DARK and LIGHT

September 1st to 6th 2019

(Much already published on Face book. Enlarge any shot with double click)

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday
No Labor day events for me. I cooked, cleaned, puttered, prepped bills and got them, plus three packages to the post as soon as it reopened.

Wednesday
waiting for the bus

*

Meditation at the Zendo

Looking West

All I'm thinking about, other than the rougher attributes of aging and the woeful state of the planet, is apology to several members of my Zendo for how bossy I became as they tried to help with clean up last night and also thanks for pointing it out to one who did so cleverly with humor in parting. I could go on in historical apologies, but that would be too boring to share, so I won't. Every human encounter is a balancing act when anxiety is at the helm. My little rowboat is inadequate to contain it's cargo today.

 ~*~

Thursday
Stormy

Then bright

They're Back

Kids in the schoolyard below. Their high squeals and stout shouts accompany my thoughts of the past while reading a poet who turned his 100th corner in March this year:

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “I Am Waiting” from A Coney Island of the Mind. Copyright © 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Night Walk

Vintage Thrift Window on Third Avenue

A happy couple at Tivoli 22nd on Third Avenue

A Man Sleeping on 21st Street

~*~

Friday
Workers thudded and drilled in the apartment above me all day till 6 p.m. I'd been plugged in to a CD mystery that removed me from my immediate surround until it got brutal in the last three chapters, turned super ugly and I abandoned it. After a late afternoons downpour of rain, high wind as I paid brief attention to the dire world news. Took a brisk walk around the block to clear my head, came home cold and had supper. Since 8 p.m. the girl below has been birthday partying hearty. The imposition of sharp, squealing screams, repetitive, annoying 'music' inescapable. It's still playing. I'm tired and I wish i were elsewhere. I hate that I may have to phone a noise complaint. Hoping someone else shuts them down first. It's just been that sort of Friday friends.
SATURDAY 12:23 a.m. UPDATE..SILENCE

I'd been listening to this audio book. It was fine till the last several chapters turned truly ugly violent and I abandoned it.

~*~

Saturday
Morning
Front Window View

 Noon

 3 p.m.
Third Avenue at 23rd Street
(Good Omen)

4 p.m
Central Park at 92nd Street

 The Jewish Museum
Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street
Leonard Cohen
Three floors

 Several Wonderful films
and
Spent twenty minutes in this room hung with microphones and piping "Halleluja" as we all sang, or hummed along in spontaneous chorus.
What a lift. It was ecstatic.
.
I didn't want to be intrusive so took only this shot.
 Then wandered into the collections awestruck
again, only one shot.


Walking to the bus I noted
1067 Fifth Avenue
Stone Carvings

 detail

 detail

The End