Elinor Nauen

People exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love, and to defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.

~ Wendell Berry

Is this a new thing everywhere or just in the tragically hip East Village: restaurants with ONE DISH. Or a shtick along the same line. 

 

There's an ice cream place where you order blind & get what they give you. I'm betting it's always vanilla, with or without sprinkles. 

 

There's a pasta place where your only choice is alfredo fettuccine (althought there's a long list of add-ons). 

 

I don't know of others but it feels like organization... a movement! as Arlo Guthrie says in "Alice's Restaurant." 

... I'm happy every day. 

 

The weather is certainly pleasing me today. It finally broke. Yesterday was in the mid-70s & people were wearing jackets ~ a drop of 25° actually made it seem chilly. Hooray! 

 

So much sucks, at least it's nice to not be mad at the weather.

The people who voted for Mamdani because he wasn't Cuomo... because they didn't know anything about him... because he was cute/ubiquitous/rich/a nepo baby... I can't help but feel that in many ways they're the tRump voters of 2016 - not caring if their candidate is competent or can do what he claims, just wanting something different. And is the case so often, dismissing Jewish concerns about antisemitism. I always think, you're no more entitled to tell a Jew what is or isn't antisemitism than I, a white person, can tell a Black person that something is or isn't racist. If Mamdani had said the equivalent of "globalize the intifada" about any other group, he would have been backlashed out of the room. As always, it's OK to dump on Jews. 

 

I'm not often overtly political here, but I can't shake the idea of Mamdani voters being sure of themselves & ignorant, just like tRump voters. 

 

Note: Not sure when this will go up, there's something amiss with my website that I'm hoping the indefatigable Hector can fix quickly. 

Ramona né Ramon lived as a woman but didn't really make an effort (daylong 5 o'clock shadow). This was in the days when our landlord referring to her as he-she-it was less shockingly offensive than it would be now, at least 40 years ago. She didn't speak English but did a lot of broom-banging & taking people to court for noise. She always lost because in fact she was the loud one. Ramona was OK, though, at least if she didn't live below you. She was probably the least strange of my many strange neighbors in the early days of the Pound, when people could afford to live there on an SSI check. (Supplemental Security Income (SSI) provides benefits to disabled children and adults, and people who have very little resources or income. These days it pays out less than $1,000 a month, far from enough to live in my gentrified neighborhood.)

Real feel right this minute is 112°. 

 

Watching Ann Miller in the terrific "Too Darn Hot" sequence from Kiss Me, Kate might not cool you down but it will wake you up.

 

Vote early, vote often: today's the day. 

Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.

~ Wade Davis, Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and writer (1953– )

My office is down a half-flight of stairs. The other afternoon a young man was sitting on the bottom step. I've never once seen anyone hanging out there, & I have to say the pigeons have added not such a pleasant aroma. Hey, I called, this isn't a great place to sit — people come & go all the time. He slowly turned & considered me, then slowly gathered his belongings, which involved dropping them several times before he managed to get them into his pockets. A pill bottle sat on the step. You're forgetting your bottle, I said - unless it's good drugs. It is, he said slowly, then slowly picked it up, pocketed it, and climbed the stairs (slowly).

First we went to the Park Avenue Armory for the Diane Arbus show, which made both of us nauseated when we walked in to 450 photos on scaffolding, all at heights either too high or too low to really see the photos. The building itself is amazing & I almost became a member just to be able to sit in the comfortable chairs of the lounge but instead we walked over to MoMA, which I did join, & wandered through the Picasso, Légers, & Matisses untill the day's heat left our weary feet. 

It is raining on my building but not the ones on either side of me or across the street, where the sky is blue. 

 

I should probably have my own zip code. 

I was startled recently to find two young people (30, 24) who had never heard of traveler's checks, something that was ubiquitous in my youth. Part of the anticipation of a trip abroad was going to the bank & buying them, following discussions of the most useful denominations & just how much money you would need for the entire trip. After a highly scientific poll of everyone I ran into & remembered to ask, I discovered that age 40 is approximately the line between having used them & never having heard of them - they had an idea of what they were but had never seen these checks themselves. A couple of people thought they weren't a bad scheme, like the kid who came up with the ingenious idea of a phone that's attached to the wall so you wouldn't lose it. 

 

If you have a burning need to know more, here's a short but thorough article. 

When my current pigeon parents (whose babies are now hearty & almost flying) were building their nest of twigs in front of my office door, I dropped a long piece of soft husk on the ledge for them. They did not use it but left it lying where I'd laid it. Now the nest has turned to a beaten-down black mass, with no individual twigs - except for the piece I left them, which is still laying to the side. The nest was never so well-constructed that an additional bit of material wouldn't have come in handy, but they weren't interested & clearly knew it was an interloping piece. 

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

~ John Muir

 

People too! As Jesse Colin Young sang, Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now. 

What music is on your spotify or tapedeck or however you listen? I need some new songs! I'll check out anything anyone suggests. Doesn't have to be new. No parameters! Thank you!

I could cheap out & just list the poets / writers born today: most notably Wiliam Butler Yeats, but also notably: Fernando Pessoa, Dorothy Sayers. Tony Towle, Todd Colby, Denise Duhamel. Oh the lines of a Gemini.

 

What have they in common? They are eating cake!

Except the dead ones, Pessoa, Sayers & Yeats.

I know perfectly well that every single day my beloved country gets closer to authoritarianism / fascism / a dictatorship, whatever you want to call it. My friend Steve is doing a fantastic job keeping us informed with his daily Notes from the Resistance. What I'm doing is giving myself (& possibly you, dear reader) a momentary break from fury /despair/ worry / &, for all I know, gloating, although I doubt that anyone I know is happy about the chaos & cruelty that is ravaging the U.S. right now. 

 

Now my small triumph is going to seem even smaller, but here it is: my longtime laundry closed recently & the alternatives are far away, very expensive, or I had (ahem) already been 86ed from them. So I decided to go back to JJ's. Lou (the owner, now retired ~ his son is running the place) & I get along fine but his wife is insane; I'm far from the only one she has run out of there.

 

Today I wore a giant hat that pulled down over most of my face, had my kind neighbor go get quarters, & stumbled across the street with my stuff.

 

Success! My clothes are clean & off my mind till next time. 

Naturally, I only go to museums 2 days in a row if someone is visiting, & off we went. The baseball card exhibit was small but we did make the acquaintance of catcher Matt Batts (1921-2013) & later I learned of a more recent Mat Batts (1991- ), who played 15 games in the Major League. The highlight of the visit was "Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room," which imagines Seneca Village, razed to make way for Central Park, if it had been allowed to develop and thrive. The Native American art, some of it "FROM SOUTH DAKOTA (or north dakota)" was pretty great too. How are all those grass, horsehair, cane etc baskets and clothing so utterly pristine a hundre, 200 years later?

The usual mix of one very good show (Amy Sherald's portraits); one conceptual show, where the theory is more interesting than the art; and one boring up-and-comer. The floor with the permanent collection was closed but we sat for a long time in colorful Andirondack-style chairs dreaming into the misty Hudson, which was about as good as seeing the Hoppers. 

 

Then a quick circuit of touristy Little Island & my resentment that the West Side gets all the cool new stuff. 

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

 

Yeah, that's what we old people tell ourselves. 

I was buying something at a New York store that has a few branches in the city - not a local place but not a big chain. Are you a student or teacher, the clerk asked. I was inspired to draw myself up & announce that I am a lifelong learner. He gave me the discount. 

Topic Sentence

 

 

This poem is about people dying.

This poem is dying.

Dying is what people do.

I'm sad.

I'm hungry.

I'm distracted.

Natural stupidity writes everything now.

Natural stupidity writes everything down.

Dying is my last best hope.

I can change my mind.

Sox are not sex.

It's the strange & unwieldy bifurcation of all the ordinary parts of life (brushing your teeth, going to the gym, what's for dinner) & the deeper parts (grieving, worrying about the government), along with time (everything existing simultaneously). How does it not make us all crazy. Or maybe we all are crazy. 

The Jews are doing it wrong. Why aren't we selling the all-star holiday of Shavuot/s, which includes

* a poem in whacky, tongue-twisting Aramaic

* chanting the beautiful, haunting book of Ruth

* AN OBLIGATION TO EAT BLINTZES &/OR CHEESECAKE. 

 

Can you top that? Why do people not know about it? 

 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then - if ever - come perfect days. 

 

I know, I know, I always center on this James Russell Lowell quote in June. So here's a timely bonus quote from this great 19th-century writer, abolitionist, critic, editor, diplomat, & poet;

 

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide
In the strife of Truth and Falsehood
For the good or evil side.

 

from The Present Crisis (1844) (thank you, Markos, for this)

Lightning Ahead

 

 

When I'm driving along the interstate

I like to look at clouds &

When I'm sitting still as well

 
What's your all-time favorite drug?

Is a terrific question for old friends or for people

You hope to get to know

Right now the clouds are bestowing their gift of rain

Other times their gift is shade &

Other times the curse of rain while I'm driving

 
However, in Orangeburg even the bananas are orange &

The egrets only visit when the sun goes down because

The law is out & they know what they did

 
We hydroplane across South Carolina, which

Is less amusing the second time just

Like those beans we ate last night

 
Lightning ahead!

 
O to live on Iron Mountain

Where your personal magnetism

Will hold us close

 
The rain drowns our conversation, which is inane,

But sincere

Which is even worse

 
Excuse me, ma'am, do you know

Your back window is down?

Oh shit! Thank you!

 
O to live high up

Up on Iron Mountain, now a marsh hill in the

Even Lower Country.

 

 

Elinor Nauen & Stephen Willis

5/29/25 ~ Steve's birthday