Every once in a while someone sends me a photo of myself that I don't remember having seen before. Oh! That's me! I look 25 but I'm 40. I know that because I know that baby & she's a beautiful young woman now & in fact is the one who sent me that picture. I don't look like that anymore but I don't know when that happened. It's perplexing to be yourself & no longer yourself.
The words "yes" and "no" get used in comparison to each other so often that it feels like they carry equal weight in conversation. In reality, they are not just opposite in meaning, but of entirely different magnitudes in commitment. When you say no, you are only saying no to one option. When you say yes, you are saying no to every other option.
~ Productivity expert James Clear
My end-of-year last-ditch attempt to get it together :-)
The Brooklyn neighborhood of Dyker Heights has been home to a Christmas lights extravaganza since 1986. I went a few times in the 90s with my friend Bonnie, who somehow always knew about things like that. She loved folk customs of every stripe. I wish she were around to see what a big deal it's become. If we thought it was over the top back then, it's 100x more so now. It's still a neighborhood event, which I like. We talked to some of the homeowners, who were a little exasperated by the traffic & trash, but also really loved that people appreciated their efforts. I'm only sorry I didn't ask them their electric bill for the season!
Bought the best persimmons I've found in 5 years, in Chinatown. Why do good ones show up so infrequently? Why are there more good poems than good persimmons?
How could one ever get tired of the churning energy that produces a mural like this? I love New York, which I know I say constantly but I feel it constantly. It's the love of the drowning person for the island of dry sand, for air itself. I will never forget that feeling of having found my place, & my determination to live here always, & the gratitude & amazement that I, a hick from the sticks, get to live here. Love at first sight that has never wavered.
I took very few pictures this time, partly because the fall colors were finished so it wasn't so striking, partly because it's so routine (though special!) to be here that I don't need to document its wonders. This is pretty much the only photo of the house that I took, because I'm still getting used to coming down from the chalet (my little cabin) from this direction. A less familiar view. Home now, on a very early flight yesterday. Intensely & gratefully missing Spartanburg & my generous, funny, brilliant friends & hosts.
I love coming to the South, seeing my friends, the beautiful landscape, fried okra, sweet tea, & much more. But then I see a concrete 10 commandments in front of a motel, & I feel like I'm in a foreign land & that the real me is invisible or nonexistent. It's a good feeling once in a while (if uncomfortable), a reminder that everywhere isn't the East Village of NYC & getting out isn't a bad thing, & you can travel abroad without leaving the country.
To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants either fools or slaves.
~ Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771)
French philosopher, freemason & littératur
Oh for heaven's sake, stop banning books! Let people read!
Wayne continues his quilting ways. This picture is of the quilt I sleep under & a runner he made of Chanukkah fabrics. I could have draped the runner over the giant quilting machine that shares my cabin but it's not nearly as pretty as the work Wayne makes on it. He's retiring in a few months. Even more quilts? I used to joke about Wayne making phone calls: Hi, you probably don't remember me but in third grade you gave me one of your cookies so, here, I made you a quilt. We have one at home & I treasure it.
I learn something every time I come to Spartanburg. Love the Dixie Nightingales & to think that Ira Tucker sang with them from the time he was 13 for 70 years. The only job he ever had. I forgot to take pictures of the yummy grilled carrots at the Kennedy, or my meal at Wade's, or Steve & his lifelong friend (met in 1959) who lives in England & who I was meeting for the first time, or the calm lake in front of Steve's house, or the new dogs, or the garden. Probably because it's so normal to be here that I don't think to whip out my camera. I'm simply here.
Everytime I hear a little sound in my office, I think it's a rodent. Once it was & now it always seems to be. It's been the wind, my sneakers squeaking against each other, my breathing, my neighbor... I put down a glue trap & put away snacks.
Note: Leaving early tomorrow for a week in South & North Carolina, my annual trip to see friends & go up into the mountains. I may be inconsistent with the blog till I get back. We'll see. Happy start of December!
It's snow I want but it was a joy to come upon this bush in the East River park. I suppose it's a signal of terrible climate change but it came as a surprise pleasure. The way I could be traveling so much because of worrying about a bleak future (the economy! my knees!) or because I finally get to again & it's what I enjoy. Or both.
Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage.
~ William Lloyd Garrison
Not entirely true. I'm thinking of something I just read, that only one Norwegian policeman protested the rounding up of the Jews 80 years ago (November 26, 1942). He was shot. Hundreds of Norway's <2,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz, where most of them perished. If 2 or 3 or a handful (or 50) of the police had refused the Nazi orders, would they all have been shot? Or maybe the police were considered to be great & good, & the blue silence protected their actions, & Garrison is exactly correct.
Nothing makes me (re-)fall in love with New York more than a long walk, which I've done the last couple of days (it's raining now, so probably not this afternoon). The first thing I ever did in NYC was walk on Galway Kinnell's Avenue C: "The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World." I'd never seen the like: fruits & vegetables right out on the sidewalk in bins. Which wasn't anything my Midwestern/New England eyes had ever seen. People hanging out, who for a long time I thought must work nights, like I thought all those young girls were babysitting their little brothers & sisters.
Our Nesselrode pie (made by Petee's) was light yet substantial, with chestnut mousse, gobbets of whipped cream & a few cherries (said to be rum-soaked but I didn't taste any alcohol). It was popular in the 1940s to 60s in New York but I had never had it or known anyone who had. I don't exactly know why I even knew the name. Read the interesting history here.
There was a full Thanksgiving dinner of food, laughter & warmth leading up to the pie.
This year we're going across the hall to Wanda, my wonderful new neighbor. I'm bringing a Nesselrode pie, made of chestnut custard, rum-soaked cherries, & cream. I'm grateful for so much but I'll keep my list internal in case I omit someone or something. I've learned a lot this year, & for that I'm even more thankful than for all the support & pleasures.
And once again, my traditional Thanksgiving poem:
Thanksgiving Almost Found Poem
Many years we go to my grandmother's in Virginia.
My mother, father, aunts and at least two of my brothers are there.
My son has a football game that morning.
My daughter is home, but needs to get back to school this weekend.
My wife doesn't want to ride for nine hours and turn right back.
Sometimes I have gone alone, but not often.
A couple of neighbors were vying for our company.
One of those my daughter's boyfriend's family,
Which we did last year and had fun.
But this year it will be another family,
One we have visited on two or three other Thanksgivings.
I have a turkey freezing in the garage.
Nothing to do with it.
Even though she'd been sick a long time, it is sad that Bernadette has died. The last time I saw her, Annabel & I drove up to her place in upstate New York. We sang our version of her "Essay" to the tune of "Streets of Laredo," her moving closer & closer in delight. I recently translated a poem of hers ("Carlton Fisk Is My Ideal") into Norwegian. Her wonderful Midwinter Day.
An image of love allows what I can't say,
Sun's lost in the window and love is below
Love is the same and does not keep that name
I keep that name and I am not the same
My friend Diana had an extra ticket to see Mike Birbiglia's one-man show at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Soon I'll stop pointing out great it is to be back in the whirl but not quite yet. I'd never heard of this comedian/storyteller but I'll try to watch his previous shows on a streaming service. It was simple & profound ~ life, death, & swimming. Funny, gaspingly poignant. Not a moment or a phrase to pull out from a seamless whole. Totally satisfying. And it was at 5 o'clock, so I even got home at a reasonable hour.
For poetry there exists neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men.
~ Giorgos Seferis
Orange you glad I stopped talking about politics?
If only it were headed our way. I'm sure a lot of people up there would be happy to trade. They got five & a half feet! I'm sooooooo ready for winter, even though we didn't really have fall - it went from a week or 2 of 70° days in November to the 30s without passing through crisp cool days.
My dad's poem:
Snow. Snow. Snow.
Ho. Ho. Ho.
Absolute fun to do an in-person reading last night. To look up & make eye contact. To get a response in real time, not silence through a screen. To hear people laugh! That was my first in-person reading in at least 3 years & I loved it. Also, I read with two fantastic poets, Evelyn Reilly & Brenda Hillman. Someone said it was like one reading by 3 poets ~ we felt in synch. I tried out a bunch of new works & was happy with them. It was bracing to be outdoors, giving my new Irish sweater a good run; it kept me cozy. So totally glad the world is opening back up!
Maggie wondered if my insomnia was related to Covid. Voila, it's a common aftereffect & should go away. That might have been all I needed to hear, as i slept soundly last night (though yawning again now, mid-afternoon). O Covid, what a trickster you are.
I've never had insomnia before & I have no idea why this unlovely gift has arrived, unordered & unwanted. Help! I thought once the midterms were over, I'd sleep like a baby but nope. I can't be lucid about it because my head's in a whirl.
I love the Authors Guild & how easy they make it to have a website, but they have this crazy new system that makes using photographs unwieldy & time-consuming, which is why I haven't been including so many images of late. Many "improvements" are far from that. Planned obsolescence was a term from way back when but it applies now to technology as much as appliances. I admit I sometimes do grow to prefer what I resisted ~ for example, I was the last in my gang to get an answering machine but then it was wondrous not to have to sit at home waiting for a phone call. I hope to embrace this AG update, & others, but a big part of me wants everything to stop.
"We Are Going to Pick Potatoes: Norway and the Holocaust, the Untold Story, by Irene Levin Berman, reminds us that there are Jews everywhere & that Hitler wanted to kill them all. There were around 2,000 Jews in Norway when WWII (Den andre verdenskrig) began, of whom around 700 died in Dachau. The author, a toddler at the time, escaped with her family to neutral Sweden. I'm glad she has told this story but it's devastating to read.
Back in the 70s, KOFF, which I co-edited, included centerfolds of naked male poets in part because poetry magazines were boring, we proclaimed, & a naked man might enliven ours. Not much has changed except no naked poets. I've read all too many dull reviews & pointless, self-serving anecdotes, presented with line breaks. Occasionally there'll be a last line with a timid kick as if to prove that what they wrote is indeed a poem. Why? Their opinions are banal &/or inoffensive, their language has no life or magic, they seem not to have learned a single technique beyond enjambment.
It will cease to exist without me, so I need not exercise myself over it, except to worry that this drivel will prove what non-poets already believe, that there's nothing in it.
Ah, this is such an old rant.
Off to read this week's offering in Terence Winch's well-chosen Best American Poetry blog. And then a little Hesiod & a reading later this afternoon. Ever hopeful am I.
As part of my Norwegian class, I watched Max Manus: Man of War this week. It's about a hero of the Norwegian resistance, & there's a lot of killing, but also love & friendship. On yet another Veterans Day, it's hard to think about & hard not to think about war, violence, armed struggle, unnecessary deaths of young people, Ukraine & other current conflicts. My two grandfathers fought on opposite sides in WWI & my favorite book (Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End) is about that war, with a memorable scene of the chaotic Armistice. No one is untouched by war.
Great night at the Poetry Project in celebration of Get the Money!, a just-published collection of Ted Berrigan's prose. Happy to hear the dozen or so readers with excerpts & stories, happy to hug so many people Ted mattered to. I loved Anselm saying that many of his dad's friends are now his friends, & to relish this contentious, loving community of 40, 50, 60 years. Happy that Johnny read, who of everyone there had known Ted the longest, since he was (in a poem of Ted's) "19-year-old knife fighter Johnny Stanton." Get the book!
Coulda been worse.... not a Red Wave.... The antisemite lost in PA.... Reproductive rights preserved in several states, including Kentucky. All over the country, lots of diversity: first black/out lesbian/trans/Gen Z elected etc.... That's encouraging but also surprising that there are still so many firsts of that sort.
Quite a few races still undecided & Georgia's senate race goes to a runoff.
Couldn't sleep & did everything I could to avoid looking at the returns till I felt ready.
Could've been worse.
Wearing my lucky (I hope) shirt. Vote early, vote often! Too nervewracking. I'd like to sleep till tomorrow but instead I signed up for a class after YAI. Hope to come home tired & calm. That's the best I can do today...
Update: One person at the polls said, "I like your shirt." Disappointing. Johnny wore it later, when he went to vote, and he said when he walked in people started clapping. So!