1. Looking Up

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    May 16, 2017 by admin

    Things started out this week where they left off last week.  The gardeners had taken the weekend off, so the pall of death in the garden had advanced to the pall of decay.  Here and there, however, the pale purple herb robert (said like a Frenchman) poked its head up, and the solomon’s seal was still going strong.  Salmon and white azalea punctuated the lawns and intersections.

     

    The day, as cold as last week, with the same cumulus clouds in a clear blue sky, felt somehow brighter.  A strong wind caused people to hold onto their hats.  The skinny branches of the paulownia tree, in full bloom, waved its lavender panicles at me.  And across the road from the chestnut, lit up like a Christmas tree with its white catkins, was another chestnut.  We’ll see if it too has the blight.  (I recently learned that the blight, while effecting the tree’s appearance, won’t kill it; it was the same place I learned the difference between a panicle and a catkin.)

     

    I set up at Bethesda Fountain.  Having anchored the leis and sheltered the hula girls, I began my set.  Before too long, a young man pulled a dollar from his wallet and tossed it into my case.  It immediately blew away, but he grabbed it, like a goalie, then tucked it under the capo I keep to hold things down.

     

    A man wanted to buy a hula girl for his girlfriend.  “How much?”

     

    Ordinarily I don’t sell the hula girls; I consider them, like leis, part of the act, but the girlfriend seemed to want it, so I said “Five dollars.”  They discussed it and agreed.  I let her pick out the color; she chose green.  The man handed me a twenty and asked for change.  I only had twenties and a ten in my wallet.  “Ten dollars?  No, seven?” I said, indicating the 3 singles in my case.  He said he’d get change from the hot dog man and come back.  He didn’t.

     

    Marcel and Maggie the dog came down the path together.  Maggie took a seat and waited for me to play, which, after a brief chat with Marcel, I did.  Maggie is the center of attention wherever she goes; it’s tough to hustle for hulas when she’s around.  Marcel, I think, senses this; when she didn’t budge with a tug on the leash, he picked her up and carried her away.

     

    A teenager from Argentina was delighted to hula.  He mugged for his friends, gave me back the lei and walked away.

     

    An exotic 30-something woman and her boyfriend walked by.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    “Of course, I do.”  She peeled off to dance with me while her boyfriend walked on.  After a short lesson, she went to the hukilau.  With mixture of classical Indian dance and hula, she swayed through 2 verses and managed to attract a crowd; her boyfriend was there at the end taking pictures.  She gave me $3 and a hug.  “That was so much fun,” she said.

     

    Yeah, I thought, for me too.

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  2. A Dark Day in May

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    May 11, 2017 by admin

    It was a cool day, 60 degrees, if that.  Yet I went to the park anyway.  There wasn’t much new growth since my last outing…the opposite, in fact.  The dead daffodils were a little browner, the mauve tulips drooped to the ground, dead, the colorless stems of the remaining tulips deader still.  Pansies and South African daisies were holding up; the fritillaria?  Dead.

     

    The mood in the park was decidedly down.  No Beatle tunes at the Imagine Mosaic; it was change of shift for the guitarists.  An old woman, homeless, slept on a small patch of lawn between some azaleas and the road.  Across the road, a young man in a hoodie combed through the trash for bottles and cans.  Before the day was over, the police would announce that 2 bodies had been pulled from Central Park lakes.

     

    A young man on his cell phone was plucking references from his resume in response to the voice on the other end of the call.  He was confident that he could make a contribution to the future of (insert name of hedge fund here).  At Cherry Hill I stopped for 3 horse-drawn carriages, while all around the pedicabs hustled for fares.  Victorian London meets modern Dhaka.

     

    I had hopes for Bethesda Fountain, that under a warm sun I might dispel the gloom, but a young man with an accordion was playing some lugubrious minor-key folk song. On my way to the Norway Maple I passed the Ukrainian art vendor on his bench, feeding the squirrels.  A bird landed on his leg.  He later told me the accordionist was Russian, and he did not like Russians.

     

    I laid out my gear.  Very little sun penetrated the leaf canopy; I hopped around from one side of my case to the other for warmth.

     

    After 30 minutes a couple from England gave me a dollar.  They laughingly refused to hula.  But an Australian family got the spirit from a youngster of 2-3, who stopped to stare.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    He shook his head yes.  His enthusiastic dad helped him put on a lei, then off we went to the hukilau.  An older sister showed him some moves, for which I awarded her a lei, and mom stood proudly by.  “I always wanted to go to Hawaii,” she said.

     

    “Yet you came to New York for a hula.”  A dollar passed from mom to dad to the toddler to me.  “Aloha.”

     

    A teenaged boy gave me a quarter.

     

    A woman walking by didn’t stop to hula, but she gave me a word.  “It’s the only Hawaiian word I know.  Pulelehua.  It means butterfly.”

     

    It wasn’t getting any warmer.  I launched into my final song, “Little Grass Shack,” when a 30-something woman, bundled up in down vest, hat and hiking boots, put a dollar in my case, bringing my take to $3.25 cents, 45 cents more than my $2.70 break-even.  All things considered, I was lucky to get out of there with my life.

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  3. At Long Last, Wisteria

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    May 3, 2017 by admin

    Hanging over the old bridle path that passes under the entry to the park, obscured by bushes, a splash of purple blossoms caught my eye.  It was wisteria, growing from a thick root outcrop, between the barren vine covering the north pergola and the precipice.  The button seller told me that it sometimes bloomed there; now I saw it for myself.

     

    There was hellebore among the spent wood hyacinth, and hot pink azalea closer to the road.  Under the judgmental squint of Daniel Webster, a squirrel faced off with a dog on a leash, just out of reach.  How did I miss the trillium yesterday?  Single three-petaled flowers opened pink and white out in the open, while in the shade of an Eastern Hemlock, they were wine red.

     

    The white and red azaleas led me down to Bethesda Fountain, where the lunchtime crowd was light.  A cool breeze blew off the lake.

     

    My first contributor dropped a pocketful of change into my case.  I spread it around to weigh down the 2 singles — shill bills — I use to give people the right idea.

     

    Coming down the path in her green Central Park Conservancy volunteer tee shirt, skipped Joan.  Five years ago, Joan heard me singing the verse to “Have You Ever Seen a Dream Walking,” and joined me for the chorus.  A year or 2 later, we met up again for a reprise.  Today, for the third time, we belted out her number.  And for the third time, she walked away without a tip.

     

    An Argentine girl did a Latin hula while her friends photographed her.  She too walked away.

     

    A young woman couldn’t pass by without stopping.  She and her friend worked in the area, and were having a hard day.  I pitched the therapeutic benefits of hula.  “I’m up for that,” she said.  Her friend demurred, until I started playing “The Hukilau Song.”  Soon both of them were gracefully swaying, hips and arms, languid and relaxed.

     

    At the end of the dance, they gave me 2 dollars.  “That was fun,” said the first.

     

    “So what kind of work do you guys do?” I asked.

     

    “We raise money for people richer than we are,” said the second.

     

    Another young woman of about the same age, 20-25, stopped to hula.  “Do you know how to hula?”

     

    “Yes.”

     

    “Do you know how to hula to the hukilau?”

     

    “Yes.”

     

    In fact, she’d never heard of a hukilau and had only a loose grasp of the hula.  As she dropped a fiver in my case, she told me she was from Utah.

     

    The breeze had picked up.  When I tried to anchor the leis across the back of my case, one flew off into the fountain and floated away.

     

    Next came 3 Italian girls from Milan.  They wanted me to say something in Italian to their friend Katerina.  I think it was Happy Fortieth Birthday.  They filmed it and tipped $2.

     

    By the end of my set, the lei had floated back to me.  I plucked it from the water and spread it out in the sun.  By the time I counted my money, $10.78, it was dry.

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