a little prayer for baseball

If there were ever a time to believe, it would be now. Unlike the end of last season, the sad start of an improbably baseball-less fall for us Mets fans, this is a beginning. The beginning after the end. A resurrection, of course.

After a 2-1 series victory over the Marlins last week and 0-2 series loss to Atlanta, we’re in a spot here, Mets fans: It’s time to believe or not. Ok, so we’ve already lost Pedro from our pitching line-up, but Santana is as amazing as promised, and other new Mets (Church, Schneider, Pagan etc.) are looking spry. It’s the last season at Shea Stadium, the crape myrtles are just about to bloom. Even the father at St. Mary Star of the Sea, the massive old red brick church behind our apartment building, is in the spirit. Me, I think I’m getting religion too.

So here’s a little prayer, lofted to the gods of baseball: Give these guys another chance…Give us another chance. We all deserve it. All baseball fans (even Yankees fans) think they are long-suffering. But our suffering is fresh. We need to believe again, and with the quickness.

I think the Mets are making it easy to believe again. How quickly we forgive them for their massive implosion, their inexplicable going-away. Or maybe it’s the nature of baseball; for a new fan, it’s a little too soon to tell. But I know that it’s good; it’s a lesson: Let go of the past…Believe in today, because it’s all we truly have.

on Bear Mountain

On Bear Mountain, we started on the ground – an hour’s drive up the silent snake of the Palisades Parkway, memories of Paterson lingering on the edge of New Jersey before we slip into New York State. Its mountainous otherness. We live in this state and never go to it. Strange.

But after finding a crappy map and taking a chance, the whole family set out – two people, two dogs – to climb a mountain under a coldish March sky, on a clear almost-spring day, to get a little closer.

A ring around the lake by the deserted inn, literally, with boards on the doors and windows. Nothing around in the huge field surrounding it but goose shit and brown grass. Strange children out of school in the middle of a Tuesday with even stranger adults. Fishing lures dangling in the bare tree branches. Here we go again, said one child. Tiny cold waves coming from somewhere. Dirty dog paws.

Then the ascent. Sharp turns and lookouts for the blazes. Scrabbling over huge rocks and up mountain goat-like paths. The same feeling as skiing down a mountain: Look a few feet ahead, make tiny plans as the route unfolds. Dream about it later, fall up or downhill, depending. I’ll have the dream tonight, you said, of falling over tree roots again. We approached the lookout tower, deserted in its warlike glory, the Hudson Valley streaming below us. Turkey vultures glided over us, so close their red heads were wounds in the sky. They looked down at us. Doxy looked up at them.

The top of every mountain is the same: The world in miniature, the vantage point that attracted the vista-wish to see it all at once, all of it, and the promise to appreciate the nooks and crannies, the ice still molded to the boulders below, the tiny creatures rustling in the leaves – more, or at least differently, once you’re back down on planet Earth.

looking out

Clouds heavy over the water to the south in the morning, clearing in the other direction over downtown, clearing over the city, the city before the city, the one I came to much later but this time stayed. Sometimes New York rejects you on its terms and you have to come to it on your own terms.

Then, once you’re here in this city of dreams and nightmares both, walking its sidewalks, letting yourself day by day become more and more a part of this world, once you’re here, a day (or a night) comes when you realize you’re looking out, from the perspective of the city, not at it anymore.

What this place does to you is create a space so big inside your life (strange, given that everything about your life must be so physically small here to fit in the tiny places we live) that no place else could ever fill it. And you know this, or sense something about it, and it’s why we all walk around so worried and sad or overwhelmed and joyful: On one hand we know we’re ruined, and on the other, we’re actually here…

more than keys

I have now made yet another sacrifice to New York: My keys. To lose one’s keys is always annoying, but this loss is even more intense, because on my keys I carried Oso’s last dog tag. And this loss is even more infuriating because I must have simply dropped them on the sidewalk in front of our apartment…It’s the only place I was between getting home last night and getting inside. Who would take keys? Probably the same person who took the mattress but not the futon frame, and who rummaged through our trash.

All morning, I paced around the apartment, searching under, between and above everything here. Quizzed my poor husband until he told me to stop. Searched the trash twice, walked around the block even more times. How could they be gone? How could that little piece of silver that I rubbed on all my subsequent dog walks without him be gone?

Finally, I gave in, called a locksmith. My full name was on Oso’s tag, and while it was an old address, from an old life back in Jersey, if it was anyone other than a homeless person who picked up my keys, I could be found. True irony.

And a lesson from this place, I think, in transience, yet again. We hold on to things that signify others, as if those things form some last link, a crucial tie that keeps the lost ones with us. A symbol of how he was mine. It said so, right there in etched steel. But it can’t be true. Oso’s still gone, tag on my key chain or not, and I’m still here, only slightly safer behind a new lock on our door.

kensington blogade

A lovely group of bloggers from and of Brooklyn united last Sunday in Kensington for lunch and a reading from our work. It was great not only to learn about so much wonderful online writing about Brooklyn...but also to make human connections with these writers. We all love this place - or some part of it - and that love gives our writing an authenticity that I think attracts many to these "blogs" we keep...Many of these are gathered in my links section to the right. Please visit!

There were multimedia presentations - The Blue Barn is linked on my site now, and we were delighted by Tom, who draws cartoons that appear in the daily Metro newspaper, a series of which he shared with us. There was a woman who wrote about her observations and adventures in Prospect Park every day. And a man who keeps his green thumb on the pulse of greenery in Flatbush. One woman and her husband moved to Brooklyn from Denver, much to the dismay of their baffled families. Please read one of the best explanations I've ever heard about why we writers and arty-types want to live here.

Reminiscenses about punk New York, dreamy explorations of dog ghosts, and political indictments of poor city management: We are doing it all! Thank you, Joyce of Bad Girl Blog for organizing an enlightening afternoon. And thanks to everyone who reads us.