Saturday Sun and Sustainable Urbanism

 

The Scarlett  

Shredder and Haley Hughes, 

This is your country, oil on canvas. 

Cuban Jazz as the blogger edits away, 

thinking about a lost friend,

and the wildfires.

In between everything, I edit away at Sustainable Urbanism, trying to pull the notes together for my lost manuscript, that went to press, then away from press, through the years, drifting and drafting some acknowledgements to my friends and the circumstances of the time:

“A trial of editing chaos, hiking trails through Spain, a broken arm in Italy, a snorkeling trip in Jamaica, missed deadlines, disappearing editors, missing friends, lost manuscripts, a novel from    San Francisco, a lost map of Shinjuku, scheduling miscues, activism, wildfires and plagues followed.”

 

One last chance to get the book right, I think editing away listening Nick Drake sing about the

Saturday Sun:

 

“Saturday sun came early one morning
In a sky so clear and blue
Saturday sun came without warning…
But when I remembered those people and places
They were really too good in their way…”

 

They really were too good.

 

For the last week,

thoughts about Graeber’s premature departure pour through my mind.

His old Direct Action book calls from the bookshelf, where it has sat for the last decade.

He wrote it out of meeting minutes as we all sat at Charas or wherever else he was taking them.  Now, he’s gone and his book sits on my shelf, my name misspelled in the acknowledgements, along with a group of friends, some I still speak to, others long moved on.

It was fun having a wild, curious anthropologist of history around, writing notes, sending drafts of chapter after chapter in all night emails.

Here and then gone.

The quirky words remain acknowledging those years:

“…everyone who looked over drafts, or pieces of them, to point out the endless things I got wrong; but really, anyone whose name appears deserves thanks and much more. 

These are people who gave me a sense of hope for the planet in what would otherwise have been the worst time of my life. I have nothing but love for them…

I came to this project with little but myself and my of sense of optimism.

I pursued it with the growing understanding that, no matter now bleak and dangerous some of the places through which one must pass, to live as a rebel- in the constant awareness of the possibilities of revolutionary transformation, and amongst those who dream of it-surely the best way to live.”

 

That’s the way it is these days,

Dreams and realities in a constant dance of becoming and fading.

The past and future dancing with the future.

Be here now,

even when

fighting a rezoning in the Gowanus on Wednesday,

Hoping for public space,

Keep the Public Place Promise.

Share the commons.

 

Getting oysters after trauma class, talking through solutions in policy class.

Hoping for leaderful movements,

When a new group sees some conflicts,

No gods no monsters.

No shame or blame.

No scolding, lets do what we can do with a little humility.

 

Friday, September 11, 6:30 pm:

“A memorial will be held for Sarah Pitts, the Brooklyn senior assistant district attorney killed while biking in Williamsburg on Monday. Gather at the Prison Ship Martyr at Fort Greene Park and march and or bike to McCarren Park; please wear white, bring flowers or candles…”

I ride through downtown to join the mourners, finding my biking buddies.

You gotta have friends. Stay safe comrades. #ripsarahpitts, I think.

It could have been any of us out there, any of us riding.

Emily, em4assembly posts a few photos,

"Honoring Sarah Pitts. I wish I didn’t only see my friends at vigils for the murdered."

 

It could have been any of us.

 

The sun is shining Saturday.

We walk to Dumbo

through the glorious Indian Summer, fall air, moving into fall.

I sit in the sun, waiting for Caroline to return from an appointment,

reading Norwegian Wood, Murakami’s genius.

Thinking about Faulkner and his struggles with old manuscripts.

Texts and calls, conspiring with the kids,

Plans for the #Chicks n Bowls meetup in New Jersey.

Kids from all over skating, building, supporting,

Bodies in motion, descending and ascending.

Skates in motion all afternoon.

Everyone looking out for each other.

 

On the way back, we make our way from Orange through Midtown,to Queens, where we lose our way, circling anew,

toward the Pulaski Bridge in Long Island City,

over Newtown Creek,

the toxins still swimming about,

finding our way to Greenpoint in Brooklyn

First time in a gallery in six months at 64 Dobbin St.

We have to wait in line to get in, chatting about what is going to happen to art,

People drinking wine,

New York could be the 1970’s again.

Finally inside, we take in the wonderful piece by activist

Haley Hughes.

An activist artist for our moment, her work tells the stories of bodies in protest, in action, fighting ICE, Occupying Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, City Hall Autonomous Zone, story after story, an abundant narrative, ever expanding.

 

Back home, I walk to Carroll Street for

“Bridges of Brass
Sept. 12th
7-8 pm
Gowanus Canal Bridges

the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club welcoming the incomparable Funkrust Brass Band to the Gowanus Canal as part of City of Water Day!

walk over the bridges of Gowanus …

 be blasted and serenaded by trumpets, trombones, tuba, saxes, drums and singing as these intrepid musicians take to the murky waters in canoes and play their fiery all-original songs about finding joy and catharsis in the apocalypse. Really!

Try Union, Carroll, and Third Street Bridges or the shoreline esplanades near the Sponge Park…”

 

Friends from everywhere are there.

Nikki and I talk about David G and his many quarrels, still with us.

Still gossiping through the years.

 

A few of us sit for a glass of wine.

Musicians play below, standing on a flotilla on the Gowaus.

Please don’t fall in.

 

Every time I look at the manuscript, there is more to fix,

Chapter after chapter,

Citations missing.

I’m at it all day,

listening to Leonard Cohen, tuning into Judson service online,

instead of going.

 

Old and new testament in the church bulletin:

from Earthseed: The Books of the Living in Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler:

“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”

 

Exodus 14: 19-29

“The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.”

We are all drowning, says Micah, beginning to preach,

Looking for life rafts.

Carl Jung helped describe an active imagination we explore.

We are all the characters in our dreamscapes.

They are all us, every fear and hope and anxiety,

in our adaptability, persistence, obsession.

Keep us from drowning

Keep one another afloat

Adapt as the world changes.

A global pandemic descends.

We become helpers.

We own up to our mistakes,

Use the lessons to transform.

We listen to what’s working.

We persist.

Listen to one another.

Build ways to sustain the journey.

Sustain the collective

Add positively to this collective adaptation.

What do you have to give?

Let your mind flood with ideas.

Here are some jump starts.

Get involved,

Write voters.

Call them,

Engage them

Listen to them.

Listen to each other.

 

The West Coast is on fire.

Extinction Rebellion,

“EMERGENCY MARCH FOR WILDFIRES

The West Coast is burning. Again. And so is Brazil, Greece, Argentina, Indonesia, and Bulgaria. Climate chaos is not in the distant future. It is here.

We’re calling an emergency march on Sunday 9/13, meeting at Battery Park at 1pm. Stand with us - stand in solidarity with all those who have lost their homes and loved ones to the wildfires.

Please bring a homemade sign about the climate emergency we're in (examples are "No Planet B" or "Our house is on fire") …

Our house is on fire. This is an emergency. We need to act now! If we stand together, crisis does not have to mean collapse.”

 

We meet in solidarity,

New York stands with the Left Coast.

Those fires are all of our fires.

The climate is our commons.

 

Jazz fills the street,

Springing from Brian at the Cubana Café.

Sunday night jazz on Smith Street with neighbors.

Live music every night.

Live

Breathe.

Summer turns to fall.

Writing all night long.

 

Peter Sears sees

“The Return of the Horses’ Spirit

 

After the pillage, the fires,

and rounding up of the boys,

the soldiers returned months later, dug up the graves,
and took the bones away.
They drove the high road along the river,
drinking and yelling and throwing the bones,
one by one, into the ravine.
That’s when horses appeared on the ridge
and charged down onto the road.”

 

A prophetic closing and opening, as summer turns to fall.