Elinor Nauen

Make the wrong thing difficult & the right thing easy.

~ Bruce Nauman on breaking horses

 

but doesn't this work for politicians, husbands, kids?

if only it worked for cats:

how serene & unbitten my toes!

Det Norske Sovebiblioteket – The Norwegian Sleeping Library

 

a room on a street

to lie down with a book

lamp throws apricot light on the bed

we doze & drift & doze

Horace, a poet of another dimension,

orders a whiskey sour

 

 

11/21/18-8/2/19

 

I translated it into norsk with a little help from Tone & Berit (but not MUCH):

 

Det Norske Sovebiblioteket

 

 

et rom på en gate

legge seg ned med en bok

lampen kaster et aprikoslys på sengen

vi døser og flyter og døser

Horace — en dikter fra en annen dimensjon — 

bestiller en whisky sour

I'm not a fashion maven, never have been, but I wish I'd been able to get to Spain for "Balenciaga and Spanish Painting" (through September, so maybe...). His incredible dresses are matched with, in dialogue with, really, works by El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, Murillo and others. 

 

Hey look, I can get the catalogue, every garment & every painting, for only $75. That's a LOT less than a plane ticket to Madrid, though not nearly as fun. 

This tale starts maybe two years ago, when both my home phone (a landline of 42 years) & office phone (also a landline I'd had for over 20 years) stopped working due to problems in the line. Verizon pretty much refused to fix them & so I switched my office phone to a cell (which is why my cell phone has a 212 number). I also kept paying for my home phone, $43 month after month, even though I couldn't use it. I thought about how useful it was to have a landline during blackouts & other emergencies & I kept hoping they would fix it. 

 

Finally, a couple months ago, I canceled my home phone. There was a small amount I still owed but they told me don't worry about it. Which I didn't, till I got a bill from a COLLECTION AGENCY for $16.48. Verizon said they sent a bill but I never got it. Blah blah blah, on the line to customer service, then financial services, then customer services—& just when they were wiping it out, my phone dropped the link! 

 

I could have written a damn check but I was mad—I paid my bill month after month & got nothing, & all I asked is that they spot me that last really minuscule amount. 

 

Taking a breather before I call back to see what happened...... YES! They took care of it. At least something worked.

 

I'm feeling good about Esti lemon hummus

 

but not about much else

 

 

It is lack of confidence that kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as effectively as by bombs. 

~ Kenneth Clark

 

To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse. 

~ John Quincy Adams

  

And so we soldier on, trying to believe in people's good hearts & intentions, & that the racism & fury we feel so strongly is a passing whirlwind & not the ground we stand on. 

 

A little story about men with beards: I knew Johnny (this isn't Johnny) for several years, all of which time he had a heavy beard. One day I went to a reading at the Poetry Project & said, Who's that? about some guy across the room. That's Johnny! No, that cute guy over there. That's Johnny, my friend repeated, he shaved. We started dating soon after. 

I was reading some humorous stories about people's self-diagnoses ("Doctor, I think I've caught that Down's syndrome") & remembered many years ago when it looked like I had pneumonia. I was so tired I couldn't even climb a flight of stairs so my late friend Roberta hustled me over to urgent care. They took a chest X-ray & I went to the doctor's office where my X-ray was pinned to the light box. He pointed—"there & there, yes, pneumonia."

 

Yeah yeah. I wasn't really looking because I saw the giant tumor that covered half of my chest. "What's that?!" I gasped, wondering how it was even possible I was alive.

 

"Darlin'," he said, "that's your heart."

 

Oh.

 

OK. 

 

Never mind. I'm going home now to take my medicine. 

 

Questions & Answers

 

Why are you washing your clothes in soup?

That's not soup, that's air.

 

Why do people live in New Jersey?

That's not exhaust, that's air.

Also, too lazy to search for the pink promise.

 

When will my leg be better?

The Shadow knows not.

 

Who is sleeping in my bed?

You, your man, your cat, & soup.

 

What time is it?

No trick questions! No philosophy! No speculating! Drop that bone & back away!

 

Where time is it?

I can answer that!

Let's see: my young friend Eli died unexpectedly on Wednesday, apparently from an aneurysm; the shiva was exhaustingly sad. On Friday, my brother-in-law's brother & his wife were killed by a truck that blew through a stop sign; they were the loveliest, liveliest people & their huge family is devastated. On Saturday, I went out for a quick cold drink with a friend on her way out of town for the summer & came home an hour later to find Johnny passed out in his chair. Lucky me to have a medic upstairs. His blood pressure was 67/36 & he could have died if I'd been out much longer. This was probably due to his having worked out in 100° heat without hydrating sufficiently. When I came in to my office this morning to find a big mess where a big chunk of ceiling fell, it felt like the universe maybe thought I hadn't noticed what's been going on. But I have! Believe me, I have. I'm heartsore & weary. 

 

Thursday Update: But wait! There's more! Old pal from college, John McCarthy, died yesterday from pancreatic cancer. A lovelier, more shining person there never was. He was openly gay so early (1970) that I almost didn't even know what it meant. He was always, utterly himself & therefore kind & accepting to everyone around him. Beautiful man.