Crazy Stable

Not one but two book proposals lurk on my computer, waiting to be tweaked and submitted to an (as-yet-to-be-identified) agent. Both books will rock, I believe. But today, leafing through The New York Review of Books, I had a ghastly crisis of confidence--prompted, not by their high-end reviews, but by those numbingly awful vanity press ads. You've seen them: cheesy two-page spreads from Vantage or XLibris "publicizing" their "authors" with blurbs so execrable they call to mind H.L. Mencken's description of the prose of Warren G. Harding:

It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.

These books, created at their unloved authors' expense, hew to a few recurring themes: Blowhard autobiographies. Manuals for saving the world. Religious conversion stories. Heartwarming tales of a hero cat/dog/ferret who saved the author or his child from the abyss. Romans à clef by angry survivors of modern-day conflicts. Bizarre historical novels, usually with a sci-fi or fantasy twist. It's an ocean of quirky, cranky bilge. Amusing myself, I am suddenly horror-struck: One of my ideas is explicitly Christian, the other is a historical novel.

Oh God! What if my book proposals sound like one of these pitiful vanity blurbs?

Now I can't be stopped; I torment myself with visions of a desperate future self, rejected countless times, convinced that digital really has made self-publishing a whole different world now, and blowing the Child's college savings. Intellectuals leafing through The New York Review of Books will pause, between lapping up a post-mortem appreciation of Christopher Hitchens and sighing over a roundup of tomes on post-Obama America, to guffaw at my opus; I will rot in obscurity, with the cranks, the ferret-biographers, the semi-literate zealots, all the poor sods who had a dollar and a dream.

I had to snap out of it, before I opened folders and trashed the beginnings of one hell of a good novel and an intriguing spiritual memoir. Put anything in the XLibris template, I realized, and it sounds like insane crap. To give this theory a whirl, here are three potential "best-sellers" from XLibris, where you can "write your own success."

The tragically unique story of Stingo and Yetta's big pink house. Who is the mysterious Sophie and what is her secret? How will she make her Choice? Deep in the chasms of history lie the answers, where love and danger are common-place and haunt the lovers of today. You will never forget the psychologicle tension of this unforgettable masterpiece.

 A manifesto for eaters! Find the truth behind the ugly rumors and learn how to eat real food, mostly plants, not too much, for health forever! You will find the way to absorb nutrients for a more enlightened era of health and human enlightenment with this scientific revelation of nutritionism gone wild.

Can young Irishman Steven go to encounter for about the one-millionth time the reality of experience, and can he forge within his soul the uncreated consciousness of his race? This very brilliant fictional story will supply the answer, or at least asks the questions.

ORDER NOW!

Top: Edward Gorey, The Unstrung Harp

Howard Carter and team break open the tomb of TuthankhamenThings have been too deep for blogging lately.

On September 2, we "celebrated" the twenty-fifth anniversary of closing on the Crazy Stable. Things are not, alas, much advanced beyond the last big anniversary.  The next landmark looms on October 1: A quarter-century of living under this roof. (Well, okay, under the roof we had torn off and replaced with this roof.)

Overwhelmed by the enormity of it all, I chose my time-honored head-clearer: Throwing stuff out. And what stuff! I have lately cracked open several Rubbermaid storage bins that lay virtually untouched since my mother moved in circa 1987. The trigger was getting a big Ikea cabinet in the pantry--a job we'd postponed for, um, 25 years.

Brooklyn Museum, Luce Center for American ArtSomehow, the interior dimensions of this cabinet had expanded in my mind. Like a Tardis, it was vastly bigger on the inside. Like the Luce Center at the Brooklyn Museum, it would hold and display the accumulated petty-bourgeois treasures of two lifetimes, mine and my mother's. The cut glass, the silver, the ceramics that would be unearthed from their attic exile and displayed!

Instead, the longed-for cabinet filled up instantly with a few big pieces and a lot of pseudo-Tupperware. (I spent weeks rearranging the canned goods, however.) This left tons of stuff with no home except our already tchotchke-crammed surfaces. Frankly, much of the stuff was Mommy's taste, not mine, and bags of it will be on sale this Saturday for the World's Craziest Porch Sale here. Mom's been gone a decade now--it's time.

But other stuff...ah, ouch, agony of decision. Help me out here. What do I do with:

* The glass strawberry we bought on one of our rainy-day gift shop excursions in the Poconos when I was little?

* Two antique crucifixes, both broken beyond repair? (Note to crucifix-makers: The arms are clearly a weak spot.)

* An assortment of silver serving pieces, when I hate to polish silver--and hear my mom's harsh judgment about my polishing neglect every time I take them out of storage?

* Several pickle dishes, when we never really serve pickles? (They do, however, work for Mallomars.)

* Half-a-dozen demitasse cups, when we don't drink espresso?

Except for the Mallomar dish and the strawberry (which brings back the smell of deerskin moccasins and cedar trinket boxes), all of the above may be available on Saturday at shockingly low prices. But I'm especially conflicted about this Belleek sugar-creamer set. 

Not only do we have 3 other sugar-creamer sets...this one brings back Irish Mother Belleek-o-phobia. That's a syndrome triggered by seeing the feather-light, translucent, pricey porcelain, marked by trembling, flushing, and barking loudly, "WATCH OUT for the Belleek! Do you know how delicate that is? That belonged to your grandmother, don't you be the one to break it!" I love this set, really; but if I screech at my family about breaking Belleek, it will have turned into the Horcrux and I into Voldemom.

Maybe I will put it back into its bubble-wrap and just take it out for St. Paddy's Day, with soda bread and Irish tea. Maybe I will toss it, Zorba-like, in a declaration of independence from maternal/material things. Maybe you can pick it up on Saturday...carefully, dammit!

This was the scene post-Irene: one Ent, still standing at its post a foot from our front porch, and leaves and branchlets littering the front yard. That's it. We were spared the wrath of nature. No power loss, roof damage, or flooded basement. This week, life seems suddenly very sweet and precious and good, in the most arbitrary of ways.

When you live in a century-old, freestanding wooden box with a five-story maple growing out from under it, you take Apocalyptic Hurricane Warnings (AHWs) seriously. Heck, our next-door neighbor nailed up plywood over his front windows. We opted for a strategy of cowering and watching lots of television. About 3 a.m. Sunday morning, when the AHWs ramped up from "tornado warning" to "tornado watch," I went a little nuts. Because (a) we have had a tornado touch down a block away, and (b) my fear of tornadoes is morbid, even by scared-of-scary-things standards. And thus did I do what I formerly sneered at: I packed a "Go Kit."

The "Go Kit" has been a long-standing joke in the Crazy Stable. Years ago, Spouse obtained one somewhere; it contains, among other ludicrous articles, a cheap rain poncho and a Band-Aid. Whereas I have always felt that the only Go Kit worth having would contain firearms and a lot of cash. Now, as the winds swooshed outside, I seriously contemplated what to take to the basement if we might emerge to a pile of boards and wet rubble. And what about rounding up the pets? After a direct hit; what do we do with two carriers stuffed full of four idiot cats? Ask FEMA for kitty litter?

I flung a few days' worth of clothes into a bag along with my camera, a flashlight, and some of the one zillion D batteries I'd scored on Saturday. I added my bedroom slippers, picturing myself in a shelter and comforted by their presence under my cot. Grabbed my few good rings; couldn't find my one good necklace. (Burglars, don't even bother.) Jammed in a zip-lock bag of important documents, including our passports so we could move to a less eventful country if need be. (How about Luxembourg? Nothing seems to happen there.) 

But what about the other stuff I'd always thought I'd grab in the proverbial fire? Our wedding album? My box of family recipes? A few precious tchotchkes? Curiously, none seemed very important. I did tuck in my dad's old Latin/English Catholic missal, and his New Testament still lightly pencil-marked from his convert studies. And, as when I take a plane, I put his "miraculous medal" around my neck. Even from the next world, my dad makes me feel protected.

I insisted that Spouse and I take turns sleeping and keeping a vigil for tornado warnings. (This after an argument about whether Flatbush had secret tornado sirens.) One reporter, Tony Aiello, passed within blocks of our house in a live-TV van, which was strangely reassuring. As Irene's less-than-apocalyptic bluster became apparent, we both dozed off, awakening to a mere lashing rain storm followed by whipping winds and clearing skies. The Ent's massive trunk swayed like a ballerina's supple spine; the roots that torment my gardening efforts held fast. We were protected. No cat carriers, basement huddle, bottled water or D batteries needed.

Now, with the videos of heartbroken folks who lost everything, comes the mingled relief and unease. What if we hadn't gotten off lightly; would God be to blame? Or my dad, for not stepping up and interceding? How much could I lose, and still remain friends with the invisible force that gives and guides my life? The wedding album, the house, even the cats, okay, but what of those I love? These questions are even scarier than the $25,000 hurricane deductible that I discovered in our State Farm policy.

Now it's time to rake up branchlets. And to wonder again why faith isn't as easy as it is in Doctor Who. Click the clip to see how it ought to work.

Woman jumping from building, Croyden, Aug 8 2011 (Times of London)

Headlines from my beloved and besieged London sent me back to Bombed but Unbeaten, a book of letters written in London during the Blitz by my aunt, Beatrice Warde. Here, she describes her first time in an air raid shelter, in the laundry room of a “council flat” (housing project) near Victoria Station on Sept. 3, 1939:

There were about fifty of us, men and women. They were all, of course, very poor and “common” people and they were all …as cool as cucumbers—just as gallantly matter-of-fact as you’d expect them to be. One young girl was sniffling a bit, and her friends were jollying her out of it. The men busied themselves in shifting a pile of sandbags. There was no joking, no talk to speak of; the only expression on their faces was one of deep disapproval—the incredulous, “shocked” disapproval of a man who is serene enough in his own mind to feel morally outraged without feeling flustered.

Hackney (New York Times)… I hadn’t of course known up to that time how I’d take it. It’s odd, but the one thing I’d been dreading was the sound of the sirens: and in actuality they weren’t what I imagined at all. The sound was as expected, but the effect on me wasn’t! I just thought “Well, well.” (Mind you, I never suspected that it was a false alarm.) When I’d seen all those grand people toting their gas masks and smiling at one another I felt rather privileged to be in that L.C.C. community laundry; I remember thinking that if that was to be my last ten minutes, I couldn’t have chosen a better place or better company…  

Hackney looter, 8-9-11 (Peter MacDiarmid/Getty Images)Well, then they gave the “All Clear” signal and I hoofed along to the Cathedral and arrived on the dot. There was a wonderful sermon by a Dominican, about Peace. He said Peace was the State of Order—the mind ordered within itself, individuals living in such a state of ordered tranquility as to allow every man his right, nations obeying Law and Order. We were to attain internal peace and know that it was Peace we were fighting for. Very stabilizing and sane.

Looters rob a store in Hackney, 8-9-11 (Peter MacDiarmid/Getty Images)I caught a fast train out of Victoria; it was reassuring to see the balloon barrage in full force around London. The sky was dazzling blue, with great white cumulus clouds, and hundreds of bright little silver fish riding amongst and around them—the sun flashing from each one…

Clean-up volunteers, 8-9-11 (Reuters)…The reason why I feel confident about the British is that they have gone into this thing without any illusions to speak of, without hatred, without any noticeable emotion… These people know what it’s all about. At present—while they can—they’re representing Reason and the Free Intelligence, and going over the Cause as if to memorize it—rather as one learns to memorize a road nowadays by daylight, or to notice, at dusk, where one’s bedroom slippers are.

Clean-up volunteer 'mob,' Clapham 8-9-11 (Times of London)

Last weekend's Forgotten New York walking tour took us to the heart of ridiculously historic Flatbush. It had been many years since I'd walked east to what used to be the heart of the village of Flatbush. We peeked in at Albemarle Terrace, and the group ached with real-estate longing, especially when several homeowners stopped to chat about life in this lovely enclave and its neighbor, Kenmore Terrace.

 This pre-Civil War gem was the rectory to the Dutch Reformed Church of Flatbush, and porches don't get any better than this.

Behind the house, now used for social programs, an effervescent young lady named Katie leaped out of a pile of leaves to explain composting. Behind us, tombstones in the ancient Dutch cemetery gave mute witness to a different sort of composting.

This crossroads, at Church and Flatbush Avenues, goes back way before George Washington slept anywhere. Above us loomed the steeple of a church built in 1786 for a congregation founded in 1654. Around us flowed the hurly-burly of a working-class Caribbean community, which supplanted a well-off middle-class Jewish community, which took over a fading semi-rural village, which faded from a once-thriving Dutch farm town.  

 In the churchyard, we met up with Flatbush Gardener Chris Kreussling, a deeply knowledgeable garden coach who showed off the new native plantings in the Church Avenue communal garden. From these modest shady beginnings, he and his fellow volunteers envision a swath of greenery authentic to time and place; plantings include switch grass and one of my favorites, wild ginger. Around the back of the church, Anne Pope of Sustainable Flatbush and another brave soul were coaxing luxuriant crops from containers. (They all welcome helpers, by the way, if you're itching to get your hands dirty this summer.) Here's Chris with Kevin of Forgotten New York--proud to call them friends.

Yes, some of the tombstones are in Dutch, and the names are a who's-who of Brooklyn streets: Lefferts, Martense, Clarkson (he once owned the land our house is built on). The July sun drove all ghosts away, but at night some folks leave voodoo souvenirs scattered around (like a coconut shell we stepped around).

Our last stop was that gothic masterpiece of Flatbush Avenue, the former Erasmus Hall High School, now broken into five smaller "academies" (the currently trendy solution for large failing schools). Erasmus should be the Hogwarts of Brooklyn, but no one seems to have cared enough to save it in its original incarnation (one that counted Barbra Streisand and Beverly Sills as graduates).

The academic decline is depressing; so is the atrocious neglect of its architectural treasure, in a quadrangle that dates back to school founders Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (among others). This original school building is reportedly in near-ruins; students apparently know little of its history. A statue of Erasmus dominates the inaccessible courtyard; behind him, paint flakes off one of Flatbush's ignored treasures.

Gentrification hasn't swept in to transform old Flatbush, but hard-working and passionate people still love it and fight for it to thrive. Its once-storied institutions serve new incarnations of this resilient community through our chronic struggles. (One tour member, Sarah, Kevin's cousin and a Ditmas Park blogger, used to teach at Erasmus and described the beauty of its interior. "And I won't say a word against those kids," she said with a passion that touched me.) Most of the passers-by probably don't know any more about the steeple and the graveyard than the kids know about Erasmus; we got passing funny looks from hurried shoppers for standing around staring at the cornices. But the truth of Forgotten New York is that traces remain, and the curious find out more, and fight to save what's left...while the city morphs relentlessly all around us.