Elinor Nauen

It seems my ability to outsmart or outthink a 4-year-old is nil.

A chocolate croissant? And hot chocolate for your sister? Sure, since your mom gets you this every day.

Now her mom wants to kill me because I let them eat chocolate on a school night: no dinner; meltdown.

My strategy for our next adventure: I'll say, "I'm just going to call & double-check." Will they come clean? Any other ideas?  Read More 

The timelessness of kids on monkey bars. All of them wanting to be older. The scary thrill of hanging upside down. Leaves like party frocks, & that hair!

While the Hudson River front has been fancied up for a long time, the east side has been neglected for almost as long. All you saw down there were families barbecuing & softball games. We dodged potholes, fishermen & scary guys, all the while marveling that we did indeed live on an island. For many years the East River path was completely closed.

Not anymore. Slowly they've paved the sidewalks, planted ornamental grasses, added a green-roof program, and installed art. Still not crowded, though, & still has that just-us feeling of the end of the line.  Read More 

Clock is ticking—I'm going to see Rachelle Garniez in a little while, had a meeting this afternoon, & class before that, had to deposit my IRS refund ($1.12!) & didn't get this written, barely got my Norwegian studied, & no Torah learned (yet). Where did the day go?

Auntie Irene's daughter, my cousin Barbie, said they figured out Auntie Irene had had at least 10 proposals.

So why did you marry your (horrible) first husband?

"He was such a good dancer!" she said.

This is as good as 311. It's aimed at people without documents, but to erase any stigma, it's available to anyone who lives in New York City. They sweeten the pot by including a free one-year membership in 3 dozen city cultural institutions: the Metropolitan, the Museum of Natural History, Wave Hill, & more. Took 10 minutes to get.

I can't make a breezy transition to what I've been thinking since the Paris  Read More 

I got waylaid in writing here today by the news of the horrible attacks in France.

1) It rained during class but not before & after, when I was riding my bike to the dojo & back.
2) I dropped my sunglasses, went back to where I'd locked my bike, & there they were.
3) I have work, but not today. A freelancer's favorite state.
4) I didn't have a heart  Read More 

We were "Air Force hippies," our eyes opened to the unjust war in Vietnam only by doing as our fathers did, joining up. Or we were against the war, but thought the Air Force was different from the Army. Or we were antiwar protestors who reconsidered our contempt in order to be friends with soldiers. We were cynical about red-white-&-blue holidays but we loved our home ground & its people. We became friends then because of our politics & many of us remain friends now despite our politics.  Read More 

How can I feel like doing anything?

Studied Norwegian adverbs, which are HARD.

Thought about going to the store, but uninspired towards any food at all.

Tried to clear up to-do lists from the past 10 days.

Did a couple of things then consolidated, so I didn't have as many days with items.

Progress?

Perhaps I'll die.

But before that, I plan to cough my lungs inside out.

It was one of those pesky drain flies that sneak into your eyes, nose, & mouth.

It happened while Susie Timmons was telling me about her trip to Indonesia, & I finally had to hang up because when she made me laugh,  Read More 

So much to take in & then you have to figure out what to do with it. Or maybe not: it's possible to watch hours of Big Bang Theory, say, every day for years & never have the urge to create your own sitcom.

But poetry leads to poetry, doesn't it? Does anyone read a lot of poetry without wanting to try their hand at it?  Read More 

Whenever I go to lots of events, I fall in love all over again with New York. Most of these events would not occur outside of New York and a couple of other places, the way that people from Detroit grew up hearing a lot more Motown, non-hits, than the rest of us. I'm grateful to be in a nexus.

In the last week or so, I went to these literary events:
* A Prose Pros celebration of excerpts from Martha King's memoir about being at Black Mountain College in the 1950s, published in A Public Space, a terrific & thoughtful magazine full of "works that don't stack on obvious shelves." Vincent Katz, Mitch Highfill, Kim Lyons & Burt Kimmelman each read an excerpt of Martha's piece along with brief memoirs of their own. I admire people who can remember anything.

* Karen Weiser & Maureen Owen at the Poetry Project. Karen was a revelation, reading a fadeaway collaboration with Melville.

* The launch of Jackson MacLow's complete light poems, also at the Poetry Project, where I found out about his infatuation for an old pal. Poetry: gossip of the highest order!

It was tucked in a corner lawn, looking over the Mississippi River in St. Paul. No signs or guidance. It didn't seem to belong to the building over there. The lines were burned into steel, marched up a column of fish, swirled in mosaics. River of sorrows, river of migration.

"to fields of ice & northern lights"

"your dream can become real"  Read More 

I like pictures of Johnny almost as much as I like pictures of Buster.

She's a tenant of his building.

Why do birthdays cluster? I know lots of people born on November 3, none on November 2. Lots on October 21, nobody on October 22. And so on.

Could it possibly mean anything?

This is most of the output from Janet's garden.

4 cucumbers & a tomato.

In Maine she had so many berries—blue, black, rasp.

The only time I ever ate my fill of raspberries was off a bush near her place in Lamoine.

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) was born on this date. He was my favorite poet when I was in high school.

A Man Said to the Universe

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

I liked that he got right to the point, that I could understand it while it still  Read More 

I'm from a corn-growing state, home of the Corn Palace, and I'm a sucker for everything corn. Eating it: goes without saying. Knickknacks of every sort: bring 'em on. Puns? 'fraid so.

A-maize-ing.

I can't go on. (That's a good thing, right?)

I had never even heard of these animals, mammals also called scaly anteaters. There are 4 Asian & 4 African species, and they are highly endangered due to poaching. They are considered a delicacy by people in China & other parts of Asia, and the scales (which are nothing more than keratin, like our nails) are used in potions. One variety runs on its hind legs like tiny T Rexes. They are adorable and it is disgusting that tens of thousands are being killed, like the ortolans in France, for human ego. Also, the ecology of the areas where they live will change for the worse without enough of these animals, which control the ant and termite populations.  Read More 

Man, I just love my cousins! I like them too. There were close to 50 of us—from NY, California, Seattle, Florida, & Minnesota—together in St Paul this weekend for my niece Rachel's wedding. How'd we get so lucky? No drunks, no pills, & we all have similar kind-hearted politics. One cousin-trait-in-common is that we all  Read More 

Here's what I bought at Ingebretsen's:
* Lutefisk & Lefse lip balm
* Magnetic poetry kit in Norwegian" "over 500 ord med høy ladning ("with high charge"). Slipp følelsene løs, her har du ord ("go texas with these words!")
* A plaque that reads "what part of lutefisk don't you understand?"
* A couple of "uff da" greeting cards.

I didn't buy  Read More 

We'll be in St. Paul through Sunday for my niece's wedding. I'll try to post but may not get the chance as I'll be spending the weekend with 49 cousins, all of whom I adore.

My Jawbone UP (same idea as a FitBit) is shaping up to be pretty cool. I like keeping track, in general (can you tell I'm an accountant's daughter?). My new mantra is "you manage what you measure." The UP is helping me get a better idea of how much exercise & sleep I get. (More sleep & less exercise than I'd thought.)

My favorite feature  Read More 

The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who love office supplies and those who don't. My cheapest pleasure is spending an hour at Muji, which has wonderful & inexpensive pens & notebooks. I found a weekly planner that will replace my monthly whiteboard: this way I can keep track of previous and upcoming appointments, not just the current month's. Will it change my life? I feel like it will.  Read More 

Saw a terrific short one-person show last night, Lucky Chick, written & performed by Felicity Seidel (a friend of Maggie's). She reveals her wild youth without bragging, humble-bragging, apologizing, repudiating, or analyzing.

As the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir's underage girlfriend & simultaneously a big drug-dealer's girlfriend, she walked what seems now (& I'm sure to many people then) like a pretty dangerous line.

But she came out on the other side intact, not to mention smart & good-humored.

Closes Wednesday—see it if you can!  Read More 

So many interesting things have crossed my field of vision lately but I haven't managed to write them down. That in itself is interesting to me: Why? Why not? But not very interesting to write about.

But that seems to be the best I can do today.

How did people lounge before there were cars to lean on? Maybe the problems in the world today stem from the fact that there are computers inside our automobiles instead of engines (so to speak). Instead of pondering & fooling around & scratching our heads, our cars are sent for diagnostics. Nothing there we can fix.

We used to have leisure built into our lives: We had to wait on line, we had to wait  Read More 

Johnny and I are rereading McGrath's Letter to an Imaginary Friend. In our 25 or more years of reading long poems out loud to each other, we've never repeated till now. We are blown away just as much this time. McGrath (1916–90) is from North Dakota and is as good as Willa Cather  Read More 

I got my first-ever flu shot today.

The houses in Butte could be new or a hundred years old, but the cars are unmistakably long-ago.

I bored my new doctor because nothing is wrong with me.

Even so, something is waiting. All expectations lead to the dump.

But until then, I'll jump up & down.  Read More