Which comes first, the chicken or egg? I never heard of the Little Italy up and around Arthur Avenue, the commercial heart of the Belmont neighborhood in the Bronx, just south from Forhdam University. In this ethnic-religious enclave, everything about it, down to the signage, feels like a throwback to sometime in the 1970s. The bond between church, street, community, and tradition is thick and intimate. We were up just a couple of days before a festival for St. Anthony.
ah yeah my mom was born to the Polito clan in the Bronx, her father Mario could remember hearing opera 78s being played out into the streets mixing with the smells of laundry and early morning beginnings of the cooking of lunch.
thought this might be of interest:
Unable to get into the Monet show,
Too many people there, too many cars,
We spent the Sunday morning at Bowl Pond
A mile from the Museum, where no one was,
And walked an hour or so around the rim
Beside five acres of flowering waterlilies
Lifting three feet above their floating pads
Huge yellow flowers heavy on bending stems
In various phases of array and disarray
Of Petals packed, unfolded, opening to show
The meaty orange centers that become,
When the ruined flags fall away, green shower heads
Spilling their wealth of seed at summer’s end
Into the filthy water among small fish
Mud-colored and duck moving explorative
Through jungle pathways opened among the fronds
Upon whose surface water drops behave
Like mercury, collecting in heavy silver coins
Instead of bubbles; some few redwinged blackbirds
Whistling above all this once in a while,
The silence else unbroken all about.
“Monet” by Howard Nemerov
what strange synchronicity. i was just looking up Nemerov for a little essay I’m writing.