ACKNOWLEDGE ITS MYSTERY

"Obviously I need courage to deal with my current dysfunctional body. And religion? The bible says that the kingdom of God is within you. If so, I haven’t noticed it lately. I’m not making light of devotion or a mother praying to bring her baby back to life after it’s been cut out of the stomach of an anaconda in Venezuela. Human suffering has to be the largest of all question marks. You must beware of hope, a radically dangerous emotion. Hope can roll over and crush you. I went to a dozen doctors last winter in Tucson for shingles relief and each time I had a wide-eyed Midwestern hope and faith that was promptly smeared. Hope is a bourgeois Tinker Bell toy that can transform into a guard dog of the most vicious nature. You raise your expectations then are gutted like a deer. However, if you need to say a little prayer, go ahead and moisten your lips for the deaf gods, although it’s like fly fishing in a sewer: 'Raise your chin, o son of man, your doom is around the next corner on the left.'"
— Jim Harrison

Cooder's evening position on the back of the couch while I work.

The days are beautiful, but the mornings and evenings are sharp, acidic in their way. I have already seen leaves blowing around. I'm still back in February in my mind, the year and possibilities stretch before me. I still have time to get it together. Um. Not so much.

Emmylou keeps an eye on me as well.

As I mentioned, I finished Tom Bissell's book of essays, Magic Night. The final essay was about a writer I guess I am not supposed to like as he is a man's man writer. But I do like Jim Harrison. I can't remember offhand what I liked so much about Sundog (n.b., not a glowing review there), but it is a book I will buy as a gift.

A bon mot or two here:

Until that point in my life, I had heeded the inadvertent lessons of my English classes: literature was something written by the dead for the bored. ... I was fifteen years old and for the first time in my reading life I underlined a phrase not to retain its information but to acknowledge its mystery.

... I do not recall much of the night after the second bottle's splendid arrival, and by the end of the evening I felt as though I had been beaten up by our meal.

Sometimes politeness was just a way to escape what needed to be said.

— Tom Bissell

No matter how acute, the pain of hangovers can't rise above farce.

A creek is more powerful than despair.
— Jim Harrison

And this one is difficult to quote so I will paraphrase a bit, "Harrison's belief that a writer is someone who 'consciously or unconsciously takes a vow of obedience to awareness' ..."

And so it goes. I'm struggling. Not in an overt way, but I can feel myself all balled up inside, steeling myself, protecting myself, generating worry, and maybe some discontentment. On my walks, I try to remember to relax my shoulders, let out some of the tight energy, kind of ... um ... flow ... a bit. I try to escape myself by eating Smarties and Gummy Lifesavers and more than I should. I want to drink although I know I sleep better if I don't. Maybe I just need a good long bath or a massage. 

E has returned from Europe and had to move back to Stonybrook for her senior year. M and J packed up the SUV and off they went this afternoon. They haven't returned. I worked on Monsterwood with Louise for a good long time and have quite a bit to rewrite tomorrow, but my head was too full to write this evening. So I tried watching the Keira Knightley version of Anna Karenina. Strange. Interesting, but I don't much like KK, so I couldn't get into it, notwithstanding that Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay. I caught up on Borgen. And now to bed and maybe more Brothers K (closing in on the end, I swear it). I couldn't sleep last night so I just listened until I did fall asleep and I will try that again.

Breathe deeply. Sit up straight. Relax your shoulders. Good night.

DISJOINTED RAMBLING

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

— Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) 

Yeah, attending to an answer, listening to what someone says. Perhaps that will creep into my "practice" if this mindfulness, this general paying attention business stays on my mental forefront. On the other hand, I will also need to practice by talking to more people. My world, at least in telephone and face-to-face contact, is fairly limited these days. Cooder, Emmy, and Albert ... well, I was going to say that maybe there wasn't much there ... but come to think of it, I could attend to them more ... attentively ... as well.

Pardon the rambling nature of this, but the caffeine is still kicking in.

Later that ... well...  not really morning anymore. I am preparing to head down to Brooklyn and Manhattan until Thursday and I find that I am anxious. I am avoiding getting ready, although I have had ample preparation time. And it is not any big deal, no pressure situations. But here I am playing solitaire and feeling just slightly out of sorts. And isn't because of the constant drone of the power mowers in the background. 

I don't like this anxiety about leaving and/or going places. It's a new-ish thing. Just sharing.

Days later. 

Made it to New York City and back, more or less in one piece and now with darker hair! I've settled back in and, this afternoon, I will buckle down on the graphic novel again. I am going to head out for an hour of walking and The Brothers K and thence to writing.

Gravestone at Quaker Hill.

Being out of the home environment leads to more indulgence in food and alcohol, but at least on Wednesday I did plenty of walking. S is on the Quaker Cemetary Committee and thus has keys to Quaker Hill in Prospect Park. He needed to see if the keys worked, so we walked over there and walked all around the cemetary, which was hella-cool.

And I finally finally finally finished Tom Bissell's book of essays, Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation. Yay! I only checked it out of the library five or six times.

"Films, perhaps, show us who we want to be, and literature shows us who we actually are. Sitcoms, if they show us anything, show us people we might like to know. Because of this, the sitcom is a medium designed to reassure. The more reassuring the sitcom, the better its chances become at winding up in the financial promised land of syndication, where multi-camera sitcomes fare far better than their single-camera brethern. Most sitcoms are about families, and for the millions who watch them, a sitcom becomes a kind of mental family. Week after week, your couch faces the couch of characters you feel you know, characters whose problems never quite get solved."

from A Simple Medium: Chuck Lorre and the American Sitcom

I don't watch many sitcoms, although I have seen all of the episodes of 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation. I did find this very interesting.

Okay. More later. Cooder wants Greenies and I do need to get a-walking.

Emmylou joined us on the bed again this morning.

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