Let's get a close-up of the poet:

One

Hosannas! It is, more or less, the one-year anniversary of this blog. The celebration would have passed unrecognized had not it come up during a conversation with my Birthday Twin last night. Constant Reader, have you been here since the beginning? I thank you.

The Brooklyn Bachelor is doing well. I still have all my teeth. My ass is still a wonder to behold. I am still far from enlightenment, and have miles to go before… &c. Two things notably different from one year ago: I am employed, tenuously to be sure (but then aren’t we all?); I am dating someone (as opposed to just dating; our vocabulary is rather limited in this context, isn’t it?)

But be assured, Faithful Reader, that I am still a bachelor and still living in Brooklyn. And the purpose of this blog remains as vague as ever, neither micro nor macro, but just right. It is a mixture of diary, journal, & broadsheet, although I try to keep my rants on the side.

Gentle Reader, all half dozen of you, this is the pride of my small vintage paperback collection:
I tried to rotate it 90 but it didn't take.

Film at 11

It’s no Wyoming I know, but Big Sky Brooklyn at twilight has its pleasures. That slanting light, Edward Hopper light, hitting the red brick and magicking the hour.

On the F train, an older woman all in green (shoes, socks, pants, jacket, hat, hair highlights, and, as another passenger whispered to a friend, watch, all different shades). She had quite the dotty smile.

There’s a new documentary about the conspiracy trial of the “Chicago 7”; actually 8 when you add Bobby Seale, and now, adding the two defense lawyers, The Chicago Ten. I’m looking forward to it. Following Mayor Daley's police riot at the Democratic Convention in 1968 (oh, I bet that made the late WF Buckley excited!), it was one of the great pieces of American political theater. I’ve read Allan Ginsburg’s testimony before, it’s sheer mad genius. Om!

Jos. Cornell is my pharmacist...

i'm puttin' on my top hat...

I purchased a top hat yesterday. Film at 11.

I see that, being an over-30 bachelor, I'm a "menace to society." The white fascist "natural family" society of the fundies, that is. Cool.


This morning I took OHS into Prospect Park to look at birds. We saw more x-country skiers at first, but then you must always enter deeply into the park before you see anything, shedding the city as you go in. By the Waterfall, it was warm enough to sit in the sun. Two red-tails put on a show above, circling each other and then doing the claw-down swoop: buteo courtship. A little later they landed in a big tree across the Lullwater and the male made his move, but the female flew off. We heard a jay as we walked towards the bird feeders. Someone had spread birdseed along the Lullwater path, so dark eyed junco, chickadee, & cardinal were busy. I thought I heard a raptor crying from up the Breeze Hill slope, but it seemed to come from a tree, and usually they cry from on high. It might have been a jay. OHS was wearing very sexy boots, which were not made for clamoring up the snowy path to the feeders on Breeze Hill. But we could see the feeders relatively well. There were no birds there. Hmm. Except for one on the large hanging feeder. I focused. It was a sharpie, a sharp-shinned hawk. It was waiting for some unwary bird to show up for the free food. There were no takers. No fools they. A little later, we came across a mess of robins, a Carolina wren, and, surprisingly, a winter wren, a tiny thing, that worked the ground right in front of us.

Snow...

Finally. This is a part of the haunted house complex next door.
These leaves have been hanging around all winter in my apartment.
Bones of the sea.

I saw a small girl child eating a fistfull of snow, late afternoon Union Street snow, embrowned, enyellowed city slush. Yeech!

I rarely eat out, but this week it seemed like I had lunch and dinner out everyday. An extraordinary redhead with bare shoulders made my sandwich today.

The macaroons at Madeleine on 23rd between 6th/7th Aves (Inner Borough) are the best I’ve ever had. The coconut blood orange, in particular. I was given some last night. (Thanks, sweet OHS.) The aforementioned flavor, plus chocolate, and cassis. Now, the “macaroon” comes in a number of different forms, notably the little coconut mountain familiar to most ‘Mericans and the French-style sandwich cookie made with almond meringue. These were sandwich-style, but with coconut instead of the almond. Sheer synthesis. Kids, beware: don’t attempt to eat these for breakfast unless you’re a professional. Here's someone I don't know's picture of said sugar miracles.

It was clear last night, so the total lunar eclipse was perfectly visible. The pale gray orb was blushing in the shadow of the earth. It was damn cold, though, so a trip to the beach to dance naked (except for blue paint like my Pictish ancestors) seemed out of the question. (The gods’ will be appeased in other ways. I’ll pour libations for them on Saturday.)

I signed up for a speakeasy dinner, where strangers come together to eat in the home or other space of a semi-underground culinary operation, but evidently I wasn’t cool enough to be one of the “rad fellow eaters from your community.” I say evidently because I didn’t get any response at all, which is just bad manners. So much for that link.

There’s a 1845 (45!) US Survey of the Coast chart on display in the Map Division of NYPL that shows New York Bay that you must see. You can also see it here -- use the pan & zoom feature -- but not nearly as majestically. Next to it is the bright plate it was printed from, beautifully etched. What’s most interesting to me is that the landforms are as detailed as the sea soundings. The terminal moraine that makes the uplands of Brooklyn is nicely detailed. The moraine, represented in all the Heights, Hills, & Slopes found in neighborhood names, is till and rubble-scrapings deposited by the last glacier. Mount Prospect is a major landmark here; today, this second highest point in the borough is a bit forlorn behind BPL’s Central Library at Grand Army Plaza, but it was originally part of the plan of Prospect Park, hence the park’s name; Olmsted & Vaux vetoed the section because of the problem of having to cross Flatbush Avenue (they’d already had to suffer from the troublesome transverses in Central Park; live, learn, & make a better park). Go southeast through the Midwood in Prospect and you flat-line in the flatlands, beyond the terminus of the glaciers. This is the outwash plain, washing all the way to the sea, including Pelican Beach & Barren Island, east of Coney towards Rockaway Inlet but now lost to the map. Back on the other side of the hills (they don’t seem like much, these hills, but those god-damned Hessian mercenaries sure thought they were a pain in the ass back in ‘76) is Gowanus; south of the grid of Brooklyn town, it stretches east (there is no Park Slope), and Red Hook tries to snag fish to the west.

Once upon a time

I floss three times a day, at least. I don’t own a car or a television. I loath shopping and Republicans, that party of plutocracy, fundamentalism, neo-confederacy, and neo-cons. I am a rootless cosmopolitan, a New Yorker, a Brooklynite, a citizen. I eat meat and my vegetables. I don’t smoke anything; I drink, wine usually, but also gin or vodka tonics, negronis, 20-yr-old tawny port, and cocktails of my own invention. In my medicine cabinet you’ll find some decongestant; that’s it. I read a lot but know people who read more. Lately, I’ve been reading Pretor-Pinney’s Cloudspotter’s Guide; A. Theroux, The Primary Colors, and Luc Sante, Kill All Your Darlings; at bat is Rediker, Villains of All Nations; Nussbaum, The Clash Within, and Virga, Cartographia; this is not counting the three books waiting for me at NYPL. Blessed is the “hold” system. I don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus, a large invisible rabbit, or any other schizophrenic characteristics. The last movie I saw was There Will be Blood, at Cobble Hill Cinema, and I liked it tremendously. I have been sporadically published, most recently in the Sierra Club’s Atlantic Chapter newsletter; most famously in Poetry magazine. I’m a licensed NYC sightseeing guide, which means I can’t take you to a house of ill repute (while I’m on duty). I was born at 10:36 pm at the Tokyo Sanitarium Hospital 45 years ago today. Now, where the hell is my telegram from the Queen?

I lost my voice...

The artist Amanda Davidson set up something she calls the Lost Technology Hotline, urging people to call in to leave a message about losing something in NYC. The resulting piece will be heard this weekend at Outrageous Look Gallery at 103 Broadway in Williamsburg (the Berlin of the Oughts?). I am included in the 40-minute piece. I called in to say I lost my voice in New York City. Key words: cab, coffee, Cage. (Yes, it's fiction.)

Brooklyn Bamboo, and the birds

Yes, this is Brooklyn. Some very invasive bamboo in Prospect Park.

And this is witch-hazel, which blooms very early.

This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count. I led a group of 15 today through the Lullwater to the Lake, around Lookout Hill, and then back through the Lullwater. We had these species: mourning dove, rock pigeon, mallard duck, ruddy duck, northern shoveler, Canada goose, common merganser, mute swan, great blue heron, red-tail hawk, wood thrush, chickadee, blue jay, tufted titmouse, song sparrow, fox sparrow, white-throated sparrow, white-breasted nuthatch, red-breasted nuthatch, goldfinch, red-bellied woodpecker, downy wp, junco, cat bird, robin, mocking bird. The red-tails were everywhere, putting on a great aerial show.

V-Day Part II

The revels began at Tart & Kindly, a nom de plume of smoke name for a Bowery bar where the drinks are $10. Man, that’s not the Bowery I remember! I won’t go down there no more, as the song says. And what’s up with those whiskey-sour bartendresses? Termite walks into a bar and says “Is the bar tender here?” Nyet! This one was practically French if you know what I mean. We were there because Monstress was distributing her genius Valentines, a complex packet including stickers, Sharpie, and pamphlet (“it’s just a short pamphlet”; I think Marx started like that, too). Witty and wise (and good punctuation): The Ardor Arbiter Starter Kit, Standard Issue. This woman needs an exhibit, damn it!

Then it was back to the Cobble ranch/bachelor pad for some aphrodisiacal risotto. I also made this bread pudding/trifle combo for dessert; this award winner is sending NEONY to the Napa Valley. Gooey deliciousness. I can’t believe she could eat “five plates” of it (hell, I had to put some in a goodie bag come morning). Naturally, I made some adjustments to the recipe, since the thought of chocolate liqueur makes me wanna hurl. I used Grand Marnier instead and threw in some tristar strawberry coulis from my frozen CSA collection. Tart little berries. Tart little oranges. Sweet pudding.

Now, did you know that “pudding” is an all-purpose Britishism? It means dessert, as in soup, chop, two veg, and pudding. It can also be specific to such things as spotted dick and pig’s bum. (A strange people, it’s true.) And it can be savory, as in the Yorkshire pudding, that sublime pop-over. As is well known in philosophical circles, the proof is in the pudding. The inimitable CS, blacksheep of the Rockaways, referred to an old GF of mine as “Puddin’” See Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding, the odd Australian children’s epic about an inexhaustible pudding that talks and walks, pudding bowl on its head, and tastes like whatever you want. A food source that never ends: did all those transported hoodlums shipped down under have hunger issues? Coupla Lindsay’s koala gents:
There will be pudding!

V-Day Part I

The day started inauspiciously. I cut my nose shaving. I bit my cheek. There will be blood. I broke a glass. I sat in 141 Livingston for four hours, doing my civic duty, which was mostly just adjusting my ass. But wait, I got two peanut M&Ms from the vending machine for the price of one. That never happens. Things were looking up. Just before the 1pm lunch hour, we were all dismissed. No cases, evidently. In the clear now for 8 years (2 for the Federales).

A real mix of Brooklyn in evidence up there in Room 305. Spanish and Chinese speakers quite cut out of the whole process, unable to follow the basic procedures. I have to say, the upper middle class white people, (a demographic I suppose I’d have to count myself in, minus the bank account) had this look of disdain and arrogance about them that was quite off-putting; I was happy to see several of them sent back to their seats when they tried to weasel out of service. A bombastic broad from Bay Ridge, (a middle school teacher we all learned; we learned everything she said since she was broadcasting, as if she was in the classroom), kept saying “Are we done yet” “Are we there yet?” She was the kind of person you’d leave on the side of the road before driving off. She did redeem herself when she shot down some air-headed technocrat who whined, “why can’t we do this at home; everybody has a computer and we can hear the evidence through video streaming.”

Now it's off to be really bloodied like the martyred saint of the day...

The NYC Audubon lectures have new digs, the High School for Environmental Studies on West 56th. The building turns out to be a minor Deco jem. It’s not listed in the AIA Guide, but the lobby and the 6th floor auditorium are sweet. It’s long been a contention of mine that Great Lobbies of NYC would make a smashing walking tour. There are some doozies out that, particularly downtown in Gotham City (as opposed to Midtown’s Metropolis). As in the long gone Pennsylvania Station, architects/designers and even developers were intent on making an entrance worthy of the name. Now, with square footage the only god, the boxes have security desks and banks of elevators, but wandering into some of the buildings around Wall Street from the 20s and 30s. Glorious!

Meanwhile, back at 444 W 56, I can't remember the last time I was in a high school: the security dames were no-nonsense cookies; six or so languages were posted on signs for parents; and, after hours, the Boys and Girls bathrooms were both padlocked, but not the neighboring Mens and Womens. Odder still were the enormous DOWNs painted in the stairwell, angled downward with an arrow pointing… uh, down.
*
I have jury duty tomorrow at Kings Co. Civil Court. On the docket, Cupid is being sued by Psyche for alienation of affections. (Those arrows in the heart would be a criminal matter, I believe.)

Basho-san says

snow fallsbirds are silent
it's napping weather

Dimensionalize This

There’s some “branding” goin’ on down at the shop. The History Channel has decided that history is boring (baby, it’s, like, dead), so they’re gonna jazz it up, make it active and entertaining and accessible. Read: more guns, faster edits. The new branding statement declares that they are going to “dimensionalize History” (the network, the stuff itself). Ugh! A criminal use of vocabulary like that takes me back to my dot-bomb days, and new economy bullshit generator, which I see still brightens up a dark corner of the web. Synergize sticky networks! Deliver transparent architecture! Target scalable infrastructures! Morph real-time mindshare! Murder the language as Macbeth hath murdered sleep! Ah, the memories...

OHS saw her first red-tailed hawk in Fort Greene Park today. It coasted to a perch in a tulip tree and we walked under it to get the sun out of our eyes. I think it was a juvenile female. A passerby said there was a couple in the park. I wonder if there’s a nest, and where it might be. A couple of months ago, my friend D had a red-tail drop down on the sidewalk in front of him in the Fort Greene neighborhood, mobbed out of the sky by some crows. The bird stood there for a moment as a crowd gathered, then it flew off, seemingly fine

This morning was overcast. By midday, the day was beautiful, the sun bright, the sky intensely blue, a few cumulus clouds puffed by. At four, the snow was blowing horizontally.

From certain points in Brooklyn, like on the F train as it rises above the Gowanus, you can see Fort Greene Park’s Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial tower. I suppose Ratnerville (or “McBrooklyn” as I saw the Atlantic Yards development so accurately described somewhere) will block out the sight. The Memorial is being restored, so it’s fenced off, its bottom half shrouded. Anticipated date of the rededication is this year.

FYI: 11,500 Revolutionary War POWs died on the English prison ships in Wallabout Bay, where the Navy Yard is. The bones would wash ashore for years after the war. Many of the recovered bones were stored in a vault on Hudson Street in the early 1800s. Walt Whitman, newspaperman, advocated for a park in the area during the 1840s. Olmsted and Vaux, that torrid duo, designed it in 1867. In 1873, the prison ship remains were moved to a crypt in the park, and in 1908, Stanford White’s Doric column was dedicated by our fattest President, W.H. Taft. It was White’s last major work; H.K. Thaw shot and killed him on the roof of the old Madison Square in 1906, after being shocked, shocked that his wife Evelyn Nesbit had had a torrid affair with White while she was a Floradora chorus girl. Nesbit lived until 1967. I'm a sucker for Pre-Raphaelite hair.

Well, dog my cats!

Albert the Alligator and Howland Owl debate the finer points of democracy.

Back in the darkest Ike Age, a cartoonist named Walt Kelly provided some sweetness and light with his comic strip Pogo. When I was a wee tad, my dad had rotting old paperback collections of the strip, and I was flummoxed by the Southern dialect Kelly populated his dialog bubbles with. I was also not nearly bright enough to get all the puns and allusions. That was then. Now I revel in it, along with Kelly's heavy ink line. I’ve been waiting a long time, but Fantagraphics is finally starting a hardback, complete-strips edition. There will be 12 volumes all told, released chronologically, with dailies and Sundays, just like their very impressive series of Peanuts books (which I haven't purchased because I need a new apartment to put them in).

Lunatic

I just found out there’s going to be a total lunar eclipse on the night of my 45th birthday, February 20. In fact, it’s going to be total during the time I was born, 10:36pm on the birth certificate. From 10:01- 10:51, the moon will be in our shadow. Umbra man! I think I’ll be dancing naked on the beach…

I love the aggressiveness of that pagan stain of ashes on the forehead.

Made the mistake of getting mixed up in yesterday’s Jersey Giants rally. (You play in NJ you’re from NJ; that’s pretty easy math.) Completely forgot about it on what should have been a quick lunchtime errand. An invasion of out-of-towners, mostly burly white suburban types, the same ilk who love the Yankees so. How do I know they weren’t outer borough? Because they were clueless about MetroCard and none of them were going south.

Speaking of thugs, WTF is a super delegate?

45th!

I was the 45th voter at the 96th ED booth this morning at 7:50. Our NYC voting machines are about as old as I am, and I'm glad to say I'm holding up a hell of a lot better.

it never sticks anymore, does it?

c. 9:30 a.m.

After all that hunny yesterday at the tasting, I felt like Pooh Bear and barely made it to the next feeding…

Last year, when I went to this stuporbowl party, it was left to me to explain to the Israeli couple about the game, which is like having a New Guinea headhunter explain the intricacies of the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals. This year, there were actual fans in attendance. Be afraid, be very afraid. When I left at the beginning of the forth quarter, the biggest fan was incredulous; how the hell could I leave during such an exciting game? But of course I didn’t care in the slightest about the game. Another attendee, mostly in jest, questioned my patriotism. I know more people watch the game than vote, which is one reason why I’m not a patriot of the consumerocracy. The loudest fan, who could remember where he was during the previous superbowls of his viewing-life, proclaimed his love of animals several times, noting that he wouldn’t go to movies where animals were even fictionally hurt, and condemning the commercials in which animals were threatened, but having no problem with a game in which his fellow human beings smash into each other again and again, notably brutalizing each other, causing serious long-term health effects, and even shortening their lives. Ah, well, we are all full of contradictions. Since I was evidently the only party-goer with a refrigerator, I was given most of the leftovers. It was entirely too much, so I started giving it away on the way home.

Tomorrow's the prexy-primary. ABC, damn it!

I led my first Audubon walk today. It was the beginner’s bird walk, starting from the Audubon Center at the Boathouse. Nine people turned out, only two of them ringers (people I know). As R noted, it was all female except for one small boy and me. We had a pretty good walk, even though it was during the overcast middle of the day. Through the Lullwater, up by the feeders, and then over the Terrace Bridge and down to the Lake, then back along the other side of the Lullwater. Birds: mute swan, mallard duck, ruddy duck, northern shoveler, ring billed gull, black-backed gull, red tailed hawk, Cooper’s hawk, rock pigeon, mourning dove, black-capped chickadee, northern cardinal, blue jay, American goldfinch, tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch, red-bellied woodpecker, yellow-bellied wp, downy wp, white-throated sparrow, song sparrow, ruby-crowned kinglet, starling, house sparrow. The beginners didn’t see this much, of course, but that’s what beginnings are all about. They had great views of two kinds of hawks, a buteo and an accipiter, so that was definitely worth the price of admission (it’s free). The red-tails made several appearances.

I roasted some macadamia nuts and then drowned them in honey. Yeah, baby! For a honey tasting I’m attending tomorrow.