Exploring NYC through 26 words
The Covid Journal is a project I launched a few days ago. It’s my response, my contribution, my attempt to be useful in this incredibly strange and difficult moment. On a regular basis I am going out into my community which includes one of the most virus besieged hospitals in this virus besieged city, Elmhurst Hospital.
A door viewer, or the QUIDNUNC’s peephole is no longer of use these days. Nary a soul in the streets! One might as well slouch behind one’s PC and crash a Zoom party. That is, until wild life starts filling the streets. Anyone, even the quidnunc, would be at a loss for words.
New York has always had a special place in my heart for me. Even as a kid watching American movies in Korea, I loved the images of NYC: populous streets, people in sophisticated dark suits, and opulent classic American breakfast dishes with sweet and gooey pancakes (Do they really eat those as breakfast?! Phew…).
Although I’ve failed to make New York my home, it will always be a special place for me. Where else would I be able to meet Barbara Hammer in person and see an awesome production of King Lear at BAM on the same day? On the subway coming back from the theater, I remember thinking about the last lines of King Lear spoken by Edgar. I would be lying if I said I completely understood them, but since then I’ve thought about them often. How fitting they are in so many circumstances…
I’m not an AUDILE by any means, yet I do at times associate sound with image. When I see a bird I know it’s associated with sound, a species-specific song even. The sight of a bird often stops me in my track, as I anticipate a song, and the joy of hearing and emulating it. I remember my surprise on a vacation in Maine, when I learned that the cormorant doesn’t have a song, that the cormorant is mostly silent. And when it isn’t silent, it grunts like a pig as it takes offs or lands.
Anyhow, when I wake up in the morning, and I open the curtains I see a beautiful birch tree. One fall morning I noticed the shape of what could be a bird in its branched, its body. I took a photo of it. All I needed to do was add feet, wings, an eye, and a beak, and I did so with sound in mind.
Flying high above us, aiming for the pure blue welkin, the Money Man presides over my street. The gentleman who tends to him lives across the street, listening to opera and classic rock in his garage all day long. I never noticed before, but now I see him daily. Our routines collide under strange circumstances.
He sees my admiration for his money man, strung up from the tree– sort of fun, sort of eerie. We chat across the black concrete that fills the earth between sidewalks.
A new friend, closer than before but still at a distance.
I am working as hard as I can to understand this virus. If the politicians had listened to the public health experts earlier, they would have understood the NOSOGEOGRAPHY of this disease, and would have warned us sooner to prepare. In the “spirit” of social distancing, this gal takes to the dance floor with her guitar and her tutu, completely alone.
An unusual New York City sight: empty streets as Spring breaks. Unfurling my legs– down the steps and to the sidewalk, they lead, familiar with the paths of isolated walks and socially distanced strolls.
Past the empty schoolyard, I pause under a cherry blossom tree. It reaches its arms up to the sky, basking in the sun’s midday rays. Its petals fall to the ground. Its cycle is constant.
In these dark times, I find a mask on the ground and wonder if it will protect me from a germ mofette that is releasing invisible substances all about.
There were scientists who warned us, be we didn’t listen. There were doomsday shouters, but we didn’t hear them. I sit in my house looking outside, through a piece of film, like rose colored glasses, allowing me to see what I want to see. I cannot vaticinate today, cannot prophesize tomorrow. I know enough to know what I do not know.
I just recently discovered that designer Alexander McQueen commissioned jeweler Shaun Leane and sculptor Annika Hellgren to revamp the traditional YASHMAK from Muslim women’s culture into a bejeweled, non-gendered medieval-style piece of armor. It’s now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can see a video of the piece being worn for the Savage Beauty exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London here. It’s a daunting work.