manhattan bridge

today i walked to manhattan. that's right. on my feet. this is not what i had planned for the day but nothing ever goes as planned. i ended up covering about eight miles. i've mentioned before that my brain is sometimes less than reasonable and today when i need to get from brooklyn to manhattan for an appointment and must cross a very large river to do that my sweet brain assesses the two options:

1. be trapped in an airless tunnel underground with no escape and an abundance of murderous monsters (there is very little actual evidence of murderous monsters on the subway system, although last week's two fatal stabbings may be giving my brain more leverage than i'd like.), rats and toxic filth.

2. crawl across a metal slab millions of feet in the air while the wind slices across everything and spins the world around mercilessly.

and my brain says,"hey, wouldn't it be swell if we pranced across the manhattan bridge?" now, my brain is sly and i do not think about all the times in the past when it has, like lucy promising charlie brown she'll hold that football, lured me into places i've been unable to extricate myself from, leaving me feeling like poor old charlie brown flat on my back, miserable. i do not think about the treacherousness of my brain and i march right past the dekalb avenue subway station, right past junior's, on up flatbush avenue and to the sidewalk leading onto the manhattan bridge.

i stroll onto the walkway, surprised to see nobody behind me and nobody ahead of me. this is the sort of hint i don't notice until way too late. i walk high up above the edge of brooklyn, stories and stories up, staring straight ahead, keeping my mind focused on the first suspension tower. so far, so good. you know how you feel when you're managing to do something you thought you couldn't? that's right. my heart isn't pounding. my stomach isn't swirling. my head isn't spinning. the walkway is still clearly made of cement, immovable, sturdy, safe. and then everything changes.

a brooklyn bound train screams by me to the right, all howling and screeching and ugliness. and the cement begins to soften. the bridge begins to move. because this is a suspension bridge built to sway a bit. but not built to swirl like a hysterical tornado. no, that's my brain's doing. i feel myself sliding off the cement, jostled like popcorn in a popper. the bridge and my brain begin to chuckle together. jerks. my entire body draws into itself. i am tiny. alice after a cookie. the sky over the bridge is lead and the water below, roiling, hurtling under my feet, is leaden sewage. the wind whipping across the 1500 foot wide nothingness at 150 feet up is relentless.

this is a movie. this sort of thing always happens in movies. i want to look around for spiderman but any movement that is not forward threatens to spill me into the churning water below. i want to ask my brain if it thinks this is funny and i realize this is what all the crazy people are doing. the ones muttering on the train. the ones jabbering in the park and shrieking on the sidewalk. they are arguing with their stupid, horrible, treacherous brains. i tell my brain to shut up and there i am in silence a hundred and fifty feet up, above nothing. with nobody to talk to. midway across the span i see a man with a tripod and camera. he is the only person i have seen so far. he looks out over the water and i am envious. this is what i want to do, saunter casually over to the railing and look out into all that world. he watches with mild curiosity as i cringe my way down the walkway and past him not even glancing at his breathtaking view.

i tell myself that when i get to the other side i will feel so good, i will know i have conquered something big, something literally big. i am here, all by myself, stomping across this bridge on what i did not realize is a very ugly day, spitting rain, hissing wind, cold, flat. on a walkway i did not at all realize was on the outside edge of the bridge. the pavement has set up again, has firmed. i walk with the wind whipping into my left side, furling my new avocado raincoat all around me.

i pass the second suspension tower and just beyond it is a gnarled old man walking toward me wrapped in piles and piles of coats, carrying several bags and ranting. he is fighting with his brain. i can see it on his face. it is how i think my face looks, twisted into a snarl from two different directions. i smile at him and for those two or three seconds he looks back there is no wind and no river and no bridge but then he goes right on hashing things out with his brain. i am moving toward the earth again, can see what safety looks like, when another train goes by melting the pavement and my resolve and everything i intended to use while facing what i always thought was my second biggest fear.

and then i am there over manhattan. a hundred feet up above the little piecrust edge of the most famous island in the world. the bridge curves down toward land and i see the fire first. because what else would end a walk like this? my brain is poised, ready to spring. but i am not afraid of fire so i march forward. the fire is on the bridge, near the curve before it hits the street, maybe forty or so feet above ground. it is in a small can, larger than a coffee can, blackened. the wind is scattering the flames around and two old women are tending it. one is sitting in a folding chair well back from the flames next to a tray of small bowls. the bowls are full of coconut flakes, maybe rice. whitewhitewhite. laid out in a perfect row on the tray sitting flat on the bridge. the other woman squats in front of the fire and feeds it shreds of purple paper she tears off a large sheet. purple the color of mimeographs from my childhood. purple i can smell there at the end of the bridge. the smell of sitting quietly in a desk and knowing the right answers.

the flames leap up with each new offering and threaten to escape the little can but the woman stays where she is. this is some form of praying, communing with something the women cannot see. i do not know why they have chosen this place to set their fire, but i know that from my very first sight of it, when i was way back there still dangling over the east river, i knew i was in the right place.

first day

here are some crocuses and bees. maybe they synchronized their watches last fall. i don't know. but they both knew to be ready while snow was lurking at the edges of the yard.

p.s.blow up those last two. you can see the pollen sacs on the legs of that third bee and bee number four blows up to a monster.

spring

last time we drove away from our little blue house it was covered with snow and menacing icicles. we hadn't seen the ground in months and couldn't tell where the yard ended and flower beds began. but this morning the sun crawls right up past the 6:30 coldness and starts to get serious. so serious that by the time we sre finished with pancakes and duck watching the outside air feels like something we should be out in.

so we do what any normal folks would do in these circumstances. we toss the dog in the car with some backpacks and head up the side of the mountain we look at every day from our windows. the trail up our mountain is not, at least at the beginning, packed with wide open, dramatic vistas. there are no rivers or streams or waterfalls. it is just a trail that winds up around the side of the mountain through tall trees you can forget to look up at, especially if it's a while since you've been on a hike. you will be concentrating on the messages your body is sending. the backsides of your legs are sending angry messages about the steepness of the grade. your heart is snarling about how your weak and inefficient legs are making it work harder, which is not fair. your lungs are growling about how you will be coughing up blood before you get to the summit. but it's a good idea to look up at those trees from time to time. it will clear your head and shut up the angry voices of your body. because the smell of wet leaves and pine sap and air above where people live and the sound of the wind getting caught way up in the tops of those trees and, well, just the sight of a little bit of what is not brooklyn will leave your senses dumbstruck and the rest of the voices mumbling around in there will settle down, too.

the sweetie unleashes the small dog, which would make me nervous anywhere else, but he is a hunting animal and his first joy is in having a purpose. he hunts up rabbits and squirrel and deer and chipmunks all along the trail. he chases runaway sticks across great distances and is able to find his own stick among the many other littering the trail.

as we climb higher what was once patchy snow becomes deep enough to slow us down. the small dog takes circuitous routes to avoid the deeper snow but gives up when the whole trail is covered and just plunges in. it is strange to be wearing shorts in the snow. i think of visiting my grandparents in california, of going to see the largest trees i'd ever seen and how my sisters and i went from an 85 degree day in our garanimals shorts to the densest snow we'd ever seen lurking around under those massive redwoods. now, just as then, i feel like i am getting away with something, stomping through the woods and feeling snow slap against my skin.

when the snow gets too deep and slushy for the small dog, the sweetie carries him but we are a long way from the summit and although he is a small dog, he is not willing to
be carried peacefully. at every patch of unsnowed on ground he wriggles and squirms until the sweetie says enough. we have not reached the summit with the magnificent views down below to our little town. but that does not matter at all. we have walked from brown leaves right up into snow. we have been out in a part of the world you cannot see from the road.

walk

the little boy is talking to me before i can really hear him, so when he looks at me with a round, questioning face i just smile. we are walking, guthrie and i, up twelfth street and the air is warm enough that people are finally giving up on hats. the air is warm enough to smell. so the boy smiles right back at me and he is about nine or ten. probably ten. with a lilt to his voice that says his parents speak spanish at home but he swims in and out of all the languages at his school. and he falls in step beside us, right next to me. guthrie trots on a little ahead but is very much aware of this child. he glances over his left shoulder once, then again, but does not change his pace at all.

"is that a dachshund?" he brings his words out slowly like he's looking at each one, noticing for the first time how pretty they are as he sets them out there. when i tell him yes he nods, then cocks his head and watches guthrie as we walk. he is a small child, not up to my shoulder, but there is none of the franticness i see in most children his age. "is that a girl?" he says very softly and when i say no, that he's a boy, he nods again. he chews his lips a bit when he thinks and after a stretch of quiet walking he says, "he looks..." and here he pauses, rolling several words around in his head, searching for the one he likes best. "he looks very young." i tell him lots of folks say this but that guthrie is eight. i say guthrie is a grown dog, the same age as me in dog years. the little boy laughs. "dog years," he says looking up at me. he smiles and puts his hands in his pockets. we walk a bit more and guthrie looks back over his shoulder again, up at the boy. the boy smiles but does not do what other children do. he does not leap or grab or lunge or squeal. he just smiles.

he offers to walk guthrie the next block and although the child would be fine and guthrie would be fine, i am a nervous person about my dog and i would not be fine. so i thank this boy and tell him guthrie is a bit anxious and the boy says he understands. there is a pretty good chance he does. he tells me he has six dogs and enjoys walking them because they are quite well trained. and these are his words. exactly his. when we get to the intersection at seventh avenue, we stop to wait for the light. he squats down and puts a hand out to guthrie, who noses around him a little, giving him more attention than i've ever seen a child on the sidewalk get. the child stands up as the light changes and says, "well, i'll see you later." he waves and turns around. as i cross the street with guthrie i yell over my shoulder that i'll see him later. like i've known him all his life.

seeing deer

this morning before breakfast the sweetie calls someone down the street with a snowplow to see if he can do battle with our knee-deep mess of a driveway. the guy shows up a few minutes later and parks his snowplow down at the foot of the drive. he gets out and i can see him through the window as he walks across the front yard, looking at something after something after something down there in the snow. a trail of something. the sweetie goes out to meet him and they stand there together, looking into the snow, talking, then the sweetie calls me out to see what they’d been looking at.

there are hoofprints in the deep snow, coming up from the road into our yard at the northwest corner, where the chicory grows out of the low rock wall and the sumac and wild roses fight for a small patch of ground left over by the daylilies. the hoofprints are pretty likely deer say the sweetie and the man with the plow. the prints follow the edge of the yard, run parallel to the road but are up above the steps and the daylilies, four or five feet above the road. they run all the way to the driveway at the southwest corner of the yard and disappear. and all around the footprints, bright like cherries, are bloodstains. in places the blood has seeped into the snow and in other places it is frozen on top. little scatters of jewels. rubies and garnets glittering in the sun.

the man with the plow, a bowhunter, figures the deer has been shot. the sweetie agrees. probably last night. something about the way the blood is there on the ground tells them this, i suppose. the sweetie points out a place about halfway up the embankment, right below the wild roses, where the stain is much larger, where the animal had stopped a moment to consider how wise it would be to move forward, head toward our front porch light, run right under our bedroom window with us sleeping up there.

then later on in the afternoon the sweetie and i are driving into the little town a mile over, taking the back way to check out the wildness of the snow, and we see what look like mules, two of them, stomping along single file on the right side of the road, on the pavement side of the guardrails, just along the edge. they look straight ahead and might be tame horses looking for their riders, they are so calm and purposeful. but our car moves closer and they see us. ears flap wildly and monstrous white tails unfurl. not mules at all. whitetail deer. antlerless, but massive and shaggy. they bolt over the guardrail and zigzag through flat riverbottom land. but they don’t just light out. they don’t disappear. they run a while, then stop together, turn those long necks right around over their backs and watch us. they do this twice, maybe three times. they are in a hurry to put distance between themselves and us, but not in that much of a hurry.

small dog in the big city

it is a while since guthrie has been to manhattan. it is a while since he's been on a train, too, but we hop on the f train right by our apartment today because the car and the sweetie are both in the city already, waiting for us, ready to drive up to our little snow-battered house. when we get to the platform a man in a very nice green wool coat about three sizes too big is leaning over a woman sitting on one of the rare wooden benches the swankier platforms have. he has a guitar. a big, pretty wooden one, too big for him the way the coat is. the woman is smiling but her posture and his say they've just met. when the train comes, we all get on the same car, the woman a few seats down from us, across, with the man standing still, next to her, guitar ready. the car is mostly empty, friday afternoon manhattan-bound empty, littered with folks who don't wear suits or work business hours.

the man begins to play. laughs. the first clear notes of norwegian wood fill the car and although he's playing each note exactly, on what appears to be a properly tuned guitar, i wait for the miserableness that is the voice of the subway performer. i prepare to put cupped hands over guthrie's ears. he is watching, eyes bright, head cocked. the man is already singing about the missing chair and then the wine when i realize i am swaying back and forth like some unabashed hippie, singing along softly. the woman is smiling. there is a rattling at the other end of the car and a man dragging what used to be a pickle bucket in one hand and a chipped up wooden broomhandle in the other comes dancing down center of the car, stopping near the guitar man. he flails his arms and spins around so fast the hood of his raggedy sweatshirt falls back a bit. he sings, too. like me, he is not meant for singing but nobody seems to care. the song lasts a few stops, up above the ground at ninth street, the highest spot on the entire rail system, back down past carroll and maybe bergen.

and when the song ends the man smiles at the woman and probably says something, then walks with his too big coat and his too big guitar toward the other end of the train, walks past me and smiles at the small brown dog on my lap. he says good things about dogs, says they're our best friends, says goodbye. he leaves the train. the woman sits very still and the man with the bucket and pole turns to face the window in the door behind him.

a stop or two later a little girl gets on the train with her father, sits across from us. the father opens up a styrofoam box and hands the girl a plastic fork. she spears a small round fried something and as she is raising her fork toward her mouth, she sees us. sees guthrie. she takes the tiniest bite as she's looking at us, as what we are registers. her chin falls down and her eyes glitter. the fork with its fried thing hangs in the air and she nudges the man. he smiles. she waves with the fingers of her fork hand. i hold guthrie up so he is standing on my lap and flap one of his front paws at her. her eyes open dangerously wide she giggles. there is an extremely animated conversation across from us in a language i do not know. she points and smiles quite a bit and the man smiles, too. guthrie is stretched out on my lap now, close to sleep. she waves again and it is enough for her that his ears move in acknowledgment. when we get off the train, that same bit of fried thing with one bite missing sits on the end of her fork.

we come up into the world on sixth avenue, around 23rd street. the sidewalks are clogged with friday after 5 going home folks, hurrying, pushing, not interested in looking where they are going, not able to see a small brown dog dodging their stomping feet there on the ground. we cross busy sixth avenue and guthrie freezes in the middle. i know what you're thinking but i mean the exact middle. two parking lanes, two uptown lanes, two downtown lanes and guthrie sits his little self down between the innermost uptown lane and the innermost downtown lane, right on the dividing line between. the walk light is flashing so i tug on the leash and he holds his ground. i drag him, while traffic waits, across the two downtown lanes and the parking lane, trailing little nuggets of poop along behind him like breadcrumbs.

we walk up a bit and find the tall building where the sweetie works. it is not one of those shiny new skyscrapery things. it is certainly more than twenty stories, but the stories are arranged like layers on a wedding cake, getting smaller and more ornate as they get closer to the sky. it is in a part of town where there is still plenty of that left, near the empire state building. near buildings with shaftways. and because i have forgotten my phone, i do not know what time it is and cannot call the sweetie to tell him we are here. but it is a nice day out and we wait in front of the big revolving doors where guthrie has a good view of the bank of elevators inside. he mills around on the ground for a while until it becomes clear to both of us this is not safe. i hold him and he stares intently at the revolving doors, where people keep pouring out of building.

now, in brooklyn folks love guthrie plenty but he is walking around on the ground, doing dog things. in manhattan, he is at almost eye level and is right outside the door to a workplace in what is decidedly not a residential section of town. and what was cutecutecute in brooklyn becomes something else altogether. people come out the door, turn onto the sidewalk, realize they just saw a real live dog and stop. they come back. they pet him, talk to him in little smoochy baby words he obviously does not know. several kiss him. shove their faces right up into his. he bears all this with a surprising amount of grace for someone who will eat his own poop. some of them talk to me a bit. they have dogs, usually dogs like him. they all ask how old he is. this is what you ask when you see human babies or dog babies. i do not know why, but i do know that every time i say eight people look confused. nonono, they insist. he is a baby. a puppydog. and i do not tell them that real puppies would love them more than guthrie does because they love everyone the same, that what makes him not a puppy is his awareness that i am me, his person, and everyone else is not and is therefore less interesting.

in the twenty minutes we end up standing outside on the sidewalk, we never have more than thirty or forty seconds to ourselves. we do not get bored. guthrie manages to drag kisses and ear scratches and head rubs and back pats out of men with nicely tailored wool suits and from at least one heroin addict. a very angry teenage girl forgets a few seconds to glare as she passes by. some sort of supermodel type slows her clicking heels to make kissy faces at guthrie. a woman coming out of the building tells me about a children's book called pretzel. a man asks if he is a great dane. now, this has happened before and i think this time the man is joking, so i say, no, but he thinks he is. the man's face shows how hard his brain is trying to make sense of this. he asks his question again. no, i tell him. he's a dachshund. oh, says the man, looking more unsure than he really needs to. maybe thirty people in that short time cannot resist a small dog within petting range. the sweetie says it's because it's a business area. folks aren't used to seeing dogs there. but these people act starved. giddy. like they have been crawling on their bellies across the hottest, driest desert and have finally, after much suffering, come upon a small oasis with speckled fur, softsoft ears, one blue eye and one brown.