Nonsensicalness

Well, maybe that's not really a word, but it makes a strange sort of sense in this instance.  I've always wondered about a particular sign, which I hope you can read for yourself in the picture:

It's faded from the sun, and of course the picture was taken through the train window on a sunny morning.   It says no trespassing, in English and Spanish. Which on the surface of things is a not so unusual sign to be found in quasi public places.  Except the location makes me wonder what someone was thinking.  The steps that lead to the gate bearing the sign go from the ground in an area where people are basically not allowed to be, to the platform, where one would wind up if one entered through the gate, where people are expected to be.  So I would think the sign ought to be on the opposite side of the gate, warning people on the platform not to leave it, rather than telling folk who might be on the ground not to climb to the platform.  The gate, by the way, appears to be permanently locked. Or maybe rusted in place, by now.  This is the Jersey Shore, where everything rusts.

Just one of the many incompetencies exhibited by NJ Transit on a daily basis.  If I cared, I might find it embarrassing that someone in an official capacity made such a silly mistake.  As it is, I just find it mildly amusing.  There's not very much entertaining about the daily commute, so you have to enjoy the little things.

Picture of the week

This may be one of the last vestiges of the Harrison that was.  I almost missed getting this picture, I didn't think this would be the first building they would take down.  It's probably my favorite train-side graffito.  "False" is an omnipresent artist, we see his (and why do I assume it is a he???) signature up and down the Northeast Corridor tracks in NJ.  But this time it's different, and likely one of his older works (I'm guessing).  The thing I like about it is the "R" at the end, which is actually a dancer, or perhaps a street dude wielding nunchucks.  Unfortunately, the topmost part of the dancer is already gone in this picture, taken yesterday morning.  Arms formed the top of the "R"; ok, maybe arms with nunchucks, I can get behind that interpretation, with a ball in the center representing his head.

And why, you ask, is the building coming down?  So they can make space for the new multi-million dollar PATH station which is going to bring new life or something to the blighted former industrial town.  A new station which, by the way, noone can afford to build, the town is pretty much bankrupt, but it's going to get built anyhow.  Part of the renovation of the entire rust belt town, which began with Red Bull Stadium and will end who knows where.

So then we will have another overpriced bedroom community attached to NYC.

When I was a kid growing up in this area, people used to make things in Harrison.   No more.  Now they sleep there.  If they are able to sleep.

My elementary school is a few blocks from this former factory.  The Annie bridge is a few more blocks away.  I used to take the PATH to college.  Now I try not to take the PATH, it's kind of like standing in a sardine can.

 Progress.  Bah, humbug.

Reflecting on where I've been since 1976

I just reread my posting about having visited Pace's downtown campus, and can't help but consider the long and sometimes arduous road I've traveled since I left there in 1976.  I certainly can't say it hasn't been interesting.  And I don't need or want to go into great detail here.  But....wow.  There were days (weeks, months, years) when I didn't think I would make it.  And in spite of everything, while I wouldn't say I triumphed, I can state that I have survived a lot of stuff I didn't think at the time was survivable, and here I am, pretty much still intact.  The psychic bruises are finally fading a bit, and some of the memories of the better times are coming back, after years of being locked behind some kind of door in my brain.

That is a very fascinating process, the one where the memories of pretty much everything having to do with a traumatic time get locked away so you just don't remember them, and those months or years feel like a huge blank space in your head.  Then, when time and distance work their magic, little snippets of the past come leaking out, like melting ice seeping under that door, and then you realize the memories are still in there somewhere, just hidden.  If things seem to be ok, little pieces of memory pop back up into the active category, usually triggered by association with something you are currently doing or saying or in my case especially, smelling and hearing.  I get a lot of things triggered by smells and sounds. 

There are also some things that I don't like but can't figure out why, particularly sounds.  For example, I can't stand the sound of car tires crunching on gravel.  There must be some unpleasant association for me, but I have no idea what it might be.  Another thing I can't stand is the smell of beef being grilled.  Burgers, steaks, anything beef-based, the smell makes me nauseous.  I do eat beef, occasionally but not often, and it's ok, it's not that I don't like the taste, I just can't bear the smell. 

Go figure.

back to from whence I came, in a manner of speaking

It's been years, no, centuries, since I've visited Pace University's NYC campus, but I had an opportunity to be there on Sunday for a concert by someone I know.  The concert was great.  The being back was weird.

The neighborhood has changed.  Of course.  In the space of 36 years, nothing much stays the same, I guess.  The Pace building itself has an addition on the top, which to my eye seems odd, and the open rooftop I used to see from my dorm window is now a building, or what could theoretically exist as a building on its own, except it is sitting on the roof of a building.  Weird enough.

And those parking spaces along the Pace building where we all used to take turns in the free spaces created by the fire hydrant being involuntarily removed by a friend of mine are no longer parking spaces, there is no parking on the entire block.  And Nassau Street has been turned into a pedestrian mall.  Good idea, I think. It's way too narrow for cars.

Then there's the space across the street that used to be a ground level parking lot for Beekman Hospital.  I remember keeping an informal count of the predominant color of the cars parked in the lot from day to day - it always amused me that, in a place one would expect might be occupied by the same personnel's vehicles every day, the predominant car color would change daily.

Well, no more parking lot.  Of course.  Manhattan real estate is way too valuable to be used as a street level parking lot.  So they built something on it.  Actually, they built a number of things on it, all contained in one slightly twisted building designed by Frank Gehry.  Apparently, and I recall reading an article about this not so long ago, the lower floors house a school, while the tower is apartments, and rather pricey ones, at that.  The school portion of the building is kind of square and red brick-ish.  The tower is a twisted, dizziness-inducing silver thing, that looks like it is moving even if you aren't.  I recommend standing still and holding onto something stationary if you want to take a close look.  Here's a glimpse:

It's more than a bit disconcerting to have this tower growing out of this base, and both looking like they are from alternate universes, not part of the same building.  But ok.  Whatever.  What fascinates me (and I've been up the ramparts of Gehry's Disney Concert Hall in LA, so I tend to be fascinated by this type of thing) is how the tower seems to move and twist in the wind as you're watching it. 

I think I'll try to go see an apartment up there.  No, I can't afford it, but I can't not take a look, if I can wrangle my way inside.  Besides, the views have got to be spectacular.

By the way, here's a link to the website of the building, go take a look:  http://www.newyorkbygehry.com/

my kind of hummer

We're not talking those oversized suv type things here.  This is a real hummer, the kind nature makes:

And yes, it is a real photo, of a real bird, which I took last week in the real Mission San Juan de Capistrano, with my old as the hills Canon point and shoot.  For anyone who might not know, that is a bird of paradise he is eating from, which is a really awesome kind of flower that I don't think can survive our weather here on the east coast.  I wish it could, though, and if our climate change continues to make NJ feel more and more like California, I might just try planting some in my yard and see what happens.

We do have hummers here, in the right season, which is certainly not February.  Usually people put out fancy hummer feeders, which one fills with sugar water, colored red, since bright colors seem to attract the little guys.

I'm also attracted to bright colors, so I understand how they feel about that.   

rainbows 'r us

One morning this week I arrived at the train station to find people actually smiling.  Never having seen such a phenomenon, I asked around as to the cause, and found this hanging overhead:

Granted, they are not the best photos I've ever taken, and the color seems a bit less intense than the real thing, but then, it's a phone, not a camera, and I was trying to catch it before it faded, and the train was about to pull in and block my view entirely....well.  The long and the short of it is, this was all one rainbow, a full horizon to horizon arch in much more glorious color than you can see in the photos.  I think this is the only place I've ever seen a full arch, really - you see a lot of partial rainbows, like this one from a November day in LA that went from Pasadena on up, but stopped somewhere in the sky:

Sometimes we get full arches over the ocean, and once there was a circular rainbow, also over the ocean, for which I of course did not have a camera handy.  Pretty amazing, someone bigger than any of us is playing with paintbrushes up there. 

it's that siren again

...and Pablo is standing on the back of the couch barking his head off.  Seems like ever since the hurricane, anytime the big siren across the street goes off for any reason, he takes it personally and barks up a storm.  This, from a dog who my mother swears never barks. 

As for the siren, I have no idea why it does what it does.  Tonite it just did the standard siren sound, several times up and down the scale, then a few minutes later the fire department (or at least part of it) went by with their own sirens on.  So maybe this one was a call to the volunteers to get downtown and go on a call. 

Then on other occasions, it does something that vaguely resembles those chimes that grandfather clocks do, only very much electronic and fake sounding.  And very loud.

And sometimes it blows in different patterns, with no discernible reason.  I personally think it might be nice if someone official one day would explain what the various sounds indicate.  When I lived in Ohio, everyone knew what the various types of sounds meant, and most of them had to do with tornadoes.  Here, where I don't think there has ever been a tornado, they blow the siren for different reasons, but I don't know anyone who knows what they are trying to tell us.  So if they sounded a tsunami alarm, for example, I doubt anyone in town would have any idea they were about to momentarily be wiped off the face of the planet.

Maybe it's better not to know?  Considering it is highly unlikely that one could do anything about it anyhow....geography is not exactly our friend here.  We're on a peninsula of sand about a quarter mile wide at its widest point, with the ocean on one side and an estuary on the other.  So if that tsunami did come for us, we'd be gone before you could spell check it.  Gives new meaning to living on the edge.

Weather and social media

Are those two things actually related?  They seem to bear some similarities, I think.  Around here, the weather is something that is almost constantly on one's mind.  The last few days have been very cold and extremely windy.  Brings up the question of how to get the dog out of the house to do his business, and whether I actually can bear to take him out to do it.  I suspect if there is not a human on the other end of the leash, poor Pablo would blow away in the gale.  And he looks as though he is freezing to death, even in his warm coat.

On other people's minds, but not on mine, social media seems to be the object of a lot of attention.  I am getting barraged by requests to "friend" people I've never even heard of - and this is on a Facebook thing that I don't do anything with, I only made a login so I could look at something a real friend of mine put up there.  Then there are the people (some of whom I actually do know personally) who want to attach to me with Linkedin.  I frankly have no clue what one does with either of these things.  Aside from not having the time to find out, I have little to no interest in learning. 

Bottom line - if you want to be my friend, pick up the phone and call me once in a while.  I usually answer the phone, and unless I choose to unplug the whole apparatus, my calls follow me on my mobile, so I am almost always available.  Except when I'm in the opera house, then I shut the thing off entirely.  If for some reason I don't answer, leave a message.  That's what voice mail is for.  And yes, I do know how to listen to my voice mails.  I'm not that old fashioned.

One week in...

...and it looks like 2012 is going to be more of the same.  Hot and cold mixed at very short intervals - it was down to 10F and up to 63F this week.  Tried to rain with little effect.  Mostly cloudy, but mostly sunny, not at the same time.  WINDY....one night I was convinced the entire north side of my house was going to loose its siding, and I would be dragging it back from the middle of Ocean Ave in the morning.  It didn't get quite that bad, but I spent a good day fretting over it, and trying to find one of my many handy-persons who might be able to stop by and reattach what was trying to leave.  In the process I broke three nails and skinned two knuckles, my fretting being accompanied by numerous attempts to put in the fix myself, (all of which blew away) even to the extent of trying in vain to drive a nail thru the vinyl to make it stay.  It stays about as good as the dog does, which is to say, not very well.

It gets exciting around here, but rarely the type of exciting one might actually wish for. 

When my handy-person finally got here, there was much cursing and a bit of banging, and I think he actually glued the siding together so the wind couldn't get under the overlap and tear it asunder again.  Considering the wind was still going at about 50 mph when he was doing this, plus the temp was in the low teens, I can't say I blame him for cursing just a bit.

So it looks as if we might be in for a new siding job, come spring.  Well, after tax season, anyway, which I suppose puts us nearer to summer.  I wonder if it might be possible to have the house covered in Lego bricks?  It would certainly be colorful, which appeals to me, and the interlocking brick effect would seem to be sturdier than the traditional siding.  With super glue to hold it together, it might just last forever. 

The problem is deciding on a pattern.  Should it be random, or ought I have someone design a series of murals for it?  Would I need a special permit for the murals?  Does the town (or the neighbors) have rights of approval for an artistic treatment?

Sigh.  Too many questions, far too many possibilities.  If this goes the way of most issues which have too many potential answers, it too will not get done in my lifetime.  I am good at deciding between a and b.  Once you throw in c thru z as options, I can't make my mind up, and generally wind up doing nothing.  It's safer that way.  Less exciting, yes, and definitely safer.

The longest train ride ever

I got on the train in 2011, got off it in 2012....

Ok, so I'm cheating a bit.  It was only the usual not quite 2 hours on NJT in the middle of the night, it just happened to be New Year's Eve when I left NYC, ahead of the drunken raucous Times Square crowd, and consequently early morning Jan 1, 2012 when I landed at the station where my car was faithfully awaiting my return.

The crowd in Penn Station looked like a regular late night crowd, with the addition of a few dozen (or more) personnel in army garb and external flak vests, toting large automatic rifles and such.  I got on the 11.07 train, neatly missing the revelers who were no doubt still occupying Times Square waiting for the ball (or is it still a rather large apple???) to drop. 

I take pride in the fact that this is the first NYE I have ever spent in NYC, even including my time in college in the city.  I am also proud of the fact that I have never done Times Square for The Event (it's such a tourist thing).  Attribute that to the fact that I don't do well in crowds, both noise-wise and claustrophobia-wise. 

Interesting that even the NYPD was decked out in full riot gear, sans helmets.  I suppose they had the helmets tucked away in a safe yet easily accessible place, in case.  In case of what, I don't care to speculate.

I spoke to one of the Army dudes, and he thought it was getting weird already.  I advised him that this was just a normal looking late night at Penn Station, just wait a while.  I have to admit, tho, that while I don't care for the feeling of being an occupied territory, it is kind of nice to have those people (guys and dolls) carrying heavy artillery keeping an eye out for who knows what.  It's a bit of overkill for the run of the mill drunks.  But if it deters some lowlife from trying to lift my wallet, fine by me.

So, as a result of my off-peak train ride, I was somewhere just south of Perth Amboy when the clock struck midnight.  Contrary to popular belief, I did not turn into a pumpkin on the stroke of 12.  Neither did my car, for that matter.

As far as I know, noone puked on the train, which is better than the usual late night ride.  And only one man of whom I was aware slept through his stop (plus two after it), with a conductor standing over him yelling at him to wake up and get off the train.  The crew was mostly the same guys who take the 12.05 down during the week.  Nice people, tough if they need to be.  Gotta say that about NJT, the people are good.  It's the service that usually stinks.

So.  Pablo is down the block with his third family, having an sleepover.  I get to sleep alone.  My feet will be colder than usual, but I won't have him shaking and scritching every time I turn over.  I count my blessings, small as they may be.

Good night, and happy new year!