I took a long walk yesterday with my friend Markus from Tübingen, Germany, who is in town to get his MA in English. He had been staying in the YWCA (he claims not to have known what the “W” stood for) while looking for an apartment. He found one, but when we met at Back Bay Station yesterday he said he had to go back to the YWCA to leave his phone number for someone there. So we headed in that direction.

When we got there I waited outside on the corner of Berkeley and Appleton for him. I’ve been over there countless times through the years, but it’s really not until you find yourself just standing there looking around that you see things. And I’d just never really had occasion to stand around on that particular corner before. So when I looked across the street and saw this:

I was sort of surprised. Was it once a synagogue? When I got home I did a little research. The only mention I could find online was a brief one from The Boston Walks “Jewish Friendship Trail” site, that listed Berkeley and Appleton as stop #4, and said of the intersection simply:

“…near the corner of Berkeley and Appleton Streets, we can glimpse a vivid reason why Jews felt comfortable occupying several communal buildings at this intersection. Here, in the first floor of the Theodore Parker meeting house, Adath Israel ran its Sunday school beginning in 1875.”

If this is the Theodore Parker House–and it may or may not be–I don’t know why it would have a Star of David figuring prominently in the design, since Parker was not a Jew. He was an abolitionist, transcendentalist, deposed Unitarian minister (you know he was radical if he got chucked out of the Unitarian Church), and finally head of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston, whose Appleton Street Chapel was built at the corner of Berkeley and Appleton Streets around the time the building in the picture was.

So, my curiosity is piqued. If anyone knows anything about any of this, give me a shout.

Marcus joined me after a few minutes’ musing on the street corner there, and we headed to Back Bay, eventually making our way through the public garden, for a stroll on Beacon Hill, where I noticed this in passing:

A found phallus. Just thought I’d share.

We walked from there to the Charles and found a park bench, and Markus ate a plum. And we watched the sky:

Then we decided to go to Cambridge. So we walked to the Charles/MGH T station. It has yet to be automated, and here, again, the T’s utter incompetence in this process was on glorious display. We could not use our Charlie Tickets, of course, and found ourselves scrambling to come up with change. Markus got his token, and then I handed the man in the token booth two dollar bills–I am absolutely sure of it–and asked for “one, please.” I got two tokens, and fifty cents back. For some reason. I didn’t complain. Seventy-five cents a trip seems totally reasonable to me. I think that’s about what the T’s worth these days. I felt somewhat, slightly–but only slightly–compensated for all the inconveniences. It could be a secret policy of theirs, to quell the fury of the masses with little random giveaways like this, making you sort of complicit in the conspiracy. I mean, you sort of think, OK, the incompetence is bearable if I get a free ride out of it occasionally.

In Cambridge we walked around Harvard Yard. I showed Markus a swarm of tourists who had come all the way from Southeast Asia to polish John Harvard’s shoe, even though it’s not really John Harvard. I asked him if he wanted to do it, too, and he said he would pass.

We had a quick bite to eat at the Friendly EATING PLACE on Mass Ave at Dana Street (roughly midway between Harvard and Central Squares). It’s been there forever, and as far as I have ever been able to tell, it’s no friendlier than any other EATING PLACE in the neighborhood, though no less friendly on the whole, either. The sign facing Dana Street is the most strictly accurate, reading simply “EATING PLACE.” Although people also talk and laugh and drink and watch the TV in the corner, and day-dream, and worry, and look at passersby through the window. But if you want to be all functional about it, I suppose it is an “eating place” first, and an all-those-other-things place second. The eats are, however, so-so at best.

So, we hopped back on the T at Central Square, where, of course, we could not use our tokens, and Markus’s Charlie Ticket was out of funds, and the train was coming, and I ran my ticket through, and next thing I know, Markus jumps through with me. No buzzers buzzed, no red lights flashed, and no one was in the station to do anything about it if they had. This was my first fare evasion experience (albeit a passive one) with the new automated system, and to be perfectly honest, it was painless.

Not that I myself would actively evade paying my fare, but I’m not one of those people who a bag of money drops out of the sky and lands on their heads and they go turn it into the authorities, either. You know, if the universe offers you a free ride, take it. It’ll all even out in the end. I’ve lost plenty of money feeding the T’s old token vending machines, and if the gods of the underground are seeing fit to pay me back a bit at the moment who am I to question their wisdom? Am I gonna spit in the eye of Providence?

Boylston Street has some of the most pathetic bicycle rackage in Boston. “Well, at least there are some bicycle racks,” doesn’t cut it. A surprising number of people share a pathetically small number of racks that were obviously put in more as a symbolic than a practical measure. But almost worse than the city’s half-assed gestures toward alternative modes of transportation in its core, are cyclists’ insensitivity to the needs of other cyclists. It’s sad, but not too surprising, truth told, that there’s really no solidarity among cyclists in the city. I mean, City of Brotherly Love Boston most assuredly is not.

At the risk of seeming like more of a prickly prick than I generally do, I would like to demonstrate two methods of racking your bike on the Boylston Street racks: the first would be the WRONG way, the selfish, inconsiderate way, since it allows for only two bikes to be racked at once. Whereas the second is the way that allows for four bikes. And, trust me, maximizing space is important during the work-week.

These are not ideal racks, as I’ve said, but you work with what you’re given. Really, the main point here is to think about others occasionally. You know, when you do, I swear to God things run much more smoothly for everyone. It’s not just being nice to no purpose. Being nice actually makes things work better. For real.

So peace out, and freakin rack your bikes up right, Boston!

Have you seen him yet?

My friend Tony spotted him over the weekend, on Mass Ave., if I’m not mistaken. And then, this evening as I was riding home, we crossed paths on Tremont Street.

He’s a skinny, scrappy old thing. Looks like he’s seen some tough times. But that’s life in the city, as my ma used to say, especially for a bear. But despite the patch of mange on his tattered old hide, and his worn old visage with its faded fur and sad, goofy smile, he’s ever so friendly, waving at everyone as he rides by. And waving in a nice way. He doesn’t freakin’ QUACK-QUACK at you, all aggressively, like you’re the butt of his joke. Just a neighborly little wave as he passes. Which is why people wave back.

He doesn’t stand for anything in particular. He’s not advertising anything that I can see. He’s just a bear on a bike. Which is enough, when you think about it.

We need to fix him up with a foxy, cycling she-bear, so they can get busy making baby bears. Because Boston most definitely needs more bears on bikes.

Last week there was a firestorm over cycling in the city on the pages of The Globe. It was ignited by a letter to the editor from a certain Marika Plater, which is worth quoting in its entirety:

THIS IS to the man in the blue Volkswagen who screamed at me, with an obscenity, to get on the sidewalk when I was riding my bicycle on Memorial Drive last week. Actually, this is to all of the Boston drivers who have honked at me while I’m biking and following the traffic laws; who have given me the finger, cut me off, splashed puddle water all over me, and squeezed me to the curb.

I want to tell Boston drivers that they do not own the road. Bicycles belong on Boston streets as much as cars do. Especially because the number of bikers will rise as skyrocketing gas prices and heightened environmental concern cause people to seek new forms of transportation, drivers need to learn how to be respectful of bicyclists and to share the road.

So here’s an abbreviated list of Massachusetts bicyclist rules of the road:

Bicycles are allowed on all roads, unless there’s a sign that says they are prohibited.

Riding bicycles on sidewalks is discouraged in general and is illegal in Somerville and parts of Cambridge.

Bicyclists must obey traffic laws.

Bicyclists should use hand signals when turning.

Bicyclists should stay at the edge of the right hand lane when there is not a bike lane, unless making a left turn, in which case they can use the left lane.

Boston drivers: Bicycles have the legal right to share the road with cars . Please watch out for bicyclists and remember that we are not protected by pounds of steel as you are . Please be considerate rather than cruel when you encounter us on the road, and please look out your window before opening your car door. Biking in Boston does not have to be as stressful as it is .

Her rant elicited the obligatory counter-rant from a certain David McCaffrey of Waltham:

MARIKA PLATER must have a death wish (”Bicyclists belong on the roads, too,” letter, Aug. 17). No one in their right mind would ride a bicycle on Memorial Drive. Hundreds of bicyclists use the sidewalk along the Charles River daily. Is Plater so obtuse that she would risk her life because there is no road sign prohibiting bicycles?

She gives a list of bicycle rules. It’s more of a wish list. Not only do bicyclists disobey the rules, their aggressive actions are a real threat to pedestrians. While driving on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge recently, I observed a bicyclist swerving in and out of traffic at high speed. When he came to the red light, he blew right through, narrowly missing an elderly woman. I observed four more bicyclists blow through the same red light.

Why do so many bicyclists disregard the rules of the road? Probably because they are unaccountable. They need no license plate, registration, inspection, or insurance. They don’t even pay an excise tax , which helps pay for the roads they use.

The next time Marika Plater wants to vent, she should look to her fellow bicyclists.

Ouch.

People. First of all, calm down. There are no innocents in the war of all against all going on on Boston’s mean streets, so let’s not pretend we’re not all at fault here.

Secondly, one of the reasons cyclists behave the way they do is that as stressful as driving is in Boston, cycling is a hundred times more stressful. It takes a lot less to get yourself seriously injured or killed on a bike than it does in a car. because many Boston streets are not made with cyclists in mind, you have to develop some aggressive strategies to get from point A to point B. Until cycling is considered a serious transportation alternative, you will have guerrilla cyclists on the streets.

Which doesn’t entirely excuse bad behavior on the part of cyclists. And I have seen cyclists behaving very badly indeed–usually, but not always, those loathsome bike couriers, biking’s version of cabbies and truck drivers. They think because they do it for a living it gives them the right to dress and behave badly. It doesn’t.

I myself have rarely encountered any real trouble with motorists, to tell the truth. You do have to keep a look-out for motorists and pedestrians, but that’s just cycling in the city. I have not been honked at, given the finger, cut off, splashed or squeezed to the curb. Really. And I ride along Mass Ave for a good portion of my commute.

I do avoid traffic, and choose my routes carefully, though. I’m not biking to prove a point, I’m biking to get from point A to point B. And I give myself enough time to deal with unanticipated delays. So the main reason I have not encountered too much trouble on the road is that I anticipate it, and take measures to minimize the probability of it.

So it’s no tribute to Boston’s drivers, God knows. They have a real problem signaling turns. They routinely blow through red lights. And many have anger management issues. Instead of putting all the blame on cyclists, motorists like McCaffrey here should get out of their cars, hop on a bike, and ride through the streets every once in a while–not Memorial Drive, of course (he’s right that Plater’s a dork to do this).

What he would find is that all those things that annoy him about other drivers when he’s in a car, are multiplied and amplified to the nth degree on a bike. And they’re no longer merely annoyances that he can blare his horn at. They can be downright life-threatening when you’re riding a bike.

Not asking for sympathy, here, just telling it like it is.

And personally, I don’t object to a certification course for cyclists. In fact, there are courses on urban cycling offered by MassBike. The idea of an excise tax for cyclists, whose lightweight vehicles have hardly any impact on roads, and who in many parts of the city don’t have lanes of their own, is a little outlandish, however.

Cycling should be encouraged, and every measure taken to ensure it’s safe in the city. That means cyclists should learn the rules and the necessary skills, and that the city should work to build a cycling infrastructure that would minimize dangers of mixing with motor traffic. And motorists should get out of their cars on occasion and ride in the city, as well. They might learn a thing or two, and maybe, just maybe, they’d find a better way to get from point A to point B in the process.

HERE.

I had a daunting weekend, and it’s splattered all over my week so far. The weather has been more or less wonderful, of course, and I was able to spend a bit of time in the garden Saturday, but for some reason–maybe the planets are in an evil alignment– my relations at the moment are almost universally prickly. The ones that aren’t prickly are like trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

There are times when you’re in the flow, when all those seemingly disparate elements beautifully converge, and then there are times when nothing comes together, and all those perfectly merged elements scatter to the four winds again. Sometimes life is like looking through a kaleidoscope, isn’t it?

And sometimes you just find you’re in the dark. Usually when you bang into something head-first you didn’t see was right in front of you. So many disparate emotions, your thoughts crowding each other out. It’s all a lot of static. Nothing resonates.

It seems to augur change.

So I’m sitting in the movie theater with a friend, watching the thoroughly delightful Little Miss Sunshine, and at the end, when the little girl performs at the pageant—a wonderful scene, even if you saw it coming—I find myself bawling my eyes out. Hmm. Funny.

The movie was a “small, good thing,” to borrow Raymond Carver’s famous phrase. I liked the theme of impotently defying society’s rigid structures. And the peculiarly American take on that modern struggle between artifice and authenticity. I was impressed once again by Steve Carrell, whom I think is the next generation of a venerable comic tradition whose current best practitioner is Bill Murray.

This may have been a hybrid genre piece (dysfunctional family goes on a road trip), but it was a good one. As for whether genre pieces are worth seeing, there was an interesting article in the Sunday Globe by their film critic Ty Burr, about Snakes on a Plane, where the always astute critic asserted: “We go to movies–even honest schlock–not to see what we expect to see but to be surprised by what we hadn’t expected.”

But do we?

This assumption on the part of critics is really a presumption in disguise. It’s like saying that when we go out to eat we always want Chinese. We don’t. Sometimes we want Japanese, Italian, or Mexican. If we ordered a humonga-chonga, we will indeed be surprised if the waiter brings us mugu gai pan, but that’s not what we wanted. Novelty is sometimes not on the menu.

The critic might, out of ennui, choose to distill what is valuable in a picture to “surprise” or “originality,” but this contradicts everything we see in the actual history of art, where a genre is invented, replicated endlessly, mastered by degrees, finally perfected, and then parodied, mocked, and morphed in its decline, cannibalized and hybridized beyond recognition, until a new genre emerges.

The important thing to understand here is that “we” don’t necessary want to be “surprised”–movie critics, because they are bored, because they watch too many movies that seem to be too much alike, want to be “surprised.”

Why do people buy albums and listen to them over and over and over again until they know every lyric, every guitar lick, every little lilt in the lead singer’s voice? The Cult of the New is particularly modern. And has actually already been superseded. Postmodern architecture is not about out-and-out originality, but appropriation and recombination. The ascendant forms of entertainment, like video games, are not about originality or surprise, but about repetition and mastery.

But the point here is that there is no one reason to go to the movies. Sometimes we want the salve of ritual, the stations of the cross; sometimes we want surprise. For me narrative cohesion, pacing, good–that is to say authetic, appropriate–dialogue, and a dose of je ne sais quoi are the ingredients of greatness, regardless of genre.

As for prickly relations. I mean, aside from those that are just generally prickly, regardless. (And you know who you are!)…

I got a good dressing down from a relatively new FWP about my treatment of the Newbury Street shopper a couple weeks ago in my blog. To be fair, he admitted that if he had been people-watching on Newbury Street and she had passed by loaded up like a pack mule as she was, shaking her thang, he might’ve cracked wise, but he would not have gone home and written about it.

It is an interesting distinction. And there is definitely something to it. The diarist sometimes seems petty for recording for posterity off-the-cuff observations that come off seeming unseemly when the moment is past. This is the chief source of danger in keeping a diary, in fact, as anyone who has for any length of time and has the courage to read it over occasionally can tell you. Come to find, we are all petty.

What do we do when we see someone so utterly self-absorbed they don’t even realize they’re being stalked by bloggerazzi? We mock them at a safe distance. My new FB acknolwedged this. What is unseemly is admitting it after the fact. But there is a remedy even for this. Mock the blogger. Pierce made his point–”mock not lest ye be mocked”–by mocking me! Stalked by the online mockerazzi? Mock them back! We will all go down together! In a stinking plume of self-pity and scorn!

I think to many people I heard from on the issue it seemed “unfair,” but also a bit cowardly, particularly to photograph our mystery shopper, especially from behind. It’s like shooting someone in the back. I’ll own it. But come on, people. If you step outside your door these days you run the risk of being shot. It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to be watching your back for you.

Then at work yesterday one of my esteemed colleagues sort of pulls me aside, sweetly says she wants to ask me about something I recently wrote.

Now, I should preface this by saying, about a month ago another of my esteemed colleagues, an Italian gentleman, pulled me aside in the corridor (literally grabbing me by the collar) and growled: You MUSTa Write about a de WARRRRRAH! I was like, which one? I mean, Christ. Well, the Big One, of course. It’s Armageddon, you know.

But I didn’t write about that war, because no matter how judicious you try to be about it, you will get it from both sides, and, frankly, I don’t see where the big emergency is. This has been going on for millennia, and it will go on for many milennia more. It’s the freakin Hatfelds and McKahlils. What’s the rush to write something? And so what if it is the end of the world (which it isn’t)—then what?

But finally I did write something—not really about that war, but about the War on Terror, and not from the Jewish perspective, but from that of the humble Goy.

Oy.

After reading what I had written (which, for the record, made no mention of Israel, the Jews, Hamas, or Hezbollah), my colleague this morning (who is Jewish) totally JEWED-OUT on me.

To my Jewish friends out there (even ones who claim to be Reform Jews and to be all nonchalant about their Judaism): please calm the fuck down. Your homeland is under siege, I understand. It’s painful for you. I understand that, too. You don’t need to go around picking fights and casting aspersions for me to see it. We all see it.

By the way, my Jewdentials are impeccable. I’m not even talking about the part of me–eight and a half inches (give or take a few)–that’s German Jew. I won’t mention that one of the major romantic entanglements of my adult life was with an absolutely Jewlicious Hungarian Jew. (All I will say about it–TMI ALERT– is that in one of the great ironies of History and destiny, I was the circumcised one and he, like many assimilated East European Jews born post-WWII, got to keep his foreskin–where is the justice?)

Is the modern state of Israel problematic? Yes. Is the Arab world a mess? Mm-hmm. But Yahweh is a fighting God and Jews are fighters. Didn’t you see Yossi and Jagger? You want me to drop everything and rend my garments every time a missile is hurled at you? It sucks, but I only have so many garments to rend.

Apparently trying to make up for a slightly skewed sample in the previously referenced “debate” over urban violence, Metro went out to Mission Hill seeking forgiveness.

I think it would be too much to attribute method to Metro’s madness, but if you do, then you can look at it a couple of different ways: either the editorial staff wants us to think we live in a deeply divided city–the “Two Bostons” hypothesis, or we really do live in a deeply divided city, and it’s enough that a random, unscientific, infinitesimal sample bolsters this tale of two cities.

The third way to look at it is, like John said in his comment to the first post: “Sometimes I think the Metro pulls their ‘Today’s Debate’ section from old issues of The Onion.”

I noticed this weather has been making me a little crankier than usual. I always get a few emails chastising me for raging out, but, people, that’s what I’m here for. I’ve said it before. It’s like complaining that all the dishes at the Chinese Buffet have MSG in them. It’s just the nature of the beast. Don’t want the MSG? Don’t go the Chinese Buffet. Simple as that.

Yesterday I was useless. I went in to “work” in the morning, just to get out of the heat, but left around noon. I dropped in to the gym, which is in Chinatown, a couple blocks from Brattle Books–so a lot of times, if the weather’s good, I amble on down to the bookstore there, and browse the one-dollar section outside. I always leave with something.

The thing I like about used bookstores is that you go there with an open mind, and you leave with something you didn’t expect to find. I mean, I never go there looking for anything in particular. But sometimes what you find feels fateful. Maybe you’re thinking about something, trying to work something out in your head, And suddenly you open up a book, and there it is, right there in front of you.

Yesterday, on the one-dollar cart, I stumbled upon a book called Secrets of the Kabbalah, and thought: now, this will bring me closer to Madonna! It was full of beauty tips, particularly about grooming your beard. There was some fellow called Microprosopus, who has a most impressive beard. “That is the beard of adornment, true and perfect, from the which flow down thirteen fountains, scattering the most precious balm of splendour.”

I didn’t end up buying the book, but my interest in this Microprosopus character was definitely piqued. So when I got home I googled him. He was not on wikipedia. But there was an extensive entry on him in the Wisdom Archive at the Global Oneness Commitment at experiencefestival.com, that was enlightening to say the least:

Microprosopus (Latin) [from Greek mikros small + prosopon face]: Qabbalistic rendition of the Chaldean phrase Ze`eyr ‘Anpin (Short Face), which designates the nine smaller Sephiroth, in contradistinction from the Macroprosopus (Long Face). Microprosopus or the nine Sephiroth are the manifested universe or Third Logos unfolded in manifestation; whereas Macroprosopus (the Crown or Kether), the first and highest of the Sephiroth, is the First and Second Logoi considered as a unit, the purely spiritual universe and its roots. Hence the Microprosopus is the Logos manifested, and of such logoi there are many in boundless space. Naturally each such universe has its own Macroprosopus, Crown, or Kether, all these universes being united by their divine-spiritual roots in the Boundless.

Something clicked, you know?

I went back and listened to that song “Isaac,” on Confessions on the Dance Floor, right? About Isaac Mizrahi, right? And at the end, there’s this quote from Yitzhak Sinwani, this UberKabbalista of Madge’s acquaintance, where he’s like, “…the gates of heaven are always open, and he’s discovering the sky and the angels, how they sit, you know, in front of the light. That’s what it’s all about.” Yes, that’s what it’s all about. How could I have missed it? How the angels sit in front of the light, times thirty-seven, minus eleven, divided by the square root of one-hundred and three, carry the nine, and whoop! There it is!

Next I stumbled upon Nietzsche. I opened up his anthology right to his essay “Why I am so Clever” from Ecce Homo. So, why is Nietzche so clever? “I have never pondered over questions that are not really questions.” Whoop, there it is, AGAIN! In your FACE, Mizrahi!

But I did not leave with Nietzsche, either (He is a good drinking partner, but leave him at the bar). No, I left yesterday with Aphra Behn, the seventeenth century political satirist praised by none other than Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own.

There was a little blurb on the back cover that read in part: “Famous for her frank eroticism—“ I’m there!—“…she was the ‘sole Empress of the Land of Wit’—yet two centuries of female modesty were to pass before she could again come into her own.” I found that interesting. Not least because it goes to show that the more you delve into the past, the more you see that many of our assumptions in the present are based on bunk. Time and history are just not linear. Which doesn’t mean they’re necessarily circular, either. I think string theory’s the answer.

Anyway, I go in to Brattle Books to make my purchase, right? I didn’t have any cash on me, so I paid with my debit card. I bought a couple other books, too, but the whole sale came to under ten bucks. The clerk asks me for a picture I.D.

Where do they get bookstore clerks? What’s wrong with them? This was an instance of “because I can.” It’s hot. I’m irritable. Do I look like someone who’s going around stealing people’s identities to buy moldy dollar paperbacks from Brattle Books? Because that’s what you’re saying. In the guise of protecting me. It’s the very definition of “retail passive-aggressive.” Seriously.

I said, no, I don’t have a picture I.D. I don’t have a driver’s license, and I’m not going to carry around my passport for a five dollar purchase here and an eight dollar purchase there. Just ring me up. Well, did I have something with my name on it, at least? I took out another card with my name on it, but if I had stolen the debit card, I could have stolen other cards, too, right? So, what’s your point?

Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely situations in which it makes sense to ask for I.D., and situations in which it’s just the clerk—or the waiter or waitress—throwing their meager weight around. Like, I was at this restaurant in Cambridge having dinner, ordered a beer, and the waitress demanded I.D. I didn’t have a picture I.D. I’m like, look, I could not be mistaken for under twenty-one by anyone. She’s like, sorry, no picky, no dwinky.

When the clerk at the bookstore had finished with me, he actually apologized to the guy in line after me, for me. I mean, he was like, sorry that guy was in front of you and you had to wait. And it’s not like it took any time at all to ring me up. Seriously, I think it’s some kind of syndrome amongst bookstore clerks.

I wonder if the Kabbalah can shed any light on that?