The landscape I know

Sometimes I cannot remember where I am. I cannot remember if I'm in Oregon or New York. For example, I just read that Jonathan Safran Foer lives in Brooklyn and I thought Of course and I pictured Brooklyn as a grayish spot on a map, a hub of brownish buildings cobbled up over sidewalks lined with black garbage bags and London Plane trees, all far east across the continent. And then I thought, No, it's just across the East River. And just a few days ago I thought of London Plane trees and how their hardy leaves make good ghosts and that we should go pick up some to paint for Halloween and then stopped because I don't know if London Plane trees grow in Portland. I think they don't. Because I was in Portland then. (Where we have two enormous healthy elm trees that make as good company as the Hudson River, but that is another story.)

The story today began with a trip up the Hudson to Cold Spring, NY, where we bought pottery and dress-up clothes. We had duck with fennel and guinea hen with apple ragu for lunch. The leaves along the Taconic were orange and yellow, and sometimes blew across the road. The sky in the afternoon turned dark blue-gray and splattered us with some heavy drops, but not too many. There were barn sales and tag sales and traffic. And I said it was odd, the way I love the Northeast landscape. The old rocks and huge deciduous trees, the soft hills and majestic light. It makes sense to me. Woods with little underbrush and white three-story farmhouses. Its odd because I still feel like I'm a foreigner here; all the memories of these places were made by my adult mind in the last 15 years. And even though I've repeatedly visited places like Rhinebeck or Saugerties or Cape Cod I know I don't exactly belong. That is not to say that I do not drive like a New Yorker, or expect people to be direct and knowledgeable like New Yorkers, but that in my heart of hearts I am not a New Yorker.

And it is the opposite in Oregon. I feel that the landscape is my own, not because it makes sense to me or is beautiful, but because I just know it. Because as we drive the geography reveals itself like the shape of my own arm. I know where to turn for Canby without knowing that I knew where to turn for Canby. I can guess that the trees in the orchard we are passing are hazelnut, but I wouldn't have known three minutes ago how to describe a Hazelnut tree. Not the way I could describe a Linden, Honey Locust, or Copper Beech. New York is my adult mind. Portland holds my child's mind, a mind that holds far more than I knew.

Years ago my Dad came to visit me in New York, and then we drove out near Akron, Ohio, where he was born and raised. And as we rode down wide, flat lanes lined by brick houses so far back from the road that the lawns seemed oddly large, he would tell me things like, This is where Aunt Anna lived or This is where we sold flowers on Saturday or This is the road to the old coal mine. And while the landscape seemed hot and yellow-green and sort of all-the-same to me, it spoke of different things to him. I wonder if he has felt like Oregon is a foreign country all this time.

To my adult self the hills around Portland are dark and spiky and a little unfriendly. They seem too new and the deciduous trees too small (and too few). There isn't any schist lying around sparkling, not enough rock in general. I despair of split-level or ranch homes or slanty-wood-fronted buildings. I despair of people who never disagree with you, of people who drive slow. People who drive as if they are apologizing for their carbon footprint with timidity, No, no, you go ahead. At least the bicyclists are worth their salt and seem to think the point of transportation is getting there.

And yet, despite all this, Portland is where I belong. The land is connected to places and people that are my own. The roads lead to Dad's house or Mom's house, to the old nursery, or by skate church, or near my high-school, or my university, or Saint Nicholas. Hippo Hardware hasn't changed, nor all the strip clubs, or the coffee shops. I pass the place where I fell out of Dad's truck and Heidi yelled Amber's dead! and I felt myself all over and thought I don't think I am. I live a few blocks from the dry cleaner where I worked two afternoons a week in high school. I don't feel even remotely foreign there.

I think of the children's book by Allan Say, many times read to my children, Grandfather's Journey. When the grandfather was in Japan he longed for California, and when he was in California he longed for Japan--and when the grandson grew up and moved from Japan to California he felt much the same way. (Allan Say, coincidentally, lives in Portland, Oregon.) And I too, long for a different landscape: for golden magnificence of New York when I am in Portland, and for the damp clean of Portland when I am in New York.

the view

Not only have I had two days without much nausea, but my most recent diptychs are framed and mounted for the open studio tomorrow, and--most significantly--we signed a lease today for a new apartment! We're going to be renting a three bedroom with river views up in Hudson Heights (the neighborhood I've been pining after).

This wasn't an entirely foreseen turn of events, but as I have slowly felt less awful I also felt slowly felt more and more like moving. And the sooner the better. I was dreading the winter cooped up in these 600 square feet with an antsy toddler and an oversized belly. Not to mention that my tolerance for the more ghetto elements of our present neighborhood has all but dissipated.

So, on Wednesday evening I spent a little time on craigslist checking out the HH apartment listings. I arranged to meet with two realtors on the following day two see a number of two-bedrooms and one elusive three-bedroom. The first apartments I saw were dimly-lit, with awkward floorplans, and no views to speak of. The elusive three-bedroom with river views had been promised by a realtor who was having difficulty getting apartment access. He promised to meet up with me as soon as he could get us into the apartment. I wandered over to Frank's Market and bought a nectarine, Greek yogurt, a can of lemonata, and string beans from the deli. Then I walked down to the wall overlooking the Hudson river and slowly ate the beans. A line of trees stretched along the cliff to the north of me, along the river. Behind them stood a number of old apartment complexes. As I sipped the lemonata I thought how lovely it would be to live in one of these apartments, gazing out at the Hudson through the trees. Ike was home with the babysitter sleeping, I wasn't in a rush to be anywhere,  and was miraculously without nausea. I felt cheerful for the first time in months, I didn't care if the realtor showed up or not. There was no one else on the street with me, and only one car passed the whole time I loitered there. As I was finishing the nectarine, the realtor called and said he'd found a way in, but I'd better come quick. Luckily the building was right around the corner from my little lunch spot. He escorted me up to the third floor (in an elevator) and opened the door to 3G. Immediately as I walked in I saw the trees: the two large windows in the living room looked out toward the river through the trees. And not only that, two of the three bedrooms also looked out to the river. The third bedroom was tiny and had a window facing south toward another building, but it was a real bedroom. The apartment wasn't pristine, and it was still inhabited by tenants, but it was old and grand and lovely. The kitchen had no window and was barely larger than our present postage stamp kitchen, but I didn't care. I wanted the views, the big bedrooms, the old walls with original details, the high ceilings, and the hardwood floors.

And today Charles met the realtor and signed a year's lease, beginning June 5th. Hurrah!

Now the work begins. I hope the nausea stays away!

sublime subway brass

A few months ago, as I was running to catch the 6 train at GCS, I heard the wail of horns. Not the angry sound of taxi horns filtering down from the street, but brass horns: trumpets and trombones or the like. The horns were joyously howling over a deep rhythmic percussion, reminding me of Balkan gypsy music, rock, and jazz at once. I stopped running to the 6 train, and as if hypnotized, walked in the direction of the horns. A substantial subway audience crowded around a group of seven or eight young African-American men trumpeting a swelling wail into the busy subway corridor.

I stood transfixed, hair standing up on my bare arms. I don’t remember but that I didn’t move for at least ten minutes. My appointment seemed unimportant. The swaying musicians were unbearably beautiful; they transformed the grimy passageway into something akin to sacred. Between songs I finally broke away, putting money in the bin at their feet. I purposely did not look at the stack of CDs next to the bin, nor at the name of the band. I wanted to remember them this way, sweating in the subway to the howling passion of their music.

I have heard them playing in the subway since that evening. Each time I stop and listen, each time eyeing the CDs suspiciously. Last night on the way to my AT lesson they were playing in Union Square subway. I didn’t have any cash on me, but I did get the name of the band: The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. I did a google search on them and found a few interesting links, including a New York Times video (click here) and their own blogspot site (click here).

I think next time I pass them I'll buy a CD.

barscene with glasses

Last night I went out the way most single New Yorkers do, the way people do on shows like Sex and the City, the way that includes bars, cocktails, and men who claim to know you from somewhere. Except, well, it was my first time.

Really.

I've been to bars before, drank, even chatted once or twice with strangers while drinking there, but I've really never gone out to a pick up bar (do people call still them that?) with the intention of playing the game. Most of my previous bar-visiting was with Veronika, and I think between her default I want you to die now look (used on everyone besides hopeless alcoholics and men with French bulldogs) and my reluctance to talk to men whose musical and literary tastes have not been pre-approved, we really didn't get much, well, "action." So last night was, hmmmm, entertaining.

I went out with the most beautiful woman I know, which may have something to do with the fact that there was no lack of "action." The stereotype turns out to be true: all you do is walk around with a drink in your hand and men walk up to you and start (mostly) inane conversations, if you talk to them for a while they buy you another drink. It was a little unnerving. I didn't know what response they expected from me, so I tried for polite, distant, and vaguely funny. I found myself curious, what do these people do with themselves when they're not drinking alcohol and talking to strangers? Are they really getting what they want out of this? All three places we went were packed. The men mostly seem surprised when I asked them what they did for a living. Am I not supposed to ask this? I wondered. Most conversations turned around my glasses (was I a librarian?) or the fact that I was from Oregon. My friend kept blurting out to people that we'd met at a Russian Orthodox Church, which isn't true, but it got a lot of play. I was asked to show my cross as proof, and then the men dangled their gold crosses in return. I was surprised how many of them wore crosses.

The majority of the men we met were lawyers or in some sort of finance field. They didn't seem too happy about it, either, and they were all drunk. The nicest award goes to a police officer named Rafael who stepped in when a Spanish man insisted we take his number, despite my friend's forthright assurance that neither of us would ever call him. Rafael was there with a group of friends from high school, all native New Yorkers, who more or less worked in blue-collar jobs. While Rafael talked to my friend, I more or less met all his friends. They were hilarious, sweet, kept calling my friend "Courtney Love," and were anything but sleazy. Unfortunately, they also talked a lot about television, and I had no idea how to participate. But they made sure we got in a cab safely when we decided to head over to the Samovar.

If I had really been looking for a man last night I think I would have been depressed afterwards, but it was more experiment than anything. Now I know what to do at a "pick up bar, "--hopefully I won't have to use this skill too often.

crestwood at twilight