Crazy Stable

I swear, this is about the house, and not about religion. Because two religious posts in a row would mean I was turning into a "Catholic blogger," a fate I have fought bravely, because Catholic bloggers tend to be loopy (even ones I really like).

But faith has been on my mind lately, given that Easter and the Child's Confirmation just occurred one week apart. Yesterday's gospel reading was the story of Doubting Thomas, an excellent if inadvertent choice for skeptical and sometimes surly seventh-graders facing a smackdown with the Spirit. (Well, no smack any more, alas; instead of the light blow upon the cheek once given as a foretaste of persecution for one's faith, the bishop now shakes your hand. Unless you are planning a future in mergers and acquisitions, it just doesn't deliver the same thrill.)

I love the story of Thomas, whom I suspect has gotten a bum rap. I don't see him as "doubting," but rather crushed in grief and rage and abandonment, and not about to fall for any cruel pranks, stupid hallucinations, or other possible explanations for the impossible. Then Christ comes back, and he recognizes him by his scars. Not by his glory, or perfection--no Nip/Tuck or Extreme Make0ver here--but by the physical evidence of his torture and execution. Fulton J. Sheen once said, "Never let anyone tell you that all world religions are 'basically the same.' Only we worship a God with scars."

It seems, with passing years, that we recognize one another, in love, more and more by our scars. The evidence of what we've suffered bears the most authentic testimony to who we really are. My cat scratch from my aunt's farm cat, hugged too hard when I was 8 or 9...my C-section squiggle...my worry lines...the latest burn from baking--all would enable those who know me to say, "Yep, that's her." (And those are only the ones on the outside.) A perfect me, back from the dead or even the supermarket, would be unrecognizable and unimaginable, and would scare the hell out of my kid.

Which brings us to the house. When we passed the 20th anniversary here in the CrazyStable and still hadn't wrought any miracles worthy of Ty Pennington, ambition began to ebb inside me (and, I suspect, inside of Spouse as well, although he will admit only to frustration and peevishness). If our fortunes change, we'll still do plenty around here (that is, if our fortunes can stretch beyond a new roof). We only ever got this place about half-renovated to start with, and most of that work needs anything from a touch-up to a total re-do.

  But I've come to terms with the fact that I love this house for its scars. Some more than others, of course. I'll be very happy, someday, to have a good finish carpenter replace the gouged doorframes on the third floor, the ones that suffered the wounds of multiple mortises for countless locks during the Stable's incarnation as a Chinese boarding house.

Other scars, however, will be tenderly conserved, like the taped-on name tag of "M. Ste. Marie" on my office closet door, a relic of the house's 1950s as a hostelry for teachers at a nearby private school.

Nor would the Child countenance the removal or painting-over of this scratchitti, inside a scuffed built-in closet on the second-floor landing: "Alicia's Closet." What long-gone little girl laid claim to it? my daughter loves to wonder. "A brand-new house," she has said, "must be boring. Promise you'll never sell this house!"

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

John 20:24-28

Painting: Li Wei San, Chinese Christian Artist, b. 1928

Artist’s statement: “It is the time of great culture revolution, an old pastor was transferred to do manual labor in the countryside. At middle night he read Bible alone. A stranger visited and talking with him but he did not recognize who he is. Suddenly he looked at the nail mark on this hand, he discovered: He is my Lord.”

"Easter is not only a story to be told; it is a signpost on life's way. It is not an account of a miracle that happened a very long time ago:  it is the breakthrough that has determined the meaning of all history. If we grasp this, we too, today, can utter the Easter greeting with undiminished joy: Christ is risen; yes, He is risen indeed!"

-- Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

Image: Fra Angelico 

 First, Stephen Colbert runs for president. Now, I have renamed my neighborhood through the complicity of the New York Times. Has punditry run amok in this country, blurring the lines between snark and serious discourse? Huzzah!

In this morning's Times City Section, a full-page story tells the tales of how many Victorian Flatbush enclaves yearn for landmark status to avoid being pillaged by developers and scarred by teardowns and high-rises. The CrazyStable's little sliver of Flatbush, Caton Park, is given a respectful and fairly accurate accounting:

 Caton Park, which sits just south of the Parade Grounds athletic fields, is one of Victorian Flatbush’s smaller micro-neighborhoods, with about 50 Victorian homes on a handful of blocks. Its diminutive size means that each house remodeled (or, as many in Victorian Flatbush like to say, “re-muddled”) represents a blow to the neighborhood’s prospects for preservation.

The reporter, Evan Lerner, gets it slightly askew when he says thatWilliam Styron "lived in one of the many large homes that were subsequently converted into boardinghouses"  (Styron lived on the corner in a home that had already been converted to a boardinghouse), but I quibble. Here is the gem:

Some residents worry that too many homes have already been torn down or remodeled beyond recognition. The neighborhood also has the disadvantage of being the product of a number of different designers, unlike some of the areas to the south. But these drawbacks have not stopped the community’s more preservation-minded residents from seeking to keep intact the area they call NoProPaSo (North of Prospect Park South).

Gack! There is just one problem here: Absolutely nobody on earth calls Caton Park NoProPaSo except...me. As a joke in the blogosphere. A joke I shared,  with broad eye-rolling irony, with a New York Times reporter.

[Which japery, incredibly, has been documented in stalker-like linguistic detail by one Barry Popik, an expert on "Americanisms" and a contributer to the Oxford English Dictionary; Barry's  article correctly points out, “"NoProPaSo'—sounding somewhat Spanish, like the Texas town of “El Paso”—had very limited use before the New York Times article. "]

Very limited use indeed, consisting of my inane posts to Brownstoner and, um, here.  Mr. Lerner interviewed me and a few other Caton Park neighbors for the story, although none of us are quoted by name; he took notes rather than use a tape recorder. Perhaps he jotted down "NoProPaSo" and neglected to add a smiley face. Perhaps this is payback for my having continually referred to him in our e-mail exchanges as "Columbia J-School Young'un"  (itself a fond, if labored, running gag from a Times columnist when preparing to share advice with neophyte reporters).  Or maybe this just continues my strange history as a Quote Magnet for the Times (including, once, Sunday page one above the fold, first graf). Even when they leave my name off, they jes' cain't quit me.

Well, let's throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. NoProPaSo, to the barricades!
 

Trailers? On-street breakfast catering? No parking signs plastered everywhere? Oh, yawn...not another major motion picture shoot in the neighborhood! The perils of life in Victorian Flatbush! 

A short walk down Rugby Road revealed the location of the shoot: a lovely corner home that was surrealistically swathed in snow and Christmas decorations. (A nearby platform-lift truck must have been used to apply the rooftop snow earlier this morning.) A crew member told me that the movie was "Wanted" with Angelina Jolie, and that, no, Angie wasn't here today. From the trailer, the flick is a darkly fantastical shoot-em-up, slated for release this June; I wonder if these were very late re-takes, since most of it appears to be "in the can."

How do you make it snow on a sunny day in Brooklyn? Here's how: buckets of white stuff and a steam-producing flare, and lots of running around when the director yells "Snow!" (The director of this flick is supposedly Russian, but the guy today had no Russian accent; maybe it was an AD.)

The whole scene was just a quick Steadicam shot of an actor getting out of a car and walking up the festively decorated steps of the house. The Steadicam looks very cumbersome in use.  Here's the shot.

Right across the street, two parties had reason to feel snubbed by Hollywood's minions. One was  this mockingbird, who ran through an amazing repertoire of calls but was non-union and therefore couldn't be included even as background.  

The other was the neighboring "Spiderweb House," which was a location for "My Super Ex-Girlfriend." This house had been feeling pretty cool about the whole Uma Thurman connection...and then the one across the street scores Angelina!

On Sunday, I made the family stop and wait while I bought an air plant at a delightful store called GRDN in Brooklyn. The little epiphytic plant, which was heavily blogged about recently, can live in partial light with no soil and just a regular misting, making it a perfect candidate to enliven the north-facing third-floor guest bathroom.

Once inside GRDN, however, I was swept away by their delicious decor, sort of "Tuscan villa meets English manor-house mudroom," and all lush and consistent enough to make Martha Stewart's art director weep.  Where on earth does one find blush-lavender roses and white lilacs at the cusp of March? And how could one ever live up to them unless draped over an antique chaise-longue swathed in pearl-colored peau de soie, sipping an apricot-colored glass of dessert wine?

Stores like this (or magazine layouts depicting similar hyperstyled scenes) hypnotize me into thinking that, by buying an objet or two, or an armload of flowers, I could transform our space into...well, into theirs. It's magical thinking, of course; in reality, one gets one's purchase home and perches it against one's real life, and there it is. (The air plant, however, seems content enough alongside my Aunt Louie's collection of tiny bronze pagan goddesses.) For the chronically cash-strapped CrazyStable, achieving a consistent aesthetic, a "look," has always seemed like a distant dream; 20 years into this enterprise, we're still hoping to get all the holes in the walls plastered over.

Which is why I was inspired last Saturday night at the theater. By the play, definitely--the "Scottish play" (I won't jinx my beloved Patrick Stewart, who was thrilling as the "Thane of Cawdor, King hereafter"). But also by the interior physical space of the old Majestic Theater, a 1904 ruin that was semi-renovated by the Brooklyn Academy of Music as a slightly avant-garde performance space. (It was also renamed the Harvey Lichtenstein Theater, alas.) The notion behind the Majestic was to freeze its decrepitude while adding in functional modern amenities; architect Hugh Hardy must have agreed with Katisha of The Mikado that "there's a fascination frantic/in a ruin that's romantic; do you think you are sufficiently decayed?" The critics agreed, praising the "intimate, otherworldly feel" evoked by its crumbling columns and water-stained, peeling paint; Lichtenstein himself, the BAM head who oversaw the renovation, declared, "What I love about the Majestic Theater is how alive it feels when you walk in; how your interest is awakened as you scan the walls, the pillars, the ceiling, the boxes. There is a palpable energy and vibration."

Yeah. That's what first-time visitors to our house are thinking: not, "When the hell are they ever going to finish this place?" but rather, "Wow! I'm digging the palpable energy and vibration of those crumbling walls!" As I said to the generous dear friend who treated me to the Scottish play (the production was quirky but thrilling, by the way), "You know, we liked this look so much, we did the entire house in it!"  

BAM image: Durston Saylor