DAMN IT. SLOW DOWN.

What does it mean if I am willing to look for a silver lining? I wouldn't say today was one of my better days, mood-wise. I have a vague, on-the-verge-of-crying feeling ... and allow me to digress here. Does anyone know a word for that feeling, plein du larmes? Prés du larmes? (Full of tears and close to tears.) Some language must have a word or even a better, more poetic expression for it.

Here's another interesting (to me) observation. I've mentioned before how much trouble I have falling asleep and the dark thoughts that visit me. When I take an afternoon snooze, the same thoughts do not tend to invade that space. Curiouser and curiouser.

Back to the silver lining. I've decided that in any number of ways, I need to slow down. I tend to eat fast because I often want to get it over with (I know, that is incongruous with my love of food but bear in mind that the creativity and pleasure of others are higher on my motivational list). I am not as "be here now" as would be healthy for me. And the demonstration of that was this:

I drove over to take a walk on the bike path after stopping at the library. Getting out of the house is always a bit of a struggle (worth looking at why that is the case). I parked, found my place on the audiobook of The Brothers K, managed my damaged headphones, and walked across the street without looking where I was going, which was a storm drain. I badly twisted my ankle, but I immediately thought how fortunate I was that I didn't seriously hurt myself. I was able to walk for an hour, whether or not that was advisable is still to be seen. But I did not get angry. I just thought, "Damn it. Slow down. Pay attention."

I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

I'm in the homestretch of The Brothers K, by the way, only about 120 or so pages. I am trying to postpone the Kermit Place Readers until after Labor Day so that I can get up to Schroon Lake a bit sooner. Larry and I have really not had much hanging out Larry-Sally Anne stylee (some junk shopping, more music watching), etc.

I picked up Greil Marcus' quite uneven treatise on Van Morrison again, When That Rough God Goes Riding. One would have imagined that I would finish such a slight book, under 200 pages, but I did not. So, it becomes the upstairs bathroom reading again. Marcus quotes Jonathan Lethem.

"What defines great singing in the rock and soul era is some underlying tension in the space between singer and song. A bridge is being built across that void, and it's a bridge we're never sure the singer is going to manage to cross. The gulf may resides between the vocal texture and the actual meaning of the words, or between the singer and the band, the musical genre, the style of production, what have you ..."

Fly in the Ointment, 2009

I'm going to muse upon that.

The beautiful, fabulous, and generally all-around talented Patty Ramona has been touring Europe this  summer. I came across this poem and had to post it for her (and you, of course.)

The Barcelona Inside Me   Give me, again, the fairy tale grotto  with the portico-vaulting overhead.  Let me walk beneath the canted columns  of Gaudí's rookery, spiral  along his crenelated Jerusalem  of broken tiles, crazy shields.  Yes, it's hot as hell and full  of tourists at the double helix,  but the anarchists now occupy  the Food Court, and the arcadian dream  for the working class includes this shady  colonnade cut into the mountainside.  I've postponed my allegiance to  the tiny house movement, to the 450  square feet of simple, American maple  infrastructure and the roomy  mind suspended like a hammock  between joists. Serpents and castle  keeps shimmer, and a mosaic invitation  to the Confectionery gets me a free  café con leche on the La Rambla,  where honeycombed apartments bend  on chiseled stone and host  floating, wrought-iron balconies.  I think I'll move into Gaudí's dream  of recycled mesh, walk barefoot  on his flagstone tiles  inscribed with seaweed  and sacred graffiti  from pagan tombs.  O, Barcelona of chamfered corners!  And chimneys of cowled  warriors! From Gaudí's Book  of Revelations, I invite the goblet  and the stone Mobius strip  to a tapas of grilled prawns and squid.  Gaudí's book of Revelations. — Robin Becker

LONGUE DURÉE OF HUMAN ...

Yeah. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. At 6:00 I got up to have my hot water and honey while I watched the current episode of Borgen. Another amazing show. The acting is phenomenal. Then I had coffee and breakfast, played with Emmylou, unloaded the dishwasher, and now I am thinking I will try to sleep again. 

Here's Jeff Nunokawa's thought of the morning.

4463. "poem of life and death" (Jasper Griffin)

August 18, 2013 at 4:09am

Walter Marg called the Iliad 'the poem of death'. I think it will be more appropriate to call it the poem of life and death: of the contrast and transition between the two. This is what the poet is concerned to emphasize, and on this he concentrates his energies and our gaze(Homer on Life and Death).

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, or sometime near enough, you wake to wonder what you are dreading and what you are doing. What battle of life and death, come from near and far, are you fighting or fearing inside of your head?

Maybe it's a nightmare of history--say, the thought of all those decencies deadened by thelongue durée of human war.

They say that the worst weapon of war is memory, a cousin told me at a family reunion this summer. At twenty, he had fought in Vietnam. The war nearly killed him several times over, and the memories of what he had seen and done there made his life for a long time after a kind of living death.

Years later, at that reunion I reported, some decent exchange took place on the family deck as my cousin conveyed his intelligence to those listening to him--something brought back from the land of the dead to the land of the living.

Somehow, it felt a little like love.
----------------------------------------------
Note: She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them (Shakespeare, Othello).

I am trying to finish another of the three or four books that are almost finished. I stumbled across this in Sylvia Townshend Warner's Summer Will Show, that I was supposed to have finished for my book group about four months ago.

"But they had spoken together, with every admission re-establishing their liveliness, their power to speak, hear, communicate. It is one thing to speak of death with those one loves, but to think of it alone, walking through the streets, one does that at a different temperature."

I walked a long time yesterday but I did not really get any good photos. This will have to do.

longue durée of human ...

PRIDE AND JOY, ET CETERA

This helped me to sleep, of course.

I couldn't hold out. I broke down and broke my wine fast last night. I was cooking and the temptation was too great. I did manage to control myself and stop after 2.5 glasses, so that was an achievement, but I didn't sleep as well.

Of course, sleep was also tainted by the crazy memoir that has supplanted all other current reading material and obligations, Howard Kaylan's Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo & Eddie, Frank Zappa, etc.... Kaylan was right there in the middle of all the rock and roll debauchery that is now legend, although I was close enough and have read enough to know that it is true. What is nice about it is that Kaylan cops to having being an idiotic pig much of the time. He doesn't apologize or white-wash, but he does acknowledge some perfidy. Kaylan is not deep, probing, reflective, or any of the things I usually enjoy, but he tells his story quickly with enough detail to keep you utterly engaged. Yes, I do recommend this for anyone who can overlook his supreme MCP-ishness, and is interested in rock and roll.

To that end, I do need to finish listening to the last two weeks lectures and take the final before I forget all the stuff I don't really know that well. I stopped being interested in what was popular sometime back in the punk/new wave days, although, of course, a lot of what I listened to BECAME popular. No surprise to anyone here, I never cottoned to heavy metal, hair bands, rap or hip hop (after Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and some of the very early stuff), so I have to take the test while that is fresh in my mind. 

Up early today, probably because of those weird Kaylan-influenced dreams. Reading about endless groupies, throwing up on Jimi Hendrix' red velvet suit, and touring Europe with Zappa are likely not the stuff to produce sweetest of sweet dreams. Hell, even thinking about how weird 200 Motels was the first (and only) time I saw it is enough to induce confusion. Even writing about 200 Motels, Head, gosh, just adds to a lot of sadness and head scratching and a vague sense of the pain of being an outsider and an object due to gender. The party was fun, the creativity was high, but sorry kid, that vagina and those tits mean this is neither about nor for you. And yet, and yet ...

Fun with laundry.

Sorry to wander off there ... I've been a little more disoriented and vulnerable lately. I got lost for about two hours at the shopping mall yesterday. I had forgotten my cell phone and there I was at Marshall's, thinking I was delighted with the choices of discounted lavender soaps from France. I shook it off with minimal financial damage and headed home.

Plus, I have a lot of cooking to do today unless we are going to let a lot of stuff go to waste. I've already started the prep for the Persian Carrot Soup, Kale and Beet Greens with Pecans, and Smoked Eggplant Soup (can't find the link ... if it comes out well, I'll give you my recipe which will almost certainly be different than what I start out with). All this to babble and say I need to get a few more things at the Farmer's Market before I get back to cooking. The fridge is near bursting and we need to eat our way through a few things. 

It's sooooo much fun to cook at this time of year. The freshness of the onions and garlic is amazing. They are wet and juicy. I was on the telephone with Maman which prepping some delectable tomatoes for cooking down for later use. And it has only just begun. Sadly, our own tomatoes did not happen. Oh well, at least we have basil, oregano, and lots of zinnias.

Pride and joy, et cetera. But not ours.

Birthday shout outs to my dear oldest brother Michael, Becky Sue Randall, wherever she may be, and my stellar sister-in-law, Stella (who I am pretty sure won't see this). Off to the market and a walk.

PONDERING PIT BULLISH

I've been talking to Maman a lot this week. She's doing pretty well, all in all, gotten over the shock, and seems mentally back to normal. (Sorry, Mom, but you faltered once or twice in there.) She was kind of skirting a bit of a cold as of the weekend, but the stress has kicked it back into high gear. I probably shouldn't have kept her on the telephone so long last night as her voice did not sound good. Fortunately, she has a doctor's appointment this morning to have a look at her stitches and with any luck they will give her something for her very bad cough. Smith-Syberg women get very bad coughs.

(Although I will take this moment for an aside to say that, from personal experience and as far as I can tell, taking local honey really does work to allay allergies. For the past year or two, I have been, as part of my morning ritual, started the day with a teaspoon of honey in hot water to remember sweetness and to remember to be sweet to myself. Instead of daily doses of Claritin, etc., I have only had to take medication for allergies on two or three occasions. Given that I am surrounded by green, I am fairly certain the honey is what has made the difference. Support your local bees!)

At any rate, Maman and I have spoken and mused at length about what to do about the next-door pit bull. The neighbors continue to check in on my mom and did say they would do whatever she wants them to. The current thought is to wait and see what the court says about the situation, in the hopes that the court will do the right thing. (Wait. Is that an unreasonable hope?) 

Emmylou was on the bed with me and Cooder this morning.

But the plot thickens. Turns out that the neighbor, CH, plans to start breeding pit bulls in his tiny backyard. The biting dog had just given birth a day or two before. The breeding male is already on site. 

As I previously mentioned, at least four other neighbors have complained about or have expressed concern about the pit bull. I don't think they are privy to the breeding plan. I suggested that my mother speak with the neighbors about this as it is a ... community ... issue, not just about what the dog did to her. The whole things depresses and scares me. 

CH and LZ are not bad people, just not very responsible. My mother observes that they never walk the pit bull nor attempt to socialize her. Difficult to imagine that the pattern will change. 

This leads me to the quote I found in my inbox this morning ...

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

— John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873) 

... as well as the poem I posted (again) in the aftermath of Charlotte's passing

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. 


By the way, I never call my mother Maman. Just more fun to type. She and I have discussed this concept a couple of times as well, community and spiritual responsibility to acknowledge, to know, to speak out, and to be and do good. (I can hear my brother Michael grimace. Once a hippy, always a hippy.)

And while I am at it, here's a morning shout-out to Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. I, at least, am pulling for you.

Cooder at bedtime.

I do like my kittehs.

HARVESTING SPECIFICITY?

The new part of the bike path I've been walking.

Oooh I do love it when y'all participate!

LD sent me a very nice quote from Gregory Maguire's (wait! I know a Greg Maguire!) Out of Oz

"The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulate.  You live your life, and the older you get--the more specificity you harvest--the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm.  Your life and times don't drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable.  Rather the opposite, maybe.  The less explicable, the more meaning.  The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret)."

This is good for some mental chewing. 

I was up early and, bien sur, did not accomplish even half of what I thought I might. I am not giving up, however, and will jump in again tomorrow to see if I can't just get that desk cleaned off and bills, etc. filed. 

I took a long walk this early evening. I only meant to walk 40 minutes, but I walked an hour. LD suggested I find some better walking shoes than my flip flops (really, that is pretty much all I wear all summer), but I think I have a couple of small blisters so this cannot reasonably go on. I have been listening to The Brothers K as I walked, which means I am at least making some progress but I still find it quite frustrating. Just a strange book.

Cooder has come to visit, which means that it is bedtime as well as being Greenies time. Here's a pensive Emmylou sitting in the window.

I've been off of alcohol for five days now. LD and I overdid it here and there. I was sorely tempted today to open a lovely bottle LD left me from Tousey Winery in Germantown. Ah, and I think it's a riesling. I can hear it calling me from the SIP. But, I think a cleaner system is helping me to feel a bit better (although I still wake up and think dark). Just two more days, and I can have a glass of wine.

AND AND AND!!! THERE IS ALREADY HALLOWEEN CANDY IN THE GROCERY STORES. Has time just utterly compressed? Are we all on a geologic time scale now? All happens simultaneously. 

This honking mushroom fell out of a tree. Anyone know what it might be?

NIGHT CRITTERS NIGHT OFF

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance. 
-Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797) 

Then again, they might not understand theIr "errors" are indeed erroneous. People, in general, seem pretty convinced of their righteousness.

Okay day. Woke up on the early side. I was not nearly as productive as I had hoped to be, but some things were done. I wrote and mailed some birthday cards, made it to the farmer's market, did some reading and writing, and even managed to get in a walk, although that was right under the wire.

I walked on a different, closer part of the bike path. 

The weather is remarkably cool now, and the sky is getting darker earlier. That's what happens, I know. I hope we get a wee bit more of hot weather. Now off to bed hoping that I will sleep well and get up early-ish again.

The night critters are quiet tonight, except for an occasional croak. I saw a heron today.

NATTERING

They are out there in full-force, croaking and cicada-ing away. And every once in a while what sounds like a bird playing a small washboard chimes in. Soothing I suppose. 

(The sound of cicadas is hard to describe, somewhere between a quack and a chirp with a slight maraca rhythm.)

Spoke to Maman a couple of times today, and she is recovering nicely. She had so many telephone calls this morning that she didn't finish her breakfast until 1:00.

My day was reasonably productive and on-track, although I was slightly thrown when I got up and M wasn't here. She has Tuesdays off and when she wasn't at the kitchen table drinking coffee and doing the crossword, I wasn't sure what day it was. (She had an early morning appointment.) I started listening the the audio book of The Brothers K to see if I could get some momentum there, but the part I am in now seems really trite and off-topic, thus vexing me and trying my patience. Sigh. Perhaps it will all be worth it in the end. 

Besides The Brothers K, I am trying to get caught up on my reading challenge (52 books per year). I have so many started and at various stages of completion, I am focussed on getting a few read so that I can move on to other things without feeling so disjointed. I am nearly finished with Joan Dye Gussow's book, This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, which I have been reading since at least February.

"After thinking about the chiles rellenos, it is difficult for me to take seriously the question of whether eating locally is worth the trouble. Trying to understand why, I have realized my own commitment was driven by three things. The first is the taste of live food; the second is my relation to frugality; the third is my deep concern about the state of the planet."

I hear you, Joan. I always feel I should save and use, which ends up with me having too much stuff and trying to save everything. But some of it has become a new habit (okay, now there is a cricket in the house, about a foot away from me. Very loud.) M and I have begun to save the trimmings from our vegetables (and sometimes chicken) to make vegetable stock, which I did yesterday. It is fantastic. I plan to snarf up some fresh tomatoes and make some soup. (Tonight's dinner, along the same lines, was turkey kielbasa with beet greens started with a Marcella Hazan soffrito, garnished with quattro formaggi and served with peasant bread.)

The weather was rather dreary, rainy, and softly chilly when I woke up. It did clear up enough for me to venture afar for a walk and I had to go to the library anyway. I drove around trying to find a suitable (new) walking place. I finally parked near this sign and went to investigate. I love that the State Education Department found this a worthy heritage site as far back as 1936.

The actual burying ground is about an 11 minute walk from the sign. The highway buzzes by quite near. It was very beautiful. These kinds of ancient graveyards are all over the place here in the Northeast. But to a California Girl's eye, they are invariably unique and fascinating. I always want to stop and explore, but I never do, except I did.

I walked the entire perimeter more than once, trying to get in a solid 15 minutes of walking before I paused for photography. Some of the gravestones were old enough to be worn away or caked with dirt and moss.

QUESTIONS AND A SHOW OF WISDOM

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. 
 — Naguib Mahfouz, writer, Nobel laureate (1911-2006) 

I ask a lot of questions. Women ask more questions than men. Ergo, women are wiser than men? I think there might be some merit there.

Just when you think you have your writing day under control, up comes a monkey wrench (Block that metaphor!). 

I was just about finished with my thirty-minute walk at the Sodom Reservoir (see above), when I received a telephone call from my mother. I figured she was calling to discuss further Christmas plans having spoken to my brother David the night before. No, she was calling from the Emergency Room at Downey Community Hospital having been attacked and bitten by the neighbor's pit bull. She needed five stitches on her left index finger.

As she was walking out the door to teach her last Monday morning yoga class of the summer, the neighbor's dog, jumped up on her porch, menaced and barked at her, then bite her. Keeping her wits about her, she remembered The Dog Whisperer had said it is important to keep calm in the presence of a mad dog. After she screamed, she sat motionless on the front step thinking someone would come out of the house or be walking down the street and help her out. But no. The dog barked in her face, menaced, and nipped at her for about 45 minutes before it was distracted enough for her to find her house key, unlock the door, and get inside.

This is a sad thing. No one wants to have to put someone's beloved pet down. But, no one wants their 86-year-old mother to be menaced and injured on her own property. And if it had been a child the dog attacked, who knows what would have happened.

So, this story is still in progress. My mother is okay, if shaken and shocked. The neighbors will get rid of the dog. 

Found a path on the other side of the reservoir.

My friend Lyz Ward had a calendar she designed in Wired. Look here!

I-CUMEN. ALREADY.

I didn't sleep easily last night and I know I will be going for a supplemental snooze later today, but it was so amazingly quiet last night. I lay there wondering where my nocturnal symphonic cacophony was, such a stark contrast to a night or two before. This morning, up in the quiet, there is only the wave of cicadas in the distance and the sharp, short click of Cooder's bell as she moves around looking for an appropriate sunspot. (Yes, it is not a very bell-ish bell.) Albert has the best place in the upstairs hallway.

Today, two words for y'all. Nick. Lowe. M, J, and John and Melinda all met up at the lovely Damrosch  Park adjacent to Lincoln Center in Manhattan for a free show. We ended up with very nice seats in a very pleasant venue. I was surprised to see that the Lincoln Center crowd as neither as young, nor hip, nor stylish, nor racially diverse as the general crowds at Celebrate Brooklyn. And there were many many more much older people. My route to the restroom took me in front of the stage and there in the first row was a quite elderly woman, snoozing away as the band (Jason Isbell) blasted away. 

Nick was solo which was a treat, although by the end, I kind of wished for some solid backing to rock out on What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, And Understanding? 

Later that same day.

Ah Nick's voice! He's kind of a Sinatra-Wee-Small-Hours-of-The-Morning crooner, a little less smarmy, a smidge smug and smiling, with a slight twist of rockabilly. He did my current favorite Nick song, Lately I've Let Things Slide. (This version doesn't really do it justice. The first time I heard it, at City Winery a few years ago, devastated me.) Here, listen to Cruel to Be Kind. It's better. Plus, he is cuter in this video.

All in all, kind of nice weekend. I very much enjoyed the pizza and wine debacle with M, Brett, and Kristin, even if it made some of a tad slow yesterday. The show at Lincoln Center was thoroughly pleasant. I listened to another book (David Rakoff's Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish and got a good start on another one, Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue. And no, I haven't made much progress in The Brothers K. 

Sodom Reservoir, Brewster, New York.

Yes, I walked today. I even drove over to Danbury to find a park, thinking that while I could find new places to walk, the weather permitting and all, I should as it won't be too long before that will not be convenient or even possible at times. But, Google maps let me down again, so I couldn't quite find it. I just gave up and went back to one of the local reservoirs.

Sodom Reservoir, Brewster, New York.

The signs, I wrote about them a couple of weeks ago, they are getting to be more frequent. Summer, I hardly knew ye.

Autumn is icumen. Already.

FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER LOW LIGHTS

Really. This was not the optimal day to make pizza. But Brett and Kristin are coming up tonight and I thought the roasted greens would make a good topping, so here I am sweating. Everyone else will have to sit on the screened-in porch to stay cool. 

So far, I have a bacon/roasted balsamic fig/gorgonzola figured out. I will make one Mexican pizza as we've had some cheese in there for awhile that needs to be eaten. I have some fresh mozzarella and basil from our deck garden. And I roasted some zucchini, some Japanese eggplant, a green bell pepper, and some nice yellow tomatoes. I happened to be driving by the Danbury Farmer's Market and bought most of those things, as well as some yellow plums that I marinated in port for an hour and are now roasting.

But it is still as hot as hell. And I need to be prepping. 

When I went out to walk Albert around 4:00, who should be sitting on the front porch, but Emmylou!!! Again!! Third time this week. I think I found her escape route which is a torn screen on the screened-in porch. She knows where she lives and at least I know she won't run away. 

Later that same day.

The pizza was incroyable. I will likely never make this again, but the most delicious was balsamic roasted figs, bacon, gorgonzola, and red onion. The others were great, but not as stand out.

Kristin is out on the porch on a bit of a tirade about working at J. Crew. We had a lovely lovely meal on the screened-in porch, but between the work and the wine, I am ready to hit the bed. I will take up this computer and perhaps watch at bit of The Fall, but I need more water and some real sleep.

Oh, dessert was port marinated yellow plums over vanilla ice cream with toasted cocoanut cookies. 

Someday, I will write something significant again.

FROGS, CRICKETS, CICADAS

A lock on the Champlain Canal.

I did have a spot nap on the SIP this late afternoon. The sounds of power mowers were happily interrupted by a flash of lighting and a tremendous blast of thunder that sounded as if it were ripping open the atmosphere (it must have been close by).

Yah, I got the fever, the depressed fever. As usual, it comes and goes, at times it is pretty fierce. I do feel a bit more conscious and energetic. I did my 30 minute walk today, although I wasn't able to program the pedometer that LD kindly brought for me. Perhaps my compromised mentality did not allow for that kind of detailed work. (She says it is easy.)

I did make some bitchen vegetable soup last night which made for a great dinner tonight. It's a Weight Watcher's recipe, but good for anyone anytime. They call it Zero Point Soup, but it is really just a vegetable soup without much olive oil. I kicked it up a notch by starting with Marcella Hazan's soffrito of onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and a bit of anchovy. (Yes, it is very much like a mirepoix.)

The Cove at Mills-Norrie State Park, Staatsburg.

I am up too late. I needed to catch up on The History of Rock, Part 2, and take a quiz. Absinthe, my laptop, had a bit of a meltdown as I had crowded it with too much music. That took some tech time to organize and stabilize, but now all seems to be well, although I should probably purge more music. I need to get some sleeping medication and try to get up at a reasonable hour. The night creatures are having quite the symphony, a jam session of frogs, crickets, cicadas, and who knows what else. Perhaps it will be a lullaby tonight. 

I really want to go to bed and watch another episode of The Fall on Netflix, but that would likely only keep me up even longer. The Brothers K might put me down (75% done, three weeks left to finish 250 pages.)

Waterlily at Vanderbilt Estate.

FOR THE SAKE OF THOSE WHO LOVE YOU

Sunset at Mills Norrie State Park near Staatsburg.

I'm back on Planet Brewster. LD dropped me off yesterday afternoon about 2:15. I've been in "recovery" since then, getting caught up on bill paying, sleep, curatorial work, and then the biggest issue of sorting out my life.

Well, if I waited until "sortedness" happened, I'd likely never write again. (This stupid auto-correct substituted "sordidness" as if I didn't know what I wanted to write. Nothing sordid about any of this. Alas?)

Even after a nice night of sleep (10 or so hours) and another beautiful summer day, I am not back in my groove. I had been really trying to understand what all the emotion was about when I remembered a FB message I saw on Sunday night.

We lost our beautiful daughter, Charlotte Rose McNeil MacLean last night. She died in a car crash. Doug and I have no idea how we will live with this loss. We know many of you knew Charlotte and loved her for her sweet, caring heart, as we have and always will. I will miss her beautiful voice, her music, her sense of humor, her advice, how hard she worked the last two years to better understand herself and her place in the world. I know she would want all of us to be our best, healthiest, kindest selves. I will try to continue to be the person she knew and loved, for her sake. Cherish each moment with your loved ones, and take care of yourselves for the sake of those who love you.

I couldn't really process this at the time, so I am in the midst of it now. I did not know Charlotte Rose but I felt as if she were a part of my life, however distant. Her mother, Teresa, has been a frequent commenter and participant in this blog. Teresa often posted photos of and updates about Charlotte Rose, so I did hear about her quite frequently. There has been a disturbance in my larger field. Out there on my perceptual, emotional periphery, there is a puncture, a hole, an absence, a loss. 

I know I have posted this many times in the past, but when someone leaves our circle, however far the circumference, I feel this again. Teresa, this is for you and Doug and Charlotte:

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. 

William Stafford

EVERYTHING LEAD UP TO THS DAY

I'm so pretty, I'm so pretty ...

It really is time to call it a day. All day, I have had a curious anticipation/anxiety about seeing LD tomorrow ... less than 12 hours away ... after 40? years. Her much-appreciated visit has fireworked a cascade of questions about life, choices, why we did what we did and the like. 

But LD is in town, having wisely chosen to stay nearby to get her bearings. My bags are almost packed and I have a list of things to finish, (although I forgot cleaning the litter box). and if I can sleep, I will be somewhere near good to go in the morning. 

The next night ...

It's kind of too late for me to write at any length, so I will start off slowly. As soon as LD pulled into the driveway, I was out the door and in her arms and we were in tears. So much for the thought that it would take as awhile to bridge the decades. 

As day one progressed, our similarities and similar experiences surfaced far more than our differences. I mean, who expects their high school friends to be as smart and wonderful as you thought the in high school? Certainly not me. 

Yet LD is a delight and a comrade in arms in just the way we were back in the day. I will admit to some bashfulness here and there at what I regard as my giant mistakes in life, but we are right in there talking about them. 

It's early in our adventure together, but all in all, we had a terrific day and so damn compatible I am amazed. I will try to chronicle a bit more closely in the ensuing days, but I think I will look back on today as a unique and very special day in my life.

LD, you rock.

Vineyard at Millbrook Winery.

Sky over the Hudson near Staatsburg.

SEEMS LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY I LEFT MY MIND BEHIND

It seems like only yesterday we were all excited about the signs of Spring. I can see autumn in the leaves already. There are a few gold and red leaves in the trees by the Middle Branch Reservoir where M and I walked Albert and ate ice cream on Friday night. 

Then last night, Sunday evening, I was driving back from Rhinebeck and getting myself lost, as I am so more than wont to do. I know that some of it was the light of the setting sun hitting the trees just right, but I swear you could see the orange and gold somehow beneath the green. I tried to photograph this, but iPhone cameras just aren't very good for long distance shots. Maybe the iPhone 5 has a better camera or maybe I should hope and pray for those add on lenses. But there are more important things to hope and pray for like figuring out my so-called life.

The first tomatoes of the year, from the Brewster Farmer's Market.

i have been kind of quiet. I'm not terribly depressed or anything, just moody. If I wait long enough, the dips of feeling smooth out a bit. There is some strange irony or something in the current fact that after decades of loving to go to bed and sleep, I very nearly rue that time in the evening (getting to be about now). As soon as the lights go off, the circus of rumination and self-recrimination begins. I doze or fall asleep, only to wake repeatedly. I know I should just taking the sleeping helpers, but, for some reason, I resist.

And so tomorrow or rather Wednesday begins one of life's big adventures for me. An old high-school bff, LD, who I have not seen since I was about 20, is flying here from San Clemente, California to catch up with me!! I was able to put a relative date on our last seeing one another by realizing we had never had a legal drink together. And that has been a long while. I imagine we will make up for that in short order.

LD and I were the theater gals. She played the lead role of Emily in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. We must have been in plays together, but I have not been able to remember what they were or what roles she played. But we were running buddies for a good couple of years. She bought a used Fiat and we were going to drive up to San Francisco together, but I think  her danged parents objected. 

LD stayed around the LA area and went to CalState Fullerton. I left Dodge for UC Santa Cruz and the life of dissolution known so well to many of you. But I am beyond delighted, feeling somehow blessed, that LD wants to reconnect in person. And is putting her money and her time where her mouth (heart?) is. We are going to crash in Rhinebeck and tool around the Catskills for a day and head up to Schroon Lake, where I take all of my favorites.

And for anyone in my Brothers K watch, not even dragging my visual feet anymore, but it IS a slow read.

Hey do you all know about the Kopecky Family Band? I think they are kind of cool.

This is our most viable tomato. I probably won't be around to eat any of it.

Like Albert, like Emmylou.

CRANES AND TURKEYS

Brewster train station.

Yesterday, I stopped for a flock of wild turkeys and their progeny to cross the road. It was pretty cute. And there were a lot of them. I was coming around the corner and saw one, then another, pop its head out of the bushes and then rush across the street to more foliage. Cars piled up behind me.

Days later.

And then yesterday on the train, I saw a crane take flight. Now that was cool. And for a moment, my spirits took flight took. Although, of course, that didn't last too long. 

But I do so love taking the train. And Grand Central never fails to please me. I used to walk through every day as I lived on the West Side and worked on the East, and I felt a little thrill each day when I walked through the main room.

It's a beautiful day thus far. I woke up with Cooder purring on the pillow in the crook of my arm, which tells you it is bearably warm, and Emmylou farkeling around near my feet. I am going to see if I can make it to the Brewster Farmer's Market in a couple of minutes, so this will be short.

For those on you on The Brothers Karamazov watch, I am more than halfway through and it is, finally, picking up some interest, now that it is a police procedural. I have until the end of the month to read the rest and now I can take some time to read other stuff. At the meeting of the Kermit Place Readers, Sharon and I lead the pack of not liking the book, although as usual, we found we were somewhere near agreement.

I even found some time to read The New Yorker, something I dearly love to, but rarely do. Adam Gopnik ("Swoon. My hero.") had an article about Edmund Burke. Anything Adam writes, I can read. ... (Wish he would rewrite The Brothers Karamazov... just kidding). There were a lot of interesting points and I hope I get to discussing them here, but here's one for starts. 

"To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes."
Edmund Burke.

Not sure I have become accustomed to the terrors of my life situation, (NOT my living situation). 

At any rate, in the annals of obnoxious New York insanely self-absorbed lunacy, (not strictly just about New York), testicles now and testicle grooming now have a store.