On this All Souls' Day, two little souls who enjoyed Prospect Park long ago, and were captured on a summer day in a photo that wound up in a stereoview card set.
The park was featured often in these sets (the predecessors to ViewMasters and IMAX 3-D), testifying to its magnitude as a tourist attraction. The ghostly figures, fixed forever in the distant past on my same familiar and beloved park spots, often remind me of my favorite lines from Dead Poet's Society:
It was perfect Halloween weather at the Greenmarket: dark, foreboding clouds but mild enough temperatures to permit costumed revelry.
Apple green stood out amid the harvest colors, in an Asian pear (and Daughter's top), and in Romanesco broccoli. We bought the pear (Daughter gets cravings for the hard, juicy things) but not the Romanesco (whose culinary uses are described here).
I wonder if those are Fibonacci numbers in the vegetable's strange and lovely nubbins?
Costumes were in evidence: at left, a young lady dressed as, perhaps, candy corn. (Amazingly, there was also still some real corn; I bought 3 ears.)
At right, "hipsters."
And (as Little Edie says) "the best costume for today": Sister Mary Mackerel and her sidekick Bluefish at the Blue Moon fish stand. The folks here are always amazingly good sports, but today they outdid themselves.
GREENMARKET DOG OF THE DAY
This feathery friend is the gentle Olivia, who belongs to a breed new to me: the Italian Spinone. (At first, I thought her person was saying "Spumoni.") Olivia, hipster-like, has a scraggly little beard and emo-eyes, which she fixed on passers-by yearningly. She is training to be a therapy dog, but has failed her test several times--most recently, for being unable to resist giving kisses! That sounds like good therapy to me.
Five o'clock, the end of October, the Long Meadow. With daylight savings time almost over, I struggle to keep the melancholy of the season from overshadowing the golden radiance of it. Discovering this guy practicing his mad tightrope skills between two flaming trees did the job.
I was drawn to the mesmerizing elm grove, below, the one on a knob of land near the "dog beach."
The knoll is carpeted with leaves, and the mostly bare branches seem to wave overhead like a circle of dancers. See the guy on a bike at right, in a gray jacket? The two other cyclists had asked him how old Prospect Park was, and he was telling them a little of its history, with perfect accuracy and great zest.
One more shot of the elms, from the other side...towering over dog walkers, stroller moms, kids walking home from school. The moon was out, a little pale disc, but it's just out of frame.
by Rainer Maria Rilke,
translated by Edward Snow
Lord: it is time. Your summer was superb.
Lay your shadows on the sundials,
and in the meadows let the winds go free.
Command the last fruits to be full;
give them only two more southern days,
urge them on to completion and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house will never build one now.
Whoever is alone now will long remain so,
will stay awake, read books, write long letters
and wander restless back and forth
along the tree-lined streets, as the leaves drift down.
(This morning I made two simultaneous felicitous discoveries: the above poem, from this book, and a perfectly delightful blogger and children's author named Sara Lewis Holmes, who is also a powerful poet in her own right. Her blog, Read, Write, Believe, retains all the freshness, invention and quirk of the blogosphere at its best; it's technically about "kid lit" but spangles out in all sorts of lovely digressions, including a fine blog carnival idea called "Poetry Friday." Sara is most welcome to walk in the park with me any day!)
A fortnight has passed without a park visit, while I hunker down beneath the madness of our Great Roof Replacement Epic. Yesterday, my painter friend, sensing an orgy of color nearby, dragged me to the Nethermead for a blissful hour of escape.
Four little trees in the Parade Grounds, clustered near the baseball diamond, have turned the exact same color simultaneously.
I like park squirrels; they do nice normal squirrelly things, like eat viburnum berries and bury acorns. Our house squirrels play bocce between the walls and "bury" half-eaten Jamaican meat pies on our windowsills, which I do not like.
A birder with a foot-long telephoto lens alerted me to the Blurry Bird of the Day: a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. Had he ever seen their little ruby crown actually raised, I asked? "Only when they're really mad," he replied.
My vote for best leaf-peeping goes to the lake's south shore drive.
A haze enveloped the Lullwater. Painter Friend and I turned for home, where I looked up Ruby-Crowned Kinglets and William Blake's Autumn:
The spirits
of the air live in the smells
Of fruit;
and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The
gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”
Then rose,
girded himself, and o’er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.
--William Blake, "To Autumn"
...Macoun, Honeycrisp, Winesap. The names are pure poetry, and the eating is even better, now at the peak of Greenmarket apple season. For some buying tips for your next visit, go here.
Today was Summer-Prepares-to-Surrender Day. Despite the brave face (and ears, and tail) of this ludicrous eggplant, the time for warm-weather bounty is winding down. There are still peaches, but they have somehow lost heart, as if they know it is the time of Apples Ascendant. There are still emerald-green and crayon-yellow zucchini, but they're sitting alongside piles of tough and robust winter squash, and we know who's going to make it through winter storage.
And of course, there are roots in all their glory. No one else in the family shares my demented glee at piles of carrots, turnips, and beets, but at least I can share it with you.
I looked up the Jewish holiday of Sukkot here, and learned that it means "the time of our joy," and that it is traditionally a time for fun family outings. Here in Brooklyn, for the Hasidic community that means "pedal boats in Prospect Park," judging from the throngs on the water on a golden Tuesday afternoon. Some of the older ladies, in pearls and sensible shoes, struggled a bit to maneuver in and out of the craft, but everyone seemed to be having a great time, donning life vests over prayer shawls.
Maybe it comes from living a premodern lifestyle without TV, movies, and "X-treme" video games, but these folks seem to get more bang for the buck out of simple pleasures like a walk in the park; they are a throwback to another era, when a fairly sedate outing and some fresh air was enough of a treat to keep the whole gang happy.
On the north end of the lake, one of the now-infamous Bullied Swans seemed to have an injured foot tucked up, while the nearly-full-grown cygnet acted as his wingman. No bullying behavior from the Evil Dominating Southern Swan Family was observed at least during this brief period, but then, they were occupied down by the pedalboats, where the Hasidic kids tossed them challah chunks.
Meanwhile, someone had laid out this preposterous trough of chow for the Gluttonous Waterfowl on shore. I'd rather do this with them. Foie gras, anyone?
In a week it will be October, but it felt like summer at the Imagination Playground around 5 o'clock.
Daughter and I walked a half-loop around the park; we encountered a warbler (unidentified species), a saxophonist, more bread-tossing Tashlich celebrants, and a Brazilian soccer team on the Parade Grounds. We walked about 2 miles, just enough to get good and hungry for dinner. I made butternut squash flavored with sage, because, well, even at 80 degrees, it's fall.
Thanks to a friend's generous invitation, I went along to Tashlich for the first time at the lake in Prospect Park. In this Rosh Hashanah ceremony, bread is cast upon a body of water (it should have fish in it, and the lake certainly does). This symbolizes the casting away of sins and the purification of the heart for a new year.
Cast away from yourselves all your transgressions,
And create within yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.
--Ezekiel 18:31
When he was just shy of 70, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden...but tho' an old man, I am but a young gardener." I thought of his words yesterday upon learning that Carmen Farina, the volunteer Constant Gardener of Prospect Park, had died after a short illness. I took the picture at right one year ago; I was stunned to learn that this vigorous and indefatigable lady was, at the time, already 85 years old. She came out to garden virtually every day; both times that we chatted, she was working alone among her drifts of flowers.
Her masterpiece was the gorgeous hillside swath beneath the Litchfield Villa (on Prospect Park West between Fourth and Fifth Streets), and the park has officially named it "Carmen's Garden" in her honor. I profiled the garden here and especially here.
Gardening, Carmen told me in a tone that brooked no argument, "makes me feel alive." While I expressed my appreciation to her, I did not tell her the deeper gift she gave me: She showed me another way to grow old, an earthy and joyful alternative to my own mother's protracted and miserable journey into self-pity and isolation. In the darkest days of caregiving, when my mom's depression and disability threatened to overwhelm both of us, I determined to seek out "other mothers," other models of resilience and abundance of spirit. Carmen was one of my other mothers.
If you would like to follow the garden path of Carmen and Thomas Jefferson to eternal youth, Prospect Park will be holding volunteer information sessions on the following Wednesdays: Sept. 23 (6:30 p.m.), Oct. 7 (4 p.m.) and Oct. 21 (6:30 p.m.), or go here.
