Time Fades Away: One Saturday in Washington Heights

Today was a hurricane awareness day in Washington Heights, I think. I actually didn't check the weather, but the sky seemed sullen and foreboding. One of the benefits of Washington Heights, however, is that -- due to our high elevation -- we have very little cause to worry about global warming flooding. This has not prevented our basement from flooding many times, though, along with the resultant bills of some consequence from the plumber (note to young readers: this is an ideal profession in the modern era).

I was impressed by the size of a barge on the Hudson River.

I pointed it out to Elektra and Dante, who were predictably more interested in watching the birds and napping (respectively).

Stephen and I decided to go to the house. While he checked the mail in the lobby, I took a picture. I admired the pre-war elegance as much as I detested the garish color scheme adopted a few years ago by the former manager of the building. LIke most buildings in this part of Washington Heights, it could be restored to something of great beauty, but whether this will ever happen remains very much an open question.

Outside on the corner of 160th and Broadway, I noted the above sign. Is it wrong to ever laugh at death? If so, I was wrong. Stephen took this to be evidence of the small community in which we live but are not at all a part of; putting on my lawyer's hat, I pointed out that I had never seen another sign like this in the years in which I had lived here. We did not discuss the matter further.

In our front yard, I found a small paper doll that someone had thrown there a few days ago. There are a group of kids who like to sit on our neighbor's steps and toss garbage into our yard. The other day a girl happened to hurl a big bag of shit into the yard at the exact second we arrived. 'Who threw that?' Stephen asked, and a girl raised her hand. 'Come pick it up,' he demanded. 'This is not a garbage.' And she did, and even apologized with the kind of complete insincerity you might expect from a teenage girl.

A few minutes later, I looked outside and saw a livery-cab driver yelling at these same kids. He accused them of throwing something under his car, and though it was his word against theirs, I believed him!

In truth, I am less bothered by the kids than the fact that my neighbor allows them to sit on his steps without any repercussion. Needless to say, most of our conversations with the neighbor are terse if not exactly unpleasant. I have often been struck by the idea that neighbors are much like life in the respect that you could always want more of either, and so you should probably try to be grateful for what you have. As I know from our apartment building, some neighbors truly deserve the 'human glue trap' treatment (via playing stereos until 5am or throwing garbage out the windows), which could not be said of our house neighbor. You probably won't be surprised to learn that we often spend a lot of time fantasizing about moving to the Estate Section of Riverdale, which offers the implausible ideal of rural and relatively neighbor-free living within the city boundaries. (This will probably require hitting the lottery, though, which sadly did not happen today.)

Anyway, back to the house: we went to the backyard, which by this point of the summer has become something closer to a jungle than a garden. We discussed plans to avoid the monochromatic 'August slump' next year; in fact, Stephen already planted some daylilies we recently ordered for this purpose; at the moment, however, they still look like onion shoots.

Desperate for color, I took photographs of the cut lilies our friend Ken brought the other night when he came for dinner. As a child prodigy on the piano, he used to spend 8 or 9 hours per day practicing; now he only spends 2 or 3, which still seems like quite a bit. Although he says he has only 70 percent of the technique he had in his twenties, he feels like his interpretative powers have increased dramatically, and he knows his limits much better; on the whole he feels like a better player, which gave me hope as I considered my own creative endeavors. Someday, I hope to be one of the world's greatest bloggers! Back in the apartment, the sky remained heavy with clouds as the bridge stood elegantly by, beautifully resonating with serene ambivalence for all of my trifling concerns.

'Time fades away'

--Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Comments

[Lukas]

This is so good. I was telling someone today that this weather seems to make the greens more vibrant and fertile looking, but I have a weakness for this aspect of the Pacific Northwest. The lily illustrates what's lacking.

[James van Maanen]

Lovely post, Matt. Your hope for "someday" may be coming true...

[Matthew Gallaway]

Thanks for the kind words James van M and Lukas!

[Gavin Plumley]

Weisst ja nicht wohin. Zum Grafen Octavian. Gib's ab und sag': Da drin ist die silberne Ros'n. Der Herr Graf weiss ohnehin.

[Matthew Gallaway]

Thank u, Gavin!