8.27.2007
THE DELUGE
G.K. Chesterton
Though giant rains put out the sun,
Here stand I for a sign.
Though earth be filled with waters dark,
My cup is filled with wine.
Tell to the trembling priests that here
Under the deluge rod,
One nameless, tattered, broken man
Stood up, and drank to God.
Sun has been where the rain is now,
Bees in the heat to hum,
Haply a humming maiden came,
Now let the deluge come:
Brown of aureole, green of garb,
Straight as a golden rod,
Drink to the throne of thunder now!
Drink to the wrath of God.
High in the wreck I held the cup,
I clutched my rusty sword,
I cocked my tattered feather
To the glory of the Lord.
Not undone were the heaven and earth,
This hollow world thrown up,
Before one man had stood up straight,
And drained it like a cup.
8.22.2007
New York City
Aug 7, 2007
To Mr. R. Gibson Harp,
If it weren’t for the heat, the swelter of hopping the C 36 blocks from the Hell’s Kitchen apartment, after two avenues of walking and five flights of stairs, I’d start every day with a few hours at Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee in West Village. Little, and intended that way, Jack’s sells as good a cup of coffee as I’ve ever bought. I sit in the front window on bench seats that cats should curl up on. The four wooden tables, each with two chairs, are no larger than a milk crate, and they seem to be cut from the deck of an old man’s sailing ship, stained and re-stained and buckling under time. The baristas, who'd shudder at that corporate plastic marker, aren’t so friendly, but the coffee is fine, as in the old sense of the word.
I order a large cup. The girl, in a black-and-white tight-fitting shirt and holey jeans, goes ahead and makes it with milk and sugar. As it brews, Jack's trademark works, a rigged machine to stir the grinds in process. They attest the invention accounts for the smooth taste. The behind-the-counter milk and sugar saves them and I from the hassle of a station, where people clutter and drip cream and reach over one another for the right sweetener and pine-scrap stirrers. It all seems a waste once you get away from the option.
I’d spend, like I said, any morning at Jack’s had the Village been my summer home instead of Hell’s Kitchen. And had heat not fallen like fog.
It’s the warmest week thus far in New York. The sky, the last two days, has been grey and swallowing. It’s foreboding. Motionless. No matter, I’ve been out today, Tuesday, spending the afternoon hours in the midtown library, the one with the grand, concrete lions. In the upper room, halved into vast rows of brightly varnished reading tables, adorned with classic green glass lamps, I put in at the information desk for three books: a history of Grenada put out just four years ago; the 1968 nonfiction biography of a bullfighter, El Cordobes, with the most wonderful title, Or I’ll Dress You in Mourning; and, a book about street busking called Passing the Hat by Patricia Campbell. Each came up in about fifteen minutes – my number was 168 for the Grenada and bullfighter books, 029 for PTH. I knew this by a square screen discreetly inlaid into the wood-walled divider, its matrix of dotted points-of-light simple like a older basketball scoreboard. The screen sticks out seamlessly in a room that makes me think of a Carnegie brother hiring a fresco painter for the Cumberland Island place or some hotel lobby. These ceilings are like Michelangelo’s, only empty of Beings, just heavy white clouds and the bluest sky that make me think of the farm.
I browse through the street busking book, which read a bit dated, but did its job, telling me about Will the Juggler and the guitar player at Trolley’s turn, describing a mime’s bit about an apple and a arrow gone astray, all acted out on the Met’s steps. It reminded me of Key West years ago, sailing in and out, stopping for two evenings. The best of the best streetmen winter there, spending the hour before and the hour after sunset on Mallory Square. I see swords in the air and a magician on a sturdy blue fruit box and the tumblers and tappers all along the seaside pier. It’s a magic thing to witness. How I bet my Vermont friend that those traveling showmen must pull in two hundred dollars a night.
I read up then set off to find a Barnes and Noble, where I looked over three food magazines - Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and Food&Wine - trying to find a spot for a essay about Oil Down, Grenada’s national dish. (I spent a week there in June. And haven’t stopped thinking about the kindly cops in the rain ever since.) Afterwards I walked up from 44th and Fifth to 51st, and along that stretch, I found myself among the fancy clothiers I’ve always heard of. Saks, Cole Haan, Kenneth Cole, Banana Republic, Sephora, Gucci and Cartier. Most are housed in buildings with ornate golden facades of angels wound in ivy and birds’ nests and such. It’s quite Roman. Even the grates over the trees shine like polished bronze. They may be bronze. St. Patrick’s Cathedral sits among all this glamour and wideness, a thoroughfare girls with money dream about, and the spired place pokes at my conscience, like the men with the cardboard signs, the one who’d written 100 words about his plight near the duck pond last afternoon, the one I’d hurried by, so I turned after the store with ITALIA carved into the stone and headed west straight towards Radio City.
Some British rock group Deep Purple plays the Hall that night. Odd-looking groupies wait by the side door.
Such are the walk-around thoughts in New York in the summertime.
Tell Ruth to count me in for Labor Day. And that I suspect Arthur has an answer to my question.
So far is good,
TB
8.07.2007
THE DELUGE
G.K. Chesterton
Though giant rains put out the sun,
Here stand I for a sign.
Though earth be filled with waters dark,
My cup is filled with wine.
Tell to the trembling priests that here
Under the deluge rod,
One nameless, tattered, broken man
Stood up, and drank to God.
Sun has been where the rain is now,
Bees in the heat to hum,
Haply a humming maiden came,
Now let the deluge come:
Brown of aureole, green of garb,
Straight as a golden rod,
Drink to the throne of thunder now!
Drink to the wrath of God.
High in the wreck I held the cup,
I clutched my rusty sword,
I cocked my tattered feather
To the glory of the Lord.
Not undone were the heaven and earth,
This hollow world thrown up,
Before one man had stood up straight,
And drained it like a cup.
posted by TB at 21:35
Ninety Days
Ninety days does not seem like much. Ninety days is a season, less really, or the perfect average of such. A couple years ago, I took some time, left my job, and flew to Latin America, for 90 days. Today I found a picture and my old journal. Here's the last entry.
"It is my ninetieth day since the beginning of this trip. Ninety days since February 1, when I landed in Guatemala, very wide-eyed, a bit overwhelmed. Weary of staring faces, uncomfortable among beggars with unsitely, mangled bodies. Lost in the speech. I'm 90 days past then, and I'm on my way home. I dont know exactly the things I've learned on this trip down the isthmus, busing among cities and smalltowns, beach and forests, poorest of poor and the wealthy. I dont have a set list, an ordered group of aphorisms, proverbs, wisdom bottled. I hope my heart carries away something, some truth, some good. I just dont know what. At least not now. I hope I am humbled, that I'll give more quickly, love easier, see. "
Then on the adjacent page of the linen colored book, I wrote down names.
"Luis, Marta, and Ana Marcela Cuellar; the brother who read Ecclesiates; Gladis; her sister Flor; Buzz; Grupo Bongo, the wedding band; Brady and Gil; the blinking boy; Svetka, red-head dread-head; Lolita and Juanita of Santiago; Maria del Mar, Aidi, and Gianina; Halle; Leonardo el vigilante; the Bocas; and the Ngobe man from the comarca (seen above) Vicente." Panama City.
8.13.2007
Ninety days does not seem like much. Ninety days is a season, less really, or the perfect average of such. A couple years ago, I took some time, left my job, and flew to Latin America, for 90 days. Today I found a picture and my old journal. Here's the last entry.
"It is my ninetieth day since the beginning of this trip. Ninety days since February 1, when I landed in Guatemala, very wide-eyed, a bit overwhelmed. Weary of staring faces, uncomfortable among beggars with unsitely, mangled bodies. Lost in the speech. I'm 90 days past then, and I'm on my way home. I dont know exactly the things I've learned on this trip down the isthmus, busing among cities and smalltowns, beach and forests, poorest of poor and the wealthy. I dont have a set list, an ordered group of aphorisms, proverbs, wisdom bottled. I hope my heart carries away something, some truth, some good. I just dont know what. At least not now. I hope I am humbled, that I'll give more quickly, love easier, see. "
Then on the adjacent page of the linen colored book, I wrote down names.
"Luis, Marta, and Ana Marcela Cuellar; the brother who read Ecclesiates; Gladis; her sister Flor; Buzz; Grupo Bongo, the wedding band; Brady and Gil; the blinking boy; Svetka, red-head dread-head; Lolita and Juanita of Santiago; Maria del Mar, Aidi, and Gianina; Halle; Leonardo el vigilante; the Bocas; and the Ngobe man from the comarca (seen above) Vicente." Panama City.
posted by TB at 13:24
New York City
Aug 7, 2007
To Mr. R. Gibson Harp,
If it weren’t for the heat, the swelter of hopping the C 36 blocks from the Hell’s Kitchen apartment, after two avenues of walking and five flights of stairs, I’d start every day with a few hours at Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee in West Village. Little, and intended that way, Jack’s sells as good a cup of coffee as I’ve ever bought. I sit in the front window on bench seats that cats should curl up on. The four wooden tables, each with two chairs, are no larger than a milk crate, and they seem to be cut from the deck of an old man’s sailing ship, stained and re-stained and buckling under time. The baristas, who'd shudder at that corporate plastic marker, aren’t so friendly, but the coffee is fine, as in the old sense of the word.
I order a large cup. The girl, in a black-and-white tight-fitting shirt and holey jeans, goes ahead and makes it with milk and sugar. As it brews, Jack's trademark works, a rigged machine to stir the grinds in process. They attest the invention accounts for the smooth taste. The behind-the-counter milk and sugar saves them and I from the hassle of a station, where people clutter and drip cream and reach over one another for the right sweetener and pine-scrap stirrers. It all seems a waste once you get away from the option.
I’d spend, like I said, any morning at Jack’s had the Village been my summer home instead of Hell’s Kitchen. And had heat not fallen like fog.
It’s the warmest week thus far in New York. The sky, the last two days, has been grey and swallowing. It’s foreboding. Motionless. No matter, I’ve been out today, Tuesday, spending the afternoon hours in the midtown library, the one with the grand, concrete lions. In the upper room, halved into vast rows of brightly varnished reading tables, adorned with classic green glass lamps, I put in at the information desk for three books: a history of Grenada put out just four years ago; the 1968 nonfiction biography of a bullfighter, El Cordobes, with the most wonderful title, Or I’ll Dress You in Mourning; and, a book about street busking called Passing the Hat by Patricia Campbell. Each came up in about fifteen minutes – my number was 168 for the Grenada and bullfighter books, 029 for PTH. I knew this by a square screen discreetly inlaid into the wood-walled divider, its matrix of dotted points-of-light simple like a older basketball scoreboard. The screen sticks out seamlessly in a room that makes me think of a Carnegie brother hiring a fresco painter for the Cumberland Island place or some hotel lobby. These ceilings are like Michelangelo’s, only empty of Beings, just heavy white clouds and the bluest sky that make me think of the farm.
I browse through the street busking book, which read a bit dated, but did its job, telling me about Will the Juggler and the guitar player at Trolley’s turn, describing a mime’s bit about an apple and a arrow gone astray, all acted out on the Met’s steps. It reminded me of Key West years ago, sailing in and out, stopping for two evenings. The best of the best streetmen winter there, spending the hour before and the hour after sunset on Mallory Square. I see swords in the air and a magician on a sturdy blue fruit box and the tumblers and tappers all along the seaside pier. It’s a magic thing to witness. How I bet my Vermont friend that those traveling showmen must pull in two hundred dollars a night.
I read up then set off to find a Barnes and Noble, where I looked over three food magazines - Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and Food&Wine - trying to find a spot for a essay about Oil Down, Grenada’s national dish. (I spent a week there in June. And haven’t stopped thinking about the kindly cops in the rain ever since.) Afterwards I walked up from 44th and Fifth to 51st, and along that stretch, I found myself among the fancy clothiers I’ve always heard of. Saks, Cole Haan, Kenneth Cole, Banana Republic, Sephora, Gucci and Cartier. Most are housed in buildings with ornate golden facades of angels wound in ivy and birds’ nests and such. It’s quite Roman. Even the grates over the trees shine like polished bronze. They may be bronze. St. Patrick’s Cathedral sits among all this glamour and wideness, a thoroughfare girls with money dream about, and the spired place pokes at my conscience, like the men with the cardboard signs, the one who’d written 100 words about his plight near the duck pond last afternoon, the one I’d hurried by, so I turned after the store with ITALIA carved into the stone and headed west straight towards Radio City.
Some British rock group Deep Purple plays the Hall that night. Odd-looking groupies wait by the side door.
Such are the walk-around thoughts in New York in the summertime.
Tell Ruth to count me in for Labor Day. And that I suspect Arthur has an answer to my question.
So far is good,
TB
posted by TB at 11:29
THE CARIBBEAN DETECTIVES AND THE OIL DOWN
I returned a few weeks ago from Grenada, the southeastern Caribbean island 90 miles off Venezuela. The rains of mid-summer began our final day on the tiny isle, known for its lush forests and bounty of spices. My second-to-last day I took a cab from my enclave getaway ten minutes into Town, the hilly collection of plaster-walled buildings laid out like uneven layers on a cake. Boats bobbed noiselessly in St. Georges bay.
It was eerie quiet wandering past closed shops and boarded-up office buildings. Between the firehouse and English phone booths to the high point, colonial Fort that overlooks the city across the lagoon, I passed three people. It was a holiday of sorts, officially Corpus Christi Day, but locally dubbed Planter’s Holiday. Two men I met by a rusted gate outside a crumbling building on the southern hill told me so.
“People are planting before the rains,” they said.
Looking over their shoulders, I saw about a dozen men huddled under an open-air portacache. A couple small fires glowed under two primitive-looking pots. Huge breadfruit trees stretched into the opening and a sweet smell caught my attention. They smiled and stared, and, honestly, something like nervousness started coiling in my stomach. The Southernboy in me spoke up.
“What you cooking over there?” I said.
The men lit up. “Ah, Ohl Duum,” they said. Oil drum, I asked. “No, Oil Down. The island stew. Would you like some?”
These men were on holiday as well, choosing to cookout minus their wives and families. The twelve of them befriended me with Jack Iron, an over-proofed local rum, and a bowl of Oil Down, Grenada’s national dish. Cooked over exposed flame in two blackened iron cauldrons, which looked to be made from halved oil barrels, Oil Down’s main ingredients simmered. According to the detectives, rich coconut milk, chunks of the potato-like breadfruit, pig’s feet, or trotters, and callalou leaves were ready. I told them it reminded me of something from Alabama, a dirt road, Mobile Bay soup with collards and catfish I once had at a crossroads cafe.
These men, dressed in oversized tee shirts, khaki shorts, and flimsy Caribbean flip-flops, told me all about the dish. The one who spoke most held a stature over the others, and they called him Detective Gill. As he sliced open a breadfruit from the nearest branch, I asked him why.
“We are police officers,” he kindly said.
A younger officer poured me another Jack Iron. One wafted the sugary steam towards my leaned-in face. Another pulled up a few large leaves of callalou to show me.
The deserted building that covered our meal was the old police station. It took major blows in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan pummeled Grenada, the smallest independent nation in the western hemisphere. As hiking guide and amateur naturalist Denis Henry lamented to me the previous day, the storm destroyed the upper canopy of giant gommier, penny piece, and chataignier trees. More than 50% of the island lost homes. And downtown St. Georges, even three years later, remained battered still.
Though still gorgeous, ribboned by white sands and jewel water, the island sobered me up with its slow rebuilding stories outside the bungalow retreats. And my afternoon with the policemen instilled a new sense of what it is to endure.
What did not get taken by the worst storm to hit Grenada in 50 years, what I saw with my own eyes, and tasted in two helpings, was the simple blessing of fraternity among men. Food cooking over an open fire on a rainy holiday by the sea.
I returned a few weeks ago from Grenada, the southeastern Caribbean island 90 miles off Venezuela. The rains of mid-summer began our final day on the tiny isle, known for its lush forests and bounty of spices. My second-to-last day I took a cab from my enclave getaway ten minutes into Town, the hilly collection of plaster-walled buildings laid out like uneven layers on a cake. Boats bobbed noiselessly in St. Georges bay.
It was eerie quiet wandering past closed shops and boarded-up office buildings. Between the firehouse and English phone booths to the high point, colonial Fort that overlooks the city across the lagoon, I passed three people. It was a holiday of sorts, officially Corpus Christi Day, but locally dubbed Planter’s Holiday. Two men I met by a rusted gate outside a crumbling building on the southern hill told me so.
“People are planting before the rains,” they said.
Looking over their shoulders, I saw about a dozen men huddled under an open-air portacache. A couple small fires glowed under two primitive-looking pots. Huge breadfruit trees stretched into the opening and a sweet smell caught my attention. They smiled and stared, and, honestly, something like nervousness started coiling in my stomach. The Southernboy in me spoke up.
“What you cooking over there?” I said.
The men lit up. “Ah, Ohl Duum,” they said. Oil drum, I asked. “No, Oil Down. The island stew. Would you like some?”
These men were on holiday as well, choosing to cookout minus their wives and families. The twelve of them befriended me with Jack Iron, an over-proofed local rum, and a bowl of Oil Down, Grenada’s national dish. Cooked over exposed flame in two blackened iron cauldrons, which looked to be made from halved oil barrels, Oil Down’s main ingredients simmered. According to the detectives, rich coconut milk, chunks of the potato-like breadfruit, pig’s feet, or trotters, and callalou leaves were ready. I told them it reminded me of something from Alabama, a dirt road, Mobile Bay soup with collards and catfish I once had at a crossroads cafe.
These men, dressed in oversized tee shirts, khaki shorts, and flimsy Caribbean flip-flops, told me all about the dish. The one who spoke most held a stature over the others, and they called him Detective Gill. As he sliced open a breadfruit from the nearest branch, I asked him why.
“We are police officers,” he kindly said.
A younger officer poured me another Jack Iron. One wafted the sugary steam towards my leaned-in face. Another pulled up a few large leaves of callalou to show me.
The deserted building that covered our meal was the old police station. It took major blows in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan pummeled Grenada, the smallest independent nation in the western hemisphere. As hiking guide and amateur naturalist Denis Henry lamented to me the previous day, the storm destroyed the upper canopy of giant gommier, penny piece, and chataignier trees. More than 50% of the island lost homes. And downtown St. Georges, even three years later, remained battered still.
Though still gorgeous, ribboned by white sands and jewel water, the island sobered me up with its slow rebuilding stories outside the bungalow retreats. And my afternoon with the policemen instilled a new sense of what it is to endure.
What did not get taken by the worst storm to hit Grenada in 50 years, what I saw with my own eyes, and tasted in two helpings, was the simple blessing of fraternity among men. Food cooking over an open fire on a rainy holiday by the sea.
posted by TB at 14:13
