Elinor Nauen

Asked the worst thing that's ever happened to me, & I can't think of any serious candidates. Or nothing that still lingers. It's all just scars now, not pain. Never even had bedbugs.

Going to an antiwar (Vietnam) demonstration in Washington D.C. in 1971 changed my life—I met people who are still friends, it opened my mind to different lives (you're not in school? you work?!), & it was the start of my education: I realized that saying "war is bad because children get killed" to someone who thought the war a geopolitical necessity wasn't all that effective (hey, I was 19 & it was pre–oh, you know, pre–the days when kids know everything).

These days I'm less hopeful (& more claustrophobic about big crowds). Less hopeful that my presence is being counted, my shouts are being heard. Is showing up with a sign enough? "A thousand people in the street / Singing songs and carrying signs / Mostly saying, "hooray for our side."

I think of the unintended consequences of so many of our actions: good out of bad, bad out of good. How we all have different emphases for what should be done and Read More 

The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese—and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. —Eric Hoffer

I've been listening to an extended bout of Miss Kitty Wells for the first time in ages—possibly since the early, turbulent days when there was a lot of fussin' & fightin' between Johnny & me. "I can't stop loving you" & "The lonely side of town" & "I gave my wedding dress away" & a zillion more set the tears raging. Her twang (the way someone sounds flat—in tone not pitch—when singing with headphones on) bites right into the heart and you feel like she knows what's killing you. Even though she was widowed 33 days before her 74th wedding anniversary, she's the queen of heartbreak. Listening today is making me cry all over again—I suppose in relief of what no longer is. Or is possible.

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It was so bright in Central Park yesterday, and my cousin Julia & her husband Patrick had real cameras, so I didn't take the time to find a good place to stand where you could even see the statue, & anyway, you can't get the dog & the caption into one picture, but why is there even this memorial to a sled dog in NYC?

Patrick, from London on his first visit to New York, had a lot of questions I couldn't answer. Where's that steam coming from? When was the best era in NY's history? Where did the land come from to make Central Park?

I thought it wasn't settled but I was wrong: "Creating the park required displacing roughly 1,600 poor residents, including Irish pig farmers and German gardeners, who lived in shanties on the site. At Eighth Avenue and 82nd Street, Seneca Village had been one of the city's most stable African-American settlements, with three churches and a school. Read More 

I teach karate to kids 4 through 15. It's easy to tell the boys from the girls with the little & older ones but for some reason I often guess wrong on the 6- through 8-year-olds. I'm always saying to Kyoshi Greg: "Is that a boy or a girl?" The kids with long hair & toenail polish, dead  Read More 

Happy palindrome year on the Jewish calendar. I hope that the confusion, anger, frustration so many people are feeling will be washed away by the clear light of peace, understanding & Torah. I wish for good health, joy, adventure, art, love, meaningful work, peace. I wish for an end to useless conferences, backbiting, narcissism, pedestrians walking 5 abreast & not moving aside, pedestrians wandering in the bike line, bikers cutting too close, landlords who think 2 tin cans & a wire constitutes an intercom system. I wish for everything to get a little bit better.  Read More 

Best known for The Daughter of Time, a defense of Richard III, Tey's mysteries are a great pleasure. When I come upon a line like "the yelling crowd asparagus-packed into the long Georgian room," I know I'm going to have fun.

Josephine Tey's funeral was held the day I was born.  Read More 

Working drains the brain.

Tuesday a little more nothing.

I can only be smart for a couple hours a day.

By smart I mean "pay attention."

What's for dinner?

I didn't go to the People's Climate March, mostly out of claustrophobia but also because I nonchalanted the morning away. I didn't go to the dojo or the gym or for a bike ride. I didn't have lunch. I didn't write a poem or a letter. I didn't stand on my head, eat lima beans or wet my pants: I wasn't ever  Read More 

Two moments of honesty in the big city:
* When I got to work this morning, a piece of my keychain, with a thumbdrive & some pharmacy discount cards, was hanging on the gate.
* I forgot to lock my locker at the dojo, in fact left it hanging open.  Read More 

I spent all my time & writing energy today on an article. I'm really happy with it but I've got nothing left for the blog. If I hadn't sworn to post every day, I would skip it. This is gonna hafta count.

Worldwide, women between 15 and 44 are more likely to be injured or die from male violence than from traffic accidents, cancer, malaria, and the effects of war combined.

And isn't war an effect of male violence?

Man!

(By the way, that stat is from The New Yorker, which gets fact-checked up the wazoo, so I did not independently verify it.)  Read More 

I wish I had known that he was communicating when he blinked at me. I wish he were alive, this cat who loved me. I wish he hadn't had to go through dying without me & ahead of me. I wish he had had a better personality. I wish you could have seen his regal beauty. I wish I hadn't tormented him. I wish I'd known it was love that made him bite my eyeball. I wish I had known it was OK to be loved that much.  Read More 

Bird Sense

Stay away from hatters
Eagle-eyed for a cockroach
Big as a mouse

July breeze lifts the skirts
Heavy embroidery in a pleat
A bosom like a shelf

No one wants what comes next
Can you make a salad?
Sit up straight Vespa?

A handlebar moustache
A notebook
A door that won’t open

Fly away little one
Say goodbye to
No one to say goodbye
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Soon the East Village will have everything.
No more going above 14th Street.
No more Brooklyn.
Hey, Dr Dave!

Now I can't upload pictures to the blog. Stay tuned.

No post yesterday because my computer was busy dying, & the new one seems to be a lemon. I'm using an old computer that is pretty shaky.

I know what day it is! But it is also the birthdays of several friends & cousins. There is plenty to be grateful for (tho lack of sleep is not among them).  Read More 

Here's what I sent out as an email on September 12, 2001

Dear Everyone --
First of all, I am fine and so is everyone we both know. I decided to write one letter to a lot of you, so I could answer faster to the many e-mails I’ve received. Thank you to everyone who  Read More 

Thoughts on me from 30 years ago—how much lovelier than I remember being & a better actor. It's me, it's not me, it's me, it's not me.

A Dirt Road in France, 1912

A hundred years is not so long
Change a baby to a man & back

Take off your goggles - fly down the road
I came along later & why not

The mystery is we’re all here now
You who love cars & France

Change a girl to a torrent of wrinkles
Change a road to a loitering rink  Read More 

Does the fact of any country's (probably) violent origins have anything to do with its existence now? Is there a founding that invalidates a country's existence?

Let's say that I agree that Israel did this or that, even the one-sided claims of my left-of-Hamas friends. What then? What does that mean right now? In other words, where does the story start? The Jews were displaced 2,000 years ago, so does that give them prior claim, if living on the land is your criterion? My father was thrown out of his country  Read More 

Johnny & I had dinner together last night.

At home.

It's probably 5 years since we sat down together at the kitchen table. I cleared away the cat, found a second chair, and made sandwiches with heirloom tomatoes & burrata cheese (yum!).

We're planning to do it again before the books once again overwhelm us. Although I suppose we could make do with one plate.  Read More 

A photo of the front door of my building, The Ezra Pound, circa 1980, was made into a postcard. Our entryway is dark and looks commercial, so our super put that sign up. Oddly enough, it worked.

We have a yuppified door these days, and the liquor store on the corner is long gone. The drunks who once used our stoop as a toilet have given way to frat boys who might, but so far haven't done the same.

I don't miss that aspect of the East Village, but I do miss the anarchic 1970s, when we were our own little enclave of artists & families, scorned by the more settled areas. It felt more like a neighborhood because you only came here if you lived here.  Read More 

The mountain with the trails in the background is the one we took a ski lift to the top of earlier that day. It was so cold up there that it was impossible to believe it was August. I got a little altitude sick too. But it was beautiful.

As was the wedding. Their vows were so specific and connected that I have no doubt that like their parents, they'll be celebrating their 40th anniversary at their own children's weddings.  Read More 

The dictionary I consulted defined LEGBONE as “the bone of a leg.”

Womanizer

All countries that have lost their legends will be condemned to die of cold.

My apartment is the same size as a 1950 Greenland igloo, minus the seal gut window, babies & peat walls.

All countries that mock their elders will buy apartments in Queens.

I am less despondent about my life running out than I am about the summer passing into September. Seems like short-term thinking but really, I'm not bummed about being in my 60s (early 60s!) (very early 60s!). The Times had an op-ed [click on caption] about the baby boomers freaking over aging. I too have had the experience of being the youngest in the room, & now also of being the oldest. I kind of like it when I'm the oldest. It makes me feel like I won a prize in a lottery I didn't enter. All I had to do to win was be born in  Read More 

Becky: It rained so hard on the way here that the wheat, which was ready for harvest, got flattened.

Stacey: It's when it hails that the crops get destroyed. They'll bounce back from the rain.

Such a casually normal Midwestern exchange, informed about how things grow. I don't think anything about farming is part of my New York world. People here think it's odd that when it rains I automatically say: "good for the farmers."

Stacey also told of driving past a field of sunflowers, & someone asking: why would they plant flowers?  Read More 

Guns freak me out. When we were little—I'm thinking 2nd or 3rd grade—kids could sign up for a gun safety class. I didn't have to ask: It wasn't something my family went in for & even then I was repulsed. I am still a little mad at Johnny for "holding" a gun for someone. It must be 20 years ago, & I'm relieved he didn't tell me till after, but creeped out that there was a gun in my house overnight. My cousin lost an eye to an errant shot on a city street, & of course I read the news, today's being about a 9-year-old who shot her instructor with an Uzi at a theme park called Bullets & Burgers.

Man, doesn't so much today sound like it came from the Onion.

I have tried (maybe not that hard) to understand the pro-gun folks & I'm just not buying it. I don't have any better arguments than the sensible ones already out there: no reason guns can't be regulated, the way liquor & cars are; protect kids; don't sell armor-piercing ammo, & so on.Why doesn't this get fixed??

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