Elinor Nauen

Water Heron Rock

Rock standing still

looks no closer

than water

rushing

great blue heron

intent on dinner

ignoring our desire

that it spread

shadow wing

over

mushy leaves

mill ruin

dog path

Carolina wedge

not-quite-cloudy

sky

When JetBlue emailed me to say my return flight from Ecuador had changed, I noticed it left Ft Lauderdale 3 minutes earlier than before & they had put me in a different seat. Much to-do later, I was all set.

The next day Willis pointed out that the flight was actually a whole day earlier, not just three minutes.

This year, there will be more people over 65 than under 5 for the first time in human history. One word: robots.

I miss being cute.

I miss believing everybody wants to sleep with me.

I miss not being the grownup.

I miss driving around and the only concern is affording gas. 

You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

~ Medgar Evers (1925-63)

Do young people know who Medgar Evers was? Mississippi civil rights activist, the state's field secretary for the NAACP, a World War II veteran. After the Brown decision in 1954, he was denied admission to the University of Mississippi Law School, but was instrumental in the eventual desegregation of "Ole Miss" in 1962. Assassinated. His widow spent 30 years pursuing Byron De La Beckwith, who'd been acquitted by an all-white jury—Beckwith was finally convicted 30 years later & died in prison, still an unrepentant segregationist, from all accounts. 

Marble Cemetery looking towards 3rd St, 8 a.m. today. I don't know that I've ever seen it so green. Every spring, the magnolia tree blossoms briefly & I wonder how many more times I'll see it. 

Carolyn Maloney is my long-time Representative. She is effective, excellent on guns, healthcare, women's issues (& more), hard-working. Really one of the best people in Congress. She has a potential opponent in the next primary. Not terrible, but absolutely not an improvement. Ditto for my beloved Jerry Nadler, who was my Rep till they moved the lines—he's the most liberal Congress member & someone is challenging him too, claiming to be more "progressive."

WHY?

Why spend time & money opposing someone good, rather than run for an office they might be able to win (Maloney & Nadler regularly win with 80-90% of the vote) &/or where the incumbent isn't so great.

Since tRump & AOC do people assume that they are qualified for/deserve any office they want? Why are Beto, Stacey Abrams, Hickenlooper, even Steve Bullock who I think so highly of, (et al) running for prez when they potentially COULD be elected to the Senate? Why did Cynthia Nixon run for gov when she could have won a city council or state senate race? Examples abound! Can anyone put party over ego?

Even with his eye bandaged & feeling beat, he looks so good. 

It was cataract surgery, which is not that big a deal, but when he was later than expected I figured they'd dropped a scalpel into his eye & he was dead. He suffers, but I worry & suffer, which makes it harder on me. 

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

~ Maya Angelou

One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding.

~ Henrik Ibsen

These are kind of the same quote, right? And somewhere a physicist is saying that the universe makes room for the stars... & psychiatrists, martial arts instructors, rabbis—they all have a version of this too, I bet. 

This is what makes me love my city: First came a party in an apartment with incredible views of the West Village & beyond, with food made by friends, a poet and his Ethiopian wife. The food is great but the best part is their warmth, how much they love hosting, & the array of friends from young to old, artists and who-knows-what who relish this annual invite. On the way home, I came upon people singing opera atop a piano, dozens of people gathered round. A balmy late spring night, feeling safe & stimulated in my beautiful town. 

I think about the kind of person I would be if I owned something like these. Different from Day 1, is all I can say. 

These were at the Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. 

You can see this building from my corner & it always looks peculiar, like a narrow & high bridge, or 2 buildings connected across the top. We walked east all the way to the river trying to figure it out. Couldn't. Maggie took a picture from quite a bit farther south but makes it look entirely different—that strip in the middle replaced by several buildings of different heights. There's nothing unusual about it, & I don't think it's supposd to be an architectural puzzle, but it's managed to have that effect, on me at least. But wait, according to EV Grieve, it IS two towers and is going to look like stacked sugar cubes, as it is on the site of the Domino Sugar factory. 

This was, overall, my favorite work of Linda's, which I saw at her open studio. More color than I remember, that's part of it, & I like paintings of fish more than reefs made of plastic netting found in the sea. This work integrates her love of & concern for oceans.

Her studio is in an old school building on Rivington filled with artists, theater & (I think) community groups. How great to have such high ceilings & a view. 

I’d only had a copy for so long that I’d forgotten what this wonderful shade, painted by Tim Milk, really looked like. It was nice to feel Ted in the room & of course nice to see Johnny with his big laugh, enjoying himself with Joe Carey & his girlfriend Stacy (who shares my birthday AND has many other wonderful qualities). 

What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?

~ Mikhael Bulgakov

My favorite quality in literature is that of being mysterious—you can't pull it apart & aha a final meaning. 

I liked the first chapter of Sophie's Choice, the tough-but-sensitive young novelist in New York. But in the second, he moves to Brooklyn (making sure it's completely clear that he's NOT JEWISH but is charmed by the Jews' delightful vulgarity), where he refers to Sophie's "truly sumptuous rear end." That was it. I can no longer overlook that swaggering male woman-is-object gaze. This is the month of Denise Levertov & the men can blow it out their sumptuous ass. 

I bought this dress to impress an old boyfriend. It worked but scared him off even more. I wore it to my brother's wedding in 1985, where several of his Minnesota colleagues took one look at me & said, "You're the sister from New York." You can't tell in this photo but my hair was dyed to match the bridesmaid dresses (I was an usherette), maroon over calico.

My dad liked this show & I remember watching it in the early 60s. I wonder if seeing its homey NYC neighborhoods planted my desire to come here. The Bronx of Car 54 is much like the neighborhood I settled in, a shabby world of small buildings & neighbors.

The show is dumb but often funny, with some sophisticated themes & moments. A Ninotchka knockoff, for example. It's also somewhat topical, starting with the theme song ("Kruschev's due at Idlewild"). Naturally there's a lot of mugging, especially by Fred Gwynne, but he & Joe E. Ross have genuine affection. 

Guest starts included Molly Picon, Maureen Stapleton, Heywood Hale Broun, Simon (Bullitt) Oakland, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano (or was it Rocky Graziano?), Hugh Downs, among others. Nipsey Russell is on the force, without much to do. 

I run into Alisa, Ola, Ashley. Do I only know people whose names start with vowels?

I have a frustrating conversation with the checkout person at New Yorkers supermarket. She charges me $1.34 each for yogurts that are 3 for $4. I point out that she owes me 2¢. No! She divides $4 by 3 to prove that they each cost $1.33333333333. Yes, but that's not what you charged me—instead, multiply $1.34 by 3. She looks at the result $4.02 & shrugs. She gives me $10 in singles so I insist on the two pennies I'm owed. She still doesn't believe me but takes them out of a little dish. I think about getting the manager involved, not because of the money but because of the math that she doesn't understand. "Give it up!" I want to say. "I was a math star for Mineola Prep!"

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 

~ Arthur C. Clarke

This reminds me of a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, where Calvin asks his dad how the load limit is determined for a bridge they're crossing. They send heavier & heavier trucks over it till the bridge collapses, his dad explains. Then they weigh the truck & rebuild the bridge. (It is easy enough to find the actual cartoon.)

We've had visitors! Visitors with spray cans! This is just one of the new messages & pictures. There's also "Rivington Skol" & a big red vaguely ominous blob, maybe with eyes? I dig 'em! 

It's cleaner than I've ever seen it up there, too. It used to be I would pick up bottles, syringes & broken bricks, & try to find a ledge that wasn't disgusting to sit on. But it's nice these days. 

The 0.192-acre Peretz Square is no square but a strip, a slice, a sliver. It's across the street from me but in all these years I never knew anything about it. I have just learned that it's not Perez but Peretz, not named after a Puerto Rican luminary, but Polish-born, Yiddish-speaking playright & poet I.L. Peretz, who never lived in the U.S. and I don't think ever even visited. So odd that he is honored here. The French author Georges Perec was a distant relative. 

too clever by half? oy! 

The higher we climb, the farther we see. 

Although I think it says "further," thus not limiting the possibilities to physical views. 

It’s Norwegian Constitution Day, so here’s a flashback to my wonderful trip last summer. 205 years of independance from Sweden.

Helplessly in love, I am. Buster is the purringest cat of all time. He purrs when I pet him, when he thinks I'm about to feed him, while he's eating, when I pass by. It's constant & loud & loving. Amazing to have such a bond with a nonhuman person. 

Our duvet cover is getting weary. Is this flaming basketball a good idea for a replacement? Is the fact that Johnny really likes it in its favor? Why can't I find one that's nice cotton, colorful but sedate, & something we can live with for the next 5 years? Where does one go to look for duvet covers, since this is the best option I've found online, & I'm thinking... No.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. 

~ Will Durant

Ain't that the truth. The more I know, the more I learn how little I know. It's wonderful in a way—it's clear that I will never run out of eye-openers. 

Post-Normality Poem

Am I normal

or

am I performing normality?

Would I have gone in if Rooster's had been in Tulsa or Waycross, Georgia, rather than St. Paul, Minnesota? Or maybe I would have been less likely in the Southwest or South to see what they had? The only person I know in Minnesota who might be called an adventurous eater (she (we) ate dog, or maybe horse, tacos at a bullfight in Mexico City where we were the only gringas)—well, I will have to ask if she's been to Rooster's. I no longer know, I guess, what "adventurous" means. 

On the 11th floor of the brand-new Sister City hotel on the Bowery is their outdoors lounge, the Last Light Bar. I'm not hip enough to know to go here within 2 weeks of opening—my old friend David Morrison built this hotel. The New Museum is dead ahead in this photo. These few blocks—Bowery, Rivington, Stanton—are among the last to get gentrified in the neighborhood. I certainly never imagined a fancy place like this could ever displace the brightly lit bars of yore. It always seemed awful to drink in a bar brighter than the day outside, but that was the norm on the Bowery 40 years ago.