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This essay descibes Queenie's Daughter's life perfectly...
Stars in the Night Sky
by Richard Naviasky
When I lived in Harlem, I shit in a bag. But I loved living in Harlem. The toilet broke and the landlord took a week to fix it, so what else could I do? My neighbors were tight on 125th. Real people, not fake. Good people. Big Andre always on the street with dime bags and bits of advice. “Stand on your toes everyday, a hundred times in a row. Make your calves like iron. You need strong legs in life.” Duke, next door, a Harvard drop out and brilliant novelist, observing the neighborhood for forty years, and his beautiful wife, Aiki, painting and doing Tai Chi and baking cakes with her granddaughters Cherlonda and Blossom, always an open home for their wide and wonderful family. Andre the super, ex-boxer, ex-convict, weed lover, great man. Big Mike down the street at the fruit and vegetable shop, with a kind word everytime I walked by. “Alright then. How you feeling? Doing good today? Alright.” So what if the heat broke in the building during one of the three coldest winters I can remember in my life, and was left unfixed for two months. And so what if the sweltering summers seemed hotter inside our apartment than out. I was living in Harlem, guys bench pressing barbells on the sidewalk across the street, steamed crabs on paper plates, lemonade sold out of buckets, it felt like real New York, it felt like history happening. I was three stops from Yankee Stadium, putting on my Orioles cap and facing the crowds for three game stretches, back when Mike Mussina still belonged to me, and Cal Ripken was creating his immortality, and Brady Anderson was our leadoff homerun-hitting man. Once someone said when I told them I was living with my girlfriend in Harlem, “You must be a couple of stars in the night sky.” It was true. We and one other girl (who later died on 9/11) were the only white folks in a building of about thirty apartments. The ceiling leaked, the noise from the street was often unbearable, the rats kept the stray cats off the sidewalk, the plumbing broke regularly, the landlord was lousy, the breakers in the cellar would flip off the electricity half the time we made toast, but the rent was good and the neighbors had a thousand great stories to tell. When you live in a city, people make the place.
god, if I could only write like that - QD
...for more Nav check out willisbros.net
Stars in the Night Sky
by Richard Naviasky
When I lived in Harlem, I shit in a bag. But I loved living in Harlem. The toilet broke and the landlord took a week to fix it, so what else could I do? My neighbors were tight on 125th. Real people, not fake. Good people. Big Andre always on the street with dime bags and bits of advice. “Stand on your toes everyday, a hundred times in a row. Make your calves like iron. You need strong legs in life.” Duke, next door, a Harvard drop out and brilliant novelist, observing the neighborhood for forty years, and his beautiful wife, Aiki, painting and doing Tai Chi and baking cakes with her granddaughters Cherlonda and Blossom, always an open home for their wide and wonderful family. Andre the super, ex-boxer, ex-convict, weed lover, great man. Big Mike down the street at the fruit and vegetable shop, with a kind word everytime I walked by. “Alright then. How you feeling? Doing good today? Alright.” So what if the heat broke in the building during one of the three coldest winters I can remember in my life, and was left unfixed for two months. And so what if the sweltering summers seemed hotter inside our apartment than out. I was living in Harlem, guys bench pressing barbells on the sidewalk across the street, steamed crabs on paper plates, lemonade sold out of buckets, it felt like real New York, it felt like history happening. I was three stops from Yankee Stadium, putting on my Orioles cap and facing the crowds for three game stretches, back when Mike Mussina still belonged to me, and Cal Ripken was creating his immortality, and Brady Anderson was our leadoff homerun-hitting man. Once someone said when I told them I was living with my girlfriend in Harlem, “You must be a couple of stars in the night sky.” It was true. We and one other girl (who later died on 9/11) were the only white folks in a building of about thirty apartments. The ceiling leaked, the noise from the street was often unbearable, the rats kept the stray cats off the sidewalk, the plumbing broke regularly, the landlord was lousy, the breakers in the cellar would flip off the electricity half the time we made toast, but the rent was good and the neighbors had a thousand great stories to tell. When you live in a city, people make the place.
god, if I could only write like that - QD
...for more Nav check out willisbros.net
posted by Queenies Daughter at 1:02 PM
2 Comments:
This is beautiful-enough to make you wish you lived there!
I still do....
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