Elinor Nauen

A glow-in-the-dark bike path just opened in Nuenen, Netherlands, designed by an artist named Daan Roosegaarde as homage to Van Gogh's "Starry Night." (Roosegaarde's the one who called it techno poetry.) “By incorporating lighting into the bicycle path itself, additional street lighting is unnecessary,” reads a project description, which also assures us that the "bicycle path lighting is as subtle as possible to ensure minimal intrusion on the habitat of animals." Me, I'm a sucker for luminescent & fluorescent Read More 

Everything about Philae lander blows my mind: that it landed on a comet! That the moon is 1 light second from us & Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is 28 light minutes away. That it took 10 years to get to a comet more than 300 million miles from Earth. That scientists managed to figure out how to build something that could land on a tiny chunk of ice that far from here. How it sounds (click on the photo caption). That we can see a comet up close! Rosetta,  Read More 

I found a box of books, including a couple I looked everywhere for not long ago. Why were they shoved under a table & not displayed on a shelf? I have no idea! And as usual when I'm cleaning & tossing, I ask: Why was I keeping THAT? It's embarrassing what I seem to think I might just want or need in some unspecified future. And of course the longer you hang on to some stupid thing, the more it seems of important, historic &/or sentimental value.

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that you are constantly making exciting discoveries!--A.A. Milne Read More 

We've all absorbed Williams' examples so well that his "I do this, I do that" poems (except it's patients & Elsie & Kathleen & a Negro woman who do this or that) almost no longer demonstrate his startling freshness (although they do!). I remember an acquaintance, burning with indignation, saying "This Is Just to Say"—the famous "plums" poem—was "nothing but  Read More 

What we know of Paradise we learn here, by looking, by vision, by imagination, and both Paradise and the ground underfoot are always beyond the perfect grasp of our arts, as of our sciences. —Wendell Berry, The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford

As with a poem, you can't summarize this book, but I think it fair to say it concerns itself with what Berry calls  Read More 

5. I Can’t Have Enough

the invisible elm
that’s impossible
to miss

a tall man & a short man
a woman in a gold dress & church hat
dogs – hipster glasses – dogs –

skinny well-dressed young folk – dogs

Dante’s Inferno & I miss Eileen –
wherever she is

that’s the center

might be roses, woodpeckers, pedophiles
what’s for dinner, billy boy?
 Read More 

So I leaned on a shelf & it immediately split from the bookcase, not dumping everything & it probably would be fine indefinitely, but I decided to Fix It, so I dug under the tub for nails & a hammer, which led to me throwing away 2 full bags of paper bags (sacks) that were between me & the tools, taking all the books out of that bookcase, tossing 1 or 2, failing to hammer a nail (sheesh) & feeling inspired to clean, toss, discard, clean both home & office. Only 50-odd days left in 2014. Whatever else, I can go into 2015 with LESS. Read More 

Just when I thought I had the whole day to myself, first my email went wonkers & I took careless stabs at it wherever I could find a place so I messed it up more, & then suddenly it worked fine, better than ever. Then I hung out with some friends visiting. Then it got cold &  Read More 

Gonna start my tea, hang up my gi, read a little WC* ... no, that's not today's poem, just singin' on my way to my desk to say I saw a lady cardinal on the curb a few doors down; adding to the pleasure was pointing it out to a passerby, who mirrored my  Read More 

This year it stands for National Poetry Writing Month. I don't have a quick novel in me this year but I do have a poem a day, although Zacks says every day is PoWri day, yoyo. Yesterday I was rapturous at spotting a raptor (they have two foveas, that's why an eagle is "eagle-eyed")  Read More 

So great that the coffee shop was too crowded for 3 of us, so we walked a block or 2 to Union Square & sat outside on a 76° day. And far across the park, David said, Look, a raptor! And when it dropped near us he knew it was an osprey not a hawk. A good meeting AND I saw an osprey. A productive & pleasant morning.  Read More 

4. I Can’t Have Thoughts

I can only try to keep my loved ones alive
& sit outside on a summer bench
& be amazed at knowing so many people
with darkling eyes

The plane that didn’t crash & the one that did.

I know a lot of people who make a point of articulating things they are grateful for. I myself make a list every morning & it invariably improves my mood. It occurs to me that expressing our thanks should be part of that exercise.

I recently did favors for a couple of people, who both neglected  Read More 

This princess (pirate?) & police officer were giving away candy. They said they had way too much & didn't like Twizzlers. I wish the photo could show you how convincing the pint-size cop was.

Hmm, I think I just figure out how to get my iPod to flash.

When I see adults in costume, I think how embarrassed I would have been if my parents had gotten dressed up on Halloween, instead of turning us loose on the streets of Sioux Falls to trick & treat (in what today would be considered completely unsafe: dark costumes, no adults, covered faces).

But really, what do I care if adults dress up? If all the parents in my neighborhood had done that, I'm sure I would remember it as a wonderful, quirky Sioux Falls tradition. It would be normal.

Expectations, context, societal norms aren't intrinsically OK or not-OK, U or non-U, right or wrong.

Except ... I read a remarkable piece in the NYT by American journalist Theo Padnos, who was kidnapped & tortured for almost 2 years by brutal, ignorant fighters in Syria. They sound like adolescents who've had no raising and hate anyone who's not on their team. They had no interest in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure or building, oh, schools & hospitals, & their big desire was for their little kids to become suicide bombers.

Where are the women? I can't help but believe that a society where women are oppressed is a much darker place. Not normal.  Read More 

3. The Girl Who Wouldn’t Say

Is that where you’re from?

Curt wave:
I’m here now.

Where do you live?

Here, here’s my stuff.

I gave away 50 kilos of beautiful dresses & a bicycle

Everybody loves drugs. Kids whirl around till they get dizzy & fall down or laugh till they throw up. What is that but changing one's consciousness & what else are drugs for?

That said, I am not a fan of cocaine. It's a cold-hearted drug that makes people selfish & greedy.

That said, I would try anything called the elixir of life.

Wouldn't you? Read More 

2. Running into Elroy

when I stopped to say hi to Marvin
& Elroy with bike tricked out for Father’s Day
walked me a block
where we ran into Jack
who recognized Elroy from the neighborhood
but mostly wanted to ask about Maggie
& I took pictures of
Elroy smiling & Elroy soulful
& sat on a bench & read Read More 

1. Where We Are Now


here every day
where we are now

with Chaucer

falling
a little
asleep—

all couples are interracial

tree of pink
girls in short frocks

You'd think with the Ebola panic, people would know better than to plop an 18' bronze bug into Madison Square Park.

Unsurprisingly, the park describes it differently, calling Liverpudlian Tony Cragg’s three-part Walks of Life "monumental" and describing it as "supplant[ing] any longstanding art historical division between abstraction and figuration: his sculptural innovation is to fuse both styles in one work and to make bronze into a malleable material."

I know ugliness isn't supposed to be part of the conversation about art, but how can I avoid it? Read More 

Saw my granddaughter Celeste's senior class production of Godspell at her high school yesterday. Impressed with how polished & confident all 16 kids were (can I say Celeste was the radiant standout?).

But wow, the play is so lame! I had never seen it before. It's an earnest, heavy-handed & contradictory recounting of the gospel  Read More 

Little Debbie looks like she's aged right back into the 1950s since she stopped showing up in my neighborhood.

Or 125th Street, which is about as Far North as I can imagine going, a downtown girl like myself.

Johnny & I went to hear Mia Simring's senior sermon at the Jewish Theological Seminary. We've known Mia since she was little—she came to our wedding when she was 10. She spoke (beautifully) about Noah—Noah as in ark & Noah as in her late brother. A plea & hope against destruction.

Then we came back downtown & now I can scarcely keep my eyes open. Such train lag! Read More 

Even though it's my beloved sister's birthday & the weather is better than I expected & I had a not-bad class (meaning my knees held up) & a really nice lunch (salad of greens, goat cheese, walnuts & cranberries), & I got started on an article (only to find out that the expert I need is out of the  Read More 

Slept late (till 6), took a nice soaky bath in which I finished a book called Riding with Strangers, about hitchhiking, Johnny brought breakfast from B&H (challah french toast), I got out of the tub & fell asleep for a few more hours (very unusual), Johnny & I giggled, finally got dressed & went  Read More 

Wow, I used to think about cars so much & now they have dropped out of my daily life the way the Yankees dropped out of the pennant race. I loved cars & now I barely can tell one square silver car from another. I used to go fast because I knew the car could do it—I just had to let myself trust it. The last time I drove, in the mountains of western North Carolina, I couldn't do it. My days of flooring every car I get behind the wheel of are over.

When the last car I owned got stolen (in 1998), I walked around saying, I'm a pedestrian, I'm a pedestrian. It was like trying to get used to suddenly being six feet tall. I'm a pedestrian. I didn't believe it, & now I'm not a driver at all. I loved driving, I used to drive cross-country at the drop of a hat, & now I get around on a bicycle.

I'm a pedestrian. I'm a pedestrian.  Read More 

Ollie's father was well-regarded artist Roy C. Nuse (1885–1975); his daughter, Judy Belasco, is a painter and his son, Ronald, is a photographer. Did I ever ask him about his marriage? his family? All I knew was that he had kids older than me. I didn't quite understand that people even had pasts. Stories, adventures, but not pasts. I do remember him telling me he finally figured out that work wasn't nearly as important as family. He never said things as advice, just musings. Did Ollie display his art or his father's in his place in Maine that I visited so often? If he did,  Read More 

I was a callow 20-something living in Maine when I met Ollie Nuse. He lived in a real house & made me real dinners. We were hippies who lived in an unheated shack (owned in part by Ollie) without hot water, an indoor toilet or interior walls. It's how we wanted to live, but I did love visiting Ollie over in Stockton Springs.

I'm the same age now as he was when we knew each other. That 38-year age difference now seems—what?— Read More 

Someone mentioned a blog where people post the most beautiful sentence they read each week. I couldn't find it but here's my candidate for today:

This cursed ground, which no one would have had as a gift to sow with a pinch of turnip-seed, is an earthly paradise for the Bees and Wasps. —Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915)

 

 Read More 

My cat Buster loves to sleep on me. So I'm thinking it would be great to get one of those wraps that people use to wear a baby. Would he like it? Is he too heavy for it? I'd better give him a peticure first, in case he's inclined to fight while he's getting used to it. I want to bring him to work & around the neighborhood. Johnny & Karen think this makes me "a crazy cat lady."

If so, blame Toxoplasma gondii, says a Czech scientist named Jaroslav Flegr, a microbe in cat poop that "rewires circuits in parts of the brain that deal with such primal emotions as fear, anxiety, and sexual arousal," according to an article in The Atlantic. Flegr "believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia." In fact, his epidemiological research found that people who tested positive for the parasite were about 2.5 times as likely to be in a traffic accident as their uninfected peers. "When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, 'Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.'” [click on photo caption to read the whole piece] Read More