Chronicles Continued

I lifted the following word-for-word from another website: Madparknews.com.  They stated it so well, felt no need to reinvent the wheel.  Please click on the llinks below, or copy it into your browser box at the top of the screen. to see the pictures.  The pictures are superb. The great surprise is to find something standing where there was nothing before.  There you are on the bus, and a new vision appears.

As part of the NYC Department of Transportation Urban Art Program (in conjunction with the Flatiron 23rd Street Partnership) there is a new sculpture up just west of Madison Square park in the pedestrian plaza between 23rd and 24th Street and Broadway and 5th Avenue. The installation is called Bird, made of actual and fabricated nails, and is by New York City artist Will Ryman. The 12-foot high structure is “loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven” according to the Paul Kasmin Gallery and will be up from now until April 21st, 2013.

www.flickr.com/photos/34937556@N05/8597248183/

www.flatironhotnews.com/…/william-rymans-bird–sculpture-lands-in…

Yes, I was.  It rare when I’m delighted to be an irritant, but in this case I was.  Boarded the full bus, and took a seat beside a too loudly speaking-on-her-cell phone woman.  Because she was large and busy speaking on her phone, therefore not paying attention, when I settled in, I brushed against her arm. She was seated askew on her seat, and swung around to face me. She had turned with an air of great annoyance and gave me a withering, dirty look.  As I mumbled ‘excuse me’, she continued in a very loud voice to speak into her phone call. “They docked 30% of my wages….. and I said to him….. and she said to me…. and of course I won’t…..just let her try….’.  Looking around at the group of persons seated near me – this is the middle section of an extended bus- I could see there was annoyance with her loudness.  I had to move to readjust my hand baggage; in fact I had to readjust three times.  Each time she turned and scowled at me.  Finally she man-handled the young girl that was with her, said something disparaging about me, and moved to the front of the bus [remember the most unheeded command in nyc] to disembark.  I enjoyed my part in removing her and the delighted smiles of those around me when she left.  Felt sorry for the young-man-handled girl, however.

It was another time, another place, but the discussion with Cologne brought it to mind.  Washington DC: was walking down the street, when a man approached.  He was wiry, not tall and agile on his feet.  He started talking to me about his desperate situation.  How he had no money to get back to his home – a far out place in Virginia –  with which I just happened to be familiar.  How he had arrived earlier in the day, by train, [while I knew there was no train service to that town].  Someone has pick pocketed his wallet and then he dived into details about the pictures of his wife and daughter in the wallet, and how hard it was going to be to live without them.  His song and dance went on for a good bit; as he embroidered, I found him all the more entertaining.  I was on my own mission and so I had to bring his show home and close it down, and did so by asking him what he wanted.  $5.00 he said, would be great to help him on his way back home – by train of course.  Smiling broadly,  I continued to look him in the eyes while reaching for my billfold.  Opening it I removed a $10 bill. ‘Here’, I said, ‘Don’t believe one iota of your story, but you delivered it so convincingly and earnestly and in such an charming way, I would pay to see it on stage.  He looked confused.  I continued to smile as I gave him the money and walked away.

The Moral? ‘Ask and you will receive greater than you expect?’.  Well most of the time, not, but sometimes, yes.

…was his name. He approached me as I came to the corner outside my apartment. In a somewhat gentle way, with a rather long sentence he asked for money. I was on a mission, but I felt the need to stop. I asked him why he was there, and how this was working out for him.?  He looked rather well-dressed, I said, to be panhandling. I asked him where he was from and what his last job had been, and were the churches any help?  Where was his mother and did he have any family?  Of course I took a breath in between and a question only followed if what he said lead up to it. We spoke for about 20 minutes. In the end, I had no answers. None. I didn’t know how he should solve his problem. Half way through I gave him some money. I didn’t stipulate how he should spend it, as later he told me people who give him money stipulate it’s use. He told how hard it is to live on minimum wage – and since I have seen the Spurlock TV series and know what life costs, he had my agreement. He felt life was unfair and the stories he had to tell about life in the shelters, or life on the street/ the subway molestations while sleeping, were only too believable. His gout and his diabetes were not surprising based on what I could imagine his diet on minimum wage is. He said he went first to community college, got an associate degree then went on to get a Bachelors. He was qualified to do anything in criminal justice or security… but the ‘catch 22’ is that if you don’t have a fixed address you have a hard time getting hired. I could believe that too. He said in the shelter they kept pressing him, that he must have an addiction. Kept telling them he didn’t, until finally he said “Yes, I’m addicted to poverty. I can’t get rid of it.” I am always taken aback from my social expectations when one is well spoken and I don’t anticipate it. That was the case. He mentioned how humiliating it was to have to beg – his term. How people treated him and the unkind things they said to him, without provocation. How much he would like employment but he was discouraged. How the churches judged him. I met him definitely on a bad day. He said he was 39.  He looked at least 50. And I had nothing to say that was helpful. And I knew the feeling of being discouraged, and hopeless.  When I came back after completing my errand he was gone.

Brought heaviest winter coat to the cleaners for Storage.  Message to the weather gods is that this winter season is over; time to move on to spring.  So far so good.  11 pm last night temperature outside was 46 degrees.

Perhaps I waxed too brightly about the cold the other day. Today it snowed. I will not comment again this winter/spring! Didn’t the first day of Spring come already?

It’s been either a tough spring or a long winter, or both. Yesterday evening, returning home in the blustery, cold, bone-chilling wind, I was want to complain. Until, back inside, I realized how quiet it was outside. Late March and the tables are still empty because it is too cold to sit out side and be loud and noisy way late Saturday night into Sunday morning. The cold is not so bad.

In the twenties and thirties, there were two kinds of porters: red caps and green caps. The first helped with luggage, the latter delivered messages. There are no caps at the GCT now, only at Penn Station.
The constellations that one sees on the ceiling in the main room are not how they appear in the sky to us. Rather, as they appear to ‘God’ done by the French painter Paul Helleu who copied the idea from what he found on a medieval manuscript.

If one buys a ticket for an airplane trip, one is assigned a seat number. You don’t own it, just yours to borrow for the trip. A bus ticket seat is determined by how early you stand in line in order to board the bus; some folks stand in line early because they really like to sit in the front of the bus and these seats fill up first. Another gamble on the bus is whether you get to sit alone or with another traveller and whether you do or not, appears to be a combination of determination, luck of the draw, your body mass and a number of other variables. Two twenty somethings boarded the bus late, – meaning after the long line had ended. It just so happened that the long line had been standing in a downpour and some were wetter than others, depending on the size of their umbrella.  As a consequence of late boarding, these two girls went up the aisle, asking all the single seated passengers if they would please move so the two of them could sit together. They mumbled that they had work to do during the 4 hour trip. To my surprise, not a person budged for them and they had to retire to the rear of the bus and sit separately. A lot of thoughts ran through my mind… and I was left wondering why no one yielded.

Various times I have tried to get great pictures that tell the story of this elevated park-walk.  All have Failed. Here is official information, official photos and tribute to great use of decaying space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Line_(New_York_City)