What was going on when I was born?

It is a perennial dream that one day the fine arts will walk into the theater and come up with stage-pictures that, once seen, will never be forgotten. But for one reason or another the alliance between art and the stage has for several hundred years been an on-again, off-again affair. (For some evidence of that, take a look at the exhibition of stage designs that echoes the centenary celebrations of the Metropolitan Opera and can be seen at the Pierpont Morgan Library through Nov. 6.) But right now the romance between art and the stage is very much on again in New York City. In fact it would be difficult to think of a fall season that has promised so much in that context and seems so likely to deliver. From Picasso's classic designs for ''Parade,'' which can be seen this very afternoon as part of the Joffrey Ballet's season at the City Center, to inventions without precedent like the one that Francesco Clemente has in hand for the current Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, there's simply no end to it.

As Marvin Ravikoff tells it, when he bought the decrepit Capitol Theater at 149 Westchester Avenue in Port Chester, N.Y., earlier this year, the ground floor was filled with water and there were ''about 20 million pigeons in residence.'' Since then he has begun rehabilitating the 2,000-seat theater, which had been closed for seven years.

SAN FRANCISCO IT WAS a sunny day here two weeks ago - and from the 40th floor of BankAmerica's dark granite building, it was easy to spot the Golden Gate Bridge and the hills of Marin County to the north. But inside the executive suite the mood was dark and the atmosphere was heavy. And with good reason. Third-quarter earnings had just been released and they were disastrous - per-share profits had dropped a whopping 45 percent from the year before. Worse still, Samuel H. Armacost, the BankAmerica Corporation's president and chief executive officer, admitted that the company's woes were far from over.

SAM GOLDAPER Bernard King called it ''a strange game.'' Coach Hubie Brown referred to it as ''a great win for us.'' It was both last night as the Knicks defeated the Washington Bullets, 100-97, at Madison Square Garden. But before the Knicks recorded their second straight victory of the National Basketball Association season and the Bullets lost their second in a row, New York had to survive a second-quarter cold spell in which they shot 0 for 17 from the floor.

J. D. Gross led a blitzing Maryland defense that broke up a 2-point conversion attempt with 22 seconds left today and preserved a 28-26 upset over previously undefeated North Carolina. ''Now I want to go to the Orange Bowl,'' said Gross, a linebacker who forced Carolina's quarterback, Scott Stankavage, to misfire on his pass attempt that would have tied the game. Boomer Esiason, the left-handed Maryland quarterback, brought his team back from a 7-point deficit in the third period by throwing two touchdown passes that put Maryland just far enough ahead. For North Carolina, which was ranked third in both wire service polls this week, and 10th in The New York Times computer rating, the loss ended a nine-game winning streak and dropped its record this season to 7-1. It may have also knocked Carolina out of any chance at a major bowl bid this year.

Caution. The following synopsis could be misleading: Mike Bossy returned to the lineup tonight and scored three goals, his 26th career hat trick, leading the Islanders to a 5-3 victory over the New Jersey Devils at Nassau Coliseum. The triumph snapped a four-game Islander losing streak, the club's longest such skid since October 1980. Why the word of caution? Because the Islanders' performance left unanswered whether they are out of their slump.

IT IS possible to find an apartment in New York without a broker, but it isn't easy. The city's airtight housing market has enabled thousands of real estate brokers to claim a near monopoly on the limited vacancies that do exist. For a fee - which usually is a month's rent, but often is more - these middlemen match apartment seekers with the landlords of vacant apartments. The result is a situation that saves everyone time and effort. Tenants need not look at every apartment advertised and landlords need not deal with the flood of applicants every vacant apartment triggers.

At precisely 7 A.M. today, a Marine honor guard and a color guard in ceremonial dress uniforms marched into a huge hangar at the Dover Air Force Base and stood facing 16 coffins. Behind them, suspended from the beams of the hangar, was a 38-foot American flag. The ceremony was the first on American soil honoring servicemen killed in the bombing in Beirut and the invasion of Grenada. Afterward the Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. Paul X. Kelley, embraced and comforted sobbing mothers of three of the marines killed in Beirut.

IN recent mayoral campaigns here, the Republican Party headquarters was usually a lonely place. ''Normally, the candidate, the chairman and maybe one other person would be sitting in a big headquarters, hoping someone would come in and give them a hand,'' recalled Stephen Pappa, the party's town chairman. ''Now, you come down to headquarters any time of the day or night and people are manning phones and stuffing envelopes. I call a town committee meeting, and I don't have to go looking for a quorum, because the room is filled up. It makes you feel that maybe there's a two-party system again.'' For the first time in 30 years in this city, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 10 to 1, the Republican candidate is seen by both parties as having a chance to win.

Gill Fenerty, a sophomore tailback, rushed for 337 yards on 18 attempts and scored 6 touchdowns today as undefeated Holy Cross trounced Columbia, 77-28, before a crowd of 12,861 at windy Fitton Field. Holy Cross entered the game ranked second nationally, behind Southern Illinois,among Division I-AA schools. Southern Illinois may maintain the top spot after its victory today over New Mexico State, but Holy Cross's performance will not go unnoticed.

MEXICO CITY THE disquiet in the eastern Caribbean over tiny Grenada's new Marxist revolutionary rulers was transformed last week into disquiet throughout the hemisphere over the United States reaction to them. By sending in more than 3,000 troops to topple the ''brutal group of leftist thugs'' who had seized power and killed Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, President Reagan opened a new range of questions about the way the United States sees its role in the area. The first landing of United States troops in the Caribbean since 1965 came after the Reagan Administration and the little-known Organization of Eastern Caribbean States decided that while they had been able to live with the moderate Marxism of Prime Minister Bishop, they could not live with the harsher doctrine and apparently more vicious style of the men who had taken over. The action found support from the British commonwealth nations in the Caribbean, who were made nervous by Grenada's increasing leftward bent and growing ties with Cuba. But no support came from the Caribbean nations that are of French and Spanish origin and farther from the eastern Caribbean both geographically and politically. And the action met considerable opposition elsewhere in Latin America, where some countries hold long, bitter memories of United States incursions into their territories.

Out of the Doldrums This year's estimated 3 percent growth of labor productivity in the private sector represents a big advance over the previous five years of virtual stagnation. And 1984's anticipated increase of 2.2 percent in productivity - measured in output generated by an hour of work - will be normal growth for the second year of an economic recovery. ''An awful lot of the productivity growth has to do with the stage we're in in the cycle,'' says Jack W. Lavery, chief economist and director of economic research at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith. ''In the early part of the recovery, output can be increased without hiring additional workers.''