Archive | Age Matters

Mother May I

Ways you know May has worked serious magic this year: It’s 8:39 am and I’m just waking up. I’m writing this without coffee. I’ve lost weight and wrinkles and I hope you know I’m not the type to try to lose either. I haven’t watched anything–movies, TV–in weeks, just listened to music piped through speakers and headphones into the big sunshine and sexy rain. My bedroom is filled with peonies and lilacs and someone else’s socks and my shelves, the poetry of myself and many more talented others. Most of all: I’m guaranteed to give you a hug if we run into each other. For an emotionally stingy little alley cat like me, that’s really saying something.

Ferry Therapy. Fairie Therapy

The way I recovered my day when my heart was so broken was I leaned into the good weather and let it lead me where I needed to go. Which included city parks and four (count’em four) ferries for the price of one and dancing on the top deck with Argentinians and Swedes I befriended when the weather grew choppy, everyone clutching each other, somebody ducking below deck and emerging with tequila and o my the laughter so that somehow my quick trip from 34th to North Williamsburg ended up being a slow boat to Queens and Roosevelt Island and Gracie Mansion (irony of ironies) and the Bronx and then back, back, back, to Wall Street and Dumbo, the city drifting by in a reverie of freshly cut grass and building back-bones of steel and glass, and by the time I pitched back to Williamsburg shores, I had my grin back, if a tad manic. Then coffee under a tree with a longlost pal and long legs in bright sunlight and more tequila and ceviche with young(ish) people I dig and the whole time my cell phone

Carlos y Doris, de Argentina

hovering at 1 percent battery charge so I’d have it in a pinch but couldn’t really use it. Magic, really.

When people you love die, when you miss other people by a mile, you must embrace your city and your life with all the gusto you can summon. Be grateful for what still thrives.

City Mouse, Country House

Grace and I just returned to the city. For six days we sat on the screened-in porch of A’s house and watched May explode. Oh, I thrifted and wrote and she chased bugs and sunspots. Definitely I tromped through meadows, woodland paths in so many shades of green that some appeared gold and some appeared indigo.

But mostly we sat still and drank it all in.

When I stayed in Hudson before, I never ventured off the paths of A’s land. But since Truro’s mermaid woods I’ve gotten much bolder about venturing into uncharted territory. I’m less afraid of getting lost, and trust the sun even in the middle of the forest. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy