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Walking Compline
I had a theater director in college who began his day walking from his home to the college where he taught. He would pray the alphabet as he walked. He would begin with A and then he would pray for all the students whose first names began with A. By the time he reached his office he had offered up his “lauds” for each student who was studying with him and acting in plays. It seemed to me a creative and active way to pray. It was as if the alphabet was a “rosary” and he was praying one step and one name at a time. I find myself…
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I am in a place where I can see the ocean and the expanse of the sky. Recently I was surprised by the red moon slowly coming up over the horizon. I had forgotten what that splendor would be. Perhaps I have also forgotten what it is like to investigate my life in a wider, not deeper way. When I first moved to New York City, our apartment in Battery Park City looked up at the World Trade Center towers. It was a vertical outlook. Those years we would travel to Santa Fe, New Mexico and enjoy the expanse of the great sky and light. There was a wideness…
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A New Nest
Grove Street on SundayMigration is the movement of people or animals to a new area or country in order to find better living conditions. It is about finding a new home. For me it is change and beginning a new life. Seven years ago I made that change. In 1984 the Mid-Atlantic, for work and a larger future in the publishing field. My boss a native NYER recommended me for a New York publishing sales position with Scribner, Athenaeum and Macmillan Publishing. It catapulted me to a city that I had already fallen in love with while working at the Baltimore Museum of Art. My early days in New York…
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My Wife’s Lovers
At the bottom of this blog is a painting Sotheby’s sold for $826,000. That’s a handsome sum for a cat painting. It was painted in 1891 and the title is “My Wife’s Lovers.” The subtitle was “all cats must go.” I know some of you on this blog are not cat lovers, so perhaps that is your sentiment. However, I am smitten by cats. I have been caring for some outdoor cats for over 1 & 1/2 years. I found them when they were kittens near Fort Greene. Some now have homes and all remain a bit wild. Little Bea, or Beatrice, is the fierce one. Her name is the…
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Alchemy
She-Goat by Pablo Picasso For my 60th birthday one of my dear friends gave me a necklace and a small card that read “Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world.” This is a quote by the formidable philosopher William James. James wrote on pragmatism, epistemology, religion and psychology, but I find this short quote about friendship elegant and meaningful. The pendant of the necklace has two layers. The small top filigree, which is a tree symbol made of gold, has tarnished the piece it rests on, which is silver. It is this alchemy which makes the jewelry so beautiful. Alchemy is a type of change. Personal…
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Emoji with Tears of Joy
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn Last week Oxford Dictionary declared the “face with tears of joy” emoji as the 2015 word of the year. Etymologists are weeping, because emojis are not really words. However they are icons and they have become a new way to express tone over text communication when there is no body and no inflection of voice. For those of you who read my earlier piece, “Achilles Heel,” I am returning to that work with some fresh insights. In that piece I was writing about the experience of having a heel injury and how it makes you vulnerable to other injuries including emotional ones. Recently I was sitting in…
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Writing True
Looking from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice Sooner or later, every writer feels the need to talk about her writing. It is in the bones. I have many shelves of writing books and one thing I have learned from them is that they can’t tell me how to write. Yes, we can learn excellent grammar, great plotting skills and clever metaphors, but in the end, writing comes from both the subconscious (the Jungian side of the brain) and the conscious (the thinking vibrant mind that is daily renewed by our observations, reading and engagement with others). The writer’s mind must sometimes engage itself with darkness as well as light, the…
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The Legacy of Exile
Partition displaced fifteen million people and killed more than a million CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE / LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION / GETTY What does it mean to be in exile from your home with no home to go to? And to have your mother and your father and your sons and daughters and your wife and other family members traveling there beside you? What if you are separated from them, or even lose them on the journey? On our screens at home and in our newspapers we are bearing witness to one of the largest exiles since World War II. I am attuned now to stories of exile and I…
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Crows and Their Agile Thinking
Autumn Garden at Gristmill We are experiencing beautiful autumn days, so we drove from New York City to Gristmill cottage in Dutchess County, where everything is changing colors and textures. The summer garden is over, but Fall is making its colorful splash with a finale of orange nasturtiums, rose-tinged hydrangeas, yellow hollyhocks and purple morning glories. My cat Tabitha, who is almost 15 years old and blind, can smell the catnip growing in plentiful supply throughout the edges of the garden and she is rolling around in a fever. Nothing is really over here; it might be a little suspended, but the temporary lull is a gift since the weeding…
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In My Beginning is My End
Boboli Gardens, Florence, Italy Many years ago one of my colleagues said to me that her mother was completing her life the way in which she had lived it. She was critical of everyone and unhappy. I was younger then and I thought this was a rather startling thing to say. However, I understand it better now. Life is a continuum that once begun can continue in a similar fashion. T.S. Eliot wrote in “Burnt Norton” (“East Coker”) “In my beginning is my end (Line 179).” Things change, houses come and go, civilizations rise and fall, but time past and future and time present are the same. Here it is…
