Writing

My blogging has suffered because I've been spending my blogging time on writing assignments. This one fits in with this blog ...

Flea Markets. The name says it all. Unsuspecting hosts out for amusement meander through endless aisles readily collecting little parasites that multiply and are impossible to get rid of. Legend has it the term comes from the French marche aux puces, an outdoor bazaar in Paris named after the pesky creatures that infested the upholstery and clothing for sale.

In rural areas pack rats drive hours to get to the largest and best flea markets. You can’t miss these. Billboards start announcing them from 100 miles away and the shouting gets louder the closer you get. Pickup trucks fill parking lots while traffic jams of shoppers search for nothing in particular and everything they can’t possibly live without.

Manhattanites swarm like flies to fast disappearing empty lots on Sixth Avenue or The Antique Garage on 25th Street to eclectically furnish their apartments. I’m told if you want the really good stuff you have to get there early, as in 5am on a Saturday morning.

The infamous Annex Antiques Fair & Flea Market at 26th Street and Sixth Avenue, which was started in 1976 by Alan Boss, was ousted two years ago to make room for a high-rise apartment building. Loyalists now have to schlep over to Hell’s Kitchen to scout for their vintage and kitsch. In an interview in The Village Voice lamenting the move Boss characterized the flea market as “the world’s largest group therapy session.”

That’s nice for him but frequenting flea markets would put me on a fast track for therapy. My issues are manifold:

• I’m blind to the good stuff, which of course is already gone by the time I arrive at a respectable Saturday hour, because I’m preoccupied with the plethora of junk.
• I’m tormented by visions of gigantic landfills where these treasures will ultimately end up and where some of them should be already.
• I’m overwhelmed with visions of dead people and the loved ones sorting through a lifetime of clutter.
• I’m paranoid at the thought of my house being infiltrated by bargains that will end up in the basement I don’t have.
• I’m saddened when vendors pack away more stuff than they arrived with in the pre-dawn hours, and exhausted picturing all the hauling required to collect and assemble their wares every weekend.

Most people do not share my neurosis. They love to start a conversation with, “You won’t believe how cheap my new (fill in the blank) was.” I desperately want to tell them the reason it was cheap but politeness always trumps honesty and I dutifully nod and applaud.

A few years ago my wife brought home a vintage glider for our balcony that she’d found at The Annex. It was only a hundred dollars (so cheap!) and delivery was free. The faded green frame contrasted nicely with the rusty springs she contended. Of course we had to spend another five hundred dollars to outfit it with cushions. Despite the upgrade I could never look at it without thinking of sitting on my Aunt Velva’s front porch in Waleetka, Oklahoma while Uncle Floyd alternated gliding with spitting tobacco juice into a Folgers Coffee can.

My on-going ordeal ended abruptly when a neighbor stopped in and remarked how perfect the glider would look at her new house in the country. “When can you pick it up?” I offered, “It’s free.”

Forging Every Stream

I saw Tom Crean, the one-man production by Aiden Dooley, at the Irish Rep Theater this week. He went on three unsuccessful Antarctic expeditions to the South Pole.

Adventurers have always been an inspiration to me. Not the kind of inspiration that would get me out climbing the highest heights and forging the widest streams but the kind that leave me awestruck at the incredible tenacity of the human spirit.

At the prospect of being lost on an iceberg, or stuck in a crevasse, I don’t know that I’d have the fortitude to get myself out, or even to try to wait it out. I think as soon as the illusion that I was warm and could lay down and go to sleep presented itself, I’d do just that. But given the actual circumstances, perhaps I would persevere.

I think that’s what I find the most fascinating. I don’t wonder why someone would set off on a trek to the remotest bounds – that sounds very appealing for a multitude of reasons. It’s the persistent effort to make one’s way home after going off-course or encountering extreme situations that perplexes me. What is it that keeps them going?

There’s an IMAX film about a mail pilot whose plane went down in the Andes. He keeps walking through the mountains for about seven days until he finally happens upon a road where someone finds him. It was the thought of his wife that kept him taking one step after another for a solid week.

Perhaps the type of people that set out on such adventures are wired to do anything to prove they are invincible. This has often gotten people killed, but it’s the same cloth that allows them to triumph over the harshest environments and terrains.

I’ll ponder this a little more as I traverse the concrete jungle of my habitat - Manhattan.

The Survival of Mother Earth

The good news is our blue planet will weather humanity's storm. That's the encouraging message I took away from The 11th Hour.

I don't really mind the conclusion that humans may become extinct. If we can't make the necessary adjustments the hostile environment we will create will likely not be one we care to live in.

Once humans have self-destructed, Mother earth will refresh herself, renew her beauty and grandeur and live happily ever after for the next 2 billion years. Our presence will have left little impression on her pristine tableau.

The option of change, of course, is more appealing - green buildings dotting the landscape, with energy-free transportation zipping us to and fro. This future seems sublime, though the likelihood of it becoming reality is left to the blithering optimists.

It will require big government to nudge her bow on an uncharted course. Something she is capable of though not something she does without a fight. It will be an exciting chapter in our history, whichever way it goes.

Let's just make sure it's printed on recycled paper!