From Long to Coney Island

[sovay]

derspatchel suggests I should start writing errata for my longer posts, because I kept remembering things I'd forgotten to put in. I am afraid I already stuck Peanut Butter & Co. into the original trip report as a late-blooming parenthetical, but here are some of the rest:

How could I forget Garak? Collectible figurine thereof. We stopped in briefly at Forbidden Planet before losing the rest of our night to the Strand and Rob bought him for three dollars from a case of assorted loose DS9 characters. He spent the rest of the trip setting alarms, running baths, reading maps, enjoying views, trying to get into locked pianos . . . The photos are on Facebook, but Rob is thinking about giving him a Tumblr of his own. 1/8th Gates was an inspiration.

I do not know why the young man at the Strand on Friday night asked if I was an artist, saying it was because of my wrists. (I said I was a writer, which was not what I thought he meant.) Then he told me I should part my hair differently. Rob came in for the second half of this exchange and as just as nonplussed as I was.

On the F train to Coney on Saturday, the two girls in the seat next to me were playing a clapping game. It was one I didn't know: shame, shame, shame, I don't want to go to Mexico no more, more, more . . . They looked between eight and ten. They kept breaking off and arguing with each other about the hand-claps, but they were definite about the lyrics each time. In this age of permanent connectivity and iPhones as soon as a child can tap a screen, I was both slightly surprised and incredibly pleased to see that this kind of play still exists.

Please tell me that I did not do myself a terrible disservice by leaving Nicholas Blake's The Smiler with the Knife (1939) in a hipstery little secondhand shop on Stillwell Ave. It looked excellent from the first couple of pages, but it was a thin little pulp (orange and blue cover, sixties kind of silhouette design) and the pages were already oxidizing to the point where I worried about leaving them on my fingers in flakes as I read. On the other hand, it was two dollars. It had better still be in print, so I can find another copy. Or terrible, so I don't mind about missing this one.

The no-name candy store was Williams Candy and they look like they might be famous, or at least locally known for their candy apples, which I did not get. So there's another thing to go back for.

I mentioned my Tenmen shirt on Sunday, but I did not mention that Rob was also wearing his Achewood T-shirt: What We Need More of Is Science. Because we were going to the World's Fair.

And this is not wholly New York, but I don't care. The last thing I saw online before I turned off the computer and fell over last night (rain-cool wind is even better than air conditioning) was Alicia Cole's "Artemis Speaks to Aphrodite," dedicated to me. It's a wonderful poem, and I am honored to be associated with it. Later this month, Strange Horizons will be publishing her poem for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade and I will shout about it, because it's just that good.

Today I get to do lots of catch-up work.

Comments

[sovay]

The Smiler With the Knife is good, but not hard to find.

That's the outcome I was hoping for. Thank you!

I originally started putting poetry online in the open because poetry spills out of my ears there was literally nothing else to do with it, and that just isn't true any more. I'm really happy about this.

Agreed. I published my first poem twelve years ago now and there were markets, but nothing like the proliferation of the last five years. (I think of the sea-change starting in 2005 and then really becoming visible more recently.) I wish more of them were print, because I do like paper, but I understand why they're not. It should only continue.