What Possessed Me

What I did on my summer vacation

I have a post all written about what's been happening this summer, but the thought of uploading a million pictures to Typepad seems really tiring when the alternative is watching season two of "Call the Midwife."

If I had to summarize, my activities this summer have primarily focused on planning my Weight Watcher's menu around gin and tonics, freebasing Pinkberry and then falling down a shame spiral, sucking in my gut at the beach, flying into a rage over hand-carved ice cubes on Instagram, bathing in what has become Verne's toilet, trying Crest White Strips and being unable to breathe through my mouth for three days straight, trying them again just to make sure, buying cookbooks but ordering in, "gardening," driving a rented Camaro through downeast Maine while listening to Aerosmith, hiding from work on the High Line, revisiting my underage drinking haunts, watching Fauxhawk get skinny so we can "win Good Child points for being an attractive thin couple" but then letting down my end of the bargain, mixing it up with crazy people at CVS, taking candids of the back of Serena Williams's head, discovering secret gardens, standing slackjawed and mute while randomly shaking Chevy Chase's hand, stalking Clive Owen for three blocks in Chelsea, ditto Peter Dinklage, Susan Sarandon and that former Estee Lauder model what's-her-face, and buying obscenely expensive lip gloss that I don't have the balls to wear.

That's the City Mouse edition, friends. It's all glamour over here in Brooklyn Heights. 

I love New York (and a piano)

{Last night on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade}

Living in New York is like living with a handsome, brilliant and charismatic brute: it dazzles you, then it beats you up, and then, when you're really fed up, it makes it impossible for you to hate it. New York knows - like a manipulative boyfriend you just can't quit - that its got you. Where else would you go? What on earth would you do? Who else would accept you?

And so you live for those beautiful, rare moments - the dazzling sunlight of a summer evening on the Promenade, the roller boogie rink in Central Park, the kinetic energy of a pick-up game on the West 4th courts. They're what make all the heartbreak and the hassle and the minescule square footage worth bearing.

I've been down on New York lately (no A/C in blazing heat and dripping humidity will do that), but this video made my heart say, "New York, I take it all back! I love you, you crazy bastard!"

Sing for Hope, a non-profit that makes art accessible for all, put pianos in public spaces all over New York City. Tony DeSare played one song on as many pianos as he could over the course of one day and recorded the results.

Four minutes and 59 seconds of pure joy.

The crazy garden

After years of staring at the empty, abandoned tree pit in front of our apartment building, I decided to stage a guerilla gardening coup d'etat and take over the public space for myself. I had visions of lilies and dahlias and wild flowers, and was prepared to hold my ground with trowel and shovel in case anyone on Montague Street got lippy.

I imagined confrontations with smug Brooklynites ("Is that fertilizer ORGANIC? Pookie only pees on organic!") until I realized, halfway through the excavation of Brooklyn's vile exoskeleton, that the only thing that really pisses off New Yorkers is when someone upstreams their cab.

"What are you doing?" a woman stopped to ask.

"Planting some stuff," I answered, my hackles rising in defense.

"Oh," she said, considering the crust of lead and asbestos I was steadily forking into the ground. "That's so nice. Can you help me identify something in my backyard? I think it's a cactus."

After convincing her it was most certainly not a cactus, a delivery guy wheeled his bike up to the tree pit, chained it to the iron railing and took out smoke. I ran through a list of things I would say if he flicked his butt into my radioactive tree pit.

"What are you doing?" he asked, in heavily accented English. "Do you live here?"

It turned out the dude was the owner of the sushi joint five floors below me - the restaurant whose backyard I had repeatedly hosed while watering my balcony garden. Shit got hectic one day when I inadvertantly sprayed a table of German tourists and then hid before they could properly ID the perp.

"Erm...yes."

"What floor?"

"Uhh...the fifth?"

"You have the garden! The crazy garden!"

BUSTED. The day of reckoning had come, and I was trapped in the tree pit between a bike and a car, with nowhere to hide. I considered throwing my fifth floor neighbors under the bus by attributing the "crazy garden" to them, since they were stupid enough to call their dog "SO-CRATES" in homage to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure."

"Yeah, but I have the watering system under control now, so...that's good," I trailed off.

The restauranteur, who introduced himself as Nathan, was concerned about his backyard.

"I want to make it garden paradise!" he exclaimed. "How do I make flowers everywhere?"

I told him about the farmer's market, what plants he should buy, how he should plant them. Nathan listened carefully, looking nervous.

"Don't worry," I said. "It's going to be great. Give me a shout if you need help."

Two weeks later, I looked down from my balcony and saw Nathan's planters full of flowers. He'd jerry rigged an insane irrigation system which was flooding half of his newly constructed backyard, but the meditative task of deadheading had put him in a trance-like state of obliviousness.

"Lookin' good!" I called down, breaking the spell. Nathan smiled proudly and gave me the thumbs up. Elated, I responded with two thumbs up and an ill-advised fist pump. For a moment we both stood there waving dumbly - two city gardeners in our gardens of crazy.