satyadasa

Though I have never been a weak person, I have long lacked control of my movements, awareness of my surroundings, and confidence in my physical abilities. I took many long distance walks, yet ambled along with bad posture, taking in the city a marathon walk at a time, yet looking, unless something caught my attention, primarily at my own shoes and the sidewalk in front of me. At boxing class today, after I moved from shadowboxing in the mirror to the punching bag, the teacher told me that my technique had improved immediately. I went from throwing random punches by extending my arms to using the force of my entire body, from thinking and worrying about every motion to just moving. All I needed, he said, was "a fucking target." He told me that I'll be ready to start sparring after a couple more sessions. What happens at Wu Tang PCA also happens outside. I left class at 5 and boxed all the way home—through Sara D. Roosevelt Park, across the Manhattan Bridge, through Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens, across the Gowanus Canal, down 3rd Avenue, past Our Lady of Częstochowa, then down 4th Avenue to my house. I moved like my target was putting my key in the door at 440 and that I needed to be aware the whole way. It was wonderful. Everything around me changed.

kop jai habibti yaa noo al-'ayn
อบใจ حبيبتي يا หนู العين

A long collection of photos of interesting statues (some NSFW?)

( A few examplesl the first one is for you, optimussven )

Almost all of my Flickr-hosted photos are geotagged now. [Brooklyn, Bronx and Upper Manhattan, NYC, Montréaĺ, North America], including yesterday's walk through Sunset Park, Borough Park, Bensonhurst, New Utrecht, Bath Beach, and Dyker Heights.

I have these for 1979-1986, if any here btw. 20 and 28 want birth year icons.	Several locations near Bay Parkway have (statues?) covered with tarp and topped by a bucket...
NAS is... a barber in Bath Beach	Halal.. Haram... Al-Iman Grocery and Joe's Liquor Store
St Frances de Chantal, Bay Parkway. Multilingual welcoming suffering Christ	We have to leave Brooklyn, child, Herod wants to kill you
Issawi Halal Meats & Grocery / Yun Nan Flavour Snack Inc, Sunset Park	S & M Polish Deli and closed mosque, Sunset Park

1930

• Axel Swensen, 49, a Norwegian immigrant who'd been in the U.S. since 1886, a riveter at a dry dock, perhaps just downhill at the Brooklyn waterfront
• Freida Swensen, 45, his Wisconsin-born wife of Norwegian parentage
• their son Lester Swensen, 23, a photographer
• their daughter Evelyn, 20
• Evelyn's Irish husband David Farell (immigrated 1919), 36, an iron worker at a ship yard
• Trygve C. Olsen, 31, a Norwegian immigrant and window cleaner living in the house as a boarder (I like to think he had this basement apartment with the tiny window)

1920

• elderly couple Phillip J. and Augusta Gilmartin, 75, 74, both New York-born with New York-born parents
• the Gilmartens' Polish servants Theodore and Sophie Mierychlewski, both 24, presumably married with daughter Helen Mierychlewski, 2

1910

• not as elderly couple Phillip J. and Mary A[ugusta] Gilmartin (or is it Guilmartin?), 64, 64. Philip still remembered that his father was born in Georgia, not New York.
• their Norwegian servant Hilda Jacobson, 25, who arrived in the U.S. the year before

This area was laid out and populated as early as 1855 (as West Brooklyn), but the 1900 census doesn't seem to have a dwelling with my exact house number. The 1890 census records no longer exist, and in 1880 and before the forms didn't include streets and house numbers. So this is as far as I can go.

• Brooklyn's Census Tract 94 begins 2,000 feet southeast of me. More than 13 languages were reported spoken at home in 2000 by at least 50 of its 4,500 residents over the age of five. The highest listed language, Chinese, is shown in the census data as representing slightly less than a quarter of the tract's residents. Spanish and English were next at about a fifth each, followed by a second tier of Russian, Yiddish, Polish, and Arabic. Hungarian, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Gujarati, Hindi, and Urdu complete the list. Cantonese is by far the most spoken Chinese language—Sunset Park's Eighth Avenue formed as a satellite community of Manhattan's Chinatown (only 3 to 4 express stops away) and shares its roots in migrations from Guangdong, Hong Kong, and the communities of huaqiao in Southeast Asia. The U.S. Census Bureau doesn't collect statistics on religion, but Sunset Park's Gujaratis are mainly Methodist, not Hindu, and its Latinos are as Pentecostal as they are Catholic. Not too many geographies I can think of have such large Jewish and Muslim populations within an overall Buddhist and Christian milieu. It's also the only place I know of in New York with both Jewish and Catholic communities from (Polish) Galicia. While 94 is technically completely within Sunset Park, the Orthodox Jewish communities here are oriented toward Borough Park across Ninth Avenue. Similarly, the Arab community of southeastern Sunset Park (both Christian and Muslim) is an extension of the one in Bay Ridge.

• Ba Xuyên makes excellent bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwich), maybe even better than my old favorite Việt Nam Bánh Mì Số I on Broome Street, but they seem to not have an option of fresh chilies (as opposed to a not-that-hot sauce).

• Wikipedia says that my local Pollo Campero franchise was closed because of "sexual scandals".

• The MTA should win an award for lamest service improvement ever. The G train will be permanently extended 5 stations to Church Avenue. Now I theoretically could get to Williamsburg or Greenpoint with only one transfer and without having to go through Manhattan, but waiting for and riding the G train takes as long as 3 normal transfers and a long lunch.

• Conversation from work:

Customer: Do you have book bungees?
Me: What's a book bungee?
C: It's a thing that, like, attaches to the book like a rubber band and holds the pages together
M: Can't you just use a rubber band? You can get a thousand of them for $5.
(I thought maybe I had misunderstood and that this item actually might be worth checking out, but no.)

• Unfunny kid to friends: It's a dead language; they could be saying anything. Ooo! ooga arg!"
(in reference to Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, filmed in Yukatek Maya, one of many living Mayan languages, together spoken by more than 6 million people). In my imagination a Yucateco Brooklynite on the train responded something like Cimen a mamatzil "Your mom is dead" (yes, I looked it up; I have no excuse)

• I was lucky enough to find a book at the library which helped me come up with great topics for both papers I have to write by the end of the semester… the night I absolutely needed to find it. The first is due Tuesday and should virtually write itself; a 2 page summary of the second is due Monday, but then I have another week. I should do much better in both classes than I deserve, as I imagine what I could accomplish if I had any discipline whatsoever.

• I have at least three major projects planned for January — getting a big start on two blogs and synthesizing a lot of genealogy research. I promise not to work on these projects until I finish my three papers. Unless I'm on the train and writing in my pocket notebook…

My front page now links to my Flickr, as I don't currently have other web hosting, and won't until I get some money together again after I pay for next semester's classes. Here are some of my recent photos hosted there, from my penultimate walk (for a while, at least) with cerebellumdd in Queens and Brooklyn.

( You know you want to see Yiddish graffiti )