Shorthand Seeing

- The Triumph of Recognition over Cognition

I picked up a case of Coke for Thanksgiving at my local Costco. At least, I told my husband to do so because it was too heavy for me to lift. I left him and went to get some sparkling apple cider.Back at the homestead, packing away the groceries, I spotted a case of the completely wrong Coke on the kitchen floor. I laid into my husband, accusing him of passive-agressive warfare, blindness, carelessness or some combination of these. He shot me a dirty look, and accused me of illiteracy.

It turns out The Coca Cola Company had seen fit to change the packaging of Classic Coke from red to white for the holiday season. The problem is - the white can with silver polar bears is dizzyingly similar to the usual silver and white packaging for Diet Coke.

Thus, I, a college educated and somewhat intelligent person came to realize I had joined the ranks of uneducatable consumers: a super-conditioned pack of Pavlovian dogs. We weren't reading, we were relying on color and the recognition of a familiar graphic pattern that only happens to sell... er, spell something. Yes, color and pattern had trumped reading and my husband was right - I might as well have been illiterate.

My husband was not fooled, neither was my son, but neither is as avid a Coke drinker as I am. (Yes, I have imbibed after abstaining for a while.) It's no suprise that the more familiar we are with something, the less attention we pay to it. For the things we use the most, the places we visit the most, the people we see the most - we are (for the most part) only marginally present, only marginally attentive. We are everywhere else it seems - our attention pixelated and scattered; or perhaps we are nowhere at all.

For regular Coke consumers, uneasiness and outright suspicion have reigned since the release of Christmas Coke. The 'White Coke' didn't taste right, people were distressed and disoriented, having flashbacks to the time Coke changed its formula to achieve a taste more like Pepsi. After a great hue and cry, The Coca Cola Company announced plans to retract its painfully short holiday campaign and will roll out Classic Coke in proper red cans sometime soon.

Going the wacky way of previous commercial blunders, the 'White Coke' can seems set to become a collector's item. I will surely keep one as a reminder to collect myself and truly look.

Pumped Up Kicks

Disconnects between content and expression

How much agreement should there be between message and medium?  It's an imprecise question, I know. What I probably should ask is how much harmony should we expect there to be between message and expression.The answer is probably none. Case in point - I've listened to Steely Dan for decades, in fact I'd still say they are one of my favorite recording artists. Yet somehow my appreciation of their music, for a long time, didn't go too far beyond their feel-good melodies and smooth vocals. It was not until the CD Two Against Nature that I really paid attention to the lyrics of the songs - which turned out to be at times quite dark. Dark lyrics covered with a coat of super cool toe-tapping melodies.

My first response to this discovery, far from being outrage or any other judgement, was actually a bit of surprise - as when a magician pulls something unexpected out of an unlikely place: how'd they do that? Would it be insensitive to say that I still love these songs despite their sometimes off-color sentiments? I don't know, but I do. Which is to say that it's possible for me to tease apart my appreciation of music and vocal styles (mood) from the actual lyrical content of the song. However, sometimes it can feel like a kind of betrayal when things (or people) appeal to us one one level and are distasteful to us on another. We can almost feel like we've been taken by the Trojans.

My son is a huge fan of the music genre called Dubstep. Many of these songs are electronic re-creations (samples and remixes) of other songs. I consider myself lucky that my son often shares his favorite music and videos with me. When he shared this particular dubstep song/video, I enjoyed it immensely. Later on, I did my homework on the song 'Pumped Up Kicks' by Foster the People:

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks better run better run, outrun my gun.

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks better run better run, faster than my bullet.

Hmmn...
The songwriter has explained that his song is not condoning violence, but is written from the perspective of a kid who feels like an outcast. He admits to exploiting the disconnect
between his music and the lyrics, calling it 'adding another layer'. We might say that he is adding
a romantic glow to something that could be quite menacing, but the truth is - he is free to do so.

The dancer adds yet another layer to this whole dilemma. What he is doing is so visually exciting, do I need to deprive myself of the enjoyment of him and the music that he has chosen because of the questionable lyrics? The answer of course, is no. But, I would say that I feel an obligation to enjoy responsibly - in awe of the power of music and art, but not abandoning myself whole cloth to them.
And, that is what I'd like to teach my son as well.

Here is the video of  Marquese Scott, dancing to the dubstep version of Pumped Up Kicks, by Foster The People.

With a Shrug and A Grin

My summer chariot

Summer is gone, growth is declining - everything waning. The squirrels are in overdrive, children are bright-eyed again, their brains rescued from the haze of summer. This year, given the great satisfaction I experienced raising plants from seed for the first time, I am gathering seeds from these same plants to germinate again next year. I have already collected columbine seeds and day-lily seeds which rattle like maracas in their seed pods. And, of course moon flower seeds. The vines are now as laden with seed pods as they once were with flowers. I am also planting bulbs (tulips and daffodils) for next spring. Since Hurricane Irene, I have had a basement flood, buried a car, unearthed my bike, bought a car, returned to a five day workweek, read two good books,(The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and Tinkers by Paul Harding), and I am now in the throes of High School Hunting for my son, the eighth grader. My son is remarkably laid back, which I view with a mixture of relief and suspicion: thank God he's more easy going than me, but does nothing snap his spine straight? He tells me that I need to 'hang loose', 'don't worry about today what you can worry about tomorrow'. When words fail him there's the shrug and the grin, or the unassailable combination of the shrug-grin, which is the antithesis of its homophone chagrin (or perhaps, its antidote). I am trying to be down with that.

Moon flower seeds 

Bryant Park - in Pictures

 Bryant Park NYC is, for many reasons, a very special place to me. I've had happy moments there and some sad ones too. It's been my go-to place to chill out, cool off, blow steam, center myself, people-watch, cloud watch ( one of my secret pastimes) and just breathe and be. I walk through the park twice a day, so it is a touchstone as I enter and leave the city and I would say - an even deeper touchstone than that.

    

This past Friday as I entered the park, I was greeted by the stunning sight of the lawn filled with empty chairs facing downtown. I recognized it immediately for what it was - a September 11th Memorial. There was a little sign explaining the installation: 2753 chairs - one for each person who died in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. 

On that terrible day...no, on the day which hosted that terrible event, I saw the smoke of the first impact from my elevated train platform. The platform was crowded and everyone was pointing and talking on their cellphones. Yet inexplicably, when the downtown train pulled into the station, almost everyone boarded and went into the mayhem, because almost no-one believed the horror that was at that moment just a rumor. I turned around and went home, figuring that if it was true, the subway would be snaked with paralysed trains - which indeed it was in very short order. By the time I was in my car driving home, a second impact on the World Trade Center was confirmed, and the Pentagon strike was being reported. I was safe in my car heading home but I felt so vulnerable - already infected with fear.

When I got home, I called my Dad in Trinidad and we stayed on the phone watching it on TV together, thousands of miles apart. The world never seemed so small, and we felt eminently touchable. 

A few days later my son - then three, came home from Kindergarten singing a three syllable song:

Re-mem-ber

Sep-tem-ber

E-lev-enth

when the twin

to-wers fell...  

At the time it was too fresh, and still too unfathomable an event for the song to have any more lyrics, and maybe it was enough information to give to three year olds.We all wish it were as simple as the towers being taken out. It will take perhaps another generation before those words could ever be adequate.

September 8th, 2011

2005

2009

2007

                                                                    the 'reading room'

The Carousel

2009

2008

2008

The New York Public Library

The Pond, 2009

December 2010

January 2011

January 2011

                                                               March 18th, 2011....

 

                                       The new drainage system

                                                        A work in progress

                                                       Late winter...

April 2011

                                                    the fountain, no longer frozen

 

                                 

 

the first daffodils in bloom

The Better Side

Picasso solved this
by showing all facets
of the figure at once –
a jigsawed realism
more whole for flaws,
which might have saved
Narcissus from his fair
reflection, and could have
cautioned the greedy hound,
who'd lose by snatching
at the other dog's bone –
alas! his own.

     - Lorraine Robain

Ghosts of the Great Wall

 after Everything's Shiny - My Walk Along The Wall


Shoulder to shoulder
the men are bent 

bricking the inches

down the narrow ridge
that cleaves the earth
from azure heaven,
blind to the sky 

and the arrow-headed

peaks marching away
by giant zigzags into
the future of the Wall

over which they are
bent bricking – into
which they are inching.  

I'm in Love With...Wayne Rooney?

Its not something I do often, but today I watched the soccer game between Manchester United and Arsenal. Outside, Tropical Storm Irene was winding down, and I was in a relaxed free-floating state that somehow allowed this game to draw me in. What really got my attention first though, was not the game, but a word.

Manchester United was already two goals up when the announcer remarked that "the organization of the Arsenal back line has been shambolic". Shambolic? I got the meaning - in shambles, but I'd never heard the word before.
It was juicy, it was derisive, it was rambunctious - and he practically spat it out. I had a British co-worker who often used the word ' bollocks' (nonsense, rubbish) - that connotation came careening at me too, as did shame, bullshit, along with, yes, shambles.

The announcer would use the word at least two more times during the course of the game as Man U broadened its already commanding lead to 8-2. Arsenal truly was in shambles and Manchester United was a beautiful picture of precision, unison and heart. The young Danny Wellbeck, who I've seen perform extremely well in the last few games, delivered two goals before he pulled up with a hamstring injury. Nani -who came out a little selfishly at the start, recovered to produce a nice chip into the goal at close range right over the keeper's head. Ashley Young deposited two flawless goals high into the corners, and Jay Sung Park wowed himself and South Koreans everywhere by sinking one in as well. And then, there was Wayne Rooney.

I think hardcore soccer fans would have a much better analysis of this than I ever could, but I swear something has happened to Wayne Rooney. Obviously, he has matured from a talented hot-headed kid into the current captain of the Man U team. But looking at his face and demeanor, I think something much more fundamental has changed in this man. In the yoga tradition that I follow, it is believed that when one's energy changes, so does one's physicality, especially one's face and 'eye-light'. As I sat watching him play, I was more and more drawn in by him. When he scored ( two free kicks and one penalty) he was like a child. No bravado, no chest thumping as before, just unbridled shining joy. Not shambolic, more like Shambhala. I do believe I fell in love.

Love Song Before The Storm

We are bracing ourselves for Hurricane Irene.
Hurricanes are very unusual this far north - but hey, an earthquake on Wednesday, a hurricane on Saturday - this is New Yawk, we can handle it! The only hurricane I ever experienced was Alma in 1974 back in Trinidad when I was only 10 years old. Trinidad lies at the southernmost edge of the hurricane belt, almost outside it - so we don't often get large storms. I was excited and a little scared...but more excited. She lasted only a few hours, but I remember the fierce beauty of Alma, her ebullience, her magnificent gray brightness,and the peculiar sound of the air - a kind of emptiness and spaciousness that was less like a sound and more like a feeling. 

When the winds stopped and the eye of the storm was directly over us, we came outside into the steely light. The sky and the whole world was glowing - and again, spacious is the only word that fits. Its as though the storm had cleared away everything - not physically but in some otherworldly way. We saw bits of paper flying high in the sky and marveled at what big pieces of paper they were, and where did they come from, Dad? Of course it was not paper, but sheets of zinc roofing that were caught up in the air. Alma took two lives in Trinidad that day ( plus 49 souls were lost in a plane crash in Venezuela). Alma also took out a large tree in the park that lay behind our house - which subsequently became a giant see-saw for the neighborhood children. This is the first of several trees I can recall 'losing' - none of which belonged to me, but all of which were properly mine.

This evening, after putting the chairs and umbrella into the basement, I came back up to the patio to take pictures of the moon-flower vine in spectacular bloom - 10 flowers at once. It may not survive the storm, and I'm not sure I can move it, entwined as it is on the patio railing. So the best I can do is sing a little love song to this beautiful flower which blooms in the evening - a taut pale green five-pointed star spreading its soft white petals open almost as wide as my hand, a soft jasmine-like scent coming from its heart. The point is, I have done it. I have made my own magic and I have enjoyed it immensely.

Come on Irene.     

                                                                                                                         

In The Neighborhood

Seashell Villa, Tobago

I spent most of July away from New York. Two trips to Trinidad, one sailing to Tobago and a zip down to Arkansas. Six flights, two ferry rides.
I went back to Trinidad for my thirtieth high school reunion (the number is marginally less jolting if I spell it out) and met up with about 50 of my previous classmates. To put this in perspective, the actual Holy Name Convent Class of 1981 comprised 120 girls, give or take.
The first couple of days were spent with my cousin and our three children in Tobago at Seashell Villa. We returned to Trinidad in a squall, which gave the entry into Port of Spain a special kind of charm. As it cleared, the mountains were shrouded in low hanging clouds, the sky was grey and the island - deeply green.

The reunion events were spread out over four days - comprising a beach 'lime' or hangout, an evening at a nightclub, a church service and a brunch. Quite a few teachers showed up to the church service including our long-retired school principal Sister Bernadette, who is now in her nineties, and the vice principal Sister Helen. We sang the school song, our graduation song (composed by one of our classmates) as well as some of the songs we used to sing (or lip sync) regularly at morning assembly. The service was held at 6pm - the school chapel suffused with the soft light of sunset, the sky streaked pink and orange.  For me, it was a beautiful, restful hour - and having my son with me made it especially meaningful. It is true that these girls, (now women) even the ones I hardly spoke to - gave me a gift: being part of the landscape of my life.

 in Tobago

 A few people remarked that I was 'much quieter than they remembered'. I found that really interesting as one of my agendas for the trip was to be more sociable and a little more outgoing.
I'd say I was pretty quiet at school, not a part of any one group, a drifter in terms of my connections with others, but very capable of clowning around if the mood took me.

At Fort George, Port of Spain

I took up yoga shortly after our last reunion about 10 years ago, and maybe that accounts for part of the change, but I have always been an observer, and seem to have become even more so. The next reunion ( a cruise) is tentatively scheduled for 2014, when we will all be fifty, or in the neighborhood.

Holy Name Convent, Class of '81, in 2011

Center back row - yours truly.

The Goodbye

 The goodbye you will never hear

like the hello you never heard

and all the words between me

and the echo I hoped was you

are in a room - the door to which 

has been closed but is still closing;

in my mind the closing is slowed:

the slow is the hello of who, the echo

the echo of empty - the room closed,

the hope of you and all the words.

                           - Lorraine Robain

 Photo:mine, moon flower

A Thousand Words

     

 
Pictures mine: Canon EOS 50D                                        

Coming Around

Moon flower

 When I last wrote about fences, I was bemoaning the fact that 'shared things' aren't always able to be truly shared... that they cannot be all things to all people at all times. I suppose nothing can.

I was frustrated about my neighbor's low tolerance for my beloved potato vine - which is a vigorous climber, twirler and overall hanger-on to anything offering the slightest invitation to its tendrils.

I am vigilant now about the potato vine, keeping the fence clear of it. Besides, it's a little difficult to truly enjoy something when that enjoyment contributes to another person's discomfort. I tried transplanting it, but it did not catch on in the new location. I did however, germinate some moon flower seeds. Moon flower is another climbing vine which yields huge white trumpet flowers six inches across - and these I have planted at another location away from any fence, training it instead onto the railing of the stairs which lead from my back patio down to the backyard. This whole exercise was very satisfying.

Cucumber

I tried my hand at cucumbers this summer- which was a rousing success. Interestingly enough, I used the same problematic fence to train the cucumber vine with nary a peep from my neighbor on the left. I also added basil to the mix, (ridiculously easy to grow) and thyme (which I found to be bit shy). Next year I plan to expand the vegetable garden, adding lettuce; and I also want to grow more herbs - as much for their fantastic aroma as for seasoning and garnishing. I do owe my neighbor on the right a shout-out for pushing me to grow more food rather than just ornamental plants. In the garden, almost everything is a hot mess right now: the hydrangeas are burnt to a crisp, hosta leaves are fried, and the ferns are curling. Mindful of the use of water, I've put the tomatoes, cucumbers and basil at the top of the thirst triage. I have also been giving preference to the moon flower (another heavy drinker) just because I wanted to see it perform - which it did.

                                                                                  
Adding to my joy this summer was the resurrection of a spider orchid which I rescued from my office.
When I took it home, I didn't have much hope for it, but after a few weeks in a shady spot it has three new shoots and I am hoping for a flower bract before the summer is out.

Spider orchid

Basil

 

Getting There



Trinidad, July 9, 2011



I am a lover of puzzles. Not just puzzles, but mysteries. Maybe not as much a lover of them, as captivated and intrigued by them. When I was younger, before the Internet and Google, mysteries could percolate for long periods of time in my mind.Today we needn't wait to find anything out, a luxury for someone like me.
But getting answers quickly isn't always the most satisfying thing; brain teasers, and tactile puzzles such as metal rings and interlocking wooden blocks deliver their satisfaction in great part through the joy of discovery and the delicious feeling of getting close to 'rightness' - that salivary sensation that one is on to something good, that a solution is at hand.

Two weeks ago, after trying for years to eat more healthfully, I suddenly felt the urge to detox. Well, it wasn't that sudden: I had bought a book on the subject about 8 months before, and stuck it on my bookshelf. I wasn't a terribly unhealthy eater by any stretch, but I could have used more fruit and vegetables and a little less junk food in my life - and I was dogged by an inability to kick the Coca Cola habit. There was a will, but it wasn't strong enough to make the way stick. I'd quit for a while and start again, quit and start again.

A few weeks before the detox, I actually did quit Coca Cola to lessen my caffeine burden. I'd been having some palpitations, so I eliminated all stimulants. For me, that was Coca Cola, the occasional cup of coffee and my favorite pekoe cut black tea. It was effortless because I was exchanging them for something I valued much more highly - i.e. my health. As soon as it clearly and uncompromisingly became one or the other, it was an easy choice.

So, on detox day I took that book down from the shelf and set about making an eggplant and tomato soup from a recipe within its pages. Just a few simple ingredients (eggplant, tomato, red bell peppers, onion, garlic, bay leaf and rosemary and olive oil) yielded a delicious meal that I enjoyed with my entire body and mind. It's the kind of rightness that can move you to tears.

I've also found myself needing less salt and sugar. And less meat. I wasn't planning on reducing these things, but there it was. What happened? A mystery. So many years of effort, false starts, so much recrimination - and such ease at the end? It didn't add up.

What confluence of events or conditions suddenly made this goal achievable? Were all previous efforts poorly timed, in some way deficient, or were they simply accumulative? I don't know.

But, I do have a theory: some time ago I began to suspect that I'd been skipping steps in some areas of my life; that I was trying to achieve things before completing the (sometimes very ill-defined) prerequisites. Maybe this was something like that. Maybe I chanced upon a skipped step, completed it, and presto! everything fell effortlessly into place. But...I don't know exactly what that step was. Or, maybe I inadvertently addressed a root cause - and domino-like, all the inner opposition to my stated goal fell away.
So here I am - one mystery solved, and no idea how I did it.

 Trinidad, July 10, 2011