Either paused or hesitating

 Merry Christmas! Well, Christmas is over, as is the blizzard that showered New York City with 20 inches of snow. I love snowstorms: the wind, the snow whipping around in every direction, the whiteness which simplifies the landscape. At times like these I like to read Robert Frost, who seems to have written quite a number of poems about winter. I like to imagine that I am in an open horse-drawn carriage, clippity-clopping my way though some snowy woods or other, everything else in the world either paused or hesitating.

I find that the passage of time is like going up a mountain and then going down the other side. I don't mean that in the cliched sense of being 'over the hill'. I mean, as one ascends, supplies diminish. As fatigue sets in and the vistas open up, one is less and less willing to carry or even consider the unnecessary. As the air gets thinner, one breathes more and speaks less, and what I have found is that I don't even care for the unexpressed thoughts swirling around. There is so much that can and should be dropped. Beyond acknowledging mistakes and pain, taking action, and making whatever amends one can - what else can one do?

In November I surprised myself by allowing, and indeed facilitating the end of an old friendship. I realized that despite honest attempts from both sides, the friendship could not escape a particular dynamic which the other person found expedient, but which I had no interest in repeating. The moment came and I let it go. It felt completely correct.  Finally I see that knowing what you want (or don't want) makes the course of action very clear, and limits regret to misgivings over poor execution. Goodbye, friend.

This morning we had a pink and gold sunrise with sheets of gray, slow moving clouds and birds hurling themselves happily in every direction. It was wonderful having nowhere in particular to be, nowhere is particular to go.

Photo: Mine, Gapstow Bridge,Central Park NYC

A show of hands

It seems I have been presented with the opportunity to fulfill one of the 'wishes' on my Rocket List.

The Rocket List is my version of the not-as-cooly-named Bucket List : things to do before one expires.

On my very quickly trumped-up list, I had mentioned that I'd like to see what it would be like to go a day without one of the five senses, and I had tacked speech onto the sense of taste because it was in the neighborhood.

So - here I am with a bout of laryngitis which has followed on the heels of a nasty cold that came down on me the day after Thanksgiving. I literally couldn't speak if I wanted to - and when I try, I sound like a sea lion. I have spent this day (apart from emitting the occasional bark) in complete silence.Tomorrow, I am supposed to resume my grand jury duty.

I was randomly selected as the deputy secretary of the panel by the court officer. The next day, the secretary (who volunteered for the post) didn't show up, and the day after that, seeing what was involved, she asked me to continue sitting in. Later, with a wave of her hand said to me 'You can have it'. 

Since then, my note-taking skills have seen some serious action. There are twenty-three of us on the panel. As acting secretary, I receive the dockets from the Assistant District Attorney and log in several pertinent bits of information: the name(s) of the accused and the names of any witnesses due to testify; the docket number, the names of the ADA and the court stenographer, the list of charges and the disposition of the case based on the Grand Jury vote.

@ Joyce Kilmer Park, near the Supreme Court

Everyone is required to take their own notes, but I seemed to be the only one able to get down the entire penal code definitions word for word as given by the ADA when charging us with the vote. They recite the code the way a seasoned Catholic recites the 'Hail Mary'. If you don't already know it - good luck picking it up from what you hear. I suggested that each ADA supply a typewritten copy of the Penal Code definitions based on the charges they plan to bring.  Of course I only suggested this to the other grand jurors, after which they took to calling me the Secretary General.

When we get charged with the vote, the ADA and the Steno leave the room and everyone looks at me like I'm Moses with the tablets. So I read back the code:

"Penal Code 265.03 sub (1) sub (b): criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. A person is guilty of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree when

1) with intent to use the same unlawfully against another, such person

 b) possesses a loaded firearm"

People get a sense of where their gut is based on the evidence heard, and we take the vote whether to indict or dismiss.

Tomorrow will be interesting. I plan to continue my duties, but will hand off the reading of the charges to the original secretary. I can then focus more on reading back my own case notes and participating in the show of hands.

Meanwhile, back on the island...

@ Lapeyrouse Cemetery

My family recently made the trip to Trinidad for my husband's grandmother's funeral - as much for that event as for some face time for my son and my father who have not seen each other in person in about 18 months. It was a short trip, just four days. 

  

I was also able to visit and lay flowers at my grandfather's grave which is located in a very small unkempt cemetery in Petit Valley. I tugged futilely at the tough grass - unable to get even one tuft out with my hands despite all the rain that had fallen (and was still falling) that day.I needed a hoe and an afternoon, and I had neither. I put the flowers anyway - I bought and arranged them myself: pink, white and red ginger lilies; red, pink and white anthurium lilies and Andromeda heliconias. I arranged them in a cut out 2-liter soda bottle full of water. They are good hardy blooms and should have lasted at least a week - if no one removed them.

 On the way home from the cemetery I passed a high-school friend walking along the road. I backed up and stopped to talk to her. She was just finishing up her chemotherapy for a 'tiny lump' which she'd had removed. She was bald but she was bright and optimistic about the future.I had last seen her in 2001 at our high school reunion.

We had one beach day which was rained out - but still lots of fun, and (I thought) beautiful. The rainy season tends to feature days with bright sunny mornings followed by mid-day showers and wild-card afternoons. On our beach day, the afternoon never cleared up.

We made up for that with two lovely mornings of breakfast on the water at one of several boatyards in Chaguramas.

On the way home from breakfast, we passed by these church ruins, (St Chad's Church), a favorite spot of mine.

We rounded out the four days with the purchase of these two paintings.The artist was set up right next to the lady selling flowers by the side of the road. So,I bought my grandfather's flowers and some art in one roadside stop.

Crossing

Crossing 

they say what you can't change you ought to embrace:
the river's run takes it into the sea,
its waters grow murky with reverse.
they say what you can't change you ought to embrace -
dissipating itself in a delta of loess,
a verdant swath marks where it disagreed.
they say what you can't change you ought to embrace,
the river's run takes it into the sea.


-Lorraine Robain

Photo - AMVETS Memorial Bridge, New Croton Reservoir, Taconic Parkway, New York
September 2010

High Human Drama

Barbara, her grandson and great-grandson

At just about the time that Edna Kiplagat of Kenya was striding over the finish line to become the women's 2010 winner of the New York City Marathon, Barbara Rodriguez was drawing her last breath in Trinidad. Edison Pena, one of the rescued Chilean miners who was known as 'the runner', was already down to a walk, and Haile Gebrselassie, arguably the world's best distance runner, had pulled up lame on the down ramp of the 59th street bridge, never hitting First Avenue. He shocked everyone by retiring from running on the spot. I had been transfixed by the marathon all morning. In fact, I am transfixed by the marathon every year. It's high human drama because there is nothing in play (or at work) but the human.

Ma (as we call her) had fallen and broken her femur two weeks before. An avalanche of complications quickly followed until she succumbed on Sunday. She was 94. My own paternal grandfather had passed in February of this year, also at age 94. We know that we've had them for a long time, and we know that the time has come for them to go. That's the last of the grandparents for my husband and myself. The other six are long gone; two of them - we never even knew. My son was fortunate to have had great-grandparents for 12 years.

I like being around elderly people. I actually spent this morning with my eighty year old neighbor on the right (the one with the kick-ass vegetable garden). They have distilled their lives down to the essentials. They wash and wear the same pieces of clothing over and over, they walk reverently to the cupboard to fetch a teacup, in fact there is nothing that they do that isn't a prayer. You feel precious and humble just being around them - whether that is due to the esteem of their age and experience or the gratitude that you feel for still being on the (relative) side of youth.

At midnight, on December 31st 2009, I took part in the New York Road Runners annual 4 mile New Years Eve Run. I did a brisk walk which took me about 90 minutes. Maybe I will do it again this year.

Photo: Easter 2007, Trinidad

Afternoon at the zoo

                                
                                                                  

click on photos to enlarge

Chinese Teacup

Baby

teeth, a Chinese

porcelain teacup, sit

one inside the other 
on the shelf with

books.


                       






Photo: mine 11/05/10

Webcam the World

Webcam the World

  by Heather McHugh

Get all of it. Set up the shots

at every angle; run them online

24/7. Get beautiful stuff (like

scenery and greenery and style)

and get the ugliness ( like cruelty

and quackery and rue). There's nothing

unastonishing - but get that too. We have

to save it all, now that we can, and while.

Do close-ups with electron microscopes

and vaster pans with planetcams.

It may be getting close

to our last chance -

how many

millipedes or elephants are left?

How many minutes for mind-blinded men?

Use every lens you can- get Dubliners

in fisticuffs, the last Beijinger with

an abacus, the boy in Addis Ababa who feeds

the starving dog. And don't forget the cows

in neck-irons, when barns begin

to burn. The rollickers at clubs

the frolickers at forage - take it all,

the space you need: it's curved. Let

mileage be footage, let years be light. Get

goggles for the hermitage, and shades for whorage.

Don't be boggled by totality: we're here to save the world without exception. It will serve

as its own storage.

(from 'Upgraded to Serious')

 Photo: mine, Bryant Park, NYC Sept 2010

Whoah boy!

Paul Revere

I had not been looking forward to my birthday this year and had spent the previous few weeks rehearsing the new number, trying it on for size, doubling it to see what number it was half of, and generally marveling at how quickly the previous year had passed.

I spent my birthday in Boston with my mother, two brothers, my husband and son. My son was going to be without his PlayStation for 72 hours and I was going to age, so to fortify ourselves we planned to attend Sunday mass at St John the Evangelist Church in Cambridge.

As we stood on the sidewalk after the service, I made some glum comment about my age. My husband piped up: "What's the hurry?" Apparently, I had so conditioned myself to the new number that by the time my birthday hit, I automatically added one more year.  I didn't know whether to be relieved that I hadn't 'aged', or to become concerned that I was able to dupe myself so well. But we all did the appropriate thing - which was to laugh.

My brother, the former Bostonian

Mother, brothers, son - Boston.

After church we took a walk along the Freedom Trail in historic North Boston. We started at the building ( now a pub) where John Hancock and Samuel Adams plotted the revolution. We then moved on to the spot where Crispus Attucks, former slave, became the first casualty of the Boston massacre marking the beginning of the Revolutionary War. We followed the trail all the way through the Italian quarter to the Old North Church where Paul Revere had instructed that a lantern be held up in the church belfry: one if the British were coming by land, and two if by sea (the Charles River).

We spent two nights in a hotel on the Cambridge bank of the Charles and watched the four-man sculls going upriver on the cold mornings in preparation for the Head of the Charles Regatta. On the third evening we made the drive back into New York City. I was one year older, and my son was conversing again. It was (at least) a two lantern moment.

Husband and son

Birthplace of the Revolution

Photos: Boston, October 15-17, 2010

  

Not Much Today

  There isn't much I have to say -

these pictures were a week ago, 

but could as well have been today.

Screeching seagulls hanging low

a cool wind sweeps across the bay,

these pictures were a week ago

but could as well have been today.

The Throgg's Neck Bridge's gentle bow 

has made the fractured city stay -

these pictures were a week ago,

who saw what happened there today?

There is no way for me to know.

There isn't much I have to say,

these pictures were a week ago -

but might as well have been today.

Not Much Today - by Lorraine Robain
Photos, mine - City Island 10/3/10

Something Else Entirely

My grandfather, Claude Nichols

To my great shock and delight I learned this morning that despite my previous claims to the contrary, I do have some sort of 'native' blood coursing through my veins. Who knew? Apparently, my mother...who didn't think it noteworthy till we got together with her cousin over breakfast and they started to dredge up the family history.

The story goes, there were three brothers who came from Scotland (The Nichols) to the West Indies in the early to mid 1800's. One settled in Barbados, one went to the Grenadines and the third went further south to Aruba.One of those men was my great-great-grandfather. From all accounts, my g2g-dad settled in Barbados and one of his sons later came over to the Grenadines and took up with a woman who was, if not full blooded, a hefty part Carib. My grandfather Claude was one of their sons.

The Caribs and the Arawaks (Taino) were two of the main tribes of Amerindian people living in the Caribbean when Columbus 'discovered' this area. A common simplification is that the Arawaks were friendly whereas the Caribs were hostile - even rumored to have been cannibals. But we've learned to be a little leery of historical accounts, based on who has done the telling. What we know for sure is that the regional population of ten million Amerindians was reduced to one million through disease, slavery, revolt, extermination and finally, re-population. I understand quite well how indigenous people feel about being usurped. I even sense the angst of Sarah Palin's 'Real Americans' who fear the influx of immigrants, though the ironic 'full-circle' quality of this occurrence isn't lost on me.

Because of our history, almost all present day Caribbean people are part many things, which makes us something else entirely. But at this point, no living West Indian can argue against that history without arguing against their own personal existence.

Tibetans, after losing their autonomy, now fear the systematic influx of more and more Han Chinese into Tibet. Their country has been rapidly developed in part to put a good face on the invasion but more practically, to put down the infrastructure needed for its increasing Chinese population. I read about it and felt quite a bit of outrage because this clearly is not a mutually acceptable situation, but it never is.

No Iron Balloons

With a Henry Moore sculpture - June 2008, NYBG

It started this past Thursday - a cyclist almost ran me over on the sidewalk. He had no business there, but once he passed me I looked past him up the canyon of Fifth Avenue, wondering what it would be like to ride my own bike up the length of it. That started me thinking (of all things) about my upcoming birthday which is just weeks away from claiming another year of my life. By then, the thought was fully formed: "What have I been doing all my life?


This type of reflection is proof positive that one's youth is fast departing (I am being kind). Where did the time go? What do I have to show for it? Is this as good as it gets? Because life is truly seamless and organic, its quite difficult to tease out the tiny threads of cause from the tangled ball of their effects. So, unless you are standing in a cesspool (i.e, assuming you are reasonably OK with your life) you don't really look for scapegoats, or rogues to rue. As a result, you rarely regret what you've done, (criminals and jerks aside) rather - what you didn't do.

Enter 'the bucket list'. I'm not crazy about the term but I like the idea of at least taking stock of what you think you'd like to do before you 'go'.

Some people think they want to climb Mount Everest, or perhaps a more modest slope (you don't want to risk kicking the bucket before you fill it), go to some exotic country or other, run with the bulls in Pamplona, go on Safari in Kenya, volunteer for some noble cause, write a book, swim with the dolphins, run a marathon. Feats of endurance, feats of indulgence, and some feats of pure foolishness too.

I hadn't given it any thought whatsoever until that evening. If you'd asked me that morning what I would want to accomplish in life, I would have replied that I'd like to see my son reach adulthood, and I would like to have peace of mind along the way. 'Winning the lottery' rears its head now and then - but that's not within my control. Not that anything really is. So, I thought about it, and the first thing I decided was to call it something different: "My Liftoff List". Like a rocket-ship rather than a bucket. Something to blast off in - rather than something to kick. Up rather than down. Next, I decided that the list couldn't be populated with 'iron balloons', but rather things somewhat within my power to initiate and complete. There goes growing beautifully old like Vanessa Redgrave. So, here it is, in no particular order:

1. Become an elementary school Phys Ed teacher. I know this is possible because my son's Phys Ed teacher is at least 65, has a bum knee and walks with a cane. Thus far, I only have the bum knee.

2. Plant a garden of 'under-appreciated' plants (code for 'weeds'). I've got a jump start on this one already.

3. Dress strictly out of a (carry-on size) suitcase for a month. The only extra I will allow myself is a (carry-on size) tub of laundry detergent.

4. 'Give up' a different one of the five senses for each day of a week - and give up speech on the 6th day.
Give up the project on the seventh day because the kick to this is renewed appreciation not masochism.
 
5. Spend a night sleeping out in the backyard. Its a nice compromise between my warm bed and camping. I could move my warm bed into the backyard which would be an even nicer compromise.

6. Have an exhibition of my photographs and publish a book of poetry. ( Nowhere do I say they have to be any good.)    

7. Travel to the hillside where (they filmed) Julie Andrews singing 'The Sound of Music'.

8. Have a birthday party at the New York Botanical Gardens. Peggy Rockefeller's Rose Garden to be specific.

9. Learn to tolerate more asymmetry and uncertainty. Like having a list of only 9 items - and having no idea whether I'll accomplish them.

   Liftoff.

    

Artist and admirer in the Rose Garden

Peggy Rockefeller's Rose Garden - NYBG

Spirit of the Evening

Pony Boy

Pony Boy with Mom

 This past weekend I attended my second pow-wow for the year. This one was the Redhawk Native American Council at FDR State Park. There were several things on my calendar for that day (Sunday) but I thought I'd go up there since I didn't get deep enough into the last one. I got a great seat and just settled into it.

The first delight was the sight of my favorite little dancer from the Bear Mountain Pow Wow.
I'd dubbed him (to myself) 'Pony Boy' because of the horse image on a piece of his regalia.
Looks like he was there with his mom and he looked even younger than I remembered him.


The spirit of this evening was phenomenal, I think it was my best pow wow experience ever, and although I didn't get to see Pony Boy dance, what I did see didn't disappoint. There was a lot of wonderful dancing - about 150 frames worth - yet these quiet moments were the ones that stayed with me: Pony Boy - of course; the pensive, almost tender teens; the passionate, soulful youth, and the striking man with the black and white painted face. Intense, intelligent and electric.