ESCAPE?

STEAMY HOT

NEW YORK CITY

AFTER

A 24 hour full-blown Anxiety Attack

(at least I'm conscious enough to recognize it)

I'm packed and ready to Travel.

*

I Pray for Sleep

*

Hope I hear the Alarm

*

If I post this, I'm Gone for a week

Without Internet

*
However, though I'm posting,
I 'm not Gone.
Anxiety dissipated and was replaced by aching limbs
So,  I rescheduled for July.

I'm inside with the A/C on 77 Energy Saver to cut humidity, much more comfortable after a five hour nap, while outside the storms continue to arrive with severe flood warning for the rest of the night and into tomorrow and Thursday.

  ~*~

SLIDING INTO THE FOURTH

The Moon over Gramercy Park

1AM

Monday June 3rd

St. George church Annex

(shot through the closed doors)

 St George Church

(side door)

~*~

Home

Downloading Photos

Sleep

Waking

Bathing

Letters

Food

~*~

 Noon

Charming "Olive" at my Bank

Where it was announced the ATM was closed because over the weekend there had been accounts compromised.  I stood in line with many others to check my account.  I was safe thank goodness because I had already written and posted the monthly bills checks.

Whew!

A Patriot with one of the bank officers

 Outside on Third Avenue

Fire Escape Painters  working in 90 degree heat

Home Again

Download Photographs

Lunch

Answer emails

A friend visits with an invitation to her place for the Fourth

Nap

6PM

Bus to Eldridge Street late for the weekly Writing Group

(storm threatening)

 Great session--had one of those 'moments' when mind let go and words just took off producing a magical piece of prose--one I will transcribe.

Return Trip
8:45PM

(storm passed)

Scene on the uptown Bus
There are five separate stories in this frame. Only the two men at the far back are relating to each other. Actually, it was charming--both  were bragging about their weight lifting credentials, then they engaged in showing their ability--the thinner one lifts the heftier one and the heftier one was so delighted they did it twice.

9:15PM

First Avenue near 22nd Street

Evening Prayer

~*~

Home

Stuff

Sleep

Wake

July Fourth

https://youtu.be/W_0IhqWd6fE

LINK

Grey Gardens

https://www.google.com/search?q=grey+gardens+trailer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 

WALKING MEDITATION

Reflections
2nd Avenue

"The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it."
-Hermann Hesse-

~*~

The Gandhi Garden
Broadway

“The life that you live in order to photograph it is already, at the outset, a commemoration of itself”
-Italo Calvino-

~*~

Public Prayer
Union Square

"All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt."

-Susan Sontag-

 ~*~


Chess

At least ten tables at the front of the park on the West side of 14th street offer chess games with local 'masters' of the game. Fascinating to watch the relationships develop.

Because we were friends and sometimes loved each other,
perhaps to add one more tie
to the many that already bound us,
we decided to play games of the mind.

We set up a board between us:
equally divided into pieces, values,
and possible moves.
We learned the rules, we swore to respect them,
and the match began.

We’ve been sitting here for centuries, meditating
ferociously
how to deal the one last blow that will finally
annihilate the other one forever.

by Rosario Castellanos
25 May 1925 – 7 August 1974

~*~

Sky

"The sky is the only roof I have over my head and when I'm weary

Mother nature makes me a bed"

-by Haven Gillespie, Seymour Simons, and Richard Whiting-

1926

https://youtu.be/z2ATkurruzQ

~*~

Links

Photography

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/09/16/susan-sontag-on-photography-social-media/

Chess

http://239393044769220898.weebly.com/

NEW YORK NEW YORK

"It's a hell of a town.  The Bronx is up and the Battery's down."

I can be here and in Kathmandu, Nepal.

 I can be thinking about the people and animals shaken

by the worst earthquake since 1934,

 about the stranded climbers and the dead.

(5000 and counting)

 I can know, I can mourn and I can pray.

 https://youtu.be/EbG0ljkBlu8

~*~

I can show up on Monday night,

join my writing group "The Moving Pen" for a final reading.

(screen capture partial of photo by Elizabeth York)

 I can appreciate our brilliant leader Frank Haberle,

drink wine and share cookies with our friends.

 I can lose my thoughts in an audio book

till sleep comes.

 I can sit Zazen with the New York Center for Contemplative Care,

find space for peace.

 I can be surprised by a protest while waiting for the bus home,

and capture some of it on a brief video.

(First a surge of 20 or so young men all in black and many with masks ran past me at break neck speed.  Then one kid was caught and cuffed and the march continued across 23rd Street  toward the West side.  I'd been seeing helicopters circling and eventually, when I got on the bus, ambulances and police vans followed.)

https://youtu.be/cEJ7ooYOETw

I can think about Baltimore, about all the protest marches all the way back to the sixties.  I can mourn for all the people, for all suffering beings, for the planet.

I can pray.