General Admission

It was a a black box theatre, about 40 seats total. For the 7 pm show, the doors opened for seating at about 6:50. She was right behind me, the 4th person to enter. She sat down beside me in the first row, in the middle. There were a couple of empty seats to her [our] right and to my left, two empties. We sat, chatting lightly with our programs in hand. At about 7:10, a group of 4 young people entered the space and we noticed them, because they stood in front of us. ” We would like to sit together, would you mind moving down’, they asked her as she was on the ‘end’. She didn’t answer. ‘Are you saving those seats for someone?” they asked her as a follow-up.  She didn’t answer. ‘We would like to sit together and if you are not saving those seats, and would just move down…’ They said. She got up and moved down. I followed her. That left 4 seats smack in the middle of the front row. As they were collecting themselves to be seated she turned to them, from her now end seat. “If you want to sit there, all together, I suggest you arrive before those of us who are already seated. There is no reason, that your coming late, entitles you to ask those already seated to move so that you can be seated in a row. I got here early, so I could sit exactly where I wanted to sit in a general admission and I resent your asking me to move. You are not to be chatting during the performance anyway, so what does it matter, and in fact it is quite rude to ask others, who have arrived on time and chosen exactly where they want to sit, to move to accommodate you.” And then she was silent. I was silently cheering inside. The 4 looked at her, mumbled among themselves and then said, ‘Here, have your seat back…mumble, mumble…’ and they went to the 2nd or 3rd row to find seats. There was some accent mumbling in those rows to accommodate them, but on the whole there was little commotion.  We did not move back.  At 7:20 it was not yet begun when 4 late comers arrived and to their delight, found seats empty in the front row.

Spam

1174. That is how many ‘comments’ this site has received and they are all spam. I #1. don’t understand who they are targeting. #2. Why would I ever visit their site when they are taking my time to delete them as spam. #3. What is their business goal? They have me totally confused as to their goal. And they take a significant amount of time for me to delete when 185 arrive in a 24 hour period. Welcome to the internet!!

Each Other’s Good Deed

I arrived at the bus stop on 7th and 44th, as he passed by hawking tickets to the Comedy Club. His is a difficult job and I had had a difficult day on all levels. For some reason he came over to chat and ask if I wanted to buy a ticket. I told him I lived here, and he told me New Yorkers go to comedy too. I agreed with him, but said other things were always getting priority. So he said, let’s strike a deal…Because you live here, the ticket is already half price and good until February 2014. You pay me whatever you want that is more than a dollar. So I looked in my wallet, pulled out a bill, and we were both pleased. And this is a ticket for 2!

Whimsey

It began at 4:00 am.  By 8:30 am the shouting and banging and loud discussions were completed.  The car then sat until 2:30 pm! when the two actors arrived.  Hopefully you can see what I see.  This was outside my window, and is the set up for a car scene, where you see the occupants chatting with one another as they drive along.  The camera in front is mounted on rails that ride over the hood on top of a protective blanket.  There is a second camera, riding shot gun on the trailer rails and blocking the entrance of the car by the passenger side door.  All of this is mounted on a trailer that is attached to a truck, square shaped and larger than a big RAM pick up.  There are lights mounted on the back of the truck. By the time the two male actors arrived [unrecognizable to me, but that says more about me than them] the count was 28 males and 4 females to get the show on the road.  

The final picture is all the detritus waiting for their return.

Just Like His Mother Did?

The scene caught me by surprise. I was again walking down the tree-shaded lane in the Village but not so late at night this time. As I came to where the bed had been previously, I was distracted by movement on my left. It was a very tall man with his back to me, standing beside the very tall tree, adjusting his pants and shirt. I turned to look to my right because something had caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It was his unoccupied bed. But the way it was: there was a small pillow placed in the center at the top, and the cover was ‘turned down’, like a Bloomingdales displayed bedspread. Just the way a mother would do it for a child in anticipation of the child’s going to bed. It was 63 degrees tonight.

At 5:00 am I awoke to the sound of cars driving in the rain.

Cement

Walking home in the dark, along a tree lined street in the Village, means walking in the shadows at times. All of a sudden I realized that the shadow to my right, was not cast by the tree on my left but was a person bundled up in a dark cover. The sidewalk was narrow and I walked close. The part of the face I could see, not covered by the wool cap, gave me to believe it was a male person. He looked to be asleep. The temperature was about 45 degrees. As I continued walking, I thought about lying all night above the cement sidewalk; about the cold that radiates from the cement into one’s very bones. It couldn’t much matter what sort of pad he had between himself and the cement, as the night wore on that hard cold had to seep in.

A Missed Opportunity

He was standing mid block on 10th Street, near the shoe repair shop. As I hurried by, he said, ‘Don’t you have some money for a guy to get something to eat’. It was about 12:30 pm. I had no change, and was too ______ to give him an unbroken $20. But what I could have done, I did hesitate further along, I did look back, I did think seriously about it, what I could have done is invited him to the restaurant on the corner and given them the $20 and asked them to give him whatever he wanted for that amount. I still don’t know why I didn’t.

Voting Day

Yesterday, I boarded the now infamous M11 going south and walked to the back of the bus, sitting near to two persons having a conversation in Spanish. At the next stop, one of them disembarked and the left-behind-one, moved up the aisle and engaged another passenger in Spanish.  As I watched, and the next stop approached, all six persons on the bus were conversing in Spanish as they all stood waiting to exit.  At the designated stop, the driver opened the doors to let them off with a final sentence in Spanish. After everyone, but me had disembarked, I said, ‘ Well, was I the foreigner on the bus or what’?!  He laughed. The traffic, he said, had been horrible for hours.  I suggested that it might be because of voting day; both sides were fearful of losing and that made everyone tense, because everyone could count on either winning or losing. He bought that suggestion, he said. A few blocks later, at the end of the line, I thanked  him, in Spanish of course, as I exited.