sight of spring

ash wednesday, west 16th street, nyc

ok, so maybe water towers aren't a sign of spring, but it was sunny today and i didn't have to bury my chin in my parka while i walked around--i could look up. that seemed like progress (spring forward, please).

i liked the look of these two together, along with the back stairs. i have more than a few watertower/back stairs photos, some better, others worse than this. but this was west 16th, today.

apart from admiring how they dot the cityscape, i didn't know much about the water towers or why in this 21st century they still necessarily exist. it turns out that because this town is built on shallow bedrock, with low natural water pressure, and our infrastructure is so old, we still need these tanks to get water above six stories. and there is now a regulation -- every building over 80 feet tall must have its own water reservoir.

and while modern steel models are being built, the preferred material is wood, often cedar; wood offers better insulation, and there's no fear of rusting. what's most amazing to me is that no sealants are used--based on barrel construction principles, the wood planks are held together by cables. as it's being filled, water seeps though, but as more water is added, the wood swells, eventually creating a tight seal.

***

my erstwhile gym buddy, my friend sonya sklaroff has painted a beautiful water tower series; i love that i have seen the new york sky in those colors (even though today, it was plainly blue).

third avenue/27th street

it's not an exciting trip, the twenty blocks i walk home from work, but i'm going to try to liven it up some nights, by carving a circuitous path. last night? third avenue.

i am drawn to old city bakeries, with their formerly fancy signs and dated fonts. i love seeing dozens and dozens of colorful cookies and pastries doused (liberally, nearly haphazardly) with sugar icing. i love how especially bright they at night, under the flourescent lights. these are places where long time locals, fussy in their own way, get morning coffee and a danish. or where they go for a box of butter cookies...

but who buys all these cakes?

***

photos © anita aguilar

the spirit of 76?

"the silver beekman"

beekman towers, frank gehry's ready-to-rent residential design in lower manhattan, is 76 stories tall. i had mistakenly suggested to mfw that it is something like 106 stories. i am mostly indifferent to numbers, but i should have paid closer attention to such an important fact. the truth is though, when you stand at the base of the towers as i did last week, 76 and 106 stories look pretty much the same. too high.

and from that ground level vantage point, i wasn't convinced the beekman suits new york. it's impressive--for its scale and uncommon shape. and it can be mesmerizing-- the sky was bright and blue when i arrived at around 2pm, and the beekman captured the color perfectly, nearly blending into the sky. i imagined for a moment i was in south beach. when i left my appointment several hours later, grey sky had moved in, intensifying the steeliness. the bernini -inspired folds became reptilian and futuristic, like we were living in some michael bay 3D universe--the dark side of the moon. this was, for obvious reasons, the scary beekman. the sky changed yet another time and it shone silver--it could have been a landmark in any flashy town: vegas, atlantic city, dubai. it bothered me a little at first, that it could be so "anywhere." but it's rather a great trick. i'm no architectural scholar, but isn't it often the case the character of a building (if you think it has one at all) is evidenced by its shape and its architectural flourishes? but this one seems to have been given a personality that can change.

eb white wrote, "new york is peculiarly constructed to absorb almost anything that comes along." so perhaps the beekman, with its ability to absorb and exude light, is quintessentially "new york" after all?

the "sobe" beekman

the "michael bay" beekman

the reptilian view

***

and this is what makes me think frank gehry must be an incredibly charming fellow. when i was at the site, i wasn't exactly sure if the beekman was set behind and separate from the orange brick structure in the foreground, or if it formed the base of the actual skyscraper (i'd forgotten that the nytimes mentioned it). paul goldberger reviewed 8 spruce in this week's new yorker and reminded that it was a single structure, with the contrasting base intended to tie the tower to the rest of the neighborhood. who else could win with this visually ridiculous solution? not too many.

same with having a 4th side of the building, the south side, flat (let's make one side of this "plain"...).

but i'm open to the idea that it might give a great effect.

i'll have to take it all in this summer, in the twilight, perhaps from somewhere across the river. i'll try to make a few good pictures then, too.

see a fine picture: riding the rails

kim novak, and admirers. photographed by leonard mccombe, 1956.

republished in life magazine, march 3, 1972.

yes, 39 years ago today.

read a good poem: marginalia

a few of mine...

i was never rebellious enough, as a kid, to write in textbooks or library books. i disliked having to use books with other people's scrawl. it was distracting and messy and "wrong." but once i transitioned from borrower to owner, i blitzed mine-- i was a single- and double- underliner, a multi-color highlighter, a circler of proper names and places. i made written notes, too.

i went through some of my books during a holiday weekend at home last year, the ones i've kept from college (constitutional law books, mostly) and the years immediately afterwards (erratic fiction choices, overwhelmingly). highlighting is a sin against books, isn't it? the garish neon has barely faded. the school notes were actually sort of impressive. (will i ever think that rigorously again?)

the personal notes reveal exactly how i was at the time--searching and sad and solitary. i don't mind reading them now but would feel shy if others did, too. it's the reason i eventually stopped making notes and took to dog-earing "meaningful" pages instead.

i thought those folds would be a good guide, that re-reading entire passages, even many years later, would trigger memories, like a snapshot. but judging by my attempts last week, it's a very imperfect technique. i still haven't figured out the connection to neruda's sonnet no 7. and i'm seriously wondering why i liked ask the dust at all? but there are a few pages (didion essays, other poems) that are imprinted forever.

maybe that's the way it should be after all.

***

i looked for "marginalia" after reading this interesting nytimes piece.

it's a good one, i think.

but i am probably predisposed to like any poem that includes the words "egg salad."

hope you like...

***

Marginalia

--Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

via billy-collins.com

how lovely can you get?

grace kelly in jamaica, 1955. photographed by howard conant.

i've been trying to teach myself a little photoshop, practicing a little color manipulation, to see if i could add a little character to some shots i've taken recently that to me seem sort of unremarkable. the hardest part is finding the color balance. i know what i like in other people's photos, but when i look for a long time at an image i've taken, to try to re-color it, i tend to get a little lost. i reach the point where i think i like it, but when i step away and then back, it seems very different. maybe it's a matter of training the eye? (or maybe i'll never get it.)

well, have a look at these colors from the same shoot in jamaica. (i didn't retouch these one bit--i found them this way). what does your eye prefer? i lean toward the first shot, that's softer and a bit more pink.

obviously, you can't go wrong with these..

grace kelly in jamaica, 1955. photographed by howard conant.

academy awards: a touch of (real) glamour

before and during the ceremonies...

shirley maclaine during rehearsals for the 1959 show...she'd been nominated for her work in some came running

...with janet leigh

kirk douglas and burt lancaster practicing their performance of "it's great not to be nominated" for the 30th awards ceremony...

see the full gallery of leonard mccombe's behind the scenes photos at life.com

***

audrey hepburn, with grace kelly back stage in 1956...

sophia loren with husband carlo ponti in 1962. photo by lawrence schiller.

natalie wood with warren beatty in 1962...

extra virgin: the first time

i was still living in the west village when extra virgin opened, but never made it there before packing up and away to the LES and murray hill, and it simply fell off my radar until this weekend when my friend zovig suggested it for brunch. i welcomed her idea in part because i was just so happy that it still lived there. the notion of a basque scramble (pepperonata, creamy polenta, salsa verde, avocado puree, and...chorizo), a smoked salmon and potato tart, or roasted artichoke provençal, cinched the deal.

we were lucky, at 12:30 to snag a window table for two, a high counter, right about the heater (set to HIGH) to warm our toes. the whole scene, overlooking west 4th street and its parade of strollers (with strollers?) was a nice comfort, a way to soothe the readjustment back to WINTER, after a sunny, tease of spring the day before.

(it was also a good opportunity to quick test the 100mm...lots of natural light...)

i opted for the roasted artichoke...

this is maybe a bit too close to appreciate the dish, but i love that you can see the grain of the cheese and the delicacy of the poached egg white...

i love the graceful neck of the artichoke. and the contralto to this heavenly chorus: nice smoky bites of pancetta.

there was one thing missing for me: a few slices of hearty peasant bread to soak up the medley of yolk and cheese bits and dressing (presumably made of extra virgin olive oil). shouldn’t good bread be compuslory at an establishment that purports to offer choice olive oils?

maybe the olive oil was so dipping delicious the night before that there was none left over?

(maybe i get lucky next time.)

i think i'm in love (spoon me)

sorry for the eddie money reference, but i'm testing the canon 100mm 2.8 macro lens this weekend.

i think it's a keeper.

spoons and a spill, not high art. but i love the effect here.

lovely day, lovely night sky

fifth avenue/21st

feb 18, 2011

photos © anita aguilar