A Brooklyn Memory...

When I visited my Dad last week in Brooklyn, I took a day and traveled to Grand Army Plaza, the section of Brooklyn where I was born and raised until shortly before my fifth birthday. The neighborhood’s main drag is a grand old six-lane boulevard called “Eastern Parkway.” According to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Eastern Parkway was “the world's first parkway, conceived by famous architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1866. The term ‘parkway’ was coined by these designers as a landscaped road built expressly for 'pleasure-riding and driving'. To these ends, commerce was restricted.”

Wonderful, late ninetheenth century apartment buildings of twelve to fifteen stories each line the North side of the parkway. And then the opposite, South side of Eastern Parkway contains a wonderful array of Brooklyn’s finest culture, one next to the other: The Brooklyn Museum, The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and then Prospect Park, a 585-acre masterpiece, also designed by Olmsted and Vaux.

On Saturdays, Dad would take me and my brothers to the Library and the Gardens, in order to give Mom some quiet time at home. But every day as a toddler I was pushed in my carriage through the Gardens and the Park by Faith, the wonderful Jamaican lady who was my primary caregiver.

41 Eastern Parkway

Towards the middle of the afternoon, I headed for the Library. When I was almost there, I stopped dead in my tracks for across the street from where I was standing I saw 41 Eastern Parkway, the apartment building where I was born. It had been over 46 years since I had last seen that building.

And then powerful memories of Chris started flooding my mind. Chris was the building’s old, white-haired black elevator operator. In buildings from that era, the elevators were all manually operated. There weren’t buttons for each floor, but an up/down lever for the elevator itself. Skilled elevator operators were necessary to make sure the elevator actually stopped level with the particular floor it was going to. And there was a shiny brass gate that the operator manually opened and closed for you to let you on and off the elevator.

Because he was in the elevator all day, there was a little operator’s seat that Chris could fold down from the wall to sit upon. But Chris always stood when he had passengers to take from one floor to another. He had very shiny shoes and a smart cap and uniform with big brass buttons. His pants had gold stripes down the outsides of the legs.

Of course, at the time I never realized that all the elevator operators in these Eastern Parkway apartment buildings—just as all the lavatory attendants—were black. But the memories that came to me so strongly were ones of Chris smiling kindly at me, as he let me operate the elevator and I laughed with delight at the fun of it all. I also remember his folding down the seat for me to sit on, and we would chit-chat together like two old friends.

Later in the day as I sat with a cup of coffee in the Library's cafeteria, I marveled that try as I might, I couldn’t remember the apartment I had lived in for almost five years. The only images in my mind were ones that I had seen in family photographs from the time period. There was nothing of it that was really “mine.”

Yet what DID stick with me in glorious, living color from 41 Eastern Parkway after almost five decades were the simple kindnesses of an old black man toward a very little white boy.

Elevator Up/Down Lever

Beau

Beau

I remember walking with my dogs one morning, leaving the enclosed dog park and heading back to my car which was about 200 yards away. Ellie, my then seven-year-old Blue Tick Coonhound, raced around happily, tail wildly whipping about, like an oscillating fan out of control. She wasn’t always like this, though… When I got her from the dog pound two years earlier, she was reclusive, fearful and aloof. It turns out she had been terribly abused, and was particularly cautious around men. But she and I bonded quickly, and today she rarely needs to be on a leash, especially in rural areas. While she is much happier now in her life, she still remains cautious, and if there’s something loud or unfamiliar in the distance, she quickly runs back to my side for safety.

            Beau, on the other hand, was entirely different. He was the Will Rogers of the canine world: he never met another human or animal he didn’t like… or at least, who he didn’t wanted to play with. He was a two-year-old Tree Walker Coonhound, also a rescue dog, and had absolutely no idea how big he was (120 pounds) nor how intimidating he could appear when he came charging at you like a freight train, with ears, jowels and tongue flapping madly with each bound and stride. Because of his, ummm..., “enthusiasm,” Beau needed to be on his leash as we walked back to the car. Otherwise, he might knock someone over, trample a smaller dog, give a heart attack to a cat, or—and this was my worst fear—accidentally get hit by a car.

            As we walked to the parking lot, I felt a slight sadness for Beau… Ellie got to romp freely, but he was restricted. I looked at him lovely, wanting to say, “I wish I could let you run free, big guy, but I’m afraid you have the good sense of a stump…” So I just continued to look at him and marveled at what a miracle he was.

            And then something dawned on me… There was a slight tension on the leash as he pulled me forward ever so gently. His long tail swished nobly back-and-forth in a slow but steady wide arc. Every so often, he looked back at me, as if to say, “Just checking.” Ellie, who seconds ago was twenty yards ahead, raced back to us and growled invitingly to him… “Come catch me!” she taunted, and then raced off hoping for pursuit. But Beau didn’t flinch. He led me unerringly back to my car, waited for me to open the door, and then happily hopped right in.

And what I realized was this:

            He didn’t see his situation the same way I did. I thought I was controlling him, and protecting him from potentially hurting himself and others (which I was). But he viewed it differently: to him, he was simply leading me safely to our destination. Dogs, unlike humans, are happiest with two things: being with their Master, and being useful. Whereas I thought Beau might be jealous of Ellie’s freedom, that I was treating him unfairly and stopping him from having fun, he seemed to be viewing his situation with the seriousness of receiving a high honor. And what’s more honorable to a dog than being with his Master and having a job to do?

            There’s a technical term for what I did here: anthropomorphism. It’s where one assigns human characteristics and feelings to an animal or inanimate object: a “happy” tree, or a “conniving” bird, for instance. But at a deeper level, an anthropomorphism is, as psychologists would say, a type of projection… where we have very personal responses to something that is happening, not to us, but to another person or creature. I would be sad, after all, if I were a dog on a leash.

So why didn’t Beau feel the same way? Because he was a dog, that’s why. And isn’t is amazing that he was so totally fulfilled—and good at—being a dog? Would that I was as good at being a human being!

Accelerated Times

It’s very odd, but I can’t seem to write by pen & paper anymore. I am so used to sitting with my laptop, that not having it impedes my flow.

I have no idea why this is the case… one would think just the opposite would happen.

For me, though, the writing process has become somewhat disjointed. I seem to do best when I write and revise, edit and step back, each task in quick succession, and almost randomly.

There’s also a part of the process that requires distraction… and computers allow me, even in mid-sentence, to quickly and constantly check my email or instant messages.

I used to think that this multi-tasking had to be disruptive to inspiration and the completion of projects—how could you possibly get in “the zone” if you kept jumping around from task to task?

But I recently reread Rollo May’s amazing work, “The Courage To Create,” and he said the creative process needs diversion. The way he explained it, you spend concentrated intellectual effort on something, but then the inspiration comes when your mind puts the problem aside and concerns itself with other things.

Of course, when May wrote this back in 1975, he was referring to working on the problem for several hours straight, and then going off and doing something else completely different.

But we’re living in accelerated times now… maybe a quicker alternation of tasks is required in a society where camera angles on TV change, on average, at least every three seconds…

Perhaps, then, the key for me isn’t to calm my racing mind, but rather to adapt my methods to its frenetic pace. I don’t know.

One thing I am sure about, however, is that I don’t like writing by pen & paper anymore.