Elinor Nauen

It really is fun to pick a place & see what's there. Could be any place ~ I could throw a dart at a map & find something amazing & wonderful if I went wherever it hit. Today we saw contemporary & classic art at the Carnegie, rooms sponsored by many nations at the Cathedral of Learning, absolutely the coolest classroom building of all time. We drove through the rich neighborhoods of Shadyside & Squirrel Hill, & I went for a walk & found my way back to the hotel. The information guy at the Cathedral of Learning said that in Pittsburgh, neighborhoods tend to stay intact, so the Polish or Italian areas, for example, are still Polish or Italian. This city is, he said, as diverse as New York. 

 

Another day, another taxi driver. Do you have a drunk in that bar fight? I asked referring to the Fetterman-Oz senatorial race. He laughed & said they're all drunks & he didn't care. Hmmm. What the heck? 

 

Tomorrow the Incline up Mount Washington, the Andy Warhol Museum & home early Sunday. 

A woman at the airport said, admiringly, you're adventurous, coming here without knowing anyone, just because you've never been. It's only an hour or so away on the plane & it feels, if not adventurous, fun to be in someplace completely new. Very pretty, with changing leaves, & big views & the rivers. 

 

The cab driver seemed great & told us that the Monongohela is one of the few rivers in North America that flows north. Great until he let slip his racist politics. As soon as I said mildly, "but don't you think that [ethnic group he looked down on] came here for jobs just like anyone else," he totally changed his tune. My fault, I asked what he thought of the senatorial race here. 

 

I wrote a post yesterday that somehow didn't get saved & now I don't even remember what it was about. I think it was to say we were PA-bound. Someday (maybe tonight?!) I will sleep & then I expect to remember things. It's so strange to be somewhere other than the East Village with Mr. No-Travels Johnny! 

My friend Dotathy (aka Melissa) had a show at her studio in Gowanus. I left the East Village, yes I did, & went to Brooklyn. Intrepid me! Especially, as my friend Maggie once said, It just seems like it's farther for us to go there than for them to come here. Dot embroiders on photos, & they are textured, beautiful, way more than the sum of their parts. Then I went to hang out with another friend in a different part of Brooklyn, my Norwegian teacher Marie-Therese in fact, but it was too late in a long day for me to manage to say anything much på norsk. I may go to Brooklyn again someday.

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt is strange & wonderful. The plot makes the book seem either silly or heroic. "The world would be quite a pretty place if the only people tormented by atrocities were those who'd committed them." It's a serious book but also one where the author clearly put in everything she felt like & by wanting it made a place for it.

Yay for a new-to-me stop on the F train: Smith-9th street, with two very long escalators plus stairs. And also this fine view. Then the G train across Brooklyn, & eventually the L train home.

 

Pro tip: the G is not the J. Turns out the G doesn't go into Manhattan at all, & it's the J that you can catch at Delancey St. Who knew? I'm certainly not one of the dead who know Brooklyn. 

The open door policy between apartments 9 & 12 usually involves Lefty swaggering over to Wanda's place & terrorizing Jojo & Harry. But Jojo has slowly tiptoed into our apartment & here he is in bed with sleeping Johnny. Usually, as soon as Lefty realizes Jojo is visiting us, he gallops over & chases him away. Our little Napoleon, king of all he surveys. Especially me. 

This semester's Norwegian class is built around watching a Norwegian movie every week & discussing it. I seem to have been one of the few people who enjoyed last night's Fjols til fjells (Fools in the Mountains), a slapstick farce from 1957 set in a ski resort. It was dumb, sure, with a plot about identical guests mistaken for each other over & over, but Leif Juster was terrific & it even (maybe) had its subversive moments, such as a girl everyone took for a boy in her bellboy (piccolo) outfit who whistled at & propositioned attractive women. Lots of great Norwegian words & expressions & I could understand most of what everyone in class was saying, even when they were rattling along pretty fast. 

Thank goodness for having a name I don't share with a thousand Andersons. It meant that an email got to me from a woman in Sioux Falls who had found a copy of CHIPS (from the Tree of Knowledge), our high school literary magazine, in a storage box. Did I want it?

 

Oh my goodness yes, although I'm embarrassed in advance/in retrospect about my sophomoric (literally!) drivel. 

 

How above & beyond to reach out with something she could so easily have tossed. (Thank you, Teresa!)

Ever since I started studying Norwegian, I've dreamed of overhearing people speaking it on the streets of New York or, even better, stopping me to ask for directions. This morning I stepped out of my office on 5th Street as a young couple were passing, stopping to let their dog sniff around. THEY WERE SPEAKING NORSK! I stopped & pretended I was waiting for them while I made sure of it, then interrupted: Snakker dere norsk?! (Are you speaking Norwegian?) They were & we had a lovely conversation half in English, half in norsk. Victoria lives on Ave B, while her friend, whose name I didn't catch, was visiting from Trondheim. Made my day week year (dag uke år)!

The role of the artist is to not look away.

~ Akira Kurosawa

 

To look at the hard things with a compassionate eye that stops & a cold eye that passes on. 

I can't help but sense that the men who are critical of Annie Ernaux as a "pedestrian" & "mediocre" choice for the Literature Prize are actually saying, Why would they give it to a woman when there still are men who haven't won it. That writing about personal issues like abortion & dementia isn't serious, & by george, THEY are serious. And some of the writers they think more worthy write in languages I'm quite sure they can't read. But who cares about prizes! Scratch a man & you find a man, as my old pal used to say.

 

Glad to see women standing up for Ernaux, who's published by my friends at Seven Stories. Good for them. 

What, everyone doesn't have their personal forecaster? I love that I can text WillisWeather® to ask if I can go outside in 10 minutes without an umbrella & I hear back in plenty of time. I didn't need him this week as we went from too darn hot to winter, with a cold rain barely short of sleet, to summer again (today). Or maybe it's spring? Willis, help! I need you, after all. 

I'm excited to own a voting shirt (naturally it's from Raygun, the greatest store in the universe). I've been waiting for this shirt my whole life. I DO love voting. I believe in voting. I miss the booth, the plastic curtain, the heavy lever that closed the curtain then registered your vote. I miss walking over to Sioux Falls College to be my dad's lever-puller. A month till this fall's democracy in action. Are you ready? 

In a little while, the 27 hours of Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, will begin. It's a time to ruthlessly analyze our own behavior & shortcomings, & get right with the people who matter to us. I've tried harder this year than I sometimes do, deciding to break the eggshells rather than tiptoe on them. Will it work? Maybe not but it means I am less likely to be held back by fear or anger or resentment. It will be an intense day, boring at times, but I hope to come out the other side fresh & enlightened. 

There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place.

~ G. K. Chesterton

 

I suppose I could have combined this quote with yesterday's ramble. I would have except that I wasn't able to edit for several days, & their new setup is quite unwieldy. So read 'em both & think of them as two parts of a thought that I'm not really ready with yet.

 

My urge to move back wrestles with my urge not to spend 40 minutes in a car going anywhere at all; the ease of living in a walking town. My love for my beautiful home state wrestles with my adoration of my adopted home. When I was out there, I asked myself why I'm always going to Europe & the South when I could be spending time in the West. It's taken me a long time to appreciate where I come from without disclaimers, though they're still there at the same time. I suppose I'll always be a bit bi-geographic, & that's fine. My life is here, my heart is there, except it's here too! 

I need to be here breathing the air of the Hills.

 

The roundup was a little underwhelming but I'm glad that I was there, seeing a SoDak sunrise, goofing around with my friends.

I mostly wanted to post a picture of the beautiful Black Hills and Sylvan Lake, where we spent much of the day but I can't figure out how to do that on my phone. I will add it when I can.

 

Update: Oh dang it, I'm back at my computer & still not able to add a photo. But I couldn't edit at all till just now, so maybe something has improved....

More beauty to come ~ headed off in a few minutes to western South Dakota to a "girls" reunion with a bunch of friends from high school. We'll go to a buffalo roundup & be together at Sylvan Lake to memorialize our dear friend Jacque, who died early this year. No time now for more. 

Today is the birthday of the world. 

 

Best for Rosh Hashanah & 5783.

A stroll to Washington Square Park to see the Klezmatics & even run into some folks. Chilly in the mornings, & I've begun to carry a jacket. Tonight starts Rosh Hashanah & I'll be out of the office for 2 days, then leaving early (6 a.m.) for the Black Hills. Going away has given me such an urge for more going. 

I'm still readjusting to being home but already preparing to head off to the Black Hills on Wednesday, the minute the 2 days of Rosh Hashanah are over. Even though I pack light ~ 2 weeks in Ireland with a carry-on backpack ~ I want to take even less to South Dakota. Because I haven't slept much, my mind is working slowly & boringly, trying to work out if I could go with just a tote bag. It's only 4 days ~ what do I need besides underwear? And should I upgrade to first class from Minneapolis to Rapid City? It's only 7,900 miles, 41,000 miles for first class from LGA to MSP & the flight's so early (6 a.m.), I wouldn't get the lounge benefit. Sorry, I don't know how to get anything else into my mind at the moment. I'll be more interesting soon! I hope! It was cold enough for a blanket last night! It was cold enough that I wore my new handknit Irish sweater this morning! Does the lavish use of exclamation marks make this more fascinating?!

I Believe

 

the crocus is the state

flower of

 South Dakota       if

that is                  it's

    the same as the

"pasque"

       in Pasque

Petals the official

organ of the South Dakota State Poetry

      society to which my mother long belonged.

She wrote

a sonnet

about a

cow

but I don't remember any lines with

rain

red

down

sweetest              with ocean

fuck (certainly

not)

      mapmaker or pine

Spruce perhaps

since the state tree

of South Dakota

is the

Black Hills

Spruce

& we often vactioned at

Spruce

Lake the real name of which is Spearfish          my mother

took me      to a poets luncheon       at which

an advanced younglady

read cummings'

buffalo bill's defunct ("now how

       do you like

        your blue-eyed boy

mister death")

which I instantly

knew was my favorite poem

& went out & bought

my first book of poetry       The Collected Poems of

Leonard Cohen

 

circa 1984

 

I'm still a bit jet-lagged & have to moderate a public conversation tonight & want to take a nap & a bath first, hence a poem rather than a post today. I'll be in South Dakota next week.

The relaxation lasted halfway through my first morning, when I found myself yelling, like always, "My lane, my light!" at pedestrians sauntering into & up the bike lane. Totally worth it to have two weeks off even if I'm already back. 

 

Yesterday we went through Preclearance at the Dublin airport, meaning we cleared customs before boarding & landed as a domestic arrival ~ & were on our way. We're sitting around the airport anyway, & it was great to get that over with. It's available in 16 destinations around the world (Ireland, Canada, the Caribbean, the Middle East) & I'm hoping they'll extend it widely. 

Hello from an airport hotel, quick note before we pack & get on our plane back to New York. Thank you Ireland for your beauty, unfailingly friendly & helpful people, & two weeks of calm. Except for driving on narrow roads, which I found only slightly less harrowing by the end of the trip. 

The Wild Swans at Coole

 

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

 

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

 

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

 

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

 

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

The really beautiful part about Coole Park were the vast lawns (which don't translate as photos) & the many signs of occupancy by the cultured & literary, from the owner, Lady Gregory, to the leading Irish artists, playwrights & poets.Yeats, Synge, Augustus John, Shaw, O'Casey. Once we found it (signage, Ireland, signage!), I could have stayed there for days. 

 

It amused me to read there that Lady Gregory's plays at the Abbey Theatre always drew full houses, while Yeats' plays got no audiences at all. We went to some Yeats revival years ago & his plays were just awful. Like many poets, he's not interested in other people, so he can't write characters, only beautiful poetry. Dramatic poetry, but not theatrical. 

The Burren is crazy cool. It's a vast area of limestone with evidence of Stone Age occupancy, deciduous forests, Badlands-like stretches of desert formations, and an incredible lack of signage. There's a national park somewhere down one of them unmarked lanes... Steve was amazing, both in figuring out a route & asking people, all of whom gave us illuminating information, like the man who pointed out the central feature of the Burren, Mullagh More, what he called the mystical center. I even got to speak for a moment in Norwegian! He was Swedish but that didn't deter me. 

The gentians are blooming as we eat lemon cake

In the tearoom called An Féar Gorta

Your home comes to be

Mine for a week 

In sweet Ballyvaughan, County Clare. 

 

And I'm happy & sad as though Ireland were mine ~

The Burren, the pubs and the sea

You spark & you joke 

While I long for the pie

Of An Féar Gorta, Ballyvaughan.

 

 

 

References to the lovely song "Sweet Ballyvaughan, "Terence's poem "An Féar Gorta" & to his song "When New York Was Irish."

Beautiful & impressive as they are, in a way the Cliffs of Moher are hard to see, that is, to get a fresh view of. The paths are laid out for walkers, no behind-a-rock surprises. Like the Pyramids in Egypt, they've been stared at so long that there's not a lot left to see. 

I don't mean to say that I was disappointing. Beauty is enough. Beauty is always all we need.