A hiatus from classic literature to mimic my weekend activities, even though read some Savage Detectives and The 42nd Parallel today.
Maduros are salted sweet plaintains. I once tried to open a plaintain with my fingernails, like a monkey. I hurt the tender skin underneath my fingernail, as when you clip your nails too short.
Staten Island is a magical place. It is far removed from the mainland and the large orange ferries move fast, perhaps fifteen or twenty knots, so that you arrive within fifteen minutes if you are on one of the larger ships and twenty-five if you’re on one of the smaller ones late at night. They’re free. Latenight the crew is drunk, they admitted this to us. They were good hardy folk.
We saw a jug band. There was a harmonica player with a washboard; a one string tub bass; a musical saw, which is played by running a violin, or maybe a viola, bow on a wiggling saw to create a Halloweeny sound; a ukelele, guitar, and I think that was it…No of course, there was the jug player!
The people we met had lived outside of Staten Island, but had returned to their glorious Island. The Statue of Liberty was glorious too and when you’re up close it looks like the wind is blowing her oxidized copper garment. I was entirely alive as I passed her.
We biked over the Manhattan Bridge on the way home and I didn’t yell as I did over the Brooklyn Bridge on the way there. I’ll get more post postmodern soon.
Daniel the Writer 