Country Report, Late April

If there is a dominant partner in this love triangle with city and country, it is definitely city. Country struggles for her place, her time, her priority. City is where we make money. And so, and thus...

But spring is here, and so country elbows her way in. The roads are dry, everything is covered (us included) with the red dust kicked up by trucks as they drive by. We're sneezy and watery-eyed, our backs sore from garden prep. The leafy veges are beginning to sprout: this year we're going Asian - gailaan, bak choy, pak choy, Japanese mustards. Some American spinach and beets, as well. Today, we work on a second garden plot, breaking hard red earth again (get out the ibuprofen), a hot sunny spot for tomatoes, eggplant, green beans, zucchini, cucumbers.

With the price of food (and everything else) rising, we're getting a little more serious about growing food. Hoping to do some canning as well, which will be new for me, old hat for J. (his late father's specialty).

I think about finding a way to spend the summer here, give country her due. But I worry, too, about the reality of it--isolation (physical and mental), especially. But maybe it's time to give it a go. Maybe the country wants to be wife this summer, instead of mistress.

Gentrification in the Bx

With the latest incidents here in the Bx - vandalism, theft, etc. - I've been feeling on edge. The situation with our super J. is also a bit shaky; he tends to be drunk a lot, has been letting various characters into the building (the basement has become a kind of "clubhouse" for whomever, and many of us feel uncomfortable when we go down to do our laundry), and doesn't really do his job. But if/once our landlord lets him go, I would not put it past him to become embittered and do who-knows-what. All the locks would have to be changed, etc. And he lives down the block and won't be going anywhere.

Lately when I walk the pup around the 'hood, I feel conspicuous and nervous. More so than before. I am more aware of the men's shelter around the corner. I was told by one of our neighbors in the building that a former sex offender lives two doors down (did you know that you can find out by going to sexoffenders.com? Jeez.). I am waiting for the next incident, the other shoe to drop.

On Saturday we decided to be pro-active, spend some time out in the neighborhood. We walked up to St. Mary's Park, which is a nice hill-top park about 10 blocks north. We've been looking for free public tennis courts and found them there. The gates were locked with a padlock, but the Parks attendant told us that they did that to keep the kids from stealing the nets, and that we could use the courts if we wanted to squeeze through the gap in the gates (so much for "security"). So we did that, and we all (the pup fetched balls for us) got some exercise.

On Sunday, I walked the 15 blocks west to find the nearest NY Times. On the way back, I ran into a woman who was opening up the doors at a new art gallery in Mott Haven. She let me and the pup in, and I learned that she lives on a brownstone block nearby, where there are a number of historic brownstones for sale. She owns two of them - lives in one, rents the other to her daughter. The buildings have been in her family for 80 years, she said, from back when the neighborhood was mostly European immigrants (she's White). She told me about a group of historic-building owners who have been getting together, forming a little community; and that a curator from the Metropolitan Museum just bought one of the brownstones.

Is this good news? She thinks so. I didn't get a sense of racial awareness, though. She seemed to imply that White gentrification is good, no matter what. White = safe. Most of the people who run the gallery are White - Brooklyn and Manhattan refugees, or, like her, old Bronx families returning after a generation away. Hmm...

J. and I are going to check out the brownstones for sale. Just to see what's up. I find it all a little troubling, though.

The Voter in My Head

There's been so much in the media about "that white male working class voter" lately. Will he go for Hillary, or will he go for Barack? Will he go for McCain over Hillary, or Barack over McCain, or not show up to the polls at all depending on who is on the ballot?

More importantly, who IS he, and is he real? Meaning, is he truly a group of he's that can be categorized in a block?

We're all being categorized and chopped up into voter blocs like never before (or, perhaps, like always before, but much more evident now) based on income, education, location, consumer habits, race, gender, age, etc. I even find myself trying to guess, based on some combination of appearance and observed behavior, who someone is going to vote for -- strangers, friends, acquaintances alike.

What is hopeful about this year's Democratic race is that people seem more open and fluid in their voting decisions. If democracy is about having an informed and active voting public - as opposed to a predictably self-serving / not-in-my-backyard voting public - then the voting patterns themselves will be interesting to observe. I will certainly be disappointed if Obama is not the Democratic nominee; but I will be exponentially more disappointed if he loses as a result of predictable voting patterns, i.e. people voting out of a kind of pre-determined fear and self-preservation factor (which I believe Hillary is exploiting to the utmost). If Hillary wins, I at least hope to be surprised by the how and why of it; I doubt it, though.

I will be interested to see how Wayne County, PA districts vote on April 22. We have a moderate Democrat as Congressional Rep. -- Chris Carney. Wikipedia says the following:

Carney is a somewhat conservative Democrat, which is not surprising given the nature of the district. For example, while opposing proposals to privatize Social Security, he said he is open to the idea of adding private accounts in addition to (not at the expense of) traditional defined benefits. He supports federal investment in stem cell research, and is an advocate of universal healthcare. He supports gun rights, does not favor abortion (but supports family planning and "comprehensive reproductive healthcare"), and opposes gay marriage. He supports estate tax reduction.

During the campaign, Carney raised money with a wide-variety of supporters including Sen. Barack Obama, Sen Joe Biden, Rep. Jay Inslee, Rep. Jack Murtha, and Richard Perle, a leading Bush Administration advocate of war with Iraq who more recently has criticized the decision to go to war Douglas Feith, another Pentagon hawk, congratulated Carney on Election Night.

Rumbles in the Bronx

It's been forever.

Well, I guess it's been a month. I've been thinking about the reality of blogging, and my unsuitability for it. It requires a certain talent for current-ness, for keeping up, for "freshness." Me, I'm all about the old, the outdated, the slow. It takes me a long time to chew on last week's news. It takes me a long time to do just about everything.

But city (keeping up) and country (slow) are still on my mind, still the extreme realities of life. These days, we're thinking about our life in the Bronx, about whether or not/how long we'll stay. It's weird to be a gentrifyer, and difficult in many ways; the double challenge of "should we" (participate in pricing out people who've lived here a long time) and "do we want to" (confront the daily challenges of living in a poor, under-serviced, crime-ridden neighborhood) is where we find ourselves.

The latest: you already know that my car was stolen from the block last summer (at least I got to write off the $400 tow-yard cost on my Schedule A this year as a theft loss). J. has had a number of things stolen from his truck as well. My flower pots have been vandalized, and recently someone (who?? why??) tossed our plastic lawn chairs off the roof. There are currently angry/hysterical warning signs throughout the building posted by one of our neighbors, whose bicycle was stolen from the basement. But the biggie: the other night, someone went around puncturing tires on the block, including all four of mine.

J. and I were out on the street pumping up the tires the next morning, not yet aware that they'd been punctured (the holes were super-tiny), hoping that possibly the vandals just let the air out, for pranks. A guy who works in the neighborhood stopped to chat and asked us what happened. His take was basically this: "Well, you got two ways of looking at it. Since it was a whole bunch of cars, at least you can think, 'It wasn't just me,' and you don't have to feel like you've been targeted or anything, like it's personal. And at least it's just kids playing pranks, you know. Once I had both my mirrors stolen, and when I found out it was a bunch of people lost their mirrors, I felt better. Even though it cost me 500 bucks to replace them. A few years back, one of the tire repair shops was paying kids to slash tires in the neighborhood; that guy's been closed down, though. So consider yourselves lucky, you know. It could always be worse."

Well, seeing as the tires were indeed punctured, we're thinking that old scam may have been revived; and we're not feeling so lucky. How long will my new tires last? Maybe my mirrors are next?

I feel lucky that J. was with me to help pump up the tires and get the car to Maria's Tire Shop. I feel lucky that someone stopped to try and encourage me that I'm lucky. I feel lucky that the car is still running (and that it was recovered by the police last summer). And I feel lucky for my three days in the country after all that, which was good rest & recovery time (it's amazing how porch and sky can heal the soul).

The window boxes are out on the fire escape, I planted bok choy, gai laan, and Japanese mustard seeds. Trying snapdragons for the first time, too. Not sure if I'll put in the time for roof or stoop or backyard plants here; doesn't feel safe.

Chekhov's Humanity... City and Country

Chekhov generally refrained from passing judgment on his characters, playing more the role of objective "witness." Well, sort of. "Man will become better when you show him what he is like," he wrote in one of his notebooks. Often his moral pronouncements are put into the mouths of characters with a deceptive simplicity; as readers, we recognize that the speaker is often both impassioned and hypocritical, sincere and ignorant. And because Chekhov always approached and drew his characters humanely, we can never look at a character and say, "What a hypocrite" or "How ignorant" - because they are too recognizable, too much like ourselves.

Anyway. A couple of stories I recently read with bits of this layered commentary, on city and country life. In Russia, of course, city and country have always been code words for social class - peasants, landed gentry, sophisticated intelligentsia, etc. Many of Chekhov's characters, however, are often in fluid social positions, which allows him to comment on class positions in a more dynamic way.

From "Gooseberries": The narrator is speaking about his brother. Their father was a military man who rose to the rank of officer and came to own a small country estate. As children the two brothers thus lived in the country; after their father's death, all property was lost to creditors, and so they became white-collar professionals.

He was a kind and gentle soul and I loved him, but I never sympathized with his desire to shut himself up for the rest of his life on a little property of his own. It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet of earth. But six feet is what a corpse needs, not a man. It is also asserted that if our educated class is drawn to the land and seeks to settle on farms, that's a good thing. But these farms amount to the same six feet of earth. To retire from the city, from the struggle, from the hubbub, to go off and hide on one's own farm - that's not life, it is selfishness, sloth, it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without works. Man needs not six feet of earth, not a farm, but the whole globe, all of Nature, where unhindered he can display all the capacities and peculiarities of his free spirit.

From "On Official Business": The main character here is a magistrate, young and ambitious for a career and lifestyle in Moscow but paying his dues in the provinces.

The fatherland, the real Russia, was Moscow, Petersburg; but these were the provinces, the colonies. When you dream of playing a part, of becoming known, of being, for instance, examining magistrate in important cases or prosecutor in a circuit court, of being a social lion, you inevitably think of Moscow. If you are to live, then it must be in Moscow; here, nothing matters to you; you get reconciled readily to your insignificant role, and only look for one thing in life - to get away, to get away as quickly as possible... and he kept thinking that all about him was not life but scraps of life, fragments, that everything here was accidental, that one could draw no conclusion from it... It occurred to him that since the life about him here in the wilds was unintelligible to him, and since he did not see it, it meant that it was nonexistent.

Both passages express the superiority of city life; and yet both characters are limited in their experiences and understanding. Each bring their prejudices. Chekhov himself summered in the country and eventually settled down on a rural estate; but seemed throughout his life to be dogged by a consciousness of the poor upon whose backs the wealthy and comfortable lived. "As though someone were knocking with a little hammer on his temples," he writes of the young magistrate, who ultimately has nightmares about how the poor "shouldered all that was darkest and most burdensome in life" and how "to wish for oneself a bright and active life among happy, contented people, and constantly to dream of such a life, that meant dreaming of new suicides of men crushed by toil and care..."

As for the man who criticizes his brother for "escaping" to the country, he has similar thoughts as the magistrate after seeing the life of comfort and satiation his brother made for himself (Chekhov even repeats the use of the phrase "a little hammer" in reference to one's conscience), that "obviously the happy man is at ease only because the unhappy ones bear their burdens in silence." But in this story, Chekhov bears "witness" to something perhaps even more implicating: the man's audience, the two other men who listen to him speak of his brother and the revelations he had with regard to happiness and the poor, don't care to hear him speak of it. "...it was tedious to listen to the story of the poor devil of a clerk who ate gooseberries. One felt like talking about elegant people, about women."

Bronx Skies

"We all suffered from the same shortage of vocabulary, as if language itself had fled the Bronx, and curiosity had been bleached out of us. School was of little help. Our teachers had succumbed to the neighborhood’s affliction, a kind of constant, sluggish sleep." From an article in the City section of The NY Times this Sunday, by Jerome Charyn, novelist and Bronx native.

On quiet days when I work at home, I sometimes take a few minutes to sit by the window that looks out onto the street in front of our building. The view is a waterproofing company's warehouse, Bruckner Blvd., the on-ramp to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, billboards billboards billboards... and quite a lot of sky. I can see what kind of traffic day it is; and it always seems that people are driving away from here, as fast as they can.

Sometimes I really have no idea what I'm doing here. Lately I've begun to imagine living somewhere else - a different borough, a smaller city, perhaps even a small town. This morning the pup and I walked under the bridge (a spooky underpass) to the handball courts, where I sometimes take him to toss the tennis ball around; but a shady-looking guy was sitting on the curb there, with no one else in sight, and I didn't feel safe. Ho hum.

This is where I am, for now. Half the time, anyway. When I sit by the window, I think about this: this is where I am. Somehow, I got here. And this is where I am.

It's not much of a pedestrian's neighborhood (shady-looking guys, etc.), so when I'm here, I'm mostly inside. Grocery shopping, miscellaneous errands, these things are accomplished mostly by driving to somewhere else. The other night we stopped in at a Puerto Rican restaurant a few blocks away and flumoxed the two women at the counter with our non-Spanish. I do find delight in seeing the Korean dry cleaners' and the Chinese takeout owners' faces light up when we walk in.

So I learn about my borough in tiny tidbits. It's a huge borough, its history of people groups diverse. But when it comes to writers, the Bronx is very much the un-Brooklyn: writers flock to Brooklyn as the new literary enclave, while they overcome obstacles and flee the Bronx for brighter skies (Delillo, Doctorow, etc. - Mr. Charyn now lives in Manhattan, I believe, and Paris.)

Here's another one, which I ran across I don't remember where. A self-published memoir by James McSherry called A Clean Street's a Happy Street. "A well-crafted and poignant memoir about a chaotic childhood in the Bronx," the review says. The title struck me, because of the garbagey-ness around here. I'll see if I can get my hands on the book.

Pilgrim in Provincetown

Boston or New York embodies our condition in one aspect: We are strangers among millions living in cubes like Anasazi in a world we fashioned. And Provincetown shows, by contrast, that we live on a strand between sea and sky. Here are protoplasmic, peeled people in wind against crystal skies. Our soft tissues are outside, like unearthed and drying worms'. The people in cities are like Mexican jumping beans, like larvae in tequila bottles, soft bits in hard boxes. And so forth. The length to which we as people go to hide our nakedness by blocking sky!

There was a fatal problem. There always is. Provincetown people too, and all people worldwide who could swing it, were also bare tissues living under roofs. An honest way through, all but changing the whole idea, would be a set of interleaved narratives, Boston people and desert villagers. -from The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard

It's been a while. City and country somehow receding as main characters in this day-to-day. But I've just finished The Maytrees, Annie Dillard's new novel (and her last book, she says: "This one just about killed me... I want to change and grow."), and made note of the above for OITB (that's Orchid in the Bronx): Toby Maytree, a Provincetown poet, is thinking about a book-length poem which he will start writing shortly.

Anasazi: "The ancestors of modern Pueblo Indians, about 20 separate tribes living in New Mexico and Arizona. There never was an 'Anasazi' tribe, nor did any group of people call themselves by that name. Anasazi is a descriptive term of Navajo origin. Archaeologists applied the term to villagers who lived and farmed in the Four Corners between the years 1 and 1300 AD." One of many things/words I had to look up throughout the reading of The Maytrees. Along with hoyden, folderol, lagniappe, albedo, howitzer, Algreba, skeg, chert. (Any idea? You are much smarter than I.)

AD's story of love found, lost, found, pondered upon, redefined, undefined is as dense as it is earthy, heady as it is moving. Like everything of hers, it hurt my head to read; she's so damn smart, it actually grinds the brain. But in this one, you can feel her heart fighting for space next to - or at least somewhere near - her mind. As a reader, it's a unique experience - feeling something in your chest swell and tighten as you reach for the dictionary. Bare tissues living under roofs.

And it's definitely a country story. AD has come home to Tinker Creek in a way; this time it's the dunes and the starry skies of Cape Cod. The wind, the sand, the "green sea," "black cordgrass, " "parabolic dunes," "low swale," and "shack gulls" - all constantly in motion, ebbing and flowing like the tide throughout the story. On the one hand, I'm sad AD says she's "done." On the other hand, she's earned it, and I've barely understood everything she's written to date, so it's not like I won't have her work to re-read for many years to come.