The Corona Diaries: Day Thirty-Four

Sharon’s Garden at the Litchfield Villa in Prospect Park. I knew about the villa, which is now owned by the Parks Department, but I didn’t know about the garden. Adding this to the places-I-love-in-New York list.

 Breakfast at Tom’s Diner on Washington Avenue

A walk in Brownstone Brooklyn

Cherry blossoms in April

The fountain in Grand Army Plaza

The fountain in the Frick Museum

The steps (plus everything else) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The pre-war and brownstone buildings of the Upper West Side

A walk on Wave Hill in Riverdale

Anything at the Hungarian Pastry Shop in Morningside Heights

An egg cream at the Lexington Candy Shoppe

An assortment from Li-Lac Chocolate

The Corona Diaries: Day Thirty-Three

Why do we live in cities?

We end up in cities for all sorts of reasons. Family, opportunity, culture are just three that come to mind. 

What we do in them is the important question. They have to bring us some kind of joy. If not, what’s the point?

New York and I have always had a complex relationship, which I won’t go into at this time. With the sadness of the streets right now, it feels like the right time to celebrate all the places I love. Which, I pray, I can visit once more when this tragic ordeal ends.

The Rose Reading Room at the 42nd Street Library

Spring flowers on the sidewalks

Matzah Ball soup at Eisenberg’s lunch counter

Linens at Mood Fabrics in the Garment District

Dishware from Kam Man Grocery in Chinatown

Dinner at Gene’s Restaurant on West 11th Street

Shopping for shirts at Brook’s Brothers

The Boat Lake in Central Park

The dog pond in Prospect Park

The roses at the Brooklyn (and New York) Botanic Garden

The star-studded ceiling at Grand Central

Coffee and a classic at The Film Forum

The Art Deco glory of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings

The back stack at the Strand Bookstore

The fountain at Lincoln Center

The corner table at Caffe Reggio

Everything at Three Lives Bookstore

Bottled ink from the Fountain Pen Hospital

Burgers at the Waverly Diner

A walk along Hudson River Park

Everything at Save On Fifth

The intimacy of Washington Mews

The playground at Washington Square

The window table at Fanelli’s Café

The black-and-white floors at Bloomingdales

Dim Sum at 88 Palace

Marzipan from Schaller & Weber

Pretzel sticks at Orwasher’s Bakery on 78th Street

The Double D Pool

The Red Hook Pool

The Carmine Street Pool

The Hudson River branch of the New York Public Library

Leroy Street in the Village

Bocci at Bryant Park

The giraffes at the Bronx Zoo

Chicken Paprikash at Budapest Café

Watching the Hudson from Riverside Park

The list certainly goes on; stay tuned…

The Corona Diaries: Day Thirty-Two

 

This week my Writer’s Circle met for the first time on Zoom.

A delightful meeting; it was good to catch up. And check in. One of the questions we asked was “what have you lost?”

My answer was travel. The ability to get in the car and drive upstate. Or out of state. For the moment, my travel is on my TV screen. In the past week, I’ve been to Paris, Florence, and Rome.

We will be home for at least another month. I will have to plan my itinerary. Even if it means not leaving my armchair.

The Corona Diaries: Day Thirty-One

The sadness of the steps.

We deliver meals to my dad and I ask my husband to drive down Fifth Avenue so that we can see Central Park in spring. Red bud blooms and there are daffodils poking their pretty faces above the ground. Tulips are everywhere.

And then we pass the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Which looks like it is midnight, only in broad daylight. The steps are empty. There is not one soul to be found anywhere. 

On any given day in spring, these sunny steps would be teeming with humanity, people from all over the world coming to see art, sitting with a friend, watching the world go by.

But today, there is no one.

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty-Nine

Milo loves to sing.

I discovered this one day when I was practicing the Pineapple Leaf Rag, by Scott Joplin, on the piano. Why Ragtime? I have no idea. Except that what began as a whimper slowly turned into a full-on howl.

And then there was Mozart. I haven’t practiced the Piano Sonata in C Major in ages, but the one thing the quarantine has given me is time, so I’ve revisited pieces I have not seen in a while. 

And, sure enough, there was Milo, accompanying Mozart. And me. And there was no question about it: It was a fall-on howl.

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty-Eight

Today began with Milo’s tummy rub. Thank goodness. I needed to play with him.

Milo loves to get his tummy rubbed. He lies on his back, and puts his paws up for you to hold on to. 

Sometimes I wonder at the simplicity of his life. All he asks for is food, water, a walk, and play time. 

How lovely…

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty-Seven

Reuben made things happen.

We always wanted to have my father, Daniel, record a CD of his piano playing. In the summer of 2001, Reuben suggested I form a production team to make this happen. The CD, which included works by Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, and Schumann, was recorded in New York, on July 23rd.

And then 9/11 took place. What did the world need more at this time than the comforts of Beethoven? In addition, a portion of the CD sales went to the American Friends Service Committee, No More Victims Fund to benefit 9/11 relief and education efforts. 

The result – Daniel Gutoff, Solo Piano Works – has given a lot of people great pleasure. Stay tuned, as we investigate how we can share this CD digitally…

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty-Six

Reuben loved the opera.

Sometimes I would call him on the phone and could hear WQXR playing classical music on the radio on his end. I will really miss our regular calls, when he would ask me how things were going on my end.

If I told him I was home listening to Tosca, on Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, he would have liked that.

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty-Five

And Reuben was a man of opportunity.

From a young age, he taught me that opportunities were always in front of us. It was simply our job to open our eyes and find them.

In the late 1970s a film came out called Stevie, about British poet and novelist Stevie Smith. Reuben, knowing that I loved literature, made a novel suggestion: why didn’t I pick up copies of Smith’s poetry and sell it to patrons on line waiting to see the film?

Although I loved the idea of it, the reality was a completely different thing. I was at that “difficult” age – thirteen -- and the last thing I could picture myself doing was walking up to total strangers on the street and asking them to buy a book. To, of course, say nothing of the fact that no movie theatre manager would let a teenager cut into their ticket sales.

Still, it was such an amazing idea. I never took Reuben up on it, but I did learn something more lasting: the ability to always try and forge my own way, without asking someone else’s permission.

Reuben was always a man of business and I was always a creative. At times, we weren’t able to see eye-to-eye on certain things, yet this was a moment when his business acumen merged with his understanding of my love of art and literature. 

In the end, Reuben won. He taught me to always look for the possibilities.

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty-Four

Reuben was also a man of focus. 

He was part of that generation that did one thing at a time. When he was reading the paper, he was reading the paper. When he was having a conversation, he was having a conversation, And when he was watching a movie, he was watching a movie. Preferably in a theatre. 

He was always up on the latest films and was crestfallen when the Paris Theatre closed. The scene of many a New York premier I had my own Paris memories. One was how I always associated it with the sound of horse hooves on cobblestones because my parents and I went to see Howard’s End there when it opened in 1992. The acoustics in the Paris were excellent, and I was struck by how crisp and clean the sound of the carriages of England sounded on East 58th Street in New York.

“Reuben recently said “I don’t understand being on your phone, doing all these other things, when you are home watching a movie. I like to see a film in a theatre.”

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty-Three

Reuben was a man of routines.

Today, I want no routines, I prefer simply to lie in bed, read books and watch movies. I will, however, through sheer force of will, get up, dress, and do my Pilates routine. 

Reuben was devoted to his workouts and -- into his 90s -- went to the gym and did Pilates four times a week. It is beyond me how he skied and played tennis into his late 80s. 

Several years ago, his brother -- my father Daniel -- fell and was recuperating in a nursing home in the neighborhood. Needing his classical music, I went to Radio Shack. Finding an old school FM radio, the young clerk told me he had to retrieve the model from the basement. Coming back up the stairs with it, he was clearly winded. “You need Mr. Pilates,” I told him.

“Mr. Pilates?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Pilates – my 90-year-old uncle. He goes to the gym and does Pilates four times a week.”

The clerk stared at me as if I was a creature from another planet.

“Maybe I should call him,” he laughed.

“Yes, you should,” I agreed.

I am devastated that I never interviewed Reuben, as I always said I would, about his attitude toward physical health. I remain grateful that we started the conversation, as we left a doctor’s appointment together, in late January.

“Our family always focused very heavily on intellectual rigor, which is wonderful. I felt that it was equally important to balance out the model with physical health, as well.”

“Ah, the Greek ideal…” I answered.

The very least I can do today is get out of bed and honor Reuben with my morning Pilates routine. If there is one thing I know, it will not be nearly as rigorous as his would have been. 

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty-Two

January. It begins with a newspaper story. My uncle and I discuss the virus, as I take him to a doctor’s appointment. I don’t think much of it; as usual, I have lots of other things to think about. Don’t we all?

Next it becomes part of our daily news. My husband talks about it, and the numbers of Chinese citizens in quarantine. Still I am unconcerned. My attitude, deeply flawed I know, is that I will deal with this if and when I need to.

Then it reaches our daughter’s college campus in Dublin. There is one case, which shuts down a department. Her classes proceed. At least for this week.

Now her seminars are cancelled, and there is no reason for her to stay. The arduous process of getting her home begins.

The end of March. We are all home for days, and my uncle, who I speak with almost every day, has not returned my phone call. “I’m at Lenox Hill,” he says, when I reach him on a Thursday evening. “I have symptoms.”

Admitted to the ICU, he fought mightily, though with a leaky heart valve, anemia and an ulcer, the odds were most certainly against him. I was sure he would not make it through the weekend. And yet, he somehow managed to pull through the week, dropping his temperature, and returning to normal vital signs. Could it be possible? Might he survive this? Was he really Superman?

Last night I received the news. He was on morphine. Ultimately, he was not able to come out of the sedation that a week of being placed on a ventilator requires.

Reuben Gutoff. August 6th, 1927 – April 6th, 2020

 

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty One

Practicing being present. I started this piece last year and was thinking this week about how important it is to be present right now.

Carmel is a lovely upstate town.

Quiet, rural, much less suburban than many of its Westchester counterparts.
Or at least it was, back in the early ’80s, when my mother and I found ourselves on a train or bus — I can’t quite remember — to the home of my aunt Lillian. She was hosting a retreat for her fellow participants in “The Work”, a spiritual practice based on the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff. My parents met in a Gurdjieff meeting in the mid-1950s, and several of my father’s family members were also involved. 

The pilgrimage to Carmel was, I’m sure, my mother’s way of introducing me to a spiritual practice as a young adult. Maybe she thought, “if not now, when?” Her efforts at rejoining the Russian Orthodox Church had not proved so successful. I think she and I, (age 16 at the time) were not prepared for a regular confession practice when she asked the priest at the local church about the requirements for returning parishioners.

I remember only a few odd details of the weekend at Carmel. There must have been meditation sessions, and walks in nature, and I do recall a very handsome, dark-haired man with a mustache, but that’s about it. Oddly, I can see my attire on our first day more than anything that was said or done during it. Perhaps I was holding on to the image of my white, two-piece peasant dress with dark, red embroidered flowers and brown cowboy boots because it was concrete, something solid, while my relationship with my mother was more of a mirage, a mystery that I was destined to try to solve for the rest of my life.

Carmel was the beginning of a long journey towards being present. In a few years I would be a very confused and unsure-of-myself freshman in college. I remember walking on the lawn from the gym and thinking that the ultimate message of The Work is to live in the moment. What a simple message, and one that solved so many problems. I didn’t have to worry about the impending paper, the massive reading, or my failing relationship with my mother. I could just ask myself what I was doing right now and focusing on this was, as it turned out, more than enough.

I regularly hear the admonition to take it “one day at a time”; but what if one day is overwhelming? Towards the end of her life, when my mother was ill and I was a parent of young children, I remember occasionally feeling completely incapable of taking on the day. One afternoon I was exhaustedly climbing the subway steps to pick up the girls at school and wondering whether I would make it to the top. That’s when it hit me: I didn’t need to take on the day; I just needed to make it to the top of the subway steps. If one day at a time didn’t work, perhaps five minutes at a time would.

The other lesson I learned at Carmel was how to develope a daily gratitude practice. It took a long time to come to fruition and it wasn’t until I had children of my own that it truly dawned on me: as I looked at my young daughters, I realized I couldn’t ask for more. I had everything I needed. My family was healthy, we had a roof over our heads, clean water, and enough food to eat. How many people in the world can say that? 

These days, I am taking small comfort in the gift of being present. I believe it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”

The Corona Diaries: Day Twenty

“Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers.” – Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

I am no gardener, but I have spent a lot of time in gardens.

Of course, visiting the gardens of others, whether friend or professional, is always more pleasant than tending my own, because I neither have the knowledge nor expertise to make the garden of my dreams come true.

What I have spent a lot of time doing is cleaning up gardens. Weeds, vines, and volunteer trees – I have dealt with them all, and their utter disregard for my need for control. 

My own little yard in Brooklyn is one mess; it has lost its lawn, the ivy has taken over, and the fence began coming down last summer. As we watched, the yard, which once had azaleas, wild roses, and morning glory, began looking more and more like Miss Havisham’s wedding table, perfect in its state of decay. Then, one day, someone came over and commented on how nice our back yard was. Really? Could they have meant that or were they being kind?

I have learned to listen to the voices of others, in order to understand the inadequacy of my own, which chastises me for not making better gardens and for not having the skills to realize my dreams. Are these dreams at all realistic? Or are they sheer fantasies?

In Virginia, the garden of my later mother-in-law, Maria Prytula, was once a dream. A wild idyll on the top of a hill, it laughed at the local style -- trim, clipped, and mowed. It was the style of the buzz cut versus the head of frizzy hair. But it was a garden of paradise, with red bud, magnolia, and daffodils, to say nothing of honeysuckle, trumpet vine, and the vine I love to hate, wisteria, which after a season of trimming once landed me in a doctor’s office needing cortisone shots. “You can only get this shot three times in your life,” he told me. “Hopefully, it works the first time.”

After Maria’s passing, the garden began its own descent into decay. The wisteria began to weigh the deck down, and the trumpet vine simply began to take over. There hasn’t been a day that I have worked on either garden, and thought about du Maurier’s line about nature taking over.

Which is what nature does, in the best and worst of scenarios. If we find ourselves in such a moment right now, I somehow take great comfort in the chaos of it. It stares me right in the face, reminding me of my absolute lack of control, and dares me to do something about it.

I once had a fascinating conversation with the minister at the church where I taught. He asked me how my day was going. “Today is one of those days where I feel like I am just bringing order to chaos.” I answered. “I have lots of those…” I then proceeded to tell him about my childhood jewelry box. It opened with a little spinning ballerina and had a music box in it as well. However, more often than not, what was inside was a tangled mess of bracelets and necklaces that came out in one unit. I would sit on my bed and painstakingly unravel every single piece until I had separated each one and put it back in place in the box. There was something so pleasing about this activity. 

The minister simply looked at me when I was done and said, “Anita, the creation story is about bringing order to chaos. Indeed, if you think about it, everything we do is about bringing order to chaos.”

I was floored by this. I just looked at him and thought, “This is why you are a minister. You can take my silly jewelry-box story and turn it into something profound and so much larger than myself.” 

And so, I pick up my clippers, both large and small, and go outside, where spring reminds me of its renewal and I begin the process of making order out of chaos.

The Corona Diaries: Day Nineteen

Outdoor pools are my happy place. I’m not sure if they’ll open this year; I can only hope…

The following is a piece I’ve been working on for the past several summers: 

Swimming Pools

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to fly. The act of swimming comes close.

I’ve been in the water since childhood. As a little girl I played in Hempstead Bay while my mother swam the breast stroke near my grandparent’s house in Sea Cliff. When my family moved from Elmhurst to Yorkville, our brand new apartment building had a pool on the roof for summer use. I did not have baby swim lessons and one of my earliest memories was, as a four- or five-year-old, jumping into the pool in an inner tube and sinking to the bottom when my arms went up into the air. The lifeguard came to my rescue.

Pools always represented a kind of freedom to me, where I could get away from my dysfunctional mother and the noise of her unhappiness. When I learned how to swim I loved going underwater. My head would descend below the surface and suddenly there were no sounds; coming up again I would hear children’s happy screeches and I would feel completely refreshed.

I’ve swum in all types of pools: public, private, community, gym. Community pools are where my heart is; there are so many different people who swim in them from massively different socioeconomic backgrounds. My favorite pools are outdoors. The best ones are Olympic-sized, and are shaded by trees. I can swim all the laps I want, then dry off under a tree if I don’t want the sun beating down on me anymore. I love the overheard sounds at community pools. When, for example, did “Marco” get replaced by “Popcorn?” as in Marco Polo, which I recently heard at a community pool in Morristown, New Jersey.

New York City has public pools in every borough. It’s astounding to me that, for the price of absolutely nothing, you can walk into any city pool and swim for free. Well, there are rules: you have to show your bathing suit to the entry guard, and a padlock, because you have to use a locker, and you can’t bring anything on deck except a towel. What you don’t have to show is identification; you could live in Niagara Falls and show up at a pool in New York City and waltz right in. Every other community pool I’ve been to, you have to show a pool pass or pay a nominal fee. 

I’m lucky enough to have the “Double D” (Douglass and Degraw Street) pool down the street from me, but sometimes there aren’t enough lifeguards to open the lap lane, so I have to leave the neighborhood for a larger pool. This summer I ventured over to the unbelievably-large Red Hook pool. The first time I walked in the heat and reacquainted myself with Carroll Gardens, a neighborhood I haven’t walked through in a while.

The next time I took the R to the F and got off at Smith and 9th Street (what we used to affectionately refer to as “Smith and Wesson,” back in the day). On the platform I spied sparrows eating bread crumbs that someone had strewn. Going down the stairs -- and there are many of them as this is the highest stop in the New York City subway system -- I met a man going up. It was hot; he was struggling. “There is no elevator at this station,” he said, barely able to catch his breath. “Are you OK?” I asked. I felt like telling him he was better off walking on level ground to the Carroll Street stop, rather than climbing these stairs in the heat. Instead I prayed: Please don’t make me have to practice my long- ago-learned CPR skills on you, sir.

As I crossed Hamilton Avenue I heard ’70s disco coming from an open car window. My daughter told me recently that she was impressed that I would travel such distances to go swimming; I don’t find it impressive at all. I just love to swim and the knowledge that it might be some work to get there is always rewarded by the feeling of the first dip in the cool pool. 

When I got to the Red Hook pool, I recognized, in a borough of two million people, the face of a woman I shop with at the Park Slope Food Coop. In the locker room, another woman and I reminded a teenager who didn’t know how to swim that the city will teach her for free. “It’s not just a matter of life and death,” I reminded her, “it’s fun!” I climbed into the pool and managed to get a lane all to myself this morning, one of the last of the season.

Swimming laps can be very focused, back and forth, back and forth, but I also find that lots of thoughts come and go. Because I’m in the pool, though, they are relaxed, and non-stressful. After my swim, I sip warm, tap water from a painted, blue fountain. Yes, I still maintain, community pools are my happy place. 

Tony Dapolito, on Clarkson Street in the Village, has been a destination for years; I am finally going. An afternoon has been made: a swim, where I discover they have better bathroom stalls and showers than my home pool in Brooklyn. I’m greeted by a very friendly woman at the door. “You think that lock will fit?” she asks. “It’s going to fit!” she then proclaims. “It has to! You have to have hope, right?” In the pool I have a conversation with a camp counselor about why he can’t get in (he was in a car accident last week). For some reason that I can’t explain, one of his charges asks me, “Are you a professional? Are you the pool owner?”

After I go to see the David Crosby documentary at Film Forum, complete with popcorn and a cappuccino. A perfect New York day ends with a visit to the Hudson Park branch of the New York Public Library to pick up the Bruce Springsteen biography for my August read by the pool.

This year, the city pools were open after Labor Day, for a whole week; I have no idea why. After the kids went back to school, the Double D was empty; two other people and myself had the whole pool to ourselves. I had hoped to try the Astoria pool, which is supposed to be amazing, but I didn’t want to travel that distance then get rained out. I figured I’d walk down the block, for the last time, to the Double D. At the edge of the pool I noticed two, small brown leaves; as I swam I heard church bells ringing in the noon hour. Underwater I saw the reflection of my arms slowly circling over my head and, for this moment, I felt I had become the bird I always wanted to be. Or maybe I wanted to swim like a fish.

I walked by the Double D the other day and the pool had been drained; it was grey and cloudy and rain pelted the bottom of the pool, which no longer looked smooth and glass-like but had peeling paint that looked rough and bumpy. 

Nine months before the community pools are open again, but I’ll be the first person on line when the doors open.

 

The Corona Diaries: Day Eighteen

“None of the usual sounds -- squeals of small children, shoots of water, thumping of basketballs -- were present.  It looked like everyone had gone home for good…”

If the silence of the streets is strange then the phasing out of the playground is prophetic. Things are getting worse. Perhaps they need to before they get better.

Days ago the playground was populated, if not fully, then at least by a few basketball players trying to keep their distance. Now we are in a new stage, from somewhat utilized to simply shuttered.

I wrote an essay about the passage of time at the playground several years ago…

Sprinkler

The toddler is off, fully clothed, racing into the sprinkler, while the mother yells, “No!” Clearly she came unprepared.

It is a balmy Sunday after Labor Day and the sprinklers in the playground, with their calming sounds, are usually off by now. Today is steamy, however, and perhaps the Parks Department has decided to give families one last sweet taste of summer. 

A few weekends ago, it looked completely different. The end of August was cool and grey and while walking the dog, I noticed the sprinkler was off, heralding the official end of the summer season. None of the usual sounds -- squeals of small children, shoots of water, thumping of basketballs -- were present.  It looked like everyone had gone home for good, shopping for back-to-school supplies, starting the endless process of preparing lunches and settling in for another academic year. My own children had grown up and left the house.

As a preschool teacher, I cannot say how many hours I have logged at the playground, with other people’s children. As a parent, I spent untold hours at this playground with my own children. When they were little, we were sometimes here twice a day, once in the morning, then after naptime. When my mother-in-law would drive up from Virginia, we would bring picnic lunches and sit at the chess tables. On one of these visits she commented that she was having a moment of déjà vu: ”Am I in Boston in the 1970s with my two small children, or am I in Brooklyn in the 1990s with my two small grandchildren?”

When they were older and in elementary school, we would sometimes go by the playground for a half hour on the way home. Then there was the day we stopped. We never went there again.

Exactly what day was that? Was it a Friday, or a Sunday? Was it in spring or summer? Was there a date? I could not possibly say because it wasn’t until years later that I noticed the lack of playground in our lives. It simply came and went, completely unnoticed. Yet, when I later realized that we had stopped going to the playground, it overwhelmed me. I could not stop thinking about it. I had to know. “When was it?” I asked the girls, who by now were in middle- and high school. I asked my husband. None of us could come up with an answer.

No one had prepared me for the last day on the playground. Would I have brought a cake? Or would I have prepared a speech for the girls: “Today is the last day we will come here. We will never come here to play again. Let’s really enjoy it today because it is not just another day at the playground. It’s our last one.”

We’ve talked about this repeatedly in my family since the day we discovered our loss. “I took Noah to the playground recently,” my younger daughter countered, referring to one of her babysitting charges. We looked at each other, immediately realizing that this simply did not count.

Soon the sprinkler will be off for the fall. The air will turn cooler and the children will start to wear their layers. Today, however, it is still late summer and typically humid. Parents push toddlers in tandem in swings that sing a whiny song. 

As I pass by with the dog, I am now an observer of other families at the playground, as sun rays filter through sparks of sprinkler water that squirt up into the late summer sky.

 

 

The Corona Diaries: Day Seventeen

When she was two years of age, Niko stood in front of her grandmother Babu’s window and asked, “Where are all the people?” At the time, this question made sense because she was on a hilltop in Virginia and there were no people outside. 

Today, as I walk the streets of Brooklyn, there are few people outside, and it makes no sense. Of course, logic and science dictate that this is what we must do, and thank God, the streets are empty because New Yorkers are taking this situation seriously. But in my lifetime, there has never been anything like this.

Perhaps the Blackout of ’77 was the first time I experienced New Yorkers, as a collective, going through this experience together. I was 12 and it was formative, especially since I had been hanging out in the Village – yes, these were different times – and had to walk home the 80 blocks to 84th Street.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/nyregion/1977-blackout-photos.html

Then there was 9/11, a time for which I cannot come up with any words. I can simply say that we feared together. The difference was that in our collective grief, we came together outdoors in places such as Prospect Park. New Yorkers desperately needed nature and each other.

Today, a man walks with his hands behind his back. A woman strolls with her hands in her pockets. This is not how New Yorkers walk. They have no phones in their hands and no urgency in their steps. They resemble characters in Victorian tales, when strolling was an art form. Is it possible that this pandemic has achieved the unthinkable and forced New Yorkers to slow down?

A friend reports that lower Park Avenue is closed to traffic in Manhattan, in order to allow pedestrians more space to distance from one another. Indeed, in Brooklyn I walk Milo down the middle of the street as if it is mine. There are no cars.

Much has been written about walking in New York. Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City, his memoir of growing up in Brownsville, comes to mind. Then there is William Helmreich, who, as a child, played a game with this father called “Last Stop,” where they boarded a subway and headed to the end of the line to explore new neighborhoods. 

Sadly, Mr. Helmreich, a distinguished professor of sociology at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center died this week as a result of the coronavirus.

The Corona Diaries: Day Fifteen

This is a piece I used to share with new members of the Writer’s Circle at the New York Public Library, Mulberry Street branch.

The Permission To Write

Years ago I was visiting family in Oregon.

On a sunny, Portland day where the temperature hovered blissfully between a low 68 and a high 70, I contemplated how good life was. I watched shorts-clad joggers dropping by cafes for iced coffees and I realized I had no problems whatsoever. I could write volumes in such an environment.

Then I came home. New York was grey and cloudy. The mail was messy, a pile simply challenging me to attack it. My mood plummeted. Writing? What was that?

Although life occasionally hands us the perfect day, the majority of them are anything but. There are families and jobs and bodies to tend to, to say nothing of relationships. If you're a writer, unless you have the lifestyle of the “one percent”, you're screwed.

We all know how much time and focus writing requires; how can we possibly create a regular practice within our busy lives that allows us the time and environment we need to be creative?

The answer is we have to do it ourselves; no one and nothing is going to do it for us. I started out as an actress; another actress once told me how frustrating it was telling people you were an actress (“I'm an actress. If that's ok with you...”)

I began to think of myself as a writer when I realized I no longer wanted to write; I had to write (think eating, or drinking water.) At this point it became really easy to stop asking others for permission.

For now, I am giving you the permission to write; eventually you will do the same for yourself.

Your first step is to decide who you are as a writer. Since we all have day jobs, even if we're retired or on disability, we just need to figure out how to convey to others that we are writers and that we spend time writing. I'm a writer, educator and private tutor. It’s a mouthful but that’s what I do. No one questions me. The sooner we become comfortable with our role as writers, the easier it will become to create our identities as such.

The next step is to decide what you write. Are you a poet or a novelist? Perhaps you're a playwright. In my case, I write non-fiction works of all types, from articles about homeless children in Baltimore to essays about my obsession with black and white films.

The final -- and perhaps most important step -- is to decide how you write. This encompasses three points: when, method, and where.

When. My perfect, Portland day was a sunny, 70-degree morning. It was my dream writing scenario. If I hadn't been with my family I would have been one of those joggers, grabbing an iced coffee and settling down at a cafe table to dive into my next project. Needless to say, I'm a morning person; you, on the other hand, might be a night owl. You're job is to figure out your optimal time to write.

 Method is also key. I used to write with pen and paper; then I found myself on a bus with an idea and no notebook. Who does that? The advent of smart phones and the iPhone Note App changed all that. Now I have no problem getting those thoughts down on technology. Organization is also part of method. How many articles, ideas, and notes have I misplaced because I really don’t have a system? (and I'm a really organized person...) Do you file on flash drives? Do you print and file in old-school manila folders? Or do you simply have everything in a notebook? The sooner you decide how to organize your writing, the easier it will be for you to manage your projects in the long run.

Where you write is equally important, especially in New York, where, once more, unless you have the lifestyle of the one percent, you need to figure out what space suits your needs as a writer. Is it at the kitchen table or a table at your local cafe? Can you work with people around you or do you need complete solitude (as I write this I am on the subway and a couple next to me is discussing the logistics of getting to the climate change march. I am trying to tune them out...)

Whether you're a beginning writer or one who is more established, everyone should be journaling. This affords you the opportunity to write daily (I write in my journal at the end of my day) and takes the pressure off if you have no specific project in mind. It's like working out; the more you do it the better it is for you. A great journaling exercise is the Morning Pages from The Artists Way (Cameron). The requirements are simple: three handwritten pages, unedited, without stopping. On your perfect day, you do these when you wake up; for most of us, this will take place on a weekend day or day off.

Ultimately, when you find the who, what, and when of you as a writer you’ll be able to get to work; a great goal is on a weekly, then- hopefully, daily basis.

A final thought: In our word-driven world, it’s important to remember that, from a historical standpoint, we were all once storytellers. Good writing is good storytelling.

 What story do you want to tell?