Down by Fourth

The other day, since I was already down by Angel's Flight, I cut through Grand Central Market--still all the grand sensory overload I remember it being, with that noodle stand that always put me in mind of that one we see Harrison Ford at in the beginning of *Bladerunner*, even though it doesn't really look so much like it. I'm not sure the goat meat taco place is still there, but how could it not be?

Having thought of *Bladerunner*, and being *right there*, I have to poke my head in at the Bradbury Building. Which everyone has seen, whether they know it or not. It was built by a fellow who supposedly did it with no great knowledge, inspired by a ouija board experience and Ralph Bellamy's book *Looking Backward*. It was completed in 1894 and I don't know who it was who described it as "a fairytale of mathematics." You've seen it in movies and fashion shoots and the like forever--that place that is all light and air and spare lovely ironwork and handsome wood. International Style may be looking as dated as mantuas, but the Bradbury Building is as fresh and lovely as ever. I can't for the life of me figure out why it isn't ringed by purring steampunks. Perhaps security lures them away with scones and clotted cream....

So of course by the time I come out of the Bradbury (don't you love that the delightful writer and the vintage modern building share a name?) I'm right there by the cut-through to Spring St, so I have to stop by the Biddy Mason wall.

If Los Angeles were an Orthodox Christian town, Biddy Mason would be the patron saint of the city. Biddy Mason (1810-1900) came to the area as a slave, trained as a midwife, and in the narrow window of legal opportunity, won freedom for herself and her family. She promptly settled down and saved enough money to buy a parcel of land where her memorial now stands. It served as a base of economic operations for herself and her family, and "urban homestead" as one writer put it. She delivered babies all over the city, in all walks of life. She set up an account at the store that used to be at 4th and Spring for flood victims to use. First A.M.E. was started in her home. She lived long enough to see her children and grandchildren be a credit to her, and respected and successful members of the community All in all, the sort of person who would be a superb patron saint, for any city let alone this one.

I have never been out of the country, so I don't know what it is like in places where the current culture has been in the same location for millennia, but this day I stood in the same general area where Biddy Mason had lived and walked, and I wondered about that. What had it been like then? What had it been like to be her, living through so much and constantly imagining good works to do? What was it like to watch the Bradbury go up practically next door, and taking far longer than planned to do so? I stood on the south corner of 4th and Spring and wondered which corner that store had been on where Biddy Mason kept the account for flood victims to use. I was standing where they had stood, on their way to the place where they could get food and clean clothes and household goods, because of the kindness of a woman born into chattel slavery in the opening years of the 19th century, who had walked halfway across the country behind a wagon, who had seized that brief moment around the Dred Scott case to free herself and her children and her sister and her sister's children. Who had been trained to a profession and was good at it, and used her earnings to help not only her own family but these flooded-out immigrants too.



Maybe part of what interests me is that there is comparatively little history on this spot, for the culture that is here now. Okay, Biddy Mason was born two hundred years ago next year, but she only died a little over a century ago. Historically speaking, that is the blink of an eye. When I was standing by her memorial wall, we were separated only by some time, and not at all by space. It would have been wonderful to have stood there and have read any writings of hers. (Are there any?)



After all this pondering and exaltation--(that building on the north side of Broadway still displaying a red and gold mural of the hands raised as though in blessing, showing over the tops of the buildings to the south, where I stood, having visions of this street and mixing my poetic references freely--)--I continue my meandering toward Metropolis Books, I swear not two blocks away from all this. A bookstore is full of voices dependant upon our eyes to be heard. I did not hear Biddy Mason in there, but I could have asked.



I don't really know why chronos time thins out so easily and kairos shines through when I am downtown, but it does for me, and I will keep going back.

The Magicienne Was Right, and Treats Abound

So I stop by Metropolis Books yesterday, and the vintage travel stuff is not in yet. However, the window display is the current volumes of Femme Fatales Women Write Pulp--reprints of old pulps that had been written by women, I believe most of these had been made into movies back in the day. I picked up *In A Lonely Place.*

Now me, I have a soft spot in my heart for hard boiled detective fiction, suspiciously close to the same place the squeals come from when I spot the Thanksgiving issue of Martha Stewart's magazine. I don't want to think too hard about that.... Anyways--I had just finished one of Max Allan Collins' contributions to the Hard Case Crime series (I think that is what it is called) and had enjoyed it hugely. So this comes up in what follows.

So the nice lady who owns the place and I get chatting pleasantly, the way one does when one has learned how to socialize effectively in public. Now by this time she knows a little bit about what my tastes are, and because she pays attention, she points me to a Hard Case written by her friend, Christa Faust. It was possibly not what I would have picked up on my own, but I like and respect Metropolis Books Lady, so I try it out, even getting a signed copy.

Well! I trot down the street to, yes, the Nickel Diner, whereupon I start reading and nearly falling off my stool with glee. The kind people at the Nickel kept filling my coffee cup and feeding me and seemed to be completely comfortable with my being flamboyantly literate in public. Faust's *Money Shot* was boiled quite very hard. No, it wasn't what I would have picked up on my own. I am glad I did. I had the book read cover to cover before I made it home that night.

So this is the thing--the Magicienne was right--it takes a person to tell you what you don't know and might want to know. Commerce and capitalism work very well like this--when we are good to eachother and help eachother. Nice manners in public help too.

Walking around chatting with people. It will change the world. Looking at stuff is good too of course.

Earbuds addendum

Okay, so maybe when I yank the earbuds out, I claim I did it because I needed help with a crossword....

Crosswords Make Us Sociable

People chat pleasantly with each other in public--total strangers--over crosswords.  This I have noticed.  It is very easy to feel like a human being when sitting at a counter, or on a train, and discoursing in a lively fashion over crossword clues.  Conversational pacing, sharing the talking-space, (I'll bet there is a term for that) all are easier when corralled by the limits of the puzzle.  And the topics tend to be engaging and pleasant!  The older I get and the more I see, the more grimly serious I grow about these matters of sociability and pleasure.  Job status and money don't matter--do you know who a "Burquh-wearer's God" is, or how to spell "yurt?" 

Eventually we are all going to be dead, and everyone and every thing we ever knew or loved will be swept away.  The amount of goodness we can leave behind in the world will be one of the few things that will matter.  By behaving well in public, having innocent fun with strangers over all the strange matters in this wide world, we can add our light to the sum of light, that will shine on generations to come. 

Taking Friends to the Magic Castle

So we were there Wednesday, with friends recently returned from the East Coast. This week's Featured performer was "Cashetta, Queen of Magic." Cashetta has her own show in Vegas called "Magic's a Drag." Now I am fascinated by how a person figures out that what they need to be doing is magic while in drag. She was splendidly theatrical, and quite a solid magician (magicienne?) and a great pleasure to watch. Her presentation as a woman added another...what? "interpretive layer?" to the act, and I enjoyed that. One of the pleasures of magic is the twists and turns and depths of the illusions.

The Changes

So during the recent trip to Charleston, I saw something fascinating.

My cousin took off that Sunday in order to sit in the pew and worship with her family as they visited in the church where she is pastor. She brought a birthday cake of surpassing deliciousness to share with her congregation. So they sang to her, and she cut a piece, and then, nothing. No surge of church ladies coming forth to marshall the orderly distribution of cake and napkins and the like, in the venerable tradition of church hospitality--and this was in THE SOUTH--the very bastion of gracious hospitality.

So in a demonstration of what being a man can mean these days, my brother in law, a fine individual and an experienced hospitality professional, --*and a visitor to this church*-- stepped up, cast his practiced eye about the room, and proceeded to cut and plate the rest of the cake with breathless speed and skill. Only four very reasonable-sized pieces were left at the end.

Over the course of this whole visit, my beloved dedicated himself to careful and attentive childcare, from the five year old niece to the teen-aged cousins. The brother in law took over the kitchen, and he and the teen aged nephew went grocery shopping and then male-bonded in the kitchen over meal prep. The women sat in the living room and treated of the great issues of the day.

All these spaces need filling, whatever politics or culture say about them at any given time. They are all dignified, and I came to realize that their dignity belongs to whoever can fill them best at any given moment.

(P.S. The cake came from Sojourn Cafe in Charleston. Very good. Stop by if you have a chance.)

What do I choose to look at?

I've grown viciously intolerant of divergent political opinions--wildly hating everyone who isn't as broadminded and tolerant as I am.

(Why yes I *do* intuit an incongruency there....)

Do I look at what feeds my fear and anger, do I look at what feeds my hope. How do I balance my knowledge that whatever I look at, the other options are there too?

I begin to think much of this comes down to hospitality. However much we think the world is fast going to hell, we seem to still all be going to hell *together,* so maybe we can still have some decent manners with each other even as we fight. Let us fight fair, with, yes, "good sportsmanship." No using the legislatures for revenge, but rather to make sure everyone gets their share. No killing people who don't agree with us. No claiming that God hates who we say God ought to hate.

Now that's one thing we can all get together on--how uniformly offensive God is to everyone's sensibilities. And thank God for that.