shadowbox dream

Notes written 7 December 2009.

Bedroom where I spent night
(12/6 midnight on)
on third floor
small bedroom at east end of house
seemed perfectly square
deeply alcoved windows
slim black rods with
faded toile coverings of pastoral scene.

View from window -
at night: a fractal fern,
daybreak: a Christmas tree,
and when I got up
I saw there was another next to it
& behind that
in perfect alignment,
a church spire.
Beautiful gilt-framed object on wall
amphibian theme ran thru the house
bed made up with smooth cotton sheets
summer floral quilt
with small red/white pattern on other side
F dug out a leopard throw - too light
& finally a wool blanket with a pattern that suggested
(word? royalty? pageantry? castle/rook-type stuff)
beautiful mirror across from bed
with antiqued gilt frame
needlepoint footstool
a diminutive side chair covered in pale ivory silk
bedside table with gorgeous lamp
teardrop crystal cascade
culminating in a handsome silk shade
dresser stacked with old ('50s to '70s) fashion mags
Harpers Bazaar, Vogue
I looked at the top one, paged through it
cover had a model, a woman
faux-dressed as Mao Tse Tung
& lines converged to a V
vanishing point
folded cotton serviette with a simple blue floral design
oblong silk pillow with sunflower on bed
beautifully embroidered pillow cases
edged in blue & gold.

In a corner stood a
SCEPTRE.

Boy can I relate

[#765]
You constituted Time --
I deemed Eternity
A Revelation of Yourself --
'Twas therefore Deity

The Absolute -- removed
The Relative away --
That I unto Himself adjust
My slow idolatry --

Emily Dickinson, 1863

Runaway recipe

Lovely lunch today, the lamb shanks that were meant to be last night's dinner. It's a great recipe but the trouble with it is if you'd like to dine around 7 or 8 then you should start it by 3 or 4. It's not that the recipe is so much work, it's that it's sequenced and the steps take time. The lamb shanks have to braise in their liquid for 2-3 hours; then you use 3 cups of the reduced elixir to pan-cook the orzo. So that never happened last night (yesterday's lunch of cavatappi with sausage and broccoli rabe reprised as dinner).

I finished up the recipe at 1 today. Just as well! I was awake enough to enjoy and savor it by the light of day (the sun, thank goodness came out), and I was very hungry after my brisk morning walk with weights. I fed the snow geese a bit of bread I had for them in my pocket. One of them's quite aggressive and nipped me. Am I creating monsters?

Here's the original recipe. I alter it in that I don't use port wine (have you priced it?!!!) - no need, red wine will absolutely suffice, 1-1/2 to 2 cups say. Also, when I'm embarking on this recipe I don't already have a head of roast garlic on hand. I roast it while the shanks braise, and use it in preparing the orzo. It's nice to have roast plum tomato on the side - the flavor is a beautiful complement. But it was nice that I already had some very chunky homemade plum tomato sauce frozen. I thawed and roasted it in a separate pan while the main dish braised.

***
Tonight: Carrot cake is cooling on the stove. Next task is to invert and ice it. At least the cream cheese icing is made. No excuses.

Debriefing

Journal notes from Sunday, 27 December 2009
MOMA, musings and impressions
My love, Orozco with his network of circular forms, a diagram designed "to explain how things work, how objects behave."

***
I still smell the perfume on my own wrist
but it only reminds me of you
(Is it the perfume from her dress that makes me so digress?)

***
I managed to blog - that was a good thing
----- the songs I'm singing -----

***
the little boy in the wheelchair in
the elevator at MOMA -
he was so exquisite, so lovely, so sweet,
so innocent - but already so exposed
to something terrible -
as well to high beauty, and devotion, his
sister, or mother, or au pair, or some lovely
young woman wheeling him into the lift -
the lovely quiet boy, all smiles, self-possessed
keenly alive, and aware, modest,
charisma, modest loving sweet young boy.

***
the Tim Burton exhibit (mandala, star bursting, worms, snakes - Jung)
okay




really impressive - gallery
of fantôme images from the
19th century, esp. Paris
"photography was invented 1839"
I thought it was later -
those images are timeless -
yet everyone within them is deceased -
here I am -

***
Earlier that day I also visited the American Museum of Folk Art, next door to MOMA, which featured a small exhibit by Henry Darger, a (so-called) "outsider" artist whose work I've seen earlier at a large retrospective there years ago and whose images have stayed with me



What if Henry Darger had grown up in Burbank [like Tim Burton]? His visions are Blake-ian, cinematic. Why is he marginalized as an "outsider" artist?

And somehow, I suspect, or just feel, that R. Crumb - from what I've read (e.g., H. Bloom, in NYRB) is overestimated. I don't trust Crumb (or his vision)
Why are the women so resolutely ugly?
this is not a deeply felt vision


***
What do these people make of
E. Dickinson
It's a wonder she's not marginalized as "outsider"
A. Rich gets her wrong
E.D. was wronged (misunderstood) -
felt herself split -
It is very hard.




(And still the perfume on my wrist lingers -
I'm grateful.)









***
... I can't imagine what I'm going to blog about tomorrow.

Sunday late afternoon

I had such a hard time getting myself going today, what happens with me this time of year, most every year. The sun never came out, a cold, grey, damp day. Never made it outside but did about 10 minutes of the Kate Winslet exercise plan (one doesn't have to work out hard every day, does one?). Kept the home fires burning literally. The wonderful WKZE weekly radio program, Women of Note, is now on (thank you, Jerrice, for playing Penelope again (Penelope, Penelope, are you lonely/crazy just like me?), I poured a glass of rose, vacuumed the downstairs and two-thirds up the stairs, and am now searing lamb shanks in step one of Bobby Flay's oven-braised lamb shanks with toasted orzo recipe. It's an awesome dish, much more involved than my usual recipes, I make it just once a year. We've been collecting 'manager's special' lamb shanks at the supermarket the last couple of months - and today my husband scored a fourth. The stars, lamb shanks, and a snow day aligned, so here I am. I cut a few corners on the recipe but really, the combination of seared lamb shanks braised in red wine, stock, and fragrant mirepoix (diced celery, carrot, and onion), served with roast-garlic-infused toasted orzo, and roasted plum tomatoes (thawed from September's farmstand harvesting) - it's wonderful.

Time to turn the shanks. Later.

Sunday morning scenes

"Home is not where the heart is, but the house and the adjacent buildings."--E.D.

Cohesion

From the Emily Dickinson Lexicon:
The Emily Dickinson lexicon is a dictionary of the words in Emily Dickinson's collected poems… Noah Webster's 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language is… important… because Dickinson employed Webster's etymologies and definitions in composing her poems...

Lexical cohesion: words that are tied to each other by meaning or reference.

On Warren Street early that Sunday morning there on the sidewalk was a tiny paper Christmas bulb, and a step away, an even tinier snowflake. I stooped to pick them up. There was a pretty cellophane candy wrapper too, but it was Sunday, so I left it there. Postage for your card, and glue in the first drawer I pulled.

… Not surprisingly, "bending" is a synonymous gloss in the definition of stooping in Webster's [1844] dictionary; and concepts of bending forward, inclining, leaning, yielding, and submitting are shared by these Webster entries:

Stooping, ppr. Bending the body forward; yielding; submitting; condescending; inclining.

Stoop, vi. [Saxon stupian . . . ]
1. To bend the body downward and forward . . .
2. To bend or lean forward; to incline forward in standing or walking
3. To yield; to submit; to bend by compulsion
4. to descend from rank or dignity; to condescend
5. To yield; to be inferior.

Bend, v.i. To be crooked; to crook, or be curving.
2. To incline; to lean or turn
5. To bow or be submissive.

Even without a dictionary it seems clear that "stooping," "stooped," and "bend" are synonyms… What may not be so obvious is that Webster's etymology of the word love includes a primary sense of "leaning forward," so that to stoop, to bend, and to love are lexically cohesive…

Love, v.t. [Saxon lufian, luvian . . . See Lief. The sense is probably to be prompt, free, willing, from leaning, advancing or drawing forward.]

***
Paris, by Nerissa & Katryna Nields

And I dreamed last night
Of how the moonlight shone in your old room...

And every now and then there was a word I understood...
And I wrote it down and put it on a postcard
And sent it to you.

Saturday afternoon

I got up but Gwynnie, who kept warm between my legs, is still napping.

Doric, Ionic...

Fresco with urban scene from a cubiculum nocturnum (bedroom)
Roman, ca. 50-40 B.C., from the villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1903

View yesterday into shop window of Hedström & Judd,
401 Warren Street, Hudson

To the things themselves

Thinking about the Pierpont Morgan and an image I posted a while back that was overly cryptic and that I had meant to go back to explain...

About fifteen years ago I visited the museum, back in its original incarnation before the Renzo Piano addition. I like the new light- and air-filled space in and of itself, but wish it weren't attached to the museum, the experience of which has been irretrievably altered for me as a result. From a patron's perspective, all that seems to be left of the original museum are Mr. Morgan's library and study, and to enter those encapsulated spaces from the atrium is like stepping into a tomb or sarcophagus. My memory of the museum isn't entirely clear (and I wonder if I might be conflating it with the Gardner Museum in Boston), but surely there was more to it than remains now. For example, wasn't there a long hallway along which images were displayed? (I recall framed Beatrix Potter illustrations at one time.) And that the hallway maybe overlooked a peaceful courtyard? I had enjoyed the sense of stepping back in time in the original museum. It had felt timeless and spacious to me - vital and energizing, stirring my imagination, not just a pair of dutifully preserved rooms.

In my visit years ago, in Mr. Morgan's library room was a display of correspondence by various writers, artists, scientists, and others. I vividly remember my experience of peering down at a glass case and setting out to read a letter by Virginia Woolf. The room was hushed, footfalls cushioned by carpeting, patrons silent or speaking in whispers. One could concentrate to read. I made out Woolf's handwriting, even and neat as I recall... the two most perfect novels in the English language are Emma, by Jane Austen, and The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope. Wow! What a recommendation! But why? I made out the words. Woolf posited that more so than in any other works, the hand of the author is entirely invisible, that the main characters and situation are so perfectly conceived and realized that all the action flows seamlessly and inevitably from them as a result.

Virginia Woolf came alive for me at that moment, and over vast gulfs of time, culture, and intellect, I felt as though she was speaking directly to me. I took her recommendation to heart. That very afternoon I purchased the two novels, which in the weeks that followed I read in light of her insightful pronouncement, and enjoyed greatly. I marveled that Woolf had actually caused me to read those books at that time, and together. I own them to this day, and while I confess to not remembering a single thing about the Trollope, to dip into Emma at any point is to bring her charming and insufferable self to life and to be reminded of the havoc she wreaks.

I think of this peak museum experience now in connection with a contrasting one, at the same museum, last Saturday. I visited the Morgan to see an exhibit of Jane Austen correspondence and ephemera, anticipating with pleasure being able to read her words in her own handwriting. But I found it impossible to read the material on display because a video was audibly playing in a corner of the gallery space. I don't understand why the video needed to be played there. Downstairs was a theatre where I had caught the tail end of a 16-minute film, shown hourly, on Austen (which ended charmingly if improbably with Cornel West saying that he'd want to give Austen a hug). The theatre sits empty for some 44 minutes of every hour. Why not show the other film in this space? That way patrons who are visiting a bibliophilic museum - and who might be expected, as a result, to actually wish to read - may be able to do so. Was the distracting intrusion of the video a de facto assault on the old-fashioned act of reading itself - that words on paper that patrons have voluntarily journeyed and paid to see, aren't enough? This curatorial approach seems to me to be consistent with the way that the original museum, with all its grandeur and charms, seems to have been purposely engulfed by the new addition.

New Year's reflections

Back from a desultory walk up and down Warren Street. "Eeez so grey" today, as a French intern of my past acquaintance might well say. I am in a still, reflective mood today, a pool, pond, quiet. I suppose my way of adjusting to being back home, maybe even to the new year.

This shop window caught my eye. Such a cozy scene. I like the decorative cushion and the charming cups. I picture being curled on a sofa in front of a fire with that tray and coffee in the cups and good newspapers and fun music on and the laughter of dearest company.

I am being quite decadent this day. I have poured a glass of wine, very rare for me at this early hour. But oh heck, it's Friday and a holiday weekend and I just don't feel inspired to do anything else. A glass of wine seems like just the ticket. Time for resolutions tomorrow. Funny, I don't really have any, except to continue trying to keep physically active and fit. (Not a resolution anymore so much as a reframed way of life.) The one resolution I had made a year ago today stuck in a formal respect but not in more important ways. It morphed, had to out somehow, and what was essential remained, became distilled, refused to be suppressed, intensified.

What an odd wrinkle in time - last New Year seems like a nanosecond ago, yet distinctly foreign to the way I feel now.

I am still in a reflective mood. I should go downstairs and prepare the chicken to roast.

I can't even imagine what the coming year will bring. Big changes, I think. There will have to be. But how will they come about? That I don't see.

Images

from my past week, but mostly taken today

Hudson Amtrak Station, 2:35 p.m., 25 December 2009



"dwarf" cedar deodoras today, planted spring 1990 (shrubs, then)


burro, hen, wrapped stone, and grey stone


staged recreation of scrap found under tree a few days ago


the building (the middle one) where my husband and I lived from 1990 to 2005, on the parlor floor. This week I stayed in our friends' apartment, on the top floor. There is a lovely garden space in back, where the cedar deodoras are.

Au revoir

My last morning in Brooklyn. Returning home today. It's snowing out. The library is cozy and warm. I will be glad not to have to pay $4.50 for two cups of coffee every morning. I was buying it afternoons before at Sweet Melissa, then reheating it in the morning so I wouldn't have to roll out of bed into my clothes and out into the bitter cold just to find overpriced java, which is what happened on my first morning here Saturday, until I worked out the better plan.

I am so much on my own that sometimes I feel as though I'm under house arrest, solitary. Only I wonder, what did I do? What crime did I commit?

I don't mean to sound so melancholy. I'm okay, really. Dreading the drive home in the snow, the inevitable white-knuckled moments on the Taconic.

Must go back to the apartment now and pack, tidy up.

No, I am feeling melancholy after all. Why is that? I suppose it's because I'm in a gap between things this morning, about to leave Brooklyn, not yet back home.

Full of longing, missing terribly. Perfume still on my wrist - after my shower.

Will try to post tonight. Happy New Year's eve.

Zip Drive

I wish I had a gift
to write something perfectly bland
ninety percent of its meaning
hidden, except to you.
Yesterday's breakfast, leftover panini,
with egg transformed to croque madame.
I admired an Ionic column
at the Met
and a still life - mostly peaches.
Bergdorf a bust
I gave to the urge to go to Saks
and was glad I did.
This morning snow falling on cedars
settles on your soft brown beard
and perfume still lingers on my wrist.
Drive ever northward vanished enveloping road
Volumes in initials.

Evening post

Back at the Carroll Gardens library. It's dark out, I'm not feeling very inspired, I've had a glass of rose at the apartment to try to get myself going.

Since I am here the corner where I sit (virtually empty tonight, at this hour - library closes at 8 tonight) is perfumed with sweet musky scent. I raise my wrist and inhale.

Was at the Met today, I've never seen it so crowded. Check-in, as at an airport, took the better part of an hour. The Velasquez exhibit turned out not to be a major retrospective, but rather a curatorial mini-essay of sorts surrounding the recent restoration and re-valuation of one of the paintings, perhaps a self-portrait, in the Met's collection. Spent a couple of hours wandering the Met's galleries, and perhaps one of my favorite moments was lingering in the ancient Greek galleries on the south end of the main floor, where I admired an Ionic column.

Walked down Fifth afterward, paused at a bench abutting the park, and scribbled a note that read, "timeless winter light of a silver gelatin print." It was just that kind of light this afternoon.

Stopped at Bergdorf, at 58th, in a quest for another spritz of perfume, but I didn't see any perfume counters on the main floor, just extremely expensive jewelry and handbags, and a clientele that looked, in their subdued winter finery, as though they had been upholstered at the Frick, all very coded "old money" weight and tones.

I had intended to head west to check out what might be on sale at the Williams-Sonoma at the Time-Warner center, but realized that I simply must have another encounter with the intoxicating scent, it wasn't optional anymore. So I stayed on Fifth and despite the crowds (I think I'm getting used to them after the last few days in tourist-mad Manhattan, or at least am getting better at negotiating them) headed for Saks again. In my eagerness to imbibe the scent, inhabit it, I spritzed myself twice which may have been too much. Still, I noticed that my hit from Sunday afternoon lasted into the evening, into the night, until my shower the next morning, and even then I think a trace lingered (absorbed through my wrists, coursing through me?).

And that's all I have, really, for tonight. It's all about all sorts of delirious and intoxicating thoughts and lovely fragrances and romantic reveries and wonderings of - well, all sorts of wonderings.

Love.

Afternoon

At the Carroll Gardens library, typing away in the children's section. The room is packed with toddlers and their parents or caregivers, very sweet. I feel sated and content after a lovely snack at Sweet Melissa's, a cafe on Court Street. I sat a little table scribbling, enjoying the bustle, the jazz on the stereo, and the stream of delectable dishes in my prix fixe meal: butternut squash soup; a ham, camembert and green-apple panini (a diagonal half reserved for tomorrow's breakfast); mesclun salad, delicious coffee, and a savory muffin, cheddar with sundried tomato, for dessert. Such a lovely atmosphere, yellow walls, a painted tin ceiling, stained glass lamps and milk-glass sconces, plain wood floors, tiny tables crammed together against a wall. About the size of p.m. wine bar, only no wine, just drinks like gingerbread latte and peppermint hot chocolate. Stylish, yes - but doesn't pretend to be French! (You would have blended right in.)

My day didn't go as I'd planned. I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge again and noticed that the cables not only meet above the arches, but criss-cross all the way up, which heartened me. I stopped at the New Amsterdam branch library to blog, and discovered a message from a former colleague - a five-minute walk away to her office. So she and I had lunch and caught up, and I must say I do not miss city planning one little bit and could not care less if a Lucille Roberts in a C4 district has been an illegal (adult-entertainment, non-retail) use since it illegally established itself in a retail district 16 years ago. Such nonsense. It simply doesn't matter AT ALL. I was happy to see my friend but even happier to serenely waltz out of there with airier things on my mind.

Such as what to do since it was getting too late to go see the Velasquez exhibit at the Met, my original plan, shelved til tomorrow. In the end I couldn't think of anything brilliant and compelling so I walked back over the Bridge (one would think I would be pencil-slim what with all the brisk walks I take all over the place, city & country).

The children are getting tired, there's yelling now, and screeching, and shushing, and looking around for jackets, and now some fretful crying and wood xylophone playing. No more screaming, I told you if you scream we have to go. Nooooooooo....

I need to buy a book of Emily Dickinson's poetry. I've been reading my neighbors'. To me she's all about thwarted, unrequited love, at least many of the poems I've landed on. Also in the last few days I borrowed off the neighbors' bookshelf a volume of essays by Adrienne Rich, which includes an essay on Dickinson. Her reductionist-feminist take doesn't ring true to me (don't have it in front of me, so sorry to be vague). Reading Emily Dickinson I sense a great deal of pain, a deliberate and sensible withdrawing from a conventional world that can't possibly understand her and can only hurt her, while at the same time she feels so passionately, deeply, and acutely that (absent sex, which I've read that she was quite sexual) the only possible mode of expressing herself in any adequate, fulfilling, authentic way is through her poetry, her art. Her poetry was necessary to her, the only way to be in the world, to reconcile her self in the inhospitable earthly realm. She's working out what it means to be queer, even if she wasn't homosexual.

Must logoff now, before the computer shuts down for the evening automatically.

Love, love, love.

Don't Let This Happen To You!

#449, by Emily Dickinson, 1862.

I died for Beauty - but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room -

He questioned softly, "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied -
"And I - for Truth - Themself are One -
We Bretheren, are", He said -

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night -
We talked between the Rooms -
Until the Moss had reached our lips -
And covered up - our names.

****

The grave's a fine and lovely place
But none I think do there embrace.

****

I have no intention of renouncing Love for Art.
Vitruvian Woman, I wish to be. And he's my ideal man.
Let Art & Science be friends - and lovers again!

Tinsel

Was at the library this morning, my mind too full of jumbled thoughts of Marvell, Dickinson, and petty Fate. (I don't believe it's Fate who's the culprit - it's the Puritans.)

Heading up Clinton I thought, what will I do, what will I do? And just then I saw on the frozen ground beneath a Norway maple, a green cardboard scrap, in script.

Faith, it read.

Have a little faith. I have to keep reminding myself.

And sometimes I need reminding.

On Warren Street early that Sunday morning there on the sidewalk was a tiny paper Christmas bulb, and a step away, an even tinier snowflake. I stooped to pick them up. There was a pretty cellophane candy wrapper too, but it was Sunday, so I left it there. Postage for your card, and glue in the first drawer I pulled.

Wrapped stone

From notes written yesterday evening.

The friends at whose apartment I'm staying have a knack for finding lovely stones. Left on a stack of circular rattan placemats on the table (on which also sits a vase with dried lavender and a pair of tiny ceramic animals - Mexican? - a burro, and a hen) is a an oblong piece of flat granite, hardly bigger than a postage stamp. Its markings are as if painted on. I examine the stone, finger and revolve it in my left hand as I write with my right. On either side thin white threads show against dark grey, not parallel lines at all, but crosses, X'es like minimalist bows, encircling the stone like fancy, minimalist raffia gift wrap at Takashimaya, if that shop (on Fifth) exists anymore.

I consider the painful metaphysical conclusion of the Marvell:

Therefore the love which us doth bind
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

Here is a conjunction on a stone, not parallel lines forever separated that can come together only in a planisphere or globe. The continuous white lines on the slim flat stone cross over, wrap, and cross again on the reverse, binding it together.

Steel cables come together at the summit of arches on the Brooklyn Bridge, I noticed yesterday as I walked across.

There is a second stone too, a quarter or third of the size of the first, a light grey Jordan almond, perfectly plain.

The Definition of Love

In connection with listening to John Ashbery reading from his newest volume of poetry, Planisphere, I have been considering this poem, by Andrew Marvell, which he mentioned. Here it is.

THE DEFINITION OF LOVE.
by Andrew Marvell

I.
MY Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.

II.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

III.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

IV.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

V.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
Not by themselves to be embraced,

VI.
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

VII.
As lines, so love's oblique, may well
Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

VIII.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

Arnolfini cedars

On impulse this morning as I passed by I stepped into Saks Fifth Avenue, searched for the right perfume counter, and tried on Miss Dior. Hours later it's still lingering on my wrist. I can't say it filled me with a flood of Proustian associations but it did make me feel a little emotional. Exited Saks into teeming crowds. So much for romantic reverie. Lost patience with a cheesily overdressed, overmadeup couple that decided to stop right in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, oblivious to all others. Multitudes are there to glimpse the Rockefeller Center tree. What a good idea to stop right in the middle of hundreds and hundreds of people, I said. The guy sneerily yelled at me of course. Oh man. The city.

It was nice to try the perfume though. I haven't worn a fragrance in so long, it's almost a curiosity for me to try it. This fragrance is a little (or maybe a lot, now) young for me. And yet I'm enjoying it, it reminds me of talc. It's sweet. It goes with the pink tops I'm wearing today. With fierce brown denim, that is.

Such a beautiful day in the city today, like spring. Am killing time now at the Mid-Manhattan Library before heading to MOMA with my 3:30 ticket for the Tim Burton show. I am curious about someone who has such ceaseless generative energy. His needle is always placed on a record on a turntable, turning, turning, playing, creating. Hmmm, that metaphor isn't working, and yet I think about my own creative energy, all those walks around and around the conservation area, my blogging, my writing - I find that the more I write the more I want to write. Just keep going, circling, placing pen to paper.

Last night I stood in the kitchen and watched the two cedar deodoras we planted some 20 years ago dance in the high wind. These so-called "dwarf" cedars have now cleared the brownstone rooflines. They were so animated in the windy night. Their wide, sturdy lower branches intertwine all the way up, but at the top they're new and narrow. Individual longer branches are like arms, appearing to tirelessly, determinedly reach out for the other, a ceaseless dance, aided by the wind, to come together, to touch, to grab hold. I think that their desire to join must help to spur their lateral growth. The trees reminded me very much of the Arnolfini portrait, a mated pair, deeply in love and holding hands. I know they will succeed, take hold of one another as they have with lower branches, but I do wonder - how tall in the end will these trees, which are native to the Himalayas, get?

A Day's Journey

At the corner library, with 29 minutes left til logout. So, to quote Jane Austen, "which of my important nothings should I tell you about first?" I walked all over today, from Carroll Gardens, across the Brooklyn Bridge, threading my way uptown, through Chinatown, Soho, and the Village to the Pierpont Morgan Museum on 36th St. There was an exhibit of Jane Austen manuscripts there. I would have enjoyed it better but the curators saw fit to play a loud video of currently fashionable novelists extolling over Austen. I simply couldn't concentrate to try to read Austen's miniscule script, which I would have loved to do. At one point I heard one of the voiceovers, a female, say wow, wow, oh wow (or some such breathless gushing) that I thought, I have to check this out, I wonder if it's Susan Orlean. No, it wasn't, but at that point I would have enjoyed seeing her gamine face wryly tell of her idiosyncratic bibliophilic filing system. "I keep Jane Austen with my histories of the Napoleonic Wars, just to keep Carlos Fuentes happy, because he didn't think Austen was engaged enough with the politics of her day. And a copy of The Rules of course. Boy, I sure wish I'd written Emma."

From Jane I headed for Janeism, continuing my Panoramic Day's Journey Round the Metropolis, an Amusing and Instructive Game of puddlejumping, giving clueless tourists directions (and a pat on a shoulder to one who just looked like he needed courage!), and lunching on carrot sticks & cheddar on the fly. I went to the Rubin Museum of Tibetan? Himalayan? Spiritual? - not sure - art. There I saw pages of Carl Jung's Red Book, which he had written and illustrated (it's like an illuminated manuscript) with images of his own personal cosmology. It led me to wonder if I have one, or what it might be. His images didn't resonate so much with me, but then again that was just an hour ago. These things have a way of needing to sink in.

There was also an exhibit of Janeist art, including lovely images like elaborate, colorful board games of pilgrimages to holy places, holy cities I guess. They were very reminiscent of the image I saw at the Austen exhibit (Panoramic Day's Journey), a board-game like map that spiraled from the center like a Chutes & Ladders, with each square depicting an early 19th century must-see spot in London.

Parallel universes or no, it's amazing how quickly I've slid into the Brooklyn mode as though I never left. The librarian greets me as though I was here just the other day, when it's been months (he's unusually friendly and pleasant - maybe especially for a librarian). I enjoyed the brisk urban walk.

At the Rubin I was finally able to monetize blogging! People in front of me said they were artists so the clerk gave them a discount. Emboldened, I said that I was an unemployed poetic blogger. She considered me. Well I guess you're an artist then!, and cheerfully gave me a discount. Just ask!

Must sign off now - warning messages on.

Love, love, love.

P.S. Plus I saw Alan Alda while riding the glass elevator down at the Pierpont.
Not exactly "Witnessed on Warren"...

Runaway Glorias

Getting myself together to take Amtrak down to the city this afternoon. Have listened to the PetShopBoys Xmas song several times this morning, dancing to it while putting away laundry and packing my bag. That song makes me happy.

I enjoyed the service last night, though I wouldn't say that it was ecumenical in any way, except from a missionary point of view. It was all quite straight-up Episcopal, which I'm not, though it was interesting to participate in the service, to consider the words as I read them, and to reflect on their ramifications in the earthly sphere. I have a problem with the word "righteousness," for example. A great deal of mischief stems from that over-certain and uncompromising word.

I enjoyed the carol singing, though as an alto I have a problem with the standard keys that hymns and carols are played in, geared for tenors and tremulous sopranos and awkward for most others. I loved the organist - he rocked. I think it was on Angels We Have Heard on High, the whole melismatic Glooooooooooooooooria part - the organist ripped and chugged and sped up and lurched then slowed then sped up again and crazily crashed all through it, the placid and obedient chorus valiantly keeping pace. The organist did the bangup slightly differently in each of the repeated choruses, one exuberant musical near-train wreck after another (I say 'near' because the organist always managed to recover the runaway train and meet back up with the chorus which had already arrived at the station). So Hudson! I think it was wackily intentional, and it was very funny, very creative & spontaneous I thought. Bravo, organist! for taking liberties. I too, took liberties, and sometimes tried to sing harmony, or flourishes that I'm accustomed to from my King's College Choir Christmas albums. Well, isn't that a point of Christmas - that we of various voices should try to make a joyful noise and to harmonize?

I'm spending the coming week in my former upstairs neighbors' apartment, looking after their cat and otherwise catching up on cultural offerings in the city. I will post when I can from the little branch library around the corner, on the days that it's open.

I hate to sign off. Only connect.

No, no righteousness. Love! Love!

Squawks and hawks

Feeling a little tired and achey but am determined to attend the Festal Christmas Eve service in Hudson tonight. I've never been to a midnight mass (this one's at 11) and it just feels right to go. I would like to be in company. There is to be a choral sing at 10:30. I hope it means that all can join in, if they wish. I like to sing, maybe especially hymns and carols. I enjoy trying to harmonize. I used to think that I was a better singer than I am but was humbled many years ago when at the friendly invitation of a coworker, I tried out for a well-established choral group in an Upper East Side church. At the first rehearsal the loaded stands of practiced, pitch-perfect voices burst out of the gates into galloping oratorio. I tried to keep up and was dismayed to discover that I couldn't hear myself sing. I had no idea what notes I might be hitting, and feared that they might be no more than random squawks. The other choristers clearly didn't have this problem, or the angst that accompanied it. They sallied forth, blandly and efficiently turning page after page, on-the-mark and oblivious. I was duly impressed with them, and took up swimming.

Today at the conservation area a hawk - a harrier hawk? - flew very near, ahead of me on the path along the woods. I am sure it was lingering, hanging out, allowing me to admire it. Also, maybe we were both appreciating the sunset this Christmas Eve, so rosy as to suggest a dawn in the western hills. Wouldn't that be nice!

Notes from Guillermo del Toro's The Orphanage

That's what Jung means when he says
It's in the subconscious that the living
coexist with the dead.
The Germans have another name for 'the herald of death':
Doppelgänger.
A being that appears in one's own image.
A double.
To glance at him,
or at any of the others I've shown you,
means, without the slightest doubt,
a passport to the other world.

... strange things are happening...

This wasn't a children's room in the orphanage, right?
No, the bedroom was back there.
Then we should start here.
I want an old object from this house
Something related to its history and, if possible,
Some clothing from the past.
We're not alone.

You're talking about ghosts.
And what is a ghost, Carlos?
There's something here, and we all saw it.

When something terrible happens, sometimes it leaves a trace
a wound that acts as a knot between two time lines.
It's like an echo repeated over and over, waiting to be heard.
Like a scar (oh I'm sorry) - like a scar or a pinch, that begs for
a caress to relieve it.
Laura, we who are close to death
we are more receptive to these messages.

What should I do?
My dear, you are a good mother
Your pain gives you strength, it will guide you.
But only you know how far you are willing to go.
You hear but do not listen.
Seeing is not believing
It's the other way around.
Believe: and you will see.