jolie laide

jolie laide

I started this when I lived in Brooklyn and struggled for grace in a city that grants moments of beauty and ugliness breathtakingly close to one another. Now I live in a place where things are a different kind of ugly and the beauty is pedestrian. I struggle with that.

9.10.2006

I can hear the marching band coming when it is still blocks away. I drop my paint brush, lace up my sneakers and go outside to watch. It is some kind of Masonic parade, somber black suits punctuated with strange white aprons, winged purple wrist cuffs, red vests adorned with six pointed stars. They are walking to a stiff version of "Amazing Grace" attenuated with extensive drum solos.

Now I am waiting for the rain that has been threatening all afternoon to finally break. The last light of day is bouncing back from a mirror in the living room. A black cat is stalking pigeons on the roof of the grocery store, and now here comes the call to evening prayer from the mosque, swirling, diving, getting increasingly urgent before fading out.

3 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

I love these vivid moments that you capture - the pulse of the city

it lifts me up

thanks

8:27 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

you are so welcome. did you ride your bike along the Hudson this evening? What did you see?

8:31 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

lovers & thieves

I left my bike discreetly hidden by a bridge escarpment (as I always do) and walked up the hill to Troy, NY - only to find upon my return that my bike (though locked to itself with one of those hefty u-locks) has been handled roughly, and indeed my mini air pump attached to the frame has been ripped off its holoster on the frame

I'm reminded of a famous existential philosopher (I don't re-call which one sadly) upon being hit by a car - gasps in relief in a ditch by the side of the road, thinking "at last something is happening to me!"

all part of the violence of social living (which I celebrate)

10:20 PM  

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