Archive for Journal

New public art at Lincoln Center

And boy, is it a doozy! John Gerrard’s Solar Reserve is an animated virtual representation of a solar tower array. It changes slowly but constantly. It’s in place until Dec. so I’ll be able to bring you lots of photos. Here’s the first.

John Gerrard's Solar Reserve

Fall is sharply here

Yes, it is. The sunlight is sharp, the cold wind is sharp, the air is sharp, and sharp waves this morning rolled in and broke into glittering spray at the seawall. Steam rose from my tea, visible in the bright air. The old man who fishes at the curved walkway sat on his bait bucket all bundled in a down jacket. He’ll be out there until late in November, I think, then he’ll vanish until mid-March. Joggers wore leggings and windbreakers. One of the smaller dogs had on a plaid coat. The trees are dropping yellow and brown leaves onto the stone path and into the blue water. Across the river the only maple in sight of my bench has turned blazing red. In all this sharpness, an odd note this morning: one low patch of fog, graying the ferry terminal and its clock tower. Upriver, downriver, inland, all was clear, but that one spot was smudged as surely as if I were looking through a handprint on a windowpane. Eventually it drifted apart and edges, corners, and hard colors sprang back into focus.

Death Becomes Her

I’m not a particular fan of the Met’s Costume Institute because I don’t really care about fashion. And although I write crime, it’s because I’m fascinated by motive, not drawn to death. Still, I’m thinking when this show opens, I’ll go up and see it.

Fortieth Saturday

Two small boats race by,

Churn white wakes in gray water.

Now, just rain again.

Long low swells roll in,

Silver, green, raindrop-dotted,

Mingle restlessly.

Against pale blank sky

Tower like paper cut-out.

Red light blinks from top.

Fall

Sharp waves, whitecaps and everything, at high tide this morning. This means water breaking over the seawall, and dogs leaping back in confusion. A black duck flew against the wind, a cormorant much faster with it. Hardly a seagull to be seen; where they go when it’s too windy to fly and the water’s too high for them to sit on the pilings, I could not tell you. Meanwhile, back in the little park near me, all the summer annuals have been pulled up, autumn pansies planted, and yesterday a huge number of holes were dug in rich new brown dirt and filled with armloads of bulbs. Tulips or daffodils? I don’t know, but stay tuned. Spring is just around the corner. We just have that winter thing to get through, first…

I love New York

I’m in the stretching room at the gym. Two other guys there, in conversation. One’s an actor in his 70’s, chubby, white hair, white beard. Guy asks if he ever plays Santa Claus. No, actor says, but I know a guy who’s a professional Santa Claus. How he makes his living. No kidding, says the other guy, so do I. Excuse me for butting in, I say, but so do I. We compare notes; it’s not impossible that we might know the same guy, since we’re all from the neighborhood, etc. We don’t. Three random people at the gym all know different professional Santa Clauses. I love New York.

Thirty-ninth Saturday

Curve of cormorant

Out at edge of piling field

Black on gray water.

Pale ferry slips by.

Yellow glow of cabin lights

Sliding into fog.

Hard rain, empty path.

Runner in soaked green tee shirt

Grins and splashes past.

Thirty-eighth Saturday, from the Butler Memorial Sanctuary, NY, three days late

Six hawks ride the wind.

Slow circles, double spirals

Rising and falling.

Unhappy chipmunk

Loudly scolds chatting hikers.

His morning’s disturbed!

Eyes on horizon

Birders with binoculars

Miss wren at feeder.

September SinC-up

September is Blog SinC-up month at Sisters in Crime — SinC-up, get it? — and it’s been a really wacko month for me, so I’m just managing to sneak in at the end. The way this works, I answer one of these questions:

Which authors have inspired you?

Which male authors write great women characters? Which female authors write great male characters?

If someone said “Nothing against women writers, but all of my favorite crime fiction authors happen to be men,” how would you respond?

What’s the best part of the writing process for you? What’s the most challenging?

Do you listen to music while writing? What’s on your playlist?

What books are on your nightstand right now?

If you were to mentor a new writer, what would you tell her about the writing business?

…and pass the baton to another writer. I’m tagging Tom Savage, not a Sister but a brother-in-crime. He’s got a new book out, PENNY FOR THE HANGMAN, and though his SinC-up blog will appear in October you’ll want to read it.

I’m going to answer the best/worst question, thusly: I love, LOVE, when something happens that I didn’t expect and it fits perfectly into the book in two or three different ways — that is, it answers a number of questions I maybe hadn’t even articulated to myself yet. This can only happen when you allow your work to get a little out of your control, trusting your subconscious and the process. When it does happen, it’s both an unanticipated thrill and a validation of the choice to let the book take its own path.

The worst is plot. Plot comes from the math and logic side of the brain, the Mr. Spock side, and if writers were strong on that side we’d be scientists. Everything else we do comes from the emotion and aesthetics side. I let my plots come as naturally as possible, flowing from character, but there are still those moments when I find myself having to Figure Something Out. Oh, how I hate those moments.

I also want to say this about the “Nothing against women writers…” question, and it’s all I have to say.

My kinda town

So this is life in NYC: last Wednesday, I’m at the Japan Society for a conversation between Sen So’oku, a 15th-generation tea master, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, a fabulous photographer, called “from Sen Rikyu (the found of So’oku’s school) to Marcel Duchamp.” I wasn’t sure they could pull it off, demonstrating a connection. But they did. And both of them so completely funny and charming! Even though So’oku only spoke in Japanese, with a translator.

Saturday night I’m at a tiny downtown theater for a production of WAITING FOR GODOT. In Yiddish. With supertitles, my Yiddish isn’t up to Beckett. Moving and beautiful. Makes it into a whole new play, because it puts what we now call the Holocaust front and center, which, when Beckett started it in 1946, was apparently what was on his mind — the war, the extermination of the Jews, and the very personal death of a Jewish friend who was released from a camp when the Allies swept through, but too ill to survive.

Sunday, the Brooklyn Literary Festival, where not only was I on a totally fun panel, but before mine I went to one with Franketienne, Vikram Chandra, and Phillipe Petit! Moderated by Elissa Schapell. On creativity. This was a good week for that, I think. So here’s a photo of my own panel, and if you’re of my tribe, here are best wishes for a sweet new year.

brooklyn book festival panel

Right to left: K’wan, me, A.X. Ahmad, Ibrahim Ahmad