Ode to a fire escape

I think there's a balancing point, in the life of a writer, where edge meets tightrope skills, where passion for place co-exists with thriving groove within its particular landscape, and where the flame of the word is burning in the heart, without resistance.

And I think that balancing point is where a writer must be, in order to be able to produce great work. It cannot be prescribed, but it can be recognized. I see it every time I read Martin Amis, for instance, even though he's probably an uptight rat-arse. I think the less petty life becomes, also, the more space becomes available for something beautiful to happen.

I am living in an overlooked apartment this week, and again a few weeks ago, for just about the first time in my life (!) and that includes elsewhere in new york city, new orleans, denmark and ireland. It's a great apartment, roomy and centrally located in Park Slope, utterly quiet and peaceful with a row of brownstone backyards opposite.

I love the space and the well equipped kitchen, and the rhythm of life here: writing, walking the whippets, writing, loading and unloading the dishwasher, thinking about dinner, making coffee, walking the whippets, writing... but the fact that I am visible when I walk around naked is a new one on me. However, I enjoy the kind of somewhat-intimacy that is part of this kind of landscape of facing windows. I think it's a duty of living in this kind of arrangement to be visible at least a part of the day. I try to keep this visibility clothed, at least, but it feels right to me that people can see me going about my day, and I glance in at their lives. The only one with full visibility though, at least with the lights on, is the fiddle player who lives opposite and down a floor, who has only one flimsy green see-through piece of cloth on one half of one of the windows, probably for decoration rather than privacy.

There is a neighbourhood budding horn player, who has been verbally instructed, via my next door neighbour's fire escape window, to discontinue any hopes of a career, and who seems, sadly, to have taken the advice, or perhaps found a practise room. There's a guitar player elsewhere whose sound is mute and pleasant enough to be able to survive such approbrium. I say it again, I have no such difficulty because I have no guitar here, though I sing sometimes, and I miss the bollocks out of the guitar I left behind in Copenhagen.

The fire escape here is gorgeous, and I have slept on it. But it has been thrilling to live in the flat I've subletted all summer long up in Prospect Heights.

The thrill is in its fire escape, with its view of Manhattan ( I saw the Chrysler building's wicked white witch hat of light get turned on one night last week, while eating my dinner out there!) and its tall trees and its huge huge sky and no one overlooking and the basketball court in the middle-near distance where men met to play late in the hot summer nights, and the children's playground with its distant daily bustle and the huge vista of flat, low rooftops all the way to manhattan. And the butterflies dancing and lovemaking together in twos all the livelong day, and the crickets and cicada have played a summer-long jam right outside my window. I have heard and seen birds outside my window this summer I do not recognise, whose sounds call to be heard. And the sufi man has sung every break of day into existence on the balcony of the penthouse on the corner.

I relish every moment there. Actually, I relish every moment. Here.

The park slope lunatic

Did I write about the lunatic I saw recently? An actual lunatic human being, out on the street, uncared for. He's a park slope regular, what we'd call a character, in Dublin. Well, I had a human, friendly interaction with him, yesterday. He shakes a starbucks carton out there on 7th ave, looking for change. He's got about 10 plastic bags with stuff in them, and each plastic bag is really more a of a unit of plastic bags, probably about 10 of them doubled up and frayed and filthy, forming each unit.

Anyway, last night we said howrya, and it was honest, low-key, casual and true. It was nice to see his human face. So this evening, I emptied out my loose change and dropped it in his can. "Them's really nice earrings" he says, dropping compliments for hopes of cash reward the way the guy who stands by the Flatbush 7th ave Q train entrance does.

That was such a fucking pity.

Cheap Psychic advice available on 7th avenue in Park Slope

There's a white camper van parked on 7th ave with a sign in the venetian blinded window saying "Psychic Advice, $2." I bet it's no phoney, neither.

I think I'd be spooked going to a psychic who advertised his services discreetly for $2, and who clearly lives in a camper van that he parks all over the gentrified areas of Brooklyn. He might just know what he's talking about.

Competition Olympics Prizes for Winners

Ok, lets turn up the temperature a little on this one. There's gonna be prizes for the outright winner of each leg of the Inaugural Honorary LUCYTAKESOFF Competition Olympics 2007. I would like to clarify that these individual-round prizes will NOT be presented on a plinth with garlands and a cup to hold aloft in pride and achievement, but are merely teasers, you might call them, to string you along and get you entering. Good lord. Racy.

When we have completed all the legs of the Inaugural Honorary LUCYTAKESOFF Competition Olympics 2007, then and only then will all the names be put into a hat and drawn from a drum that goes round and round by an air hostess with a blindfold on, and the winning names read out over a microphone in some kind of a live webcast by a minor Irish rockstar. Flashing discolights might also feature. And the plinths, garlands, medals, bathing suit etc. bit you already know from previous posts.

This week's prize:

drumroll drumroll drumroll drumroll

A set of five vhs copies of Simpsons Featurettes, or perhaps they're Simpsons Thematic Treasuries, each about 88 minutes long, which I found on a stoop at 6th avenue and President Street in Park Slope, this evening. Here's the rub, though. You'll have to watch them with me, because I don't have a video player and I'd love to see them. But I'm saying it now, ladies and gentlemen, I will NOT be wearing a bathing suit for the screening.

So far, the lovely Constance is in Pole Position as the ONLY entrant in the competition. And for all of you who have recently started reading the blog, dig deep to at least a week ago, there's another competition, which was Leg One of this prestigious and highly unusual Olympic variety, which is still open, though another New Yorker, the lovely Chris, is in a similar Pole Position there.

I wish you the best of luck.

"LUCYTAKESOFF is the only blog for me at the end of a hard day, because ... " in words ten or less. Post in the comments section of the original post please.

I've heard ugly rumours that the comments section is a gmail or blogger account-only zone or someshit by Blogger. I do hope this ain't so, and will be investigating whatthefuck.

Good lord, I've got a dirty mouth this evening. Just come back from the spelling bee at Freddy's Backroom tonight.

It's got to be that.