Sunday, March 3, 2013

SATURDAY-SUNDAY



Saturday 5:00AM
Rising, eating, washing up, writing checks to pay bills, and making a little card for a friend with a perfect white
found-feather woven in.
Then off to the bank for some cash, and the post office to mail things, passing pigeons out searching for crumbs--me,
searching for signs of Spring.
On to the health food store, where I picked up Locanto Kale, and cherry tomatoes--back home to read blogs, answer messages, warm leftovers, and get ready to meet a friend for a live
old time Radio show at Guild Hall, also known as
the Little Church Around the Corner.
 "Two episodes--one from the "Suspense" series entitled "The Wages of Sin" (originally starring Barbara Stanwyck), and another adventure from The Many Lives of Harry Lime!  Yes--there are jewels, a beautiful woman, an Italian nobleman, and well...Harry always has larceny in his heart, and his eye on a quick exit." 

My poor friend got lost in the subway system and never made it.
Exiting out onto 29th Street, a light snow falling, I walked back across town and down Lexington Avenue through
"Little India".
stopped at a favorite ethnic Grocery for Adzuki beans, Tibetan
red rice, and three small eggplants, adding those to my earlier
stash, with plans for some Sunday cooking.
11:00 PM
The bed looked most inviting.
I'm listening to the Audio book version of
Margaret Atwood's 2009 
 "The Year of The Flood" 
(Link to NYT Review)
"Atwood knows how to show us ourselves, but the mirror she holds up to life does more than reflect — it’s like one of those mirrors made with mercury that gives us both a deepening and a distorting effect, allowing both the depths of human nature and its potential mutations. We don’t know how we will evolve, or if we will evolve at all. “The Year of the Flood” isn’t prophecy, but it is eerily possible."
One disc a night on headphones.

Sunday 5AM
Writing while drinking tea.  Pigeons on the windowsill chortling invitations to mate.  On to coffee, hand laundry, cooking,  emails and a bath.  Where does the time go?  I need a short 'power' nap.
At 4 O'clock-I'm out, and on my way to Avenue B for a Poetry reading in the tiny back room of a tiny, tidy bar.
Stepping off the bus, these lay at my feet?!

The streets may not be lined with gold,
but white carnations are definitely sweeter.
 Carmine Street Metrics has been meeting for years, and in various locations around town.

 Today two features, both truly wonderful:

Gerry Cambridge 
is a Scottish poet, essayist, editor and sometime-harmonica player with substantial interest in print design and typography as well as a background in natural history photography. He lived in a caravan in the Ayrshire countryside for over twenty years. His publications include Notes for Lighting a Fire (HappenStance Press, 2012) Aves (Essence Press, 2007; reprinted 2008), a collection of prose poems about wild birds; Madame Fi Fi’s Farewell and Other Poems (Luath, 2003); and ‘Nothing but Heather!’: Scottish Nature in Poems, Photographs and Prose (Luath, 1999; 2nd edition, 2008). Seamus Heaney wrote of his long poem ‘Blue Sky, Green Grass’, winner of The Calum Macdonald Memorial Award in 2004: “it’s a wonderful paean, and allows in so much that the usual poem keeps out—sheer, archaic joy: hymns to light, praise of the creatures, tales of the usual, names of the people and the places”. His poetry is anthologized in The Faber Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2000) edited by Douglas Dunn, A Book of Scottish Verse (2001) and The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2005). Since 1994 Gerry has published and edited The Dark Horse, a transatlantic poetry magazine with an international reputation. 
Kevin Cutrer 
was raised in the American South, lived a while in South America, and now resides in the southernmost neighborhood of Boston. His poems appear in a number of journals, including The Raintown Review, The Dark Horse, The Hudson Review, Cimarron Review, and Descant.
Almost all attendees read at the three open mic sections,
but, since most of you don't know most of them, I'll just say--
Everyone was in top form.
The interspersed photographs are random.
I was not in top form with taking them.
Walked home, ate supper, cleaned up, checked into Face book, constructed this post, and day is done.
11PM
 
 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Posts like these make me envy the cultural, sensual variety you encounter in the city! I am interested in the Scottish poet, in particular. And I love the poem you shared in the next post. It really captures that late-night-being-awake sense.

Peggy said...

Michelle, this was nice. I admire days like these, they are so well-lived. xo

Nancy said...

So nice to see what your days are like! To walk through them with you is enriching to me for my days look so different.