SEEING and FEELING

Saturday
August 8th 2020
Homeless man with his dog 'Savannah'
Top hat for donations
2nd Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets

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https://youtu.be/FSQxzNuX0bc

Sunday
8.9.

10:00 a.m.

 I cleaned the apartment after months of neglect.

It was arduous, exhausting.

 At the start, depressing-at the end, encouraging.

5 p.m

Monday
8.10.
5 a.m.
"Manhattan Window View"

12:15 p.m.

19th Street

Menno House

In 1957 our building was purchased by Mennonites—members of a Historic Peace Church—to house conscientious objectors to war while they completed their alternative government service. In the 1980s, house residents formed a local congregation,

 Sweet Phlox

1 p.m.

A neighbor who cuts hair for family and friends, brought her equipment to my apartment and gave me a very nice cut.

(no selfie yet)

In the evening there was a zoom Zendo

Tuesday

8.11

Had an optical migraine attack but it passed after I did a series of Jinshin maneuvers my old friend P.M. taught me decades ago when the first one appeared.

(see Link)

6 p.m.

Walked to the East River

Still blooming

High tide

8:30 p.m.

 Returning home caught this Sunset

Wednesday

8.12

Another Zoom Zendo Session

the photo caught the zendo itself and me at home

News

shopping

bus stop

Home sweet home

Thursday
8.13
Dank Day

Bright spot

Tenderness born of the need for it.

On Aging
by Maya Angelou

When you see me sitting quietly,
Like a sack left on the shelf,
Don’t think I need your chattering.
I’m listening to myself.
Hold! Stop! Don’t pity me!
Hold! Stop your sympathy!
Understanding if you got it,
Otherwise I’ll do without it!
When my bones are stiff and aching,
And my feet won’t climb the stair,
I will only ask one favor:
Don’t bring me no rocking chair.
When you see me walking, stumbling,
Don’t study and get it wrong.
‘Cause tired don’t mean lazy
And every goodbye ain’t gone.
I’m the same person I was back then,
A little less hair, a little less chin,
A lot less lungs and much less wind.
But ain’t I lucky I can still breathe in.

Friday

8.14

At any age dear Friends

https://youtu.be/G2K-_bkLCrE

links

Migraine

https://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/ocular-migraine.htm

Menno House

https://mennohouse.org/

CARE

Tea Tag

~*~

Haircut
With the always caring and talented Helen Chen
Mondays only
 Haircutters International
320 East 14th Street
Between 1st and 2nd Avenues
Manhattan NY 

I have a Troll called Anonymous
Marked she/he as 'spam' of course, recognizing a faulty sentence construction and inappropriate comment, but unlike my g-mail spam, blogger doesn't remember and automatically throw she/he into spam the next time she/he appears. Blogger has no Spam memory so I'm offered the comment each time for decision. I set myself up for this somehow and tend to think that all anonymous visitors are trolls so will automatically not publish. I've got 'approval' set so I'll always have the option to accept or reject, but it bothers me that someone is out there reading me and trying to join in. Foolish notion, but true. Before they appeared, I felt safe talking here. Another foolish notion I suppose.

Spring Weather continues it's roller coaster stops and starts from warm to cold and sunny to overcast.
One more factor of life on earth that can not be controlled, like the inevitable deterioration of light-bulbs and plumbing, enamel and electrical appliances and the proliferation  of dust, rust and mold.

 (Hot-dog rolls left too long in Warmth)

~*~

Gifts and Accumulations
(Meet the bears and Bunnies sans 'Teddy" who'se being washed)

I think about having an Art Gallery and a Second-hand Store. I'll name the first "OthersArt" where I'll display only the art given to or purchased by me over the years-because what will happen to it when I'm gone? The latter, "The Used to Be" where I'll offer all the items of clothing, jewelry, Cds videos and books that occupy space here but are never used and there will be a suggested price on each item in both venues, but I will accept any reasonable payment or no payment at all if anyone wants the item terribly. Now I know that the leftovers of fifty years occupancy in these rooms is a responsibility hard to bear, I think I'll do well in both shops. Yes, though not smart, I think I've got to take care of their future and since the rules for disposal in place for Manhattan tenants about how and where they may relieve themselves of their stuff are complex and inconvenient to the max. I'm older and wiser, but no longer as able to do the work it would take to accomplish disbursal correctly. Three flights down the stairs and another to the street have become taxing. I do no financial transactions on the web so no sales on line are possible.
Just saying.
I'm resigned to the possibility that the lords of land will have to rent one of those big dumpster containers and clear the remnants themselves.
(Opera Thrift Window)

It can't just be my imagination that the tragedies of our world seem to multiply by the millisecond. and that the horrible outweighs the lovely. Perhaps I just know too much thanks to the Internet and broadcast news. No wonder Zen practice is so useful. Occasionally one reaches that desired silence when what yogis call the 'monkey-mind', swinging wildly from branch to branch and story to story, stops.
(gift from Patricia Wallace Jones)

~*~

Tuesday
9 a.m. Looking East

Bright blue, clear and mildly cold day

Still devouring M.S Merwin who died recently-wishing I'd known him.
Written on September 17, 2001 and published in The New Yorker,
October 8, 2001

To The Words

When it happens you are not there

O you beyond numbers
beyond recollection
passed on from breath to breath
given again
from day to day from age
to age
charged with knowledge
knowing nothing

indifferent elders
indispensable and sleepless

keepers of our names
before ever we came
to be called by them

you that were
formed to begin with
you that were cried out
you that were spoken
to begin with
to say what could not be said

ancient precious
and helpless ones

say it
~*~


LINKS

W.S Merwin reads "Rain light"
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/w-s-merwin-reads-rain-light

The Merwin Conservancy
  https://merwinconservancy.org/

Rememberences
https://merwinconservancy.org/2019/03/remembering-william-stanley-merwin-1927-2019/

TENTATIVE EMERGENCE

Dragged the old gals bones down three flights and around several blocks

Spring is thawing though the temperature is frigid

 A trip to the market for cream of rice and the makings for beef stew

 To ProHealth for soluble electrolytes with Vitamin C

Sunlight improves everything.

Then, after dropping the packages off, I got a haircut!

A month of neglect cut away.

Exhausted three hour nap.

Many doctors appointments scheduled for the rest of March.--Looking forward to April

Remember When nights at the White House were like this?

https://youtu.be/kIMpbQuCAHw

or this

https://youtu.be/iv4RuGP2GEk

 HISTORY
http://mscomfortzone.blogspot.com/2017/03/life-at-sick.html
http://mscomfortzone.blogspot.com/2017/03/sick.html

WEATHER FELLED

All week long, although I made it to the Moving Pen group on Monday, and to Marvin's gentle yoga Thursday where I hardly managed 'child pose', but it helped just to move.

I also got to the library for a new audio book:
"The Daughter of Time" by Josephine Tey,
and the post to mail valentines to three dear friends

You can tell I'm muddled because I'm repeating myself (already posted this)
Today, I pulled myself together and, despite frigid temperatures,
hurried the few blocks to my Italian barber, Andy, for a hair cut and some tender care.  It works every time.

I've basically spent the week in bed sleeping my life away, and I'm about to have some wicked home made mushroom soup and fall back under the quilt, super grateful to have a home, and a quilt to retreat to.
~*~
Valentine's Day
Sonnet XLIII by Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, 
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain 
Under my head till morning; but the rain 
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh 
Upon the glass and listen for reply, 
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain 
For unremembered lads that not again 
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. 
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree, 
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, 
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: 
I cannot say what loves have come and gone, 
I only know that summer sang in me 
A little while, that in me sings no more.

*

SEPTEMBER 1,2,3,4,5,and 6

Monday 
Hot-Humid

Preparation:

 Pull apart the pile that means to end up as a file

Spread it out over the floor, chairs, and tables
Read--eliminate--Read--choose--Read selects out loud.  Choose a short story too. Pop a soluble vitamin B12, and show up at the venue early

Rose Bernal read two new short poems,
Su Polo read "The Artist" by Jefferson Davies and Steve Bloom, the first feature, read several of his poems: 
(LINK)

I sang unaccompanied verses of "Hard Times" by Stephen Foster

(I like these girls doing it)

Then read three of my poems.  Here's one:

Life Itself

There's always war somewhere -
in the the body politic, or that body there.
Something wants what some one, or some thing
has possession of. That has a truthful ring.

The peace of a full belly, or a conquered hill,
of someone bending to an others will,
or death, when pulse ceases to insist,
is all the peace there is - the ultimate kiss.

This soil on which we play
accomplishing our tangled lay
worms will oh too soon aerate.
Here is every things fate.
What's green now, growing above
the bounds of seed, is living love.

A dove calling to its mate,
hungry barn cats coming late
for benefactors generous plate,
turn to where a bird is sure to sate
hunger. Each day rises from night
to the light, always to the light.

Desire, the hunt, and all this war,
the what-we-do till we are no more,
till we are no more than memory
absorbed into a vaster sea. 
Our need - a vector,
a bees thirst for nectar.

We, the least of all creations,
with our avarice, codes, and nations,
are collectively a single temporary guest,
no different than the rest,
except perhaps for conscience,
and unavoidable consequence.
*
Then a short story--the one about compassion for the New Years Rat.  I wrote several animal related stories for this paper.  Someday, when I figure out how to do pages and find the time (or take it)...but, like the file that needs to be...


Tuesday
Hot + nothing much = Nothing much + hot


Wednesday
Paying bills by snail mail, I stand and wait at the post office

  Zen sitting at 6 o'clock 
Although my spine was straight, I fell asleep three times! 
Borrowed a book and headed home

Passed several homeless people bedded down in doorways, and watched a young man photograph one sleeping.  He was the only one who stopped. Then noticed the contrast of a woman, having stepped into the street, pausing to search for her cell phone, and a man with one deformed leg struggling to make it across the street in time...the start of a short story:

She finds her phone and takes a few steps.  The light changes. Traffic zooms ahead. They're suddenly stranded right next to each other surrounded by cars.  His name?-Joseph Destino. Hers?-Mary Anne Carteret.  There they are under a hot sun burning through the evening haze, briefly trapped by circumstance.  He drops his cane. She picks it up.  Their eyes meet.  She thinks she knows him from somewhere.  But where?  When?
(flash fiction-to be continued)
*
Kept walking...
Ominous Image painted on a door further on

Kept walking...

Performers in full body leotards buying hot dogs and posing happily

~*~

Thursday
Pink sky at night-sailors delight
Pink sky in the morning-sailors take warning

Art opening

"Transitions"
by Karen Green Recor

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"The Door Closed and Open"
by Arnold Wechsler

*

*
Discs $150 each

*

Three sketchbooks for sale

*

*

Film crew
doing it for art history
.
Photographers
snapping stills 

 Arnold
bearing witness to the legend he has become:
LINK

Gallery folks cutting up

After...To the high line
with another art veteran

A nice breeze greets us

Evidence of Summer gone to seed

A variable feast for birds

Some last blooms

The intoxicating scent of late flowering trees

 ~*~
Friday
To the Public Theater

Cleopatra's Needle is being repaired

Hot and hazy still

"A Winter's Tale"
(surreptitious shakey snapshot before the show)

It was BIG fun---foot stomping, clapping along and laughing out loud fun. Great singers and performers, stunts and comedy, with appearances by Sesame street puppets, NYC Ballet, Dance Brazil, Shin bone alley stilt band, Staten Island Lions, NYC Bhangra dance company, and Rosie's Theater kids.  +  over 200 New yorkers as chorus and extras for crowd scenes!  Spectacular adaptation, harks back to days of the first "Hair", and every ticket FREE!
Read about it:
LINK
(The ghost of me with my beautiful friend)

 Strolled back through the park in the dark  accompanied by crickets, cicadas and katydids to catch the Fifth Avenue bus home

~*~
Saturday
Haircut

Awaiting the storm while watching channel thirteen
"No Way Out"
Roger Ebert gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, calling it
"truly labyrinthine and ingenious."
~*~