail curry stew, but while I was waiting, they insisted I try some of their dumplings, then some of their tofu, then some of their chicken… things, then some of their baked salmon. So when my oxtail stew arrived, I put it up for grabs; the grandmother explained through two layers of translation that it was like her mother made, and I replied, very truthfully, that it was also just like my mother makes. Though my mom uses steak cubes instead of ox tails, it was otherwise identical in every regard.
This type of family always increases my usual frustration with anti-immigration cowpokes. The grandmother: no English, walks at 0.0009 miles an hour with an umbrella cane, face like a dried apple, no ability to exist outside Chinatown. Even her own daughter only half understands her reedy homeland dialect. The father: decent English, though you have to pay attention to get through the accent. Middle management at a mixed-language business. The dinner was to celebrate his recent promotion. Entirely capable of conducting a life in Chinese-American or American-American, but definitely “not from around here.” The daughter: American, pure and simple. Happens to be able to speak pretty-okay Mandarin. (What I heard from the cellphone conversation was a burble of whatever language was most useful at a given point in the train of thought.)
You see the same thing in every generation of immigrants: Polish, Irish, German, Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern. The Aztlan Conspiracy and its equivalents are blind to history, even as they shriek, “but this wave of immigrants is different!”
Uh, on the restaurant-reviewing end: it was really good, the staff were friendly and accommodating, go there. I am pretty sure if you aren’t completely alone, you won’t be seated with a big Chinese family, but if you are, enjoy it.
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MOBLOGGING
So I’m writing this on my new Motorola Q. It’s pretty nice to have a web-connected computer that’s smaller than a Mrs. Field’s chocolate chip cookie. As an actual computer with powerful SDKs (J2ME and .NET), there are enough apps to do what I want—mini-Opera, Weather Watcher, Google Maps, ebook reading—and a zillion apps to do things I would never have thought of (like Slingbox).
On the other hand, I’m also still learning its limitations. Rhapsody wasn’t perfectly compatible with it, for instance, and an inexplicable data service dark zone in Brooklyn kept me from seeing Jeru the Damaja. More on that when I’m on an input device that allows more than 20 wpm.
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Pensées
Oct 26
Blaise Pascal is best remembered as a mathematician; a programming language is named for him. But he was also a theologian, whose eponymous “wager” is still a widespread fallacy. It was brought up at my grandmother’s funeral, for instance. The idea is that if you believe in God, and are incorrect, you lose nothing: death leads to oblivion. But if you do not believe, and are incorrect, you go to hell where you experience unspeakable torment without chance of escape for an infinite amount of time. It’s obvious which way you should bet. Ministers seem to prefer the glass-half-full approach to the topic, but the logic remains the same.
Pascal’s Wager is easily countered by asking the nature of saving faith. The minister will generally be forced to admit that it can never come from a simple calculation of risk and reward. Lab rats can calculate risk and reward. But in his Pensées, Pascal has another famous piece of advice, one that recurs in religious thought: If you wish to believe, act as though you belief. From habit, it may become true.
I have always been tempted to follow his advice as given. My upbringing gave me all the tools I need to display a pious but liberal Christian observance. It would not hurt me and might help. But let’s say I ended up believing. I can negate that as I did Pascal’s Wager: if I attain to an honest faith through a sort of calculated self-hypnotism, does it count?
I used to be the person who wasn’t into having fun; or rather, it wasn’t my element. Now, perhaps aided by a jolt of cash and a realization that the June of my life is getting well on toward July, I am damn well out to make it my element by main force. If I cannot apply Pascal’s ideas to religion, I can at least apply them to personal entertainment.
The upcoming holiday season just makes me sadder that my social life have been on pause—I don’t have a crew, even though for some reason I thought I might have by now. I have new friends, at least… maybe I need to take the initiative in “befriending” people. It’s not my natural role, but I can go try to coordinate people by tooth and nail, Bob the Angry Flower style. Only with fun instead of grapefruit.
So on the Saturday of Halloween weekend, I applied Pascal’s religious advice to my social life by attending a Satanism-themed fetish party. Sorry, God.
The photos tell the rest of the story. If you are my mother, or know of this blog only through her, click with caution. Spanking, transvestites, near-nudity, and incredibly rad Halloween costumes abound. I was dressed as a demonic friar—that is, I slapped on some horns and gauntifying makeup to augment my monk robe—but I’m not pictured.
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Willy B
Oct 16
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is the original that white twentysomethingvilleges around the country imitate; or else it has a concentrate of whatever essence makes those places what they are. Something distilled from an idea of Europe as it might once have been; and a splash of the 60s and global thinking; and more, of the 70s and art and addiction; but hollowed out to nothing but the chic. A great abundance of horn-rimmed glasses and Napoleon Dynamite T-shirts (now worn as retro Napoleon Dynamite nostalgia).
But only one guy in orange robes dancing to a boom box and a cardboard sign that says “The groove don’t stop until the bubble of consciousness pops.” Only two streets of shuttered industrial buildings not yet made into condos and vegan sushi cafes. And even as I look around and admit without hesitation that I would be perfectly happy to live here, amid all the ten-dollar cocktails and vintage clothing stores, I have to wonder—who had to get moved out for this to move in?
“A whole lot of Spanish,” is Jecenia’s answer. Probably right. But I can’t blame the current residents for being born into a more powerful caste. And even though people laugh at Williamsburg as being “a caricature of itself,” it’s playing the role to the hilt: who are we to argue? It looks like a fun thing to be.
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Most of October
Oct 1 (yeah, I write this all down in my little notebook and keep neglecting to post it)
“Few people have intellectual resources sufficient to forego the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.” —Samuel Johnson
I haven’t been writing enough lately, though not for lack of inspiration; I guess I’ve been wondering what the point is. For a while I thought I was too old to be a rapper of any variety; but the way I see it, I grew up with rap, all the original rappers are older than me, and if people don’t feel me, it’s because I’m not hitting them hard enough, not because I’m older than Jonah. Anyway, “I just need one soul to feel me; I just need one roll to hit a 4-5-6; I just need one girl so I can pick up speed and roll up the whole world.”
I’ve fulfilled my New Year’s resolution for this year, which was an easy one: to have a goddamn Halloween costume. Originally I wanted an interwar aviator, which shouldn’t really be that hard: a WWI or II style flight jacket, jodhpurs, leggings or puttees, low boots, a leather flying helmet, goggles, and a silk scarf. Instead I’m going as a vaguely Franciscan monk.
It’s costing me a small chunk of change, of course: rentals are evil. But I can’t pass up the opportunity to run around this giant funhouse of a city on Halloween (“the Cadillac of holidays”), just to see how much insanity clogs the streets. Will report.
MySpace Music continues to make me some sort of concert-finding voodoo master to my friends. At the start of the month, I did my usual search: hip-hop shows within 10 miles of 10001, the best zip code in the world. The usual glut of results sprayed itself over my screen: a ton of artist names, concert names, and venues, MySpace style. If you have never gone more than two links into the baffling breadths of that site, consider this line from Kanye West’s ghostwriter: “Close your eyes and imagine the magic of Las Vegas on acid, as seen through Yves St. Laurent glasses.” Consider that line, then visit Blingee.com. Once you’ve seen the blingee, now imagine the blinger.
The bling done been blung, but 88% of MySpace never read the obituary, leading to a bunch of concert listings that look like this:
Time: 9:00pm (this means 11:00pm)
Band: MOTHAFUCKAZ AIN REDDY YAHEARD
Show: AWW SHIT THA JUMP OFF 2007 FEAT YO MOMZ
Location: IF YA AIN DONE HEARD CALL THE KID
Time: 10:00pm (this means midnight)
Band: HYPE KREW SOUNDS INC
Show: BEST OF GUTTER HIP HOP KEEP IT MOVIN ALL NIGHT
Location: Sam’s Sports Bar and Grill, Williamsburg
Time: 3:00pm—3:00am
Band: killaT_nyc_2005
Show: ultimate house party byob
Location: East New York
Can you detect the subtle warning signs in each of these concert listings? But sometimes I click through and instead of being yet another hip-hop DJ doing a thankless dance music mix at a Caucasianation hipster bar, or some random mix-tape guest-guest-star holding a pool party in an abandoned quarry, I’ll hear some genuinely sweet music. Like when I followed the user link for The Pudding is Delicious and came across Raks-One, a Latin rapper who “ain’t tryin’ to sound like Biggie or Pac; I’m tryin’ to sound like somebody else who didn’t get shot.”
Or, this time, I clicked on The Project and found real live from the heart polished yet authentic NYC hip-hop music: from Harlem, no less. Just go to the page and hear a bit for yourself. I had the good fortune to bring a beautiful young lady to see them, and yeah, it was a good time. (Epilogue: yes, I am in the friend zone. But it’s not because I’m bad at finding rap concerts on the internet! Which is really the main point women evaluate anyway, so I’m not sure what the deal is.)
Oct 6
The Project has a song about Harlem: It’s named “Home Sweet Home,” and of course it’s about gentrification. Go listen to it for some context, because today I made it up to Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. Named after the famous Rastafarian prophet and pan-African activist, the park has been a center of Harlem’s cultural life for decades. I passed sidewalks full of bare-bones street vendors, selling whatever might move off of big blankets equipped for a quick roll and run in case a cop wanders by (I later saw three police on a corner just lampin’, so commerce crackdowns did not seem to be very high on the agenda).
It was a trip: clearly I was looking at goods that were purely scrounged, rather than gathered by theme or expertise. On the same blanket I saw a stack of DVDs with names like “Double Booty Duty”; a cheap blender, new in box; a loose pile of phone cards of dubious utility; and a paperback copy of Fielding’s “The Turn of the Screw,” no doubt lost or discarded by a student from nearby Columbia.
A couple of blocks later, the business ventures dotting the sidewalk grew more purposeful—in addition to the usual cut-rate stunnaz, burners, and pashminas, there were dashiki-clad Africans or Afrocentrists selling real or purported African imports. Egyptian musk, “desert oils,” hemp robes of red, black, and green. (“The red is for the blood in my arm, the black is for the gun in my palm, and the green is for the trom,” says dead prez.) The theory is that the designer chemicals white folks use as perfume misfire when applies to the subtly different body chemistry of Africans; and for all I know, that’s true. If the “Essence of Kemet” in the tiny vials is not exactly kin to the entire square blocks of goop the pharoahs used for anointment, I can tell you that they at least smell nice.
Enough digression. As I neared 5th and 125th (aka—like every other black main street in the United States of the Universe—Martin Luther King Jr. Drive) I heard a thrumming in the air, like the wings of a great dragonfly. A left on 5th and it came through clear: the pounding pulse of Harlem itself, the Saturday drum circle at Marcus Garvey Park.
Just outside Marcus Garvey Pool—which was indeed closed, fuck you 4chan for making me check—on a set of long benches, a batch of elders sat and drummed, a steady rhythm greater than the contribution of any single timekeeping kick. People fell in and out, chatting under the noise, changing instruments. Drummers left, new ones arrived. People carried drums down from further north, up from the subway; a man in a red-black-green kufi laid into a shakeree. A white veteran injected some Sousa by means of a snare drum; but this wasn’t really multicultural. Not in the motivational poster sense. This was African, Caribbean, and that’s all it was: it was, to be American about it, black. And in that unending clapping rumbling hum of drumming, Harlem went about its business. Children played, their mothers gossiped, old men played chess, and dozens of shops within earshot stayed open and made money.
If people don’t like it, I suggest they not move to Harlem. If they do, I suggest they not move in right next to a park named after a legendary revolutionary Jamaican activist and seer. And if they are still determined to do that, I suggest they ask around and say “is there anything about this area that will make us react like classic gated-community Texans?” “Oh, then let’s move to Park Slope instead, where people like us belong.”
But of course, instead, their money will be irresistible and completely legal and aboveboard, and natural and all-American market forces will kick the darkies out. They’ll gentrify Harlem like they’re already gentrifying the Lower East Side and DUMBO, the way they already turned Williamsburg into twentysomething arty Las Vegas, and eventually New York will cease to be a cultural capital. Give it 30 years and see where it’s at. The seeds are well sprouted already, but at least a lot of people still influencing art and culture at the grassroots are stubborn originals, or idealistic immigrants from mallville who may need their fair-trade lattes, but also want genuinely to become the next wave of movements which are at least as organic as their coffee… meaning they aren’t as carbon-neutral as they think, but at least their hearts are in the right place.
Oct 7
Sign outside Julep. One side says “Bukowsi was a pussy.” Other side says “Abandon sobriety, all ye who enter here.”
From Boswell: Lord Chesterfield, referring to himself and another noble of advanced years, said “Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we do not care to have it known.”