Elinor Nauen

"Can I ask you a question?" a tall young man asked in front of the Rite-Aid on my corner. "I'm not asking for money, I just have a question."

"Yeah, what's up," I said impatiently, in a hurry, in the cold.

"Can you buy me a $4 box of cereal?" he said. "I just asked everyone in the Rite-Aid & no one would." This was said a little indignantly.

"How is that not asking for money?" I said.  Read More 

A woman in her 40s (?) with very bleached hair pushed through a crowded train. "Marriage is slavery," she said out loud to herself. "They beat you when they want, make you have a baby for them, beat you. Marriage is slavery."

The woman standing next to me caught my eye. "He beats you twice, why you hanging round?" she said.

"You know that old song?" I said & and sang softly:  Read More 

I'm dreaming of a white December... January... February... Rain is NOT the next-best thing.

The main reasons we went to Toledo:
* Mercè had never been there, despite having lived in Spain her whole life. I liked the idea of being on somewhat equal grounds in both of us experiencing it for the first time.
* El Greco. The best museum show I ever went to was El Greco in D.C., maybe 25 years ago, with Janet. It was different to see him everywhere in Spain—in a church, in his house, in a museum, in the cathedral, in the sky & landscape he knew so well.

Still my favorite painter & I still can't really say what he does that no one else can. The humanity of his people, I guess. His apostles (this is Peter) are full of both grace & flaws. His Jesus is perfect yet human.

El Greco has only art on his mind. He paints what he has to.

Bonus reasons for going to Toledo: marzipan ("bread dough"), softer & less sweet than what I'm used to, & manchego cheese–it's from sheep & has been made there (La Mancha) for 2,000 years.  Read More 

This was the Johnny I didn't fall in love with. That beard! He's so much more handsome now (the day before our 26th wedding anniversary).

And the youngster I have so little connection with, the kid I've only seen a couple of pictures of. He graduated high school at 16, before he'd gotten his growth spurt. My main image of high-school Johnny is seeing him with his first wife, who was his high-school girlfriend. With Johanna, he's playful in a 1950s way, & I love watching them together.
 Read More 

... and I just picked up copies of my (our) new chapbook! It's a dos-à-dos book, with my long poem called Snowbound back to back (or upside-down) with 3 essays by Steve Willis, also called Snowbound. I can never figure out how come it works but both books start on page 1 & collide correctly in the middle.

At one point I thought it was going to be a book but it melted into this chapbook. Happy winter!  Read More 

I love this girl.

This hilarious, brilliant, sweet girl.

I suppose I walk by plaques like this all the time, either without noticing them or without pausing. I do love these bits of older bones breaking into the modern world.

Fun to go to MoMA & see a few rooms full of Club 57 memorabilia: films, posters, photos, TV clips. I didn't go there a lot—it was more for artists & performers but we would go once in a while & I read there once or twice when they deigned to let the poets break in.

Then upstairs to look at Max Ernst & realize he was doing all the same stuff, by himself, 50 years earlier, & with training & talent.

I was a brat myself, then.

Like the señoritos I know in Madrid,  Read More 

I made the wee mistake of saying to a very serious friend who happens to play tuba in a symphony orchestra, "How hard can it be to get an oompah out of that thing?"

First there was a breath test: I had to blow one of those little balls aloft long enough to be graced with a tutorial.  Read More 

Even the lovely snow barely got me moving. Although yes, I did get up, get dressed & go for a walk. And it is lovely. Another reason snow is great is because it's just as good indoors as out, just as beautiful through a window as it is falling onto the city. "...the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."  Read More 

I don't think I've ever been sick for a whole week except when I had pneumonia (twice) & typhus (once). My life right now is wake up, read a chapter of The Old Curiosity Shop, fall asleep, wake up, make a cup of boiling water with ginger & lemon juice, read a chapter, fall asleep. Oh, and cough cough cough.  Read More 

Look! First prize in poetry, & 3rd prize in "familiar essay." Obviously I didn't enter for book review, short story, character sketch or drama, or I would have been whizzing through that line again :-). I don't remember Miss (Mrs? Mr?) Schaefer at all. Not Mr—that I would have remembered. Though much abides, much is taken.  Read More 

I landed at 3:15 on Thursday, & by 6:15 was at the SideWalk for Prose Pros, with Alice Gordon & Thad Rutkowski. Very different in tone, reading style, subject matter but I liked both of them enormously. Sunday's Local Knowledge reading had 3 readers—Sergio Satellite, a young Dominican poet, Maggie Dubris, & Mike DeCapite—who overlapped & enhanced one another. There was some thematic resonance & so each reading magically became a commentary on & intro to the ones that followed & came before. I love when that happened. Maggie read a piece about the Gypsy flamenco singer Manuel Torre, who is not very well known in Spain, I believe—at least my friend Mercè, who has lived there her whole life & is an aficionado of flamenco (her parents opened the first flamenco tablao on the Costa Brava), didn't know him.

This despite a cold that laid me low & kept me from the Seido holiday party & kids' promotion, among other fun events I'd been planning (or considering) to go to.  Read More 

Because I posted a few photos every day on Facebook, vicariously taking quite a few friends along on my vacation, or so they said, I don't have the urge to do it all again now that I'm home. Plus my rule of thumb for this blog has largely been doing my writing at the time, not days or weeks later. Write now, post later—that's OK; but not Experience now, write later.

I did feel like I was embedded there, part of Mercè's family & daily life. I said of course when she asked if I wanted to just do & see what she loved, & since she is brilliant, wonderful & has great taste, I saw & had brilliant, wonderful & exquisite places & experiences: Toledo with El Grecos, marzipan ("bread dough"), & incredibly winding lost-inducing streets; an hour as we passed briefly through Madrid at the Prado for Velasquez, Goya & El Bosco (Bosch); the glorious Barcelona opera house—in a box no less!—for a family version of The Magic Flute; Girona with its Jewish museum in the former home of the Ramban (but no Jews); the medieval town of Besalú; the voluptuous beach town of Cadaqués, with its white walls and bright blue doors where Mercè spends a couple of weeks every year; her two little girls, who spent hours concocting vegetarian dishes; meeting her friends & sister; trying to understand the political situation .... all this in a week!  Read More 

I got back from Spain a couple of days ago with the unwanted souvenir of a cold.

More soon.

Tuesday night Johnny & I went to a bookstore on 10th Ave in Chelsea to hear Ron read from & talk about his novella Motor Maids Across the Continent, a book that most important has a character named Elinor ("not you, my dear") & that I learned was something he first wrote in 1964. He said every 7 or 8  Read More 

I'm writing this in New York, but will set it to appear on Thursday, when I will be waking up as I land in Barcelona.

Plan: Mercè will meet me, we'll catch the high-speed train to Madrid, then another half-hour train to Toledo, where we'll be for a couple of days, mostly to see as much El Greco as possible. (We're even staying at the Hotel Pintor El Greco.) He's been my  Read More 

I'm packed for my trip to Spain, leaving in just a few hours. Trying to decide between a very small backpack & a slightly roomier one. I like the idea of traveling featherweight not just light, but will probably go with the bigger one, which is still a pretty small carry-on.

I'm looking forward to  Read More 

I've been pondering what it means to be a citizen. Here's a couple of reasons why:

* My mother, after living in the States for 70 years, finally became an American citizen last fall. I always thought of it as a technicality: she has lived here since she was 20, she was American in all but the papers. The way people who've lived together for 30 years are—but aren't!—married. But a meaningful distinction.

* I remember a joke-but-not-really about a Jew in Nazi Europe staring at a globe for somewhere to emigrate to, after being told there was nowhere that would issue a visa to a Jew. At last he said,  Read More 

Great to see the small (but large!) show at Pace. I liked that there were quotes on the walls, especially one about "falling in love with Bob" at the time. She had the quality of connecting—I think anyone who spoke with her for more than a few minutes felt like they could become fast friends. I know I did, & it didn't seem like it was us hitting it off, or me as Bob's old friends, but a quality in her of stillness & listening. Of wisdom held for you if you wanted it.  Read More 

Johnny wore his raven head for the calendar & friends photos a couple of weeks ago. Among Johnny's many great qualities is that he gets breakfast for me every Sunday morning (although sometimes he makes me go). I pretty much always get either a Greek omelet or a cheddar-apple omelet, but today I asked for pierogis. He brought back blintzes. He gets rice pudding, & eats most of what I order. He doesn't want to bill to be more than about $12 because he wants to give them $20, no more no less. He refuses to vary, which is among Johnny's many strange qualities.  Read More 

I was reading about how Charles Dickens walked 10 or 20 miles a day, & I thought I'd maybe be inspired if I walked a little more. So I set off. But I really only like to be in my neighborhood, plus my leg is still bothering me, so I didn't get that far. Although I did see this cool mailbox; & I went to the New Museum, where I liked the 6 large pieces by Australian artist Helen Johnson (who would fit right in in South Dakota, where Johnson & Anderson are the two most common surnames); & at the MoMA store on Spring Street, I bought a couple of presents; & passed Rice to Riches without veering in (but yum!); & felt happier than I had in a while: looking at—& feeling part of—the city world around me always does that.  Read More 

I guess my holiday tradition is posting this poem, which I love & "stole" years ago from a friend's email, making few changes beyond line breaks. The grandmother, mother, & father are all dead now, the daughter married with several kids of her own, & I no longer speak to the former friend (recently exposed as a Holocaust denier) who wrote it. I guess that's part of the tradition now too....

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. Read More 

I knew that if the girls told Mrs. Wooten, that day's playground monitor, it had to be true.

I ran home ducking my head, waiting for the sky to fall.

Would my mother's best friend have killed herself if it had happened a day earlier?

In the Midwest, we liked how he talked: his vigah.

My mother almost crashed into another car when her hands flew off the steering wheel at hearing the news. The other driver gave her a dirty look but at some point that day understood. I imagine it was part of that woman's story of the day for the rest of her life. It's part of Annie's story, now. How often we are bit players.  Read More 

So entirely satisfying to cross off pretty much everything on my to-do list.

Not that there was much more to the day than that.

Does every day have to be the best EVER?

Much as I lament, at times, the end of the internal combustion engine, the recent electric-vehicle advances are pretty cool.

For example, last week Tesla showed the prototype for its battery-powered, nearly self-driving semi that they say can go up to 500 miles on a charge—not good enough for long-distance trucking but terrific for many routes, especially as the truck is exhaust-free and cheaper to run than diesels. Read More 

I'm fighting that cold/flu/health weirdness that's going around. Fighting as in lying around & staring at the ceiling. Fighting as in being cranky. As in making sad face.

It would be fine if I could curl up with a spy novel, but my eyes itch & I feel restless.

Woe is me! Alas!

I remember that sweater & skirt set so well—they were a deep gold color & very heavy.

I remember less well why the photo was taken.

Not true, I remember perfectly well but am embarrassed that, almost 50 years later, I know it was for being a National Merit Scholar.

Embarrassed because I was so proud of my superior knack for taking standardized tests. I didn't even know I wasn't smart, because I was officially smart.  Read More 

I sent the manuscript for my new & selected to my publisher, finally having decided on a title: Now That I Know Where I'm Going. I have wanted to use that for a long time, & meant it for American Guys 20 years ago, but Murat quite rightly talked me out of it. But this time it fits much better & I'm excited.

Not only that, Steve Willis, my friend of nearly 50 years, loves snow as much as I do, if not more, & we are putting together a dos-à-dos, or more properly, as I just learned, a tête-bêche book, where you'll flip his to read mine & vice versa. Nothing fancy, just a fun way to collaborate & get our work into a few hands.  Read More