Elinor Nauen

This was all there was to it on First Ave yesterday at 7, but later, it got violent here as in so many other places. My family in St Paul, like us, heard helicopters & sirens, & they also heard gunshots & smelled the smoke from burning buildings. I'm going at this bassackwards — it's not about riots or destruction, it's about the murder-by-cop of a man in Minneapolis, following thousands of similar killings. It's about the fact that infant mortality is worse for black infants than 125 years ago. It's about so much I can't even start with a personal take: no lamentation, no breastbeating, no vows, no answers.

 

Right now there's a dozen cops on my corner, protecting the precinct up the block. Where were they when B&H was getting its window broken last night? 

 

I'm not comparing property damage to loss of life, & I totally get the feeling that if black lives don't matter, why should white property? 

Shavuot is the best holiday! We celebrate the gift of Torah, chant the book of Ruth, & eat blintzes. No matzoh, no fasting, no primitive ceremonies with branches. I have the day off except to note that I'm feeling exuberant right now. It's been a while since I felt unmixed joy & I'm stopping myself from adding any buts. 

Ron Poznicek, a high school friend who lives in San Francisco, is someone I admire a lot. He has painted—& improved—for decades, with his only goal, as far as I know, to do excellent work. This is just one of his many paintings that I love for its beauty & big-heartedness.

 

He is also a very nice person & has a twin brother. 

It's so quiet. Birds that aren't pigeons. Shaggy lawns. Urban life begins to resemble country life. Somehow it's still (& always) New York. 

Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:

And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. 

~ John Milton, from Lycidas

 

Can you find more beautiful lines in the English language? A poem of grief & elegy seems to be just the thing at the moment, doesn't it. 

This is a tough one. Gem Spa was always there, unchanged. Until they stopped selling newspapers & then what was the point. I would go there after a game to run into Ted & he would walk me home, talking. It was the landmark for everything else: "around the corner from Gem Spa," "across the street from Gem Spa." Everything essential disappears & you find out things carry on. But thinner. 

That was a long two months without my favorite restaurant. My soups aren't nearly as good as theirs, & I've missed their smiling faces. Go eat there! Help them survive! 

One Day in September 2019

 

I walked 14,028 steps

I deleted 307 emails

I took 6 pictures of my cat

I ate 4 vegetarian dumplings

I learned 4 sentences of Torah

I slept 7 hours

I had a dream that I forgot

I listened to Johnny laugh

I failed to get my 14-year-old granddaughter to say more than 2 words

I bought a Kindle version of Norse sages for $2.99

I walked to 39th & Lex & back

It was 85°

I bought 10 THC lozenges for $20

I am sucking one now

I racked up 278 points on Duolingo Norsk

I'm #1 in the Emerald League

In 23 hours, 4 minuts, & 14 sconds I will advance to a new overachievers' league

I am 89% happy

I kind of love that the East Village is getting decrepit. This is the Marble Cemetery, which is usually highly groomed. I love that things are getting away from us. It reminds me of how everything was wild & dangerous when I first lived here. I guess I miss that anarchy, before gentrification descended & cleaned everything up. I think of all the people for whom this neighborhood was the bottom—my neighbors Bobby & Lucky who lived on SSI, for instance—and how they could never live here now. I learned so much from their modesty & kindness & miss the days when I met people very much not like me. But very much like me because we were overlooked & for the most part poor. 

Here's my 96-year-old mother, still full of beans, though locked down in her nursing home in St. Paul. She's full of marbles too & has a will to live that may well mean I'll be a centenarian with a living mother. I said that to her once & she said, "Oh I don't know..." but she wasn't ruling it out.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it. 

~ Rabindranath Tagore

  

This quote needs nothing from me.

This was taped up on my block, though not for long. It's the big local (& national! maybe global?) controversy: masks. Do they work? Do they exhibit our willingness to make a sacrifice for the common cause? Do they prove that we believe whatever we read? Do they work?? If they make it hard to run, is that a good enough reason not to wear them, while we tell ourselves we are still keeping our distance? How much distance is enough? 

 

So many questions & each question leads to another & each answer seems to be superceded soon enough. 

 

I want to stop everyone & ask why they are wearing or not wearing a mask. 

Anthem

 

Two songs I took to heart as a teen were "Angel of the Morning" & "Different Drum." Both songs about taking responsibility for our (sexual) choices, or that's how I read them.

 

I know now that "Different Drum," though sung by Linda Ronstadt, was written by a guy (Mike Nesmith of the Monkees!) who was dumping a girl: "I'm not in the market / For a boy who wants to love only me. / … I'm not ready for any person, / Place or thing to try and pull the reins in on me."

 

Merrilee Rush singing "Angel" (also written by a guy, Chip Taylor, who wrote "Wild Thing"): "There'll be no strings to bind your hands / Not if my love can't bind your heart." 

 

I believed them. I understood what those songs meant & what they meant for me. That I would always do whatever the hell I wanted.

 

 

Side note: Juice Newton (with whom I share a birthday) made the other big recording of Angel, which I also like.

They were giving out masks down by the East River (& a few other locations around town). We got there early but the line was long. To that truck. Oh wait, past the truck. To the corner. Oh no, around the corner. But once they started handing them out, it went fast & they're nice & light & don't fog up my glasses.  

 

I've taken to counting mask-wearers & mask-scofflaws, & it's pretty close to 50-50. I read that Dems wear, Repubs don't so here in the heavily liberal East Village, it would be quite the insult to yell an assumed political affiliation at the people who don't think it's their responsibility to flatten the curve. (Are we even still using that phrase?)

One good thing about going for so many walks is how much I see that I never noticed before.

 

My name is Michael and I do women's short haircuts 

when I'm not sleeping

 

I do things too when I'm not sleeping but that's rare these days. I'm with you, Michael!

A photo from a place I love, Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks. 

 

We can do this.  

 

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure. 

~ Russell Baker

 

I would like to think that's not the case but it's true that we value things once someone else looks covetously at them, from pie on a dessert plate to a boyfriend. You don't know what you've got till someone else wants it.

Here be we in the eternal present. We all be Buddha now.  

 

Here be I awake possibly or maybe I be asleep. What does it look like to you?  

 

It may be morning & I need coffee. It may be evening & I'm done for the day. 

 

This is probably the best scrabble game I've ever played. 

 

AGONIZE, there in the upper right, got me 113 points; the Z was on a triple letter, & I made words all the way down. I was a hundred points behind & then I was back in it, but I don't care about that—Ann & I play all the time, & it doesn't feel like one wins & one loses, just one long endless game.  

 

It had great words like hairline & coronas & queue ("the letter Q followed by 4 silent letters").

Why I Am a Karateka, After 12 Years, When Everything Hurts & I've Suffered the Coup de Vieux (the Blow of Age)

 

I wear pajamas & go down on the floor

when the instructor says "stomach touch" &

then I do pushups.

 

I get bowed to & the color

belts have to know my name & I know if they don't.

 

I like to work hard at something I'm no good at.

I don't mind working hard at something I'm no good at.

 

I was the only one to do basic self-defense #2 correctly.

However, I switched my feet to match, so not only was I wrong,

I lacked the courage to be right.

 

The black belts laugh all the time.

We have to.

We make so many mistakes.

 

It was a typical class.

It was a terrific class!

As Sensai Albie would say:

That's one they can't take away.

 

The wood floor with 40 years of sweat & polish.

The big mirrors, where you can disappear.

My legless armless boyfriend Bob

that I can beat up!

I'm thinking how long ago it seems that people crammed together like this. It's only a couple of months but feels like 80 years. 

When I was a teenager, I wrote in a notebook, Desirelessness is liberation, which I undoubtedly copied from some "deep" novel. I read books like The Way of a Pilgrim, & tried to chant the Jesus prayer: "Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a miserable sinner." I couldn't help but edit it: I was Jewish & didn't feel like a miserable sinner at all. I was a triumphant sinner! I quickly got it down to "have mercy on me," but then I wasn't asking anyone, & I didn't think there was anybody (AnyBody) to ask. And that was the end of my sainthood career. I liked (& like) living in the world so much more! 

This is a few dozen of my FCs—Favorite Cousins. Some are siblings, nieces or nephews, & many are removed or 2nd or 3rd cousins, but the best thing you can be in our family is a cousin. We all call each other FC & have physical reunions often. We had one this afternoon by Zoom, & I think I dislocated my jaw smiling. What a lovely, loving, positive bunch. I don't think any of them read my blog or know I write it, so this is just pouring all that beautiful energy & love into the ether.