At Least, In Pairs

Newsflash: Tail Bites Dog

As best as I can make out ( I did have to perform some intricate translation from video-game speak to current English), some hacker organization codenamed 'Anonymous' has shut down (hacked) the PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store as retaliation against Sony's attempts to sue them for hacking. Could neither of them see this coming?

Hackers run a healthy business servicing gamers who want to bypass difficult phases, artificially boost their reps and prematurely unlock the booty-chest of rewards for elevated prestige.
The hackers' latest strategy which has met with stern disapproval from Sony, is a 'jailbreak' which allows players to downgrade their PlayStation system to bypass the sophisticated upgrades which have all sorts of firewalls and retardants to 'creative gaming'. 

With the Network down, players can't link up online and have to play with the machine ghosts, rather than with their Avatar-clad Clansmen.
I suppose I should be glad that my son wants 'real human' interaction and refuses to play against the machine. He likes to chit-chat while doing battle: blue-tooth talking to Queens, Austria, Florida or where ever his buddies' bodies are hunkered down. My son, whose handle is Tizzik, can be heard calling to Ching-wing for cover, or chastising Krispy for shooting him by accident.
To speak with Ching-wing or Krispy today, Tizzik will have to make a long distance phone call, though I doubt there is anything they'd want to talk about now that the system is down. Funny how that is.

Luckily, Tizzik has many flesh-and-blood friends, (you know, like brick-and-mortar stores) twenty of whom came to his birthday party last month.
For the first time, girls were on the invited list, though only one brave member of that species showed.
My anxiety level went way up - didn't they travel in packs, or at least in pairs? We tried to keep her entertained with metal-ring puzzles and wooden 3D brain teasers, as well an origami kit.
For a moment it looked good - a couple of the boys got interested in the puzzles and left the gaming consoles. I got misty-eyed, thinking I had a real live party on my hands, but sadly some of the boys drifted back to the games, some went into the backyard, and we were back to the one birdie on the wall.

She was a real trouper, though - always smiling and polite. My husband and I loved her because she was on our side, i.e the outside. We catered to her every whim, and marveled at what great friends she and Tizzik must be for him to invite her here just to ignore her. We gawked covertly from the kitchen - a cordless free-standing, fully alert tween capable of coherent conversation - a classic model! We looked over at the boys, thumping on their control pads, yelping and howling - where on earth was she going to find a match?

Four I Follow

I love poetry - but having said that, let me also say that a lot of poetry goes over my head. I can't seem to stay with very long poems, or poems with too many painterly words like 'inchoate'. I hate the word 'inchoate' and will ditch any poem which contains it. There are poets who bang you over the head with their MFA degrees, and there are poets who just bang you over the head. Take Sylvia Plath. I heard she was brilliant but I could not approach her for years. I bought one of her books pledging to read it through - but I still haven't.


I have been attracted to the work of poets who use sound well. For me, it is as though the interlocking of sounds, their echo... is some kind of high logic, like inevitability, or an unavoidable truth.
Here are four I follow:



a small number 

So far, have managed, Not
Much.So far a few fractures, a few factions, a Few
Friends. So far, a husband, a husbandry, Nothing
Too complex, so far, followed the Simple
Instructions.Read them twice. So far, memorized three
  Moments,
Buried a couple deaths, those turning faces. So far two or
  Three
Sonnets. So far, some berrigan and Some
Keates. So far, a scanty list. So far, a dark wood. So far Anti
Thesis and then, maybe a little thesis. So far a small Number
Of emily's letters. So far, tim not dead. So far, Matt
not dead. So far, jim. So far, Love
And love, not so far. Not so love. So far, no-Hope.
So far, all face. So far scrapped and scraped, but Not
With grace. So far, not Very.
                                                           - Olena Kalytiak Davis


White Egrets 
I
Cautious of time's light and how often it will allow
the morning shadows to lengthen across the lawn
the stalking egrets to wriggle their beaks and swallow
when you, not they, or you and they, are gone;
for clattering parrots to launch their fleet at sunrise
for April to ignite the African Violet 
in the drumming world that dampens your tired eyes
behind two clouding lenses, sunrise, sunset,
the quiet ravages of diabetes.
Accept it all with level sentences
with sculpted settlement that sets each stanza;
learn how the bright lawn puts up no defenses
against the egrets stabbing questions and the night's answer.
                                                               
                                                                 - Derek Walcott


The Long Up 

You can see the
land flattening out
near the top. The
long up you've faced 
is going to stop.
Your eyes feast
on space instead 
of pitch as though
you'd been released.
The measured pace
you've kept corrupts
with fifty yards
to do - fifty
times as hard
against the blue. 

        - Kay Ryan
  

As Kingfishers Catch Fire 

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

         

                                  - Gerard Manley Hopkins

                            

Man Push Cart



Potato Guy's cart is the one on the right..

 Yesterday, I had decided that I would have a middle-eastern lunch of hummus, falafel, and an Israeli-type salad. I brought my own hummus from home, and was heading out onto Broadway to locate a few falafel balls and the salad. I went to one of the street carts - and was surprised to see a familiar face behind the counter of the cart on 39th and Broadway. It was 'Potato Guy', a Pakistani street vendor.

I have known Potato Guy for more than 20 years, which is about how long we have both been making our livings in the Fashion District of New York City. There was a time when I used to have a baked potato with sour cream and brown mustard (plus a sprinkling of chives) almost every day.  


We had not seen each other in such a long time that we couldn't recall each other's names, but neither wanted to admit it - so yesterday my name was 'Hey Sweetie!!' and his was 'Oh my God, how have you been?!''
He'd been struggling. He'd given up the potato cart and was now trying his hand at rice and beans with chicken. It was hard finding good people to work with, he said. He had tried for so long to make it...but was just surviving. He told me about a news article he had read in one of the Pakistani papers, about a freshly minted MBA who could not find a job, and so went out on a limb (literally), taking courses in plant husbandry, eventually finding a job managing a grove of fruit trees. According to Potato Guy, Fruit Guy was doing well. His takeaway from that story was that he should keep trying - if one thing doesn't work out, he should keep looking and moving forward.


Usually, the street vendors won't sell falafel balls separately, as they are used to garnish the meals which are their mainstay. However,I was going to walk away not only with the falafel balls, but also a container of rice and beans with chicken. Potato Guy did not want to take my money and I started to feel distress rising - difficult as it is for me to receive gifts and favors, and especially now after hearing his story. Finally, we settled on a compromise which we both could live with - half price.


Street vendors are somewhat like frontier people - as much for their little wagons and their hardiness as for their transient occupation of the cityscape. I like to think of them as the street keepers. Most of New York City's kiosks and carts are manned by South East Asians, which is to say Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians, but they aren't the only ones out here pushing carts: there is at least one Eastern European operating on my street corner serving breakfast fare: coffee, tea, doughnuts and bagels. Some of these men have wives and families back in their homelands, the street cart embodying at once their foray into an unfamiliar territory, and a lifeline to their families back home. It is no different a scenario than many of us as immigrants have faced, but I don't think any immigrant story expresses itself so literally as the street cart vendor peddling foods (often foreign to his own palate) so far away from home. As I left Potato Guy, with his upbeat outlook yet palpable despondence, it almost seemed like the cart was pushing the man.  

 

To Spring

My ivory helleboros

We may be staring down the barrel of a possible Nor' Easter, but Spring can't be turned back. Out in the yard there are stirrings: while it seems to me that the daffodils were slow to get going, and the tulips are reluctant to open their cups, the crocuses have spent themselves and the helleboros is already yawning. The red spear-like shoots of peony and the large circular crowd of hostos tips have already emerged; hydrangea buds are swollen, and creeping jenny sprouts have resurrected from the nodes of last year's growth. In my yard, helleboros is the de-facto herald of spring. They are the first ones out of the box, sometimes even before the last frost. I have two colors - ivory and purple. They are in full bloom and will remain so right through the summer. As usual, I am reluctant to touch anything in the yard for fear of removing something important. Which is not to say that I have a spectacular garden - only one whose every little inhabitant is of interest to me. I remember the first spring I was here, my neighbor came to help me do some weeding. In her zeal, she cut my peony shoots down to the ground. Oops. I cringed and bit my tongue. She has made amends with tomato and petunia seedlings by the handful every spring since. This spring, my most anticipated guests are the columbines (one deep plum with pink, one pure white) and the calla lilies (deep plum and pink varieties) which I planted last year. 
The columbines appeared just last year and I hope they'll be back. Aside from these, I hope for an interesting assortment of weeds, and couple of new hatchlings from the birdhouse which is already coiled inside with dry twigs and feathers, and has sheltered three crops of eggs since I put it up.
Here's to spring, here's to life.

blue wild flower