Thursday, July 20, 2017
Keep Talking: Perennial #100
Keep Talking: Perennial #100: I have been thinking about getting a new tattoo. It might be the word perennial. I have been thinking a lot about noun perennial: tulip, d...
Perennial #100
I have been thinking about getting a new tattoo.
It might be the word perennial. I have been thinking a lot about noun perennial: tulip, daffodil, tomato, strawberry, potato, spearmint. Adjective: lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually reoccurring.
Maybe it will be on the inside of my wrist in cursive flair. Maybe it will be bold italic. Maybe it will be a botanical engraving of an onion. Whatever it is, it will remind me that every year something that disappeared will return. It will show up uninvited and be just fine making an appearance. Just when you think something is over, like the door is shut for good over, a Siberian iris pops up out of the earth and says, "hey!"
When it is summer and the city feels like wading through a giant pool of hot green pea soup and the garbage is dripping out of black bags onto the sidewalk causing streams of gunk to tiptoe over, again, I know it is reliably summer in the city. Perennial.
When I walk around the reservoir and the tiger lilies are bending in the wildflower gardens punching their way onto the path and then suddenly it is the first snowstorm of the season and I have to get a look when there is absolutely no visibility, I think: hmmm, perennial.
When the sun sets with solstice precision between the two towers of the Eldorado and a pink cloud blocks the light at just the moment I've been waiting for, I think: yup, perennial.
When my child grows and changes and I think her hair is the color of peony: I pray for perennial.
Maybe I will glance at my wrist and it will seem like a silly idea in a few years. I can dream that I can be part of something that will last forever or unobtrusively come back for more: with fir trees and thyme.
It might be the word perennial. I have been thinking a lot about noun perennial: tulip, daffodil, tomato, strawberry, potato, spearmint. Adjective: lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually reoccurring.
Maybe it will be on the inside of my wrist in cursive flair. Maybe it will be bold italic. Maybe it will be a botanical engraving of an onion. Whatever it is, it will remind me that every year something that disappeared will return. It will show up uninvited and be just fine making an appearance. Just when you think something is over, like the door is shut for good over, a Siberian iris pops up out of the earth and says, "hey!"
When it is summer and the city feels like wading through a giant pool of hot green pea soup and the garbage is dripping out of black bags onto the sidewalk causing streams of gunk to tiptoe over, again, I know it is reliably summer in the city. Perennial.
When I walk around the reservoir and the tiger lilies are bending in the wildflower gardens punching their way onto the path and then suddenly it is the first snowstorm of the season and I have to get a look when there is absolutely no visibility, I think: hmmm, perennial.
When the sun sets with solstice precision between the two towers of the Eldorado and a pink cloud blocks the light at just the moment I've been waiting for, I think: yup, perennial.
When my child grows and changes and I think her hair is the color of peony: I pray for perennial.
Maybe I will glance at my wrist and it will seem like a silly idea in a few years. I can dream that I can be part of something that will last forever or unobtrusively come back for more: with fir trees and thyme.
Monday, June 12, 2017
#99 By Any Means Necessary
A few months back I was on the 6 train heading for Brooklyn. I got on at City Hall and it was cloudy out. Lower Manhattan was shrouded in a thick fog and I snapped a few photos of old street lamps and buildings blanketed in white. It was really beautiful to see nature edit out the sharpness of the architecture leaving a feeling of soft serenity. A soft breath in a chaotic city.
I got on the train and within a few moments a young man sitting across from me pointed under my seat.
"Is that yours?" he asked.
I picked up the plastic card holder with a women's college ID card, two credit cards and a few business cards.
"No. That was really nice of you to notice this and ask me. I wonder when this person got off the train." I showed him the photo ID.
"She just got off the train before you got on."
As I rode the train to Brooklyn I tried to figure out ways to contact her. Later, I googled her, found her on Facebook and Linkedin. I private messaged her letting her know that I had her ID. I called her credit card company to let them know I had her belongings. She had already cancelled her cards.
A week later she contacted me through Facebook and thanked me for efforts to contact her. She asked me for coffee the next week. We never met, but it felt good to try.
I got on the train and within a few moments a young man sitting across from me pointed under my seat.
"Is that yours?" he asked.
I picked up the plastic card holder with a women's college ID card, two credit cards and a few business cards.
"No. That was really nice of you to notice this and ask me. I wonder when this person got off the train." I showed him the photo ID.
"She just got off the train before you got on."
As I rode the train to Brooklyn I tried to figure out ways to contact her. Later, I googled her, found her on Facebook and Linkedin. I private messaged her letting her know that I had her ID. I called her credit card company to let them know I had her belongings. She had already cancelled her cards.
A week later she contacted me through Facebook and thanked me for efforts to contact her. She asked me for coffee the next week. We never met, but it felt good to try.
Monday, March 6, 2017
Keep Talking: #98 A Cat Never Loses Anything.
Keep Talking: #98 A Cat Never Loses Anything.: Today, I had lunch with a good friend who has been working at the Met Museum for almost 30 years. It may even be more than 30 years, but it ...
#98 A Cat Never Loses Anything.
Today, I had lunch with a good friend who has been working at the Met Museum for almost 30 years. It may even be more than 30 years, but it doesn't matter because she will be there forever and time doesn't matter in a place like the Met. Two or three times a year I meet her for lunch at the museum. This has been going on for as long as she has been there so I don't know what we looked like when we started but we have been through a lot over the years, which doesn't matter because when we are together we are sentimental. Sentimentality freezes time and it makes no difference if we are 26 or 65. We meet, where we always meet, in the Great Hall by the information desk. She flashes her badge and gets me a pin or what is now a sticker so I can enter the north wing. We sashay past the guards who all seem to know her as she waves her arms about and rolls her eyes as we walk through the renovated Egyptian wing. "Oh Elizabeth", she laughs and sighs like she owns it all, "this place is so, well.."
We head downstairs to the staff cafeteria. It isn't open to museum guests and there are hundreds of rushing people waiting on line for sandwiches to be made with a side of chips, or impatiently holding a cup under the soda dispenser. I know my way around the cafeteria and we wait on line while the cashier weighs my salad.
Today she told me about her group looking at Egon Schiele drawings. Unframed, naked and actually touched by him. I imagine her and a group of young colleagues passing the drawings around in a circle and smoking cigarettes.
"It's moment like that which makes this job so....well, worth it." She says this while waving her hand over her sandwich. "That man over there sipping his coffee curated the Hartley show. Hartley has always been one of the top three on my list." She shakes her head to get the curls out of her eyes and pierces her lettuce with a plastic fork.
" While we were looking at the Schiele drawings I said to them, 'okay now lets be quiet and think about what it is we are actually doing right now.'"
I imagine them blowing the last bit of smoke out of their mouths while their heads tilt up gazing sideways at her. They all admire her and appreciate the fact that she wants them to savor the moment of miraculousness of being able to touch this art.
She's right, of course.
She is always right when she talks about this.
I want to look at the drawings, too. I am looking at them in my mind. I am looking at her and her colleagues while the sun is streaming through the office window reflecting and penetrating the cigarette smoke which has just been exhaled and when it dissipates there is nothing else to look at but the Schiele nudes with crooked sexy dark lines and a bright red line between the bushy hair between a skeletal woman's legs.
Here we are year after year eating sandwiches and salads surrounded by employees of varying stature. Some are wearing guard uniforms. Others are wearing suits. Some are definitely young art history interns who won't be sticking around very long.
Through the years there are threads which stabilize our connection. Our families: her kids from birth to college. Her parents and brother. Her earrings and my necklace. We should eat dinner in Brooklyn soon.
She waves her arm over her empty tray and checks her watch.
"Is it time to go back to work?"
She tosses her head and smiles and I cannot believe she and I have known each other forever. She is sure of herself in a way nobody else I know is. She has nine or ten lives and her gaze is sturdy, kind and familiar. We hug and off she walks towards the 20th Century wing.
We head downstairs to the staff cafeteria. It isn't open to museum guests and there are hundreds of rushing people waiting on line for sandwiches to be made with a side of chips, or impatiently holding a cup under the soda dispenser. I know my way around the cafeteria and we wait on line while the cashier weighs my salad.
Today she told me about her group looking at Egon Schiele drawings. Unframed, naked and actually touched by him. I imagine her and a group of young colleagues passing the drawings around in a circle and smoking cigarettes.
"It's moment like that which makes this job so....well, worth it." She says this while waving her hand over her sandwich. "That man over there sipping his coffee curated the Hartley show. Hartley has always been one of the top three on my list." She shakes her head to get the curls out of her eyes and pierces her lettuce with a plastic fork.
" While we were looking at the Schiele drawings I said to them, 'okay now lets be quiet and think about what it is we are actually doing right now.'"
I imagine them blowing the last bit of smoke out of their mouths while their heads tilt up gazing sideways at her. They all admire her and appreciate the fact that she wants them to savor the moment of miraculousness of being able to touch this art.
She's right, of course.
She is always right when she talks about this.
I want to look at the drawings, too. I am looking at them in my mind. I am looking at her and her colleagues while the sun is streaming through the office window reflecting and penetrating the cigarette smoke which has just been exhaled and when it dissipates there is nothing else to look at but the Schiele nudes with crooked sexy dark lines and a bright red line between the bushy hair between a skeletal woman's legs.
Here we are year after year eating sandwiches and salads surrounded by employees of varying stature. Some are wearing guard uniforms. Others are wearing suits. Some are definitely young art history interns who won't be sticking around very long.
Through the years there are threads which stabilize our connection. Our families: her kids from birth to college. Her parents and brother. Her earrings and my necklace. We should eat dinner in Brooklyn soon.
She waves her arm over her empty tray and checks her watch.
"Is it time to go back to work?"
She tosses her head and smiles and I cannot believe she and I have known each other forever. She is sure of herself in a way nobody else I know is. She has nine or ten lives and her gaze is sturdy, kind and familiar. We hug and off she walks towards the 20th Century wing.
Monday, January 30, 2017
Keep Talking: #97 Yellow Vomit
Keep Talking: #97 Yellow Vomit: I haven't been writing my blog because I have attempted to write a longer format story and was unsuccessful. It was about a girl named S...
#97 Yellow Vomit
I haven't been writing my blog because I have attempted to write a longer format story and was unsuccessful. It was about a girl named Susan who went to middle school with me and she had a prosthetic arm. Let's just say that I hit a wall.
I started a small writing group. It was me and one other person who had very limited experience writing but produced much more than I did. I was jealous of her, because she could have her work published and I am merely taking teeny weenie baby steps. So, I'm embracing my limitations and, like cool with being perpetually mediocre.
I had a dream that someone I was following on Instagram, who was making the most incredible protest signs, invited me to their home in Brooklyn. Like the Susan story, which maybe I will finish someday, I was a misfit. I fell asleep in her house and when I woke up (in the dream) I had a sore throat and had to find a cab back to Manhattan. She told me that she didn't know where the Williamsburg Bridge was, or how to get a cab back to Manhattan. I knew that she was lying to me because she had lived in Williamsburg almost 30 years and I wasn't sure why she was messing with me. What did I do? I liked her signs. Needless to say, the dream was a nightmare, yet when I left her home I found my way to a main artery with many cabs willing to get me back to Manhattan.
I had a credit card, so I would be okay.
My nephew was wearing a beautiful, tailored shirt. He was sitting in the back seat of a car and he warned us all that he might be carsick. We pulled over and he got out and threw up a pond of yellow vomit. If it was freezing, there was so much of it we could've gone skating on the vomit. It was golden and swirly. He felt better after he threw up and I was glad because I love him.
Don't think that the dream didn't hold any significance. It did. This new president is like a stomach virus that doesn't give you a break. I don't care what your politics are- face it- we are on the Hell Hole at Coney Island and this ride won't stop. I would never ride the Hell Hole because I am preternaturally frightened of rides, but can really go on the ride in my imagination, which sucks.
I love my country and wish you all well. I hope that democracy prevails. I'm not interested in WWIII.
I started a small writing group. It was me and one other person who had very limited experience writing but produced much more than I did. I was jealous of her, because she could have her work published and I am merely taking teeny weenie baby steps. So, I'm embracing my limitations and, like cool with being perpetually mediocre.
I had a dream that someone I was following on Instagram, who was making the most incredible protest signs, invited me to their home in Brooklyn. Like the Susan story, which maybe I will finish someday, I was a misfit. I fell asleep in her house and when I woke up (in the dream) I had a sore throat and had to find a cab back to Manhattan. She told me that she didn't know where the Williamsburg Bridge was, or how to get a cab back to Manhattan. I knew that she was lying to me because she had lived in Williamsburg almost 30 years and I wasn't sure why she was messing with me. What did I do? I liked her signs. Needless to say, the dream was a nightmare, yet when I left her home I found my way to a main artery with many cabs willing to get me back to Manhattan.
I had a credit card, so I would be okay.
My nephew was wearing a beautiful, tailored shirt. He was sitting in the back seat of a car and he warned us all that he might be carsick. We pulled over and he got out and threw up a pond of yellow vomit. If it was freezing, there was so much of it we could've gone skating on the vomit. It was golden and swirly. He felt better after he threw up and I was glad because I love him.
Don't think that the dream didn't hold any significance. It did. This new president is like a stomach virus that doesn't give you a break. I don't care what your politics are- face it- we are on the Hell Hole at Coney Island and this ride won't stop. I would never ride the Hell Hole because I am preternaturally frightened of rides, but can really go on the ride in my imagination, which sucks.
I love my country and wish you all well. I hope that democracy prevails. I'm not interested in WWIII.
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