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It’s beginning…
… to feel a lot like Christmas!
- This morning, Roxy and I crunched across frozen grass, and our breath spiraled up and out into the frigid air.
- Right now, I’m loading hundreds of holiday songs onto my iPod so I can jolly up the housework on today’s to-do list.
- Tonight, Cab and I will ricochet between three (!) holiday events.
- Oh, and for the first time, I decided to deck the Rooftop!
Let the merry madness begin!
Back in time on Fifth
Was momentarily a kid again last night as I rode in the back of a cab that rocketed down Fifth Avenue. Saw a worker on a ladder adjusting strings of white lights outside Cartier. And sheets draped over the windows at Lord & Taylor, so the designing elves can render their annual spectacle in secret. And my old pals Patience and Fortitude standing stony watch over the books. And Rockefeller Center awaiting its mighty spruce. It’s coming, sure as anything. Christmas in New York. And it melts away the years like rock salt on snowy asphalt.
Good and plenty
Wrapping up a peaceful day of:
– Hiking beside a lake carved deep by glaciers
and leaves leached yellow by November.
and
-- Gorging on another gastronomical treat
whose season has come to an end.
and
– Enjoying the beauty that’s ripe for the taking
right here…
under my nose…
… all the time.
Surprises
Reflecting this cold October morning on how life turns.
When I began last week in the emergency room, sliding feet-first into the whirring doughnut hole of a CT-scan machine, I had no inkling that six days later I’d be chopping, sauteing, zesting, sprinkling, simmering, roasting and baking the day away.
The farmers market bounty that unexpectedly appeared yesterday at our door, in a thoughtful friend’s cloth bag, was a welcome surprise. Less so, the infection that waylaid me.
I choose to focus on the unanticipated day spent in the kitchen. It sure tasted better than anything they gave me in the ER.
Hauntings
Maybe it’s the proximity of all souls
day.
Or the way the wind bends the limbs,
and the chill pulls my hands
up into my cuffs.
Could be the late October sun as it lights up
leaf veins like an X-ray.
But I’m haunted today
by ghosts, not yet passed
– just lost
Talkin’ about a revolution
An electrical contractor arrived here early this morning to assess our house’s ability to accommodate a charging station for the Nissan Leaf my wife ordered more than a year ago. For many months now, Cabrina has researched and proselytized and unleashed an avalanche of supporting data in the direction of anyone foolish enough to express a sliver of interest or skepticism. She has become the starry-eyed poster child for electric car technology.
I, meanwhile, have stood off to the side, wringing my hands over the price tag. Throwing off the shackles of oil dependence doesn’t come cheap, and we’ve never had less money than we do right now. Wouldn’t it make more sense, I quietly reasoned, for somebody on more solid financial ground to serve as this particular movement’s vanguard?
Well, yeah, but.
Cabrina’s enthusiasm and optimism have been constant and magnetic. She’s like Ralphie dreaming of his Red Rider rifle, eyes all aglitter. And our current money woes are not her doing — they’re mine. But even more than that, Cabrina seems to understand that true revolution doesn’t foment when it’s affordable or convenient. It comes when forces of change reach a critical mass. And when a few brave and maybe even foolish pioneers step forward.
As the contractor handed Cabrina a yellow carbon sheet with the “approved” box checked, her mile-wide grin made my chest warm. And I suddenly thought of an interview I did years ago with historian David McCullough, in which he talked about the ragtag band of colonists who waged the American Revolution.
They were young and they were learning as they went along. None of them had ever fomented revolution before. ~ David McCullough
And I thought, too, about a comedy bit The Daily Show recently did on the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, in which John Oliver said the message would be more meaningful if the protesters looked less like tattooed, dread-locked, hackysack-kicking circus freaks and more like middle-of-the-road Americans. Unfortunately, the “normal” people were all at home watching the Jets game.
Well, not ALL the normal people. Not my wife, whose idealism, though impractical, is inspiring and the stuff that change is made of. She’s a modern-day pioneer, albiet one who’ll soon be parking a clown car in our driveway.
Worthy of the pause? Maybe not
I haven’t posted here since June, and it gnaws at me, this stagnation. But it’s a problem that feeds itself. Because, see, the longer I dither about what to write about, the more pressure I feel to post something worthy of the pause. Something momentous, something Homeric. So instead, I write nothing.
But this morning, as four kitten feet thump overhead and a load of whites tumble in the dryer, I surrender to the dimensions of my own small epic. Sure, it’s small, this narrow story of domesticity and doubt. But it’s mine. So I guess I’ll see ya back here tomorrow.
“A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.” ~ Edwin Hubbell Chapin
Graduation Eve
Well, believe it or not, I graduate tomorrow from the fiction program. Where did two years go? Rest assured, I’ll be musing about the journey here soon. But in the meantime, I splurged and bought myself a $1.29 graduation present. Seems fitting, on lots of levels.
Posted in career transition, fiction, Uncategorized, writing
