Tight Spaces, 311

On Monday this chandelier was hanging on a rack in the tight space between the freight elevator and the entrance to the little photo studio at work, so I had to take extra care not to go flying into the wall as I maneuvered around it. I didn't think to take its picture until later when I realized it had gotten under my skin. The chandelier, though crammed into that cluttered hallway, gave me a sense of spaciousness, the shade of blue made me feel peaceful and quiet, and I was struck by how the etched motif that looks star-like reminded me of a motif I saw in a Dürer print recently, a motif that didn't seem in keeping with the rest of his rendering. I felt like someone else had drawn the stars that surround God's raised hand in the scene that showed the ascension of, I think, St. John. I can see how stars might present a problem for an artist who worked such richness into earthly substances, for whom cloth was not just cloth but something that threatens to come to life. It was very nice leaving the exhibit and spending the afternoon in Central Park, where the rocks that rise naked from the turf are as richly engraved as the skirt of one of Dürer's angels or peasants.

I had an episode at work on that Monday where I thought a slender woman waiting on a 19th St. service entrance stoop was going to be done in when a shirtless madman on the fifth floor saw fit to put a large pail of mop water on the window ledge, the same ledge from which I saw him shake out his mop. I watched it all from the large window in the studio, where I was having a little trouble focusing on work. When I first noticed the pail I was in a dreamy daze and just admired the way the sunlit white of the bucket contrasted with the greyish bricks of 19 E. 19th St. The steam that rose out of the bucket was framed by the grimy pane behind it, which was paired with the smoke rising from the cigarette of the woman smoking in the next window. And then it suddenly hit me that where there's smoke there's fire.

On the sidewalk 5 stories below the man's window I saw children going in and out of the building, men I knew on their break, and that slender woman with her brown hair pulled back in pony tail, directly below the bucket. I was getting very agitated but got the feeling I was having a bout of neurosis. But not everyone thought so and someone suggested I call 311, where the operator connected me to the 911 operator, who seemed to trust my verdict that the scenario I saw before me WAS AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN.

The police officer actually showed up. He buzzed and I watched a man ride down in the freight elevator to answer his ring. The man got out of the elevator and soon my view of both was blocked by a school bus, so I saw only their hands as they pointed up at the fifth floor window in unison, the officer's bare and slightly hairy, the building man's in one of those white and blue textured rubber gloves. From my vantage point their hands looked very small and fine.

The officer walked off, the man with the gloves got in the elevator, and soon he was in the fifth floor apartment with the mopping man, who had put a shirt on. In exaggerated gestures he pointed at the bucket and pantomimed pushing it out the window. So the mopper took it off the ledge, but soon I noticed he had put a pair of heavy heeled women's shoes on there. I got the impression the space he was working in was pretty tight.

After that I thought I saw the mopper looking towards my window, but I guess that was paranoia. Never the less I finished the job I was working on in a section of the room beyond his vantage point. Those cavernous Manhattan streets do call for voyeurism, don't they? Especially when you're spaced out from a head cold. I wonder if anyone has ever produced a play in suites directly across a canyon from one another. I guess the acoustics wouldn't work out, there'd be too much space in between.

By the way, my thanks to the reader who prompted me to see the Dürer show, just in a knick of time. Glad I listened.