A January evening

It was too cold to do anything out of doors, the other basic chores - laundry, kitchen counters, wastebaskets, recycling - all were done. All that was left was the pile of  To-Be-Read on the desk. Well, that and about ten thousand other little things I have been avoiding, for example, the music CDs look like they were dropped on to the floor and thrown back up onto the shelves. They cry out for organizing (and dusting). There's a pile of photos I was supposed to Scan Next sometime before Christmas and there are four speakers on those CD shelves and only two are hooked up. I could go on.

I opted for the Read pile because I can scan a piece of paper quickly and file it or toss it. That went well for about three pieces of paper, a business card for a plumber -saved in the Contacts list, a coupon from Domino's -out,out, do not rest your eyes upon such, and a letter from the Co-op detailing the latest maintanence increase, filed. Then I picked up last year's calendar which I had laid on the Read pile because I wanted to have one more look at the pictures. The works are by Govinder, an artist about whom I know nothing except that I am drawn to the lines and whimsy in the art, the Big Blue Cat I described in this blog a few weeks ago, there's a skinny oddly shaped dog named Tumble Down Dick and more cats. Square, boxy cats in red, yellow and black, a cat (I think) named Ben with kind of a scaly snakelike patch of fur, the huge Mr. BIG and finally a terrific horse named Sundance. I like them all.

Three times I tried to throw the calendar away. Twice it wouldn't fit in the overstuffed basket by my desk and it ended up on desk's  corner, the third time I was headed for the trash chute outside my door when I looked up at the beam in my living room. It was a blank slate waiting.

I had thought about putting something on that beam over  the years I've lived here, I just never really thought about it, if you know what I mean and here, suddenly, was the answer to a question barely asked. I got the scissors, I got the silver push pins, I got the stepstool. I cut up the calendar month by month. The strange thing was then that I saw some of the art as if I had never seen it before. Here was a rabbit, Pippin. And what may be an elephant and some more horses which up until I looked again had seemed to me to be some kind of worms dancing. Nope, horses. Okay.

The skinny dog went in the middle and I added each page to each side until the space was filled with color and shapes, scaly and furry and blue. The only piece which didn't fit was the one of the Doves of Peace. I have that up elsewhere where I can get a better look at it. 

Then I added a Klimt poster which had been standing in a corner of my bedroom for about four months waiting for me to decide if I wanted to put new glass over it. No glass. 

So here is the finished look:

That's it. No big idea here. Or maybe there is. I kept thinking that whenever I see blank spaces in my life, it's good to fill them with inspiration. 

More, not much more, but more @ http://atthewindow.blogspot.com/

Filling out forms and waiting and waiting annnnn...d waiting.

Quit the gym just but stopped @ the Gap to get some smaller jeans. Why isn't the marathon tomorrow?

Starting a new blog today

Transitional Species.
The Search for my 2,892ND life.

In Front of the Synagogue Steps - 23rd Street

He, or she, was dead. You could tell and you couldn't tell. You could tell that there had been a fall of some kind, but you couldn't tell if the fallen one was a man or a woman. Sometimes, people sleeping on the sidewalk look dead at first glance, then you see an eye flicker or some other sign, a sound, a twitch of a foot and you know they are just sleeping. Can you say that someone sleeping on the street is just sleeping? They always seem to me to be doing something more because of the depth of the exhaustion it must take to lie down with all the people streaming by, the traffic noise and the chances you've have to be taking by shutting your eyes.

This person was not sleeping. You could tell that whoever this body, this person, this fallen one, used to be was gone, was dead, by the way the torso and the arms twisted around each other. The left arm had gotten trapped behind the back and had been pushed up so high it looked to be in the position that some other arm possessor would be yelling "Uncle'', while the left leg was arched in a hookslide configuration for sliding into home plate. The right arm was flung up over the face while the back of the head was covered by some kind of scarf or silk cap. The rest of the frame was covered by a long coat and khakis. There were really big, oversized, hiking boots on the feet. They looked pretty new and I wondered to myself if, not being used to them, he, or she, no telling yet, had tripped over them and fallen too too hard.

I wondered how many times you have to fall before you fall one too many times.

A woman on her cellphone was standing near the synagogue doorway talking earnestly to somebody and getting placed on hold. Her male companion with absolutely nothing to do kept trying to make eye contact with her to no avail.

We heard a siren and the woman looked down 23rd Street towards the East and said something first to her companion and then into the phone. The troops of pedestrians kept up their march towards home, talking to each other or, if alone, trudging resolutely onward while lugging their various bags of groceries, dry cleaning or books. The man made his way to the curb and looked down the street.

I looked at the person's left hand, it was worn and worn out. The siren got louder. An ambulance appeared a couple of hundred feet down the street coming our way but in the lane across the street. The three of us looked at it as it roared by and made a left on the avenue. The man and the woman looked at each other as she spoke again into the cellphone.

I was late. I needed to go. I needed to get in amongst all the others hauling their stuff to wherever they were going. I took two steps. The woman was nodding at the man and making a sign, waving her arm, and talking. He was looking at her as if she were someone he had never met. We heard another siren.

I walked to the curb and then out onto the street. I could see the ambulance way down the street. Again from the East. I took another step into traffic and raised my arm in the classic taxi-hailing form all New Yorkers know. It occurred to me that, if I was standing on one foot, both I and the fallen one would be holding the same yoga pose. Watching out for any traffic, especially any cabs which I did not want to think I was hailing them, I waved at the westward lanes until I caught the eye of the ambulance driver. He pulled over and left the lights and blinkers on.

It didn't take long. There were two medics. They had the stretcher next to the body in about a minute. They checked for the nonexistent vitals, murmured something to the woman, nodded to the man, nodded to each other and lifted the body, the person, off the sidewalk and onto the stretcher. Some people slowed but did not stop. Three or four quick steps and everything was loaded up, the ambulance doors shut tight and off they went. Lights on but no siren.

I headed home. We are all just a fall apart, I said to myself. It didn't occur to me until I sat down to write this that I never did see if the person lying twisted up near the synagogue steps was a man or a woman. I guess it doesn't matter now, does it? Not to me or you, but don't you hope, I do, that it matters to someone?

Isn't that odd? I'm hoping for someone to be in grief, that's a really odd thing to wish on anyone, but I'm wishing, I'm hoping, that there will be someone to say some small farewell to this fallen one before he or she gets taken out into the depths of the Queens cemeteries and is gone out of all existence.

I'll say something now just in case there's no one else:

Goodbye, we didn't get to know you.

Rest now, rest in peace forever.

Fare well wherever the Universe takes you.
All of us are right behind you.
Amen.

Direct Flights to Canada Still Available

These ladies and gentlemen were making excellent speed up the Hudson yesterday morning.

A video for me.

You've got to see this:

(I know this is a meme. This whole blog is a meme, right?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQFrzYi7ss

Songs I Used to know

SOMEONE, just a few days ago, asked how much preparation was done before getting up on stage to play a song or three or four? Found, the evening after the question was asked, is this small piece of evidence from the archives. What it is, as any good coffeehouse musicologist could tell
you, is a big cheatsheet-playlist-songchart from about 1968.

Yes.

Kum by yah is on there.

Run of Bad Luck

As I write this I am supposed to be finishing a 15K that I didn't get to start. I didn't get to start it because A) I left the apartment a little late but mostly B) the A train didn't show up for fifteen minutes and then was a local (meaning it stops at every station) and C) when we got to 125th Street, we didn't move for another twenty minutes meaning that by the time it got to 72nd Street, which is where I was going to get off to run to the race start, the race had already been started for about twenty minutes. So

I went into the park/
I took these two pictures.
and I got back on the train (which by the way SAILED it's way North without incident.




Look !!! It's Spring.
I'm going to go run this afternoon. Right now I need breakfast and a nap.

There is something exciting, magical, wondrous about a sudden Spring snow, especially since I have been counting the minutes until the new season arrives.

My plan for today was to go to the park about noon and run the Big Loop (six miles) and pick up my number for Sunday's race. I haven't changed the plan, but I am going to have to get my tights back down from the top shelf of the closet where I triumphantly and prematurely placed them last Sunday.

And where are my gloves?

Joe(Never jump ahead of Nature)