Elinor Nauen

What have I done to alienate you, o REM? Why have you forsaken me? I thought it was bad when I was getting 5 hours & waking up at 3, but now I wake up at 2 for a couple of hours, go back to an unewarws nap & wake up groggy. Some things work sometimes ~ sleep meditations, for example. At the moment I can't think of anything else, since nothing does seem to help. I'm too excited by too many books to lie back for a snoozeola. Oh well. 

I found this on my camera roll ~ there were a dozen similar photos. I didn't take them, at least not on purpose. Apparently it's a butt-snap, if that's the term. 

Besides Laura Cumming's brilliant Thunderclap, I'm reading the fascinating How Dead Languages Work, by Coulter George. In the section on Sanskrit, he says that [Rig] Veda, which means "knowledge," goes back to a root ... that [resembles] its cognates in orther Indo-European branches, such as wit in Engligh and videre "see" in Latin. In earlier English, wit referrred more widely to the intellectual faculties, and to know something, in the metaphor of the parent language was to have seen it. 

 

Laura Cumming writes: The connection between mind and eye is always there: I see, we say, in acknowledgement of a truth, a fact or an explanation. To see is to know. We see the mind in the eye. 

This isn't the first raggedy t-shirt I've gotten rid of recently, although this one I didn't cut up for rags as soon as I decided I could no longer wear it. What I have heard was that the Canaries got their name because a frugal owner bought the cheapest uniforms he could find. They were yellow. I can't confirm this, only that "they were named after several minor league teams that had played in Sioux Falls over the years." Yawn. (From 2010 to 2012, the team was called the Sioux Falls Fighting Pheasants.) 

Every day Harry gets more comfortable exploring our place. Every day Lefty is a little more traumatized by Harry's imperious ways. 

Headed north at Cooper Square, looking towards Cooper Union & the Empire State Building, after a relaxing breakfast at B&H with old friends. So hot I was longing for, about to embrace, a cooling board. Sounds pretty good right about now, doesn't it? Maybe I'll start a band & name it Cooling Board. Don't a man feel bad when his baby's on the coolin' board. 

In honor of my mother's second yahrzeit (anniversary of her death), I blew shofar as we do at our daily service during the month (of Elul) before the High Holidays. Went straight from the synagogue to our outdoor karate practice, where I demonstrated the shofar for my friends. A rare overlap of my many separate lives. Alisa was happy ~ she probably won't get to services, so this reminded her of the season we're in. 

Three cookouts in 3 days. I am an American. 

Somehow—I must have seen it recommended somewhere—I ordered a book from the library, & by the time it came I had no idea why. I do now. Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death is a beautifully written account of both Dutch Golden Age art & the evolution of the author's eye. Her father was a painter & she's an art critic. I am simultaneously reading her book The Vanishing Velázquez, which is at least as brilliant, compelling & mind-blowing. 

How swell to spend the afternoon with the extended Stanton crew, a dozen people lounging, laughing, eating, enjoying the end of the summer in Queens. I so very much never wanted a house but I dig that Tara does & takes pains to make things comfortable for all of us. 

 

You know, it's interesting that of my 5 grandchildren over the age of 18, only one has a boy/girlfriend, either now or in the past. (I don't think any of the 3 younger kids do either.) Yes, 3 are in college but ~ well, who knows if they'd tell Grandma. I do hear that kids today are less likely to be in relationships. 

The boys are getting along again hooray. I think the two unneutered adolescent cats on the floor were winding them up. Anyway, they were hissing & growling & avoiding each other, but now they're not only friends again, Harry (the orange cat) has decided to visit my place, which he never used to. 

Hey yeah that's not the sun, it's the moon. The super blue moon, to be precise, which is the second full moon in a calendar month, & one that's full at its perigee (when the moon is closest in its orbit to the earth). Even though it's only a couple of hundred miles closer out of 200,000+, it appears 14% larger ~ I don't understand that. Also, it's kind of a ripoff that we only get one moon, & Saturn has 145, Jupiter as many as 600. We would never have become monotheists i we'd had a hundred moons. 

I'm loving learning Norwegian by translating into & out of it. There's an old poet exercise of translating out of a language you don't know by using "sounds like" to get you moving. It's at least as much fun to grapple with nuance in two languages, & for me, even more so because I had never studied a living language before now. Translating is like all of the fun of writing with none of the angst: the work's been done & I'm trying to match it, elevate it, give my version of it, engage with it. I'm excited to get good enough at Norwegian that I can do valid versions. I did get compliments from two Norwegian friends about a short poem I translated so I sense that I'm improving. Exciting as hell! 

Now that the weather is starting to cool down, it's magical to go up. I have my fabulous new reclining beach chair & I get all this sky & breeze. I feel winter on the way, which also makes me happy. 

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

~ Johannes Brahms

 

Art is like sex ~ one may have skill or one may have enthusiasm but ideally your lover &/or your art has both.

 

A Sea of Snow

                    —on watching fish scale clouds

 

What touches me

always brings me back to the past

 

Which has long left me

but pauses now and then to watch the present me

 

Which cannot but compare

the two or more of me

 

The most distant memories

are always the dearest

 

Playing in the snow with playmates

dusted all over a layer of merry icing

 

June Yang

July 15, 2023

 

 

 

Et hav av snø

                   —på å se på fiskeskjellskyer

 

Det som berører meg

bringer meg alltid tilbake til fortiden 

 

Som for lengst har forlatt meg

men tar en pause nå og da for å se på presentere meg

 

Som ikke kan annet å sammenligne

den to eller flere av meg

 

De fjerneste minnene

er alltid de kjaereste

Lekende i snøen med lekevenner

støvet over et lag med gleder glasur

 

norsk oversettelse av Elinor Nauen, August 2023

The Wonder Wheel is a ferris wheel with some cars that rock. Me, I'm fine with swirling high & seeing far. I didn't need my stomach charging off in a different direction from the rest of me. If I ever do it again it's the stationary cars for me, which also go higher. I don't know why everything has to come with "thrills." Isn't it enough to serenely soar over the Atlantic? 

Fun as Sunday was, I won't go again anytime soon. The best part, in a way, was finding a display of poems by Vincent, Sparrow, Steve Dalachinsky, & a couple other poet friends, & knowing that my world exists even out in the far reaches of the city. And finding a little storefront of the Coney Island History Project, with old photos & an account of Fred tRump smashing the beautiful Pavilion of Fun at Steeplechase Park: "An economic downturn in the mid-1960s left the park and pavilion up for sale. Trump bought up the property in 1965 to build condos there. The next year, to prevent the city from declaring the park a protected landmark, the mogul and his wealthy friends smashed the building's most famous features. Coney Islanders are no stranger to development, but none have been so happy as Trump to tear down something so loved by locals."

Me, I had & have zero interest in going on any roller coaster. When I was 19, I decided I needed all my luck for some of my other dangerous pursuits & didn't want to waste it on surviving a ride. I've never been on a roller coaster but I also have little desire for manufactured endorphins. And the older I get, the less I want to be in any sort of stressful situation, even a controlled one. I'm sure there's a basic difference between people who like rides & those who don't. I wonder if it's the same as the difference between people who want weddings & people who want to be married. A ride seems like a wedding ~ a big deal that's over in a flash, while a marriage holds constant, unpredictable thrills. 

I with I could have managed to take a picture that included the heat & the noise & the thousands of bodies & the gulls & the screams & the frying food.... 

 

When I first knew Johnny he convinced me that a button he owned of the man from the Steeplechase ride had been made by his publisher to promote his book. I did think it looked a little like the maniacal Johnny of Mangled Hands.

I watch a lot of Norwegian television, in order to listen to the language. My current show is called Jens & Isak på tynn is (Jens & Isak on Thin Ice), which follows two guys who go to Greenland partly for adventure, partly to see whether there's much of a traditional lifestyle anymore. There's butchering of walrus & seals & (yikes!) a narwhal...  but there's also all that glorious snow. 

 

When I asked WillisWeather how soon I can I start complaining that it hasn't snowed yet, he said:

Optimism - Hanukkah
Realism - January 15
Pessimism - Your birthday
Despair - March 15
Hopelessness - April 8

 

All signs point to a happy winter for snow lovers even if we don't go to Greenland.

And speaking of Willis(Weather)(aka Steve), he sent me this photo a day or 2 ago. I am pretty sure it's from a trip we took in 2011 to Charleston, Savannah, the Okefenokee, & Waycross, the latter only so I could bellow "Miller's Cave" a million times: "I had me a girl in Waycross, Georgia...." The Thunderbird is in Savannah & we had been there together in the 70s, with Forrister. There's not much more to the story than that we have been friends for more than 50 years & there are many little wedges & niches of things we remember together, meaningful mostly because we share them. Like, for example, the other day he posted about crepe myrtle & we both remembered me seeing it for the first time & asking him what it was. I have loved crepe myrtle ever since, & I've loved Steve much longer. 

Giant ones in a long arc. They weren't there a couple of days earlier. I guess that's their thing, right? To appear suddenly & settle in. I used to say Johnny was a fungus ~ he grew on me. And settled in.

A great invention: a few of us wanted to talk about literature but everyone has plenty of books to read & didn't want to commit to someone else's choice or schedule. And so was born the Short Story Book Club. It's so undemanding that we can meet every other week or so, & everyone's choices are welcome. No one is attached to any particular suggestion because we'll need another one right away. We meet by zoom for an hour or so & chitchat about the story & what to read next, & both are fun. We've read Tennessee, William Carlos, & Joy Williams, Chekhov, "The Lottery" of Shirley Jackson, Sam Shepard, Lucia Berlin, Rachel Kushner, Ottessa Moshfegh, Henry James, Grace Paley ... I'm sure I'm leaving out a few. We all love our little group & we're all learning about writing from figuring out how others do it. 

Fresh corn! I didn't cook it or put anything on it. Totally delicious gnawed off the cob. 

 

And the Larry Rivers work, signed to Johnny by "the creator himself" is also a treasure. Johnny was his personal trainer when he was going after the young'uns. 

There were boxes of books & these two meticulously mounted & labeled photo displays. I guess someone died. I so badly wanted someone to keep them. The family none of us had. The aunt who had time to assemble these. The stories no one is left to tell or hear. Eddie kept a copy of The Human Comedy & the rest of us looked & left. 

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it. 

~ Laurence Sterne

 

This struck me because I just sent away for my transcript from my time at City College. I didn't even remember what years I was there, & didn't remember or didn't know I was on the Dean's List. I earned a total of 46 credits! I did go to college! 

The Double Dragon Chinese restaurant in the next block from me closed abruptly a couple of weeks ago. Apparently the two small buildings next to it are going to be torn down & something (hideous) built in their place. The sign went too & I'm trying to remember what was BET(ter?) before Double Dragon. I know it opened since I've lived here. Was that where the bakery was? It was so great to go up to their door, which was open but gated, late at night & get a fresh hot roll or two, often for free. They've been gone for decades. The vegetable stand was in the next block, I think, & the Army-Navy surplus store was on the corner ~ two corners, in fact, 3rd & 4th. Amazing that we supported two identical stores. I wish I had documented the street more thoroughly. 

Meet Alaska & Niko, my neighbor's 9-month-olds. Still men. She's been camping in Vermont so I've been hanging out with them this week. Cats are so easy to love. 

When we moved into a new house in Sioux Falls (across the street from our old one), the girls who lived there before us left a pile of .45s. The girls were Corky & Cindy Winter, who were a couple years older than me. Corky was the homecoming queen of my high school. One of the records was "Cocaine Blues," I think by someone other than Johnny Cash.

 

OK, I knew what a shot of whiskey was & so "I took a shot of cocaine" didn't faze me. But this line stumped me: "I thought I was her daddy but she had five more." I spent a lot of time pondering it. 

 

Why did I never ask anyone when I had questions like that?