I meant to write this before I went mad.

There were great ships in the harbor of the sky the day I finally knew.



Let me tell you so you don't have to wonder, I know a lot of people wonder

whether they will know or even have a feeling

just before the edge looms up.

You do.

I got it just like getting a memo handed to you across a big table:

Attention:

It said.

If you get this message you will know for sure and you've gotten this message so that means

Picasso, not that Picasso, but a Picasso stayed with me one week one summer one year. I asked if she ever felt like changing her name and she said she had already changed it to Picasso so there would be no point in going back.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry.

I started to slip away

which is where I am going.



I just wanted to tell you you will know.

Okay. I have a ship to catch.

They are landing.

The Most Wasted Space in New York City

No, it’s not those inches of empty wall between the last cabinet and your refrigerator, nor is it what your realtor called the “eat-in kitchen bar” at which you have never taken a single bite. The most wasted space is above all that, above us all. It’s the rooftops of New York.

 I know what you are thinking---people use rooftops all the time. They sing along with Carol King. They go up to Tar Beach. They lay out. Sometimes they even build a roof deck so they can have a place to catch a little sunshine. Well, that is getting some use out the space, but that sunshine could be pouring money down upon those chaise lounges in the form of solar power.

Some, not many, buildings have figured that out. Cabrini Terrace put their solar system on the roof of a parking garage,(talk about your wasted space!), and now produce enough electricity to run their elevators and hallway lights. The Museum of Jewish Heritage found a way to save energy, use their wasted space and make it look good at the same time.

There are, by some estimates, 14,000 acres of unshaded rooftops in the City, a recent laser and photo flyover survey may show that there is even more. To give you an idea of how much city-space that is, Central Park has 843 acres.

If half of those rooftops were covered with solar panels as part of PLANYC, the city’s “Greener, Greater Buildings Plan", New York City residents and businesses could save hundreds of millions of dollars each year in energy costs, the city’s carbon footprint would shrink and there would still be a place for plenty of people to get a little tan.




Picture Credits: Jonathan Jeffries; Museum of Jewish Heritage

The Pink Window

It's early. Too early. I'm out on a pre-dawn run, trying to shake off the last of my sleep, trying to get myself lifted into moving at more than a walking pace, but I am lagging. I'm up and out, but my mind is still dreaming.

I love the deep quiet of the dark. I start walking. Down the block and around the corner on the way to Broadway there is the pink window. Not a pink window, because that would imply that there are more of them. There are not. There are hardly any windows with any light of any color coming out of them. It's too early even for most New Yorkers to be up starting their day, grinding coffee beans, slicing the bagels bought yesterday, but I am not completely alone. I see a man hurrying towards the empty bus stop, a bag in one hand, two bags in the other. A couple strides by ---he, very serious, is walking purposefully four steps ahead, she, laughing at something and speaking in Russian to him.

Then the street is quiet again, darkened even as the dawn approaches. Black and browns with this one touch of pink color, just like you would see in a woods in early Spring, drabness all around and then suddenly, a crocus. Seeing a crocus always seems to cheer humans up. It's one of nature's signals that life is being renewed all the time, spirits get lifted just by stopping for a moment to drink in the sight of it. So it is with the pink window.

I'm guessing, of course, I haven't any way of knowing if this pink window means someone's day is starting or they've cried all night in it's brightness. Maybe someone turned on that light twenty years ago when the youngest went off to a job upstate and has never turned it off again while they waited, waited for her to return.

Maybe someone will see this little picture here and call up their grandmother and say "Mima, your curtains are on the Internet." and she'll say "Are you coming over soon?" And there will be a pause.















"Not this week, but yes, soon"
"That will be nice."
And there will be a pause.

I think there will be some cake, some tea and some spirits lifted while they sit at the little table next to the sink behind the pink window.
Yes.
I start again.

Going

You go by stopping

You stop by listening
You listen by seeing
You see by grasping
You grasp by letting go
Then you go.

--Jonathan

What dawns on me at the oddest times.

This is really just a test to see if it's possible to post from this BB. Of course, I know it is, it just dawned on me as I was sitting here.

Here is Starbucks @ 181st and Ft. Washington because I cleverly did not buy either bagels or milk yesterday, so I promised myself if I ran up the hills and around the Cloisters, I could stop and have a little treat at the end.
Here's what else dawns: the bagels at Starbucks must be made somewhere in the Mid-west or Oregon. They are too bready, but I really like the coffee, although on a foggy morning like this one, any black water might do.

The youth of this city

Before I forget: yesterday at 86th and Broadway I saw a woman with her baby.
She said to the baby "We're going to get a taxi."
At which point the baby raised it's right arm and said "Taxi!!"
"Good job!" said the mom.
"Just a minute" I said " Excuse me, but how old is that baby?"
"He's just nearly a year old and he loves to hail taxis"
"Taxi! said the baby raising it's little arm.
"Amazing." I said.
"He also likes to call waiters." said the mom looking at the baby.
"WAITER!" said the baby raising it's arm again.
"We get incredible service every time Al does that."
"Al?" I said. "Yes" said the Mom, "His name is Alexander, but he likes to be called Al."
The baby grinned.

No, really, the baby grinned.


Only in New York, bubbies, only in New York.

So, the child asked, how manys am I now?

Easter 1947 was on the sixth of April. My mother used to tell me she had been sure I would arrive that day.
I didn't.
Nor during the snow on Easter Monday, nor any day of the rest of that week. The next Sunday's mass was interrupted midway by an urgency now familiar, there being two girls and a little baby boy already next to her in the pew. She said she knew she would have time to get everyone back to the house on Newman Street and get Dorie from next door to watch over the little ones while she and Pop headed over to the hospital.

I was red, dark haired and fat.  um. Loud. Yes. I was loud, the healthiest of all the babies they had already had. M. was so sick her first year they counted every day she lived as lucky. A. was skinny and in turns fussy, hard to feed and then, a golden child of wonder. B., the boy, was a hard birth, no forceps scars, but his little arm was broken as he emerged and because of that lived his first months wearing a tiny sling.

So, that was 1947 and I started counting my first years. Do you remember the first time you realized that you were a certain age? Most kids remember being four, some even remember being two. I read about a guy who claimed he remembered lying on a kitchen table having his diaper changed and looking first to one side out a window then turning to see a white plate with fried eggs on it to his other. huh. I remember sitting in my father's big red chair and waiting. I waited for as long as I thought possible, then I would climb down and walk into the kitchen where my mother was cooking dinner and ask "How manys am I now?"

"You're three." she'd reply, "The same as you were ten minutes ago."

That was disappointing. Now that I was three, I really wanted to be four, but that, it was explained several times to me, would take a whole year. I went back to my father's chair. I could wait.  Boy, I could wait.

I'm sorry to tell you that if you've read this far you've been tricked. This isn't really about me. Well, it is and it isn't. It's about me in that, although I've been around since 1947 April 14, I turn five tomorrow. That's right, not four, but five. And I was wondering how manys are you now?  All the realists and people not afflicted with any sense of the poetic or the ironic will say "sixty-three" or some other equally ridiculously high number, but they are only dealing with what's real and not with what's possible.

I say it's possible for you, even though you were born in 1947, to be five this year. I'm going to be. See, five years ago, I hit the re-set button on my life. I started beginning and really I haven't really started anything else but beginning ever since that time. Everybody knows the story so I won't bore you with the details of dropping ninety pounds and going from someone who nearly died if he had to doubletime a few yards to catch a bus to being a two-time marathoner. I'm just starting, I'm only five. I've got a lot more to get done, but my question is:  how manys are you?

If I hadn't already picked five, I would pick one. And not necessarily mean one year, I mean, maybe you would pick one and mean one year and that would be fine, but I think if I was picking a place to start I'd pick one as in one day. Here it is: day one, the first day, opening day, inaugural day. Man, I feel the energy from that and it's not even my pick.

Of course, you don't have to pick day one, but don't stick with sixty-three years unless, and this is possible, unless everything has flowed your way for all those sixty three years and if it has ---good on you. But I think most of you have had a moment where you began all over again and all I'm saying is that's the day you ought to celebrate, that's the date, the moment, the turning point and that's the date from which you should count your manys.

The funny thing is, it will make you feel different. I'm not going to go into all the different ways thinking you are sixty years younger will change how you see the world. I will let you tell me the next time I see you.

Because, after we hug hello, I am going to ask you "How manys are you now?"

The Tree and the Vine

So the tree has finally started to bud and so has the vine. The picture above is from the fourth of April, not much to look at really. The vine has killed about ninety percent of the tree. I just can't figure out if the vine can figure out just how far it can go before it's host tree falls over and they both die.

You can just see the beginnings of the greening on the ninth of April.

The Tree and the Vine

 This is the tree outside my window. I should say the tree that is left after the two larger trees were removed last week. It's completely covered with some kind of vine which has already killed several branches and may, may have, already killed the whole tree. I am still waiting and watching for any signs of greening.

Stay tuned.

Grapefruit 3-30 What were the words?

oo- Now what?
~ Nothing.
oo- okay.
~   ...
oo- hmm, hm, hmmm, what was that song you were trying to remember?
~ Could you give it a rest for a second?
oo- O00oo. Okay.   ...   'K with a echo echo echo...
~ Cut it out.
oo- I'm in a good mood today and you're not. How is that possible?
~ I've got a lot to think about.
oo- I'm the thinking portion here, when you try to do it we get stuck.
~ [sigh}
oo- That's better. Take a nice deep breath.
~ I wasn't breathing, I was sighing.
oo-  See, you are affected by the barometric pressure whereas I get whacked by your dreams.
~ Did I dream last night?
oo- You dream every night. Whatever it looks and sounds like, it's mostly me stacking up fallen boxes.
~ I like that image.
oo- Thank you, you and I just made it up.
~ It's time to go, isn't it.
oo- Ready, steady....
~ I was trying to remember what the words were to 12 Days of Peacetime.
oo- Too late....your day is filling up the aisles.

Grapefruit 3.28 We are not who we used to be a minute ago.

O- Everything's changed.
~ Shocking!
O- I'm trying to get a grasp, a handle, a perspective on where you are.
~  I'm no help. I'm not who I was a minute ago.
O- But you're not completely different, are you?
~ Yeah. Yup. For sure.
O- Now, stop that.
~ Just trying to let you know that you, my dear sweet unconscious inner being, will always be a step behind.
O- That's what you think.
~ What? neener, neener??  that's all you've got?
O- There's more in here than you know and there's more knowledge and substance than you remember.
~ A sobering thought.
O- And one of the few today that you will have which is absolutely true.
~ 'tis time to go on then.
O- I know a little less and a little more than I did a minute before this.
~  Is that another of those songs you know or used to know or is that one of the ones you just spring on me.
O-  Happy Spring, bubala, Happy Spring.

Grapefruit diaries 3-28

Conversations with myself (~) and my mind (oo) while preparing breakfast

oo- The last two slices of bread are three times thinner than the first two slices.

~ What's that supposed to be? An old Irish saying?

oo- Nah. Just something I've noticed. The last stick of butter last ten times longer than the first stick.

~ You're saying all this because we ran out of milk yesterday.

oo- No, I'm trying to make a point. You almost threw out the rest of the soup on Friday. You didn't. So today we have soup.

~ That sounds Russian somehow.

oo- I don't think you are listening.

~ I know what you are saying. Cue Joni "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

oo- Not really. It's different than that.

~ How?

oo- Well, to put it bluntly. I know what we've got, but I can't get you to pay attention.

~ You see? That would be difficult to put into a song.

oo- Okay. So, today I'm the serious one and you're the flibbertigibbet.

~ I'll bet you ten miles that Spellcheck hasn't a clue what that word is.

oo- Not going to change anything until you begin to pay attention, to be aware.

~ I'll bet that word hasn't been used by anyone in ---

oo - How are you enjoying your black coffee?

~ It's fine. It's the way I'm supposed to be drinking it, right?

oo - I see you saved one slice of bread for lunch too.

~ I don't think I see this side of you enough.

oo- Oh, yes. Definitely my fault. Definitely. (sigh)

~ Ok.OK. I've got it. More awareness on my part, sharing with you, letting you know how it is out here in reality.

oo- That'll be fun. Joyful.

~ Less Irish, that's for sure.

Grapefruit/ Dis-corded

~For crying out loud.
0- Now what?
~ We are victims of technology not beneficiaries!
0- er, you want to put that into plainer English?
~ My Blackberry's battery is dead.
0- Oh. Yes, that's much clearer.
~ You know what I'm talking about.
0- I know the black thing isn't working. You want me to figure out why?
~ No. I can figure out why. I want you to think about the larger picture.
0- The wha?
~ I should wait until you've shaken off your night of sleep.
0- Actually, I'm at my best right now, I'm just messing with you. ☺
~ Well, this is serious. All of us in this modern world would be helpless without all of our gizmos.
0- I'm aware of that. It's why I constantly send out warnings to you about being so connected.
~ Connected. More like hogtied.
0- Voluntarily, I might point out.
~ I don't think this is helpful. I want you to think about what would be a better time to be human.
0- Really. Reallllly? You don't mean that.  You mean how can you live your life better and less connected?
~ Yeah. Yeah. I've got to go figure out if it's the cord or the USB port or both or is this the device and if it ..
0- take a deep breath. and hold it.
~ I can't... an hour's gone by.
0- shh. take a deep breath...
~ I'll give you fifteen minutes.
0- ☺☺☺♥

Grapefruit 3-26

0- I forget. Am I the mind or are you?
~  um. How can you forget?
0- Um is not an answer.
~  Boy.  Can I ask why we are up so early?
0- This isn't early. If you were working, this would be late. It's almost six.
~  Just because you can't find your way back into sleeping is no reason... .
0- Oh, I just remembered. I'm not the reasonable one. I'm the mind.
~  What are you talking about? The mind is where all the reasoning is done.
0- Just a myth, my friend. You, the conscious one, are the only one of us who knows what is.
~ But, I thought.
0-  That's right. You do the thinking, I'm in here with all of your emotional baggage and garbage.
~ Don't do that.
0- What?
~ Use interesting words. Like now I want to know what the suffix -age is all about and if there are any other words using it.
0- You mean like roughage and entourage?
~  Are they related?
0- Only that they are probably French in origin.
~  I like you.
0- I like you.
~ So, do you want to know what are my thoughts about today?
0- Sure. Hey. Is it raining like they said it would?

Baby Bird in Hand

One of my best running tips is never found in the conventional coaching books.
Here it is: have the left lens of your glasses fall out about two minutes after the start.

Having your lens fall out might not really help you, but it helped me. If your glasses fall apart, you'll be forced to run the rest of the race with your glasses clutched gently in one of your hands. If you hold too tightly the frame might get bent in some way, holding them too loosely will bring on the disaster of trying to find the dropped lens in amongst twenty or so thousand moving running shoes. (Talk about impossible; in this Sunday morning's race I saw a plastic sandwich bag in the middle of the roadway just before the startline. In it, clearly visible, was a ten dollar bill.  About 100 people ran by it in the three or four seconds I was watching. I'm sure someone braved the on rushing crowd, but not me.)

This wasn't the first time I had to run with my glasses in my hand. The lens popped out on the beach in Florida once. It's subject to humidity and temperature it seems. It took forever to find it amongst the sea shells. A couple of times, it just seemed easier to see in a snowstorm without the glasses than with, sometimes I was bothered by the sweat in my eyes and I just took them off and in the 18 mile marathon warm-up last year, the weather was a softly blowing rain, not enough to soak you through but enough to fog my lens like a coating of Vaseline.

So, you carry your glasses as if they were a baby bird and because of that, because you can't hurtle along with clenched fists and half closed eyes, puffing like a toad and pounding your feet while zigging and zagging through the crowds of runners, you relax into the running. You can't do anything else. Holding a baby bird has this odd effect.   All you can do, baby bird in hand, is keep your pace steady and your breathing clear. This does not happen all at once, but it does seem to happen without you trying to do it. Your arm swing evens out and you start to place your feet upon the pavement. Place, not plop, or plunk or thwack, you -place -each -foot  where it needs to go.

You are able to take notice of the things happening around you, see the faces of the families and friends who will stand by the roadside for two hours to see the six second vision of their friend, their spouse, their sister, their sons and daughters running by, you hear a guy bemoaning the early defeat of Kansas in the NCAA tourney,  listen in as you pass the seven mile mark to a mom talking via her cellphone on a speakerphone to all her kids at home eating breakfast while she is out here running or you just listen,    listen,,,  to the myriad sounds of the footsteps and the breathing. That includes, of course, your own breathing which its now moving in and out of you so evenly you can almost see the arrows of it's direction.

 Now let me be clear, this just-right-tight-grip, steady pace, clear breathing and listening in on your surrounding universe does not mean running slower than your goal, it doesn't mean running slower at all. If anything, you notice that you are keeping or beating your average pace goal and you aren't getting all stressed about it. The hills are just there and then the tops of those hills. The downhills are run with the brakes off but you never seem to have the feeling of being out of control. Try as you might you cannot hear the sound of your own shoes on the roadway because you are nearly floating along.

Okay, and now here's the weird part, at some point you do feel as if you were floating. Really. That Vaseline look that the rain-covered lenses gave you now becomes how you see the whole world outside of you, moving from vaguely unformed features to see everything sharply crystallized. You become aware that you are seeing, but the body the eyes are in doesn't feel connected to the eyes. You know you are running and you feel as if you could run forever.

I told you it was weird.

The first time it happened to me, I was a little shocked and I tried to hold onto the moment, to hold onto the feeling, but that is like holding a babybird too tight. I slowed down and tried to drink in what I was seeing....and it was gone. And I could not get it back.

Weeks went by and then one morning, just as I was finishing a really good dream about being in someone's big home in the mountains, someone in the dream said "When it comes, go."
I woke up.
--
I do still run with my glasses sometimes, but not unless I will need them to read something after the run. Most of the time I do take my headset and listen to books on Physics or Cosmology or the creation of modern English or Math.** But, most of the time, I just take me.

And in one of my hands I imagine I am holding a little baby bird.

And we fly.

~~~~~
**(Someone asked me the other day why I listen to books on Physics or Cosmology or the creation of modern English or Math. I said it was because I don't know anything about Physics or Cosmology or the creation of modern English or Math.)

Grapefruit 3 25

0- unnnh

~ I agree
0- sound..bagel, heard it.
~ Be right back....ah..good and crunchy.
0-yummm mmm
~You're on some very basic level this morning.
0- my active parts are mostly still sleeping.
~ Yes. I've noticed. Can you get the eyes to focus a little better?
----

~ Hey?
0- I'm working on it. Maybe you should go wash your face.
~I'm having a big swig of coffee and the rest of this grapefruit.
0- 0k
~Then we are going to divide the day into 20 minute segments.
0- I hate that
~ No you don't.
0- How are the eyes doing?
~ Twenty minute list, please
0- 20m/jobsearch/writing/cleaning -do for two hours then//1hr/exercise//20m/jobsearch/writing/cleaning.....
~ Not so hard to do.
0- We'll I'm not in the mood.
~ Wash your face. Here we go.

Grapefruit 3 24

ALL days are glories,
some days it's just easier to see.








(Grapefruit Diaries are conversations I have with myself while cutting up the morning fruit.)

ALL days are glories, some days it's just easier to see.
~ That's nice. Who wrote that?
I did.
~ What? Just now on the stairs?
Yeah.
~Really?
Weren't you listening?
~Yes....but I thought you were remembering a line from something.
I don't think so. Let me try to remember and you do a Google Search for it.
~Okay.
(pause for search and thought)
~ I got nothing in Google.
I'm pretty sure I just thought it up. I do that you know.
~Still sounds like the opening line of a song.
Maybe it will be, but for right now, it's just the opening line for today.

==
More at http://transitionalspecies.blogspot.com/ 

Grapefruit Diaries 3/22

-- Gotta go.
+ You're all raring today as they say.
-- Yep, let's go.
+ Don't want to talk this out.
-- Waste of time today. It's all clear.
+What is?
-- I'm telling you, just let's go. I've got the list in my head.
+ Oh,  a list.
-- I'm gone already. Try to keep up today.
+ Yeah. We'll talk tomorrow about today.

Grapefruit Diaries 20 March

- Red biscuits.
+What do you mean 'red biscuits'?
- I, your brain, just thinks of these things.
+ Red Biscuits. Huh.
-Yeah, while you were putting the eggs in the pan, I thought 'red biscuits'.
+ There's no such thing.
- There is in your mind.
+ Well, you might be trying to remember some Southern stuff because we are out of bread.
- Sorry about that. I really wanted that extra toast yesterday afternoon.
+ So, this morning, no bread, so I decided to make some eggs and rice, kind of Louisiana style.
- They make red biscuits?
+ Not that I know of. I put some red pepper flakes in the rice, maybe that's the trigger.
- It was pretty clear.
+ Yeah, most delusions are.
- Is there more coffee?
+ Red Eyed Gravy. You were trying to remember Red-Eyed Gravy.
- I don't even know what that is.
+ You don't know what red biscuits are either.
- It's Spring today. At 12:35.
+ I know. We are going to the park to eat lunch and read and take pictures.
- You think so?
+ Well, that's the plan.
- Yeah, yesterday morning you planned to have some bread left over for this morning.
+  Have some more coffee.

Grapefruit Dairies 3/19

-Ah ha hah ahh ahhha hah ha ha ha hah!
+Shut up.
-No, I can't...ha ha ha ha.
+Can we get started?
-An onion!  Ha Ha HA
+Look, I don't want this to be about grapefruit or anything like that.
-But when you reached into the fridge today for a grapefruit, you pulled out an onion AND you were about..
+Alright, alright...I'm a little sleepy and it was a very big onion.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice onion!! Isn't that another word for..
+You are such a child sometimes.
- yeh. heh heh.
+No, really, you've got to get some kind of con-
~~When did you go to bed last night?
-Who's that?
+Sshhh, it's E.T.
-You mean like the thing in the movie?
+ No, it's my mom. Eileen T. I call her E.T.
-Is it the one who yells all the time?
+No, that's Coach D.I.--drill instructor... ET just asks hard questions and makes me cry when children sing.
~~ What time did you go to bed last night?
+ Uh, it was late.
-  He wanted to see if Kansas was going to win. Ha ha ha.
~~ Well, did they win? Because now aren't you really, really tired and don't you have....
+ I don't know, I fell asleep before the end of the game.
- He tried to cut up an onion!!!
~~ Do you think there ought to be some changes made around here?
+Well, yes. That's what this is supposed to be about,   transitions, changes,,
- I'm going to sing some Paul Simon song now, just a few bars..."Thisisthestoryofhowweremember...
+ IF I could get a word in edgewise.
- OOoooo.
^^ Okay, day's begun, Let's get started.
!! You are going to DO three sets of Push-ups and two sets of crunches NOW!
 + Good morning, Coach.
!! And I see your weight's UP!
^^  First, breathe......
+ No, first, I'm going to drink the rest of this coffee and see if Kansas won.  Ah....
~~ And that, I suppose, is what you think is the start of real changes??
^^ I'll take that AH as a breath.
+  No, but it's today's starting point.

{ more at http://transitionalspecies.blogspot.com/  Follow there or on Facebook}

Slices of the Grapefruit 3/18

-I don't think you got all the grapefruit juice off of your fingers.
+Could we just get on with this?
-Get on with this? Hmm. Why do you sound like Simon Cowell this morning?
+You're right. Aboutthe sticky fingers. Wait here.
.....
.....
.....
+Okay.
-Where the hell were you?
+I put on some sweat pants. I was getting cold.
-Well, ....this is boring.
+I also changed the clock in the bathroom to the correct time.
-Now we are getting somewhere. What were your thoughts?
+You mean what were your thoughts? You're the brain.
-Okay, I'm thinking that we miss Ruby the cat waking us up.
+Oh, don't get into that, that stuff just
-What?
+makes the whole day start off sad. I'm not sad this morning, I'm cold and sleepy.
-I think you better make out a schedule for today.
+I will.
-No, really. It's important that you keep organized and on track and active.
+Are you feeling a little dull-witted?
-Funnyman, but yes.
+The coffee will kick in soon and
-Did you see the questions on that employment exam from the the Census Bureau?
+I saw them.
-Do you remember how I felt when I saw them?
+I remember a feeling of being swept overboard.
- I think I am shrinking.
+Oh come on, brain, you're not shrinking, it's just the morning blues, the early thickness.
- Thanks, but I think we'd better start doing more to exercise me.
+ I'll get the book.
-We have the book. We even started it. We need a schedule.
+I'll make out a schedule.
-Put some math on it. I'm turning to mush on math.
+You were never good at math.
^^ Don't say that. You sound like your mother.
-Who's that?
+You know who that is, Mr. Upbeat, Mr Read-Your-Affirmations and Do-your-Yoga Morning Person.
-Why does he sound so grouchy?
^^Let's breathe in this day.
+There he goes.
^^ Get up now and do three Salutations.... Get up now.
+Okay, talk to you later.
-I'm going to be here, I've decided to sing the same three bars of the Verizon ad I was singing yesterday over and over until I explode.
^^ Are we up?
+Yes.  Yes we are.

Grapefruit Diaries 3 Did I miss the Ides?

As I reached for the grapefruit this morning I remembered that I had forgotten to remember something. I had meant to look up what exactly is an Ide.

Note: I already know that "IDE" is not a word you can play in Scrabble, although it is a word found in some crossword puzzles, kind of like the word
ADE. Clue-4 Down-Summertime Treat.

Right.

But not a three letter actual word. Scrabble and Crosswords are part of my world, a bigger part these days than I would have imagined say, a year ago. I do a Crossword every day, some not so successfully, some I knock out over a cup of tea before it, the tea, gets cold. I play Scrabble on line and in person. This week will be the first Springtime meet-up of the Friday Night Orphans of Love Scrabble Association. Applications for membership are open. I have two friends who, as I do play for the love of the game, and tooth and nail to win. Challenges occur very often but I am always trying to slip a word or two through if I can. It's important to remember that QUA is valid, QUI, QUO, QUE are not.

I like to look up the meanings of the words even though it's not necessary to know the meanings in Scrabble, you can play XI or XU or QI, but I like to know that the middle one there is a Vietnamese coin. (Who said the words had to be in English?? The Scrabble people did....but they like to stretch English juuussssst a bit.)

There is no such thing as an IDE, an IDES however, is variously defined as a feast day of March and also May, July and several others months, usually on the 15th day but also on the 13th in some months which I will have to go look up now because, even though I read about this only minutes ago, the CD-ROM (not a word in Scrabble) didn't process all of the information.
.....
It all, of course, has to do with the Moon and Market days. Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Months

...
So, I missed the Ides of March and we have shifted time so much that this year the 15th marks the New Moon of March, not the Full Moon which doesn't arrive until the 30th. Wine and Cheese on the roofdeck for sure.

Grapefruit Diary 2/ A Proper Census of My Household

If I filled out the Census Questionnaire properly, it would be a dozen pages long and take me most of the rest of the month to complete. It asks how many persons live at a particular place, the place where I am, but it never says whether to exclude any of those who only live here in my head.

 First, there is me, there is I, yes, Person Number One, yes, I am.

(My brain wants now to talk about how many households fall into conflict over which of those who live in a household is the Number One Person. Whew. I sent my brain back to bed.)

I, person Number One, do live here, but there are days, and the questionnaire asks about this, when it doesn't seem like Person Number One is here, that he is off traveling or floating or trying to find certain shapes in cloud formations.
In the morning, after waking and cutting up the grapefruit, I do find clues he was here - the ends of eaten shrimp, a half a' tomato left on a saucer, the keys near, but not on the hook. So, should I write in that Person Number One is not always here, but that I could not say where he goes?

Then there is Joe. You know, Joe Nation, there's another wreck of humanity for you. Oh yes,. You say, oh no, he's not a wreck, just a bit leaky when it comes to shortening the stories he tries to tell.  Right. Ain't there gonna be some discussion coming about over whether he ever calls anywhere home. He said that, not me. Of course, he is the main problem with this census thing because he is the one who keeps bringing people home and depositing them around the apartment like so many hats, lamps and books of ancient languages.

Some have names. That's good, because the sheet is supposed to be filled out with names.
CALVIN (Nasca) BARAMON - I don't know him, but he has dogs which are quite likable and three cats which do not shed. He plays guitar.
EDDIE GYMEP - A Russian, I think, maybe from the Ukraine. One of my coaches.
YALOR and CLIP'SE DAKOTEE - they are sisters or cousins or brothers. They laugh at meals and mumble comments during movies.

My uncles live here, did I mention them yet? Ah. Okay, just in order of either birthdate or how I remember meeting them.
Bud, the youngest but see below.
Frank, answers the phone
William, fills out the paperwork except for this census
Pat, known for his ability to mix up eggs.
Eddie (Don't get him mixed up with the coach.) much nicer, takes photos.
O'Sky -the family's last hippie guy
Cornelius  (Con)- can sing more Irish songs than anyone drunk or sober
Paul - makes the bed up every afternoon, likes to fold towels
Mick - Tries to keep quiet, but isn't allowed.
Edward (He hates Edward as a name but we already had two Eddies) Of course, as the actual youngest, his philosophy of life is that we are the stupidest folks on the face of the Earth and about three-quarters of Mars.
Bertie/Birdie/Birdue/Bir-debt, who sometimes thinks about smoking on the fire escape or getting a tattoo.

Tomorrow, if the grapefruit speaks of them, I'll list off all females around here. oogod. They are crammed in every corner, line half the shelves in both the closets and are constantly picking at my food. I am swept away by all of them.

The Grapefruit Diaries (1) 3/14/2010

Confession
I have been holding out on you. Every morning I have coffee, toast and a half a grapefruit for breakfast. I put the toast in, the coffee on and, while cutting up the grapefruit, I have a conversation with myself which I alway intend to pass along especially if it's at all interesting. I never do.
It's a shame, it's my shame and things are going to change (insert blues riff here) Maybe the weekend rain made things different in the mind.

I don't know about your mind, but in the early morning before anything about the day has really started to become real, my brain spiels out the oddest observations like:
-Did you see that? (It's speaking to me now.) You put the toast in and the coffee on.
- Yes, I say, I saw/see that, what of it?
- Well, it speaks of how we fit words together in particular ways, if you'd put the coffee up, you'd be putting it in a cabinet. If you use any other preposition other than 'on' the whole meaning of the sentence might be changed.
-Right. What else you got?
-Four hours is a long time to be stuck in traffic.
-God, yes. (The mind is referring to a friend who was coming to dinner last night and got caught in a traffic jam on the West Side of the George Washington Bridge. It took him fours hours to go the last three miles into the city ----and he still insisted on paying for dinner.)
-There won't be a sunrise this morning, even though it coming up an hour later.
-Have we moved on from waiting for four hours to cross the bridge?
-Oh...um, (Tries to think of something which never works.)
-Okay, never mind, I'll say it, You never know what is going to happen, so be ready.
-I was going to say that you got your kitchen counters really clean while waiting for him to arrive.
-Yes, that's true.
-And yesterday, when the Internet and the cable was out, you really got a lot of writing done. Or, at least, you got a lot of ideas down on paper instead of just thinking about them.
-Are you saying I should unplug a few things?
-I was thinking you had some interesting dreams last night about running in the breezy sunshine and that thing about the cheeseburgers and OH that mother and child and the anaconda.
-The toast is up. (hmmm----you put it IN but you take it OUT when it's UP.)

I going to sip this coffee now.


-

I lose it to the evening news

 I cannot watch another moment

Tonight the shiny people looked out at me
and read out to me
of how the babies died
 how the babies
held tight in baby slings....
I looked away...remembering
then
how a guy
just trying to make a living,
named Umberto
ended up shot and run over by his own bus.....
I thought
I started to think
I've seen that bus, but
 Oh the happy mothers, with the baby slings
Oh, the happy helping fathers with the baby slings...
 
... but we reached a high of 61° today at....
 
the babies' chins touched their tender chests...
their airways were tenderly compressed
their little sighs not heard above the passing traffic...
 Someone being shot in the passing traffic....
 
I cannot imagine it
the moment it
it cannot have been like anything
like anything I've ever...
 
no
 that, that is not so,
 I have....
no one knows this,
no
every parent, 
Oh mothers, Oh fathers,,,,
 knows this,
how each has
 gotten up
in the pitch of night
to touch one of the poor little fever hot sick babies.
..yes...
To see if they were still
or
still breathing
 
Sports is next
but
I cannot watch another moment.
 

A January evening

It was too cold to do anything out of doors, the other basic chores - laundry, kitchen counters, wastebaskets, recycling - all were done. All that was left was the pile of  To-Be-Read on the desk. Well, that and about ten thousand other little things I have been avoiding, for example, the music CDs look like they were dropped on to the floor and thrown back up onto the shelves. They cry out for organizing (and dusting). There's a pile of photos I was supposed to Scan Next sometime before Christmas and there are four speakers on those CD shelves and only two are hooked up. I could go on.

I opted for the Read pile because I can scan a piece of paper quickly and file it or toss it. That went well for about three pieces of paper, a business card for a plumber -saved in the Contacts list, a coupon from Domino's -out,out, do not rest your eyes upon such, and a letter from the Co-op detailing the latest maintanence increase, filed. Then I picked up last year's calendar which I had laid on the Read pile because I wanted to have one more look at the pictures. The works are by Govinder, an artist about whom I know nothing except that I am drawn to the lines and whimsy in the art, the Big Blue Cat I described in this blog a few weeks ago, there's a skinny oddly shaped dog named Tumble Down Dick and more cats. Square, boxy cats in red, yellow and black, a cat (I think) named Ben with kind of a scaly snakelike patch of fur, the huge Mr. BIG and finally a terrific horse named Sundance. I like them all.

Three times I tried to throw the calendar away. Twice it wouldn't fit in the overstuffed basket by my desk and it ended up on desk's  corner, the third time I was headed for the trash chute outside my door when I looked up at the beam in my living room. It was a blank slate waiting.

I had thought about putting something on that beam over  the years I've lived here, I just never really thought about it, if you know what I mean and here, suddenly, was the answer to a question barely asked. I got the scissors, I got the silver push pins, I got the stepstool. I cut up the calendar month by month. The strange thing was then that I saw some of the art as if I had never seen it before. Here was a rabbit, Pippin. And what may be an elephant and some more horses which up until I looked again had seemed to me to be some kind of worms dancing. Nope, horses. Okay.

The skinny dog went in the middle and I added each page to each side until the space was filled with color and shapes, scaly and furry and blue. The only piece which didn't fit was the one of the Doves of Peace. I have that up elsewhere where I can get a better look at it. 

Then I added a Klimt poster which had been standing in a corner of my bedroom for about four months waiting for me to decide if I wanted to put new glass over it. No glass. 

So here is the finished look:

That's it. No big idea here. Or maybe there is. I kept thinking that whenever I see blank spaces in my life, it's good to fill them with inspiration. 

More, not much more, but more @ http://atthewindow.blogspot.com/

Years

Some years seem to have longer days than others.

Some seem to be missing months and moons.

There are the other years but these miss-shaped
miss-timed
times
stay too near us until we tell their story.

Le Chat Bleu

I'm inside my apartment wearing a woolen hat, outside my window, it's starting to snow. I don't need to be wearing this hat, it's toasty enough in here, I guess, but I'm going through several transitions today. First, I just got back from Florida early, early this morning. The flight home was bumpy and traumatic enough for me to be near prayers and gave me greater resolve, now that I am not at the bottom of that ship's canal which borders the Newark Airport runway, to make this a very good year. Good.

Second, I got on the scale this morning and it was not good. Despite running some miles every day while on vacation, there was considerable counterbalancing going on which resulted in a new gain of bulk. I now believe that carrying a Ziploc baggie of M&Ms while on a run is not a good idea. I repent.

Third, I've got all this unpacking to do. All these odd items I fail to recognize as I push the woolen hat back off on my brow. Here's a sleeveless shirt with a picture of a humuhumunukunukuapuaa (that's pronounced...oh never mind.). I didn't get to wear this shirt this year; there was really only one really good beachy day with nice hot hot feelings coming up from the sand and young girls coated with enough oil to prepare them for either the sun rays or anyone with a large enough saute pan to make "Bikini Trio A Flambe".  What's this in this plastic bag? Sandals. Does anything look more like an alien object than a pair of sandals held up to the window light as outside snow slants by and the wind shakes the naked dead branches of the trees?

I know they are not dead. I'm depressed. This morning I hung up the new kitchen calendar (zen sayings and flowers) and leafed through last year's (art work by Govinder including one very odd looking blue cat.). I usually like looking through the old calendar. Look, here's the Sunday you set aside to go to MoMa. Here's the boatride in July, the dinner in May, but this year, I seemed to have skipped writing anything down except when I ordered the new water filter filters and three weekends when the A train would not be running.

There are the 351 emails to sort. (His finger hovers over the DELETE ALL command. If it's really important they will call or email again, right?) I need to balance the checkbook and check the credit cards online for any weird charges....(What? Exactly $15.70 two days apart at the market? Oh, yeah. Papers, Bagels and Butter....sigh) I'm going to scan through all the sunset pictures and the wave pictures and the pelican pictures. I have to sweep up this little pile of sand.

I'm going out in a little while to get some groceries, but first an hour's nap and an attempt to remember the little bursts of vertigo induced terror from last night. They made me feel so good when they stopped.