the green staircase

Beautiful isn't it? That's the staircase in my friend's 15th St. 12.5 foot-wide row house. She lives there with her husband and their 4 children, and their house is one of the coziest most inviting places I've ever been. One day she tolerated me combing through it with my camera, shooting one still life after another, as if I could fill myself up with the warmth and character I find in her house, warmth and character and beauty that belong to her.

I can count on one hand people who have simply blown me away with their kindness and sensitivity. They are few and far between, like my fingers. I'm sure she wishes she could turn it off sometimes, she's so tuned in to some wavelengths of support and appreciation that I can't even hear with my mere mortal ears. It takes quite a lot to get on her bad side. She's cheerful and upbeat long after I would have lost my composure. That's because, all in all, she's well composed.

The green staircase reminds me of knowing people like her, whose depth of tenderness causes some sleeping thing in my heart to reawaken. The green of the wall is the healing power of love, how it causes things to grow, how it covers this world's struggling beings with protection and warmth and support as necessary as the rain is to plants. The white steps lead somewhere beyond my powers of imagination, to a level of purity, peace, resolution and beauty unrecognizable to our worldly eyes. Heaven I guess. This is a climb I whole-heartedly want to make, which I've been attempting with great awkwardness all my life but with slightly more success over the last year. It's not my fault I've been such a pill, we all absorb poisons and beliefs that we then spew onto others in the form of competitiveness, elitism, aggression, greed, desperation, arrogance, fear...

So nice to be reminded that there's another way. Here's a handful of bitch coupons, Lalaleeloo, for your birthday, to redeem at your leisure on my time. So I can feel a little better about myself.

Happy Birthday!

A Tree with Many Names

I've been studying up on this tree. Maybe you know the one. It's the Tree of Heaven, but some call it the Tree of Hell because it grows in ruins. Because of its rancid peanut odor, some call it the Stink Tree, because it thrives in neglected neighborhoods, the Ghetto Palm.

It arrived in this country from Asia in the late 17th Century as a purveyor of the chinoiserie fashionable at the time. Back then there was some confusion among taxonomists who labeled it Rhus succedanea, grand vernis du Japon, Toxicodendron altissima, Rhus Sinese foliis alatis, Rhus cacodendron, Ailanthus glandulosa, and finally Ailanthus Altissima, which means, more or less, the tallest tree of heaven.

It leaves are food for various moths including a variety of silkworms that produce a dull silk called Shantung, it's bark creates medicine for balding, cancer, malaria, cardiac palpitation, asthma, dysentery and epilepsy, and the tree produces toxins that poison competing seedlings. It wants to be left alone to grow, to grow as tall as it can in its brief 50 - 75 year life span. Betty Smith made it famous, it's the tree that grows in Brooklyn. How does one plant get so many names?

St. Patrick and St. Patrick's Day

Parade Information: Monday March 16, 1pm, Prospect Park West and 15th St.



Even though 15th St. is a busy street it has a very odd and strangely village like feel between 7th and 6th Avenues. Yesterday I watched 2 police officers leisurely pass by on majestic mounts just before twilight, they took their time and the elegance of the horse's motions in time with the sounds of their hooves dominated the block. Today what drew me in were these St. Patrick's Day decorations, whose charm the picture doesn't really capture. I associate leperchauns and green beer with that holiday, because I really don't know much about it.

Today I came across a morning prayer supposedly written by St. Patrick. I never even new there was such a thing as a morning prayer until 2 weeks ago when I was reading a National Geographic article about Lubavitchers in Brooklyn recounting Rabbi Schneerson's charisma. I wonder what it must have been like to hear him talk. I want to go to his grave sometime and look at all the prayer notes that people leave there. Anyway this article mentioned a Jewish morning prayer and I regret that I have never heard one. My mornings have no room for prayer, just rushing around, slogging around, I feel like the day starts before I can find a proper orientation.

I wonder if any Irish people still say St. Patrick's morning prayer:

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven–
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendour of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock

It conjures an image of the scope of the universe you might experience standing on a sea cliff on the Emerald Isle. It doesn't mention God at all, but concocts a picture of gloriousness drawn from the splendor of the elements.

St. Patrick. Who was he?

Parrots on 15th Street

I saw these for the first time yesterday. Now I'm a believer. Before that I thought this Brooklyn Parrot thing was a well orchestrated hoax. This one appears to oggle the abundant mystery berries.