BODY AND SPIRIT

Hoarfrost on Oregon Grape Leaves
(photograph by Dennis Frates)



WEDNESDAY

A restorative session of therapeutic yoga

(http://breathingproject.org)

 A gift for someone special
(purchased on the way home at Salvation Army Thrift)

THURSDAY

Reading glasses
(one pair free after cataract surgery at State University of New York)

Then stopped by the Holiday market in Bryant Park

 'Tis the season to get jolly

(working on it)

 (Gertrude Stein looks a little sad too)
"It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.”

 A huge skating rink has risen in a tent beyond

(free if you have your own skates)

FRIDAY and SATURDAY

Worked on my Holiday card production

+
Wrapping for post packages to friends afar

SUNDAY

Celebrated friend Wendy

 Her birthday party

MONDAY

The new world is reflected on the old world

(Painting for sale at Housing Works on East 23rd St)

Evening at The Creative Center

(Writing with my regular group using the Amherst Method)

One of the prompts was from Haruki Murakami:

 "Inside our heads--at least that's where I imagine it--there's a little room where we store these memories.  A room like stacks in this library.  And to understand the workings of our heart we have to keep on making new reference cards.  We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases.  In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."

I wrote:
On my shelves--skates and skating eights around the rink, that parakeet surprise, the sand in my shoes and the smell of the ocean, the taste of salt water taffy, endless cloud shapes becoming animals, the animals who curled into nooks and crannies of my life.  All there/here in the folds of my brain just a synapse away--a spark ignites a reference--like the phone ringing, like the sting of a bee might just be the key to open that vault and bring the whole catalog out for review.  Suddenly it's 1969; a door opens into a room suffused with the scent of Patchouli.

TUESDAY

Memorial Gathering

Cornelia Street Cafe in the West Village

The art of deceased friend Judith Kalina on display

(We wrote together at 'The Moving Pen" for several years)

 She was also a member of the Zen center

I sat with them Wednesday

 Her photograph is center on the altar

THURSDAY

Yearly Comprehensive Physical

Aids Month is on display at Betances Family Practice

(the clinic that has attended my health care for decades)

 This woman is 99 years old, she was shouting in Spanish while her care giver sat nearby fully engaged on her own cell phone. 

TODAY
Started working on the Sun disk again

Solstice is on my mind

GIFTS

My dear Florida friend sent love, a travel mug

and glasses that turn the view sunny

 Mr and Mrs Crows Holiday card arrived from Australia

CURRENT READING
Lanterns and Lances by James Thurber
(on loan from a friends library)
A collection of 24 essays which begins with "How To Get Through the Day" chiefly advocating avoidance of the news, doorbells, phone rings and the mail till after lunch, through "Hark the Herald Tribune, Times, and All the Other Angels Sing"

to "The Trouble with Man is Man"

wit and wisdom to fill an empty hour
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An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo
(on loan from the Public Library)

(quoting another reader)
"One of the best historical novels I've read this year. As he writes in his author's note, Mr. Morpurgo was inspired by not only historical facts, but by his admiration for the animals he calls 'the noblest and wisest, and most sensitive of all creatures.'  This is a story of kindness and love woven into the travesties of war."
*
The Inspiration Story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7966994.stm 
~*~