Hi, 2023! + "O Faded Elegant World" + MacQueen's Quinterly

These kids predate me, I suspect, but still, happy 

and goofy kids is what kindergarten is about. 

 

I started the year with a long walk, longer than expected, on the sidewalks of musty New York, first to a bar where I discovered an event had been canceled then across town to a building complex that demands I walk an extra ten blocks in the wrong direction before it will allow me into its time-honored walls. Every time. There, people I know, all warm smiles, warm hugs.  And in-between the Lower East Side and the evasive building down some from the Whitney Museum I ran into a friend. And that was unexpected - insofar as, what! you? yay! - and delightful. An unexpected, impromptu, generous meet-up. Somehow helped me clear a bit of the baggage I was hauling from 2022. 

After seeing some warm acquaintances, and friends, on top of two-and-a-half hours of walking on sidewalks, I caught a bus, but only part way. It gets complicated. Once home I popped into bed, fully clothed, fell asleep. Woke. Did some things people do when awake, such as removing a sports bra, reading a poem, watching a t.v. show I knew would lull me back to sleep.

So no booze, no big parties. I like booze and I like big parties. Another time. Soon!

One more event. When I woke for the small portion of time I saw that new work of mine had been published. A Flash autobiographical essay* of mine was online. "O Faded Elegant World" in MacQueen's Quinterly. That surely wins the prize for a journal name. It mixes the hip and the quaint. My mini-essay is personal history as recalled by the personal historian who was seven? six? when the events took place. So. Grain of sand. Definitely with a toss of salt over your left shoulder. And truth.

Here's to 2023! Peace and sanity, please. 

*500 words or less, in this case

This life: My 3,000 Loving Arms comes through on its promise; also Louise Brooks qua cat

I haven't added a posting here since Monday; let me explain. "This life" is promised in the tagline of My 3,000 Loving Arms, and that's what you'll get today.

Monday I met with a job specialist to see about getting me back to full-time work with benefits. Uphill. Tuesday through Thursday I got (very) lucky and worked, three whole days in a row, proofreading at an ad agency. My networking months past paid off.

You must realize that with the exception of my four or so years of adjunct teaching here, my jobs in New York City have kept ridiculously rich people rich. At a variety of giant financial institutions, infamous trading companies and banks, and ad agencies serving them, I've done my little bit by copyediting, moving commas and correcting spelling.

It's where I've landed, despite efforts in other directions. Nevertheless, observing how the world is run fascinates. A Pulitzer-nominated playwright friend, with great politics, leads a life parallel to mine and agrees we're granted a rare perspective. Notoriously, academics isn't a safe zone. Is there one?

Love of poetry (just reread some Lorca); excitement about fiction (reading Jian Rong's Wolf Totem, translated from Chinese); new stories I'm writing; friends; sky sun clouds trees Central Park museums the Internet strong legs and a love of walking. And the occasional photo-bearing e-mail from poet and professor Jonathan Morse, a man of two muses, Hawaiin flora and his cat ("Hommage a Louise Brooks" pictured).

It's a life.

It's Cold: walking, toughery, the female metabolism, D. H. Lawrence

It's cold outside. The month is December, I feel a barbarian invasion at the window along my bed or maybe the barbarian impulse within, to kill and skin an animal and wrap its fur around myself.

Sorry about the word "barbarian" with all its social and historical trickery. I'm reading The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity, soaking up its thousand tidbits about fourth century politics, seventh century saints, the forgotten, the victims, the victorious. Point? The "barbarian" is on my bed and the cold is licking at tall windows.

I go as long into winter as I can without turning on the radiator, to keep the air cleaner and me tough. My parents would, as legend goes, leave me out for an hour a day in a baby carriage (a baby was I) in the frosty winter on Long Island so the impulse to tough it out is in me.

But when I was in my twenties and thirties I was always freezing. It was the frosty winter of Los Angeles. "Ach, young women," my mother would say, imitating my Swedish grandmother. She was onto something, the young women part, and our hormone balancing acts, not daredevil but devilish. Back then I was under exercised-one of the reasons I left L.A. for Seattle-I wanted to live someplace I could walk.

I remember freezing or thinking that was the case my first years in Seattle. I also remember walking up and down Seattle's hilly streets. I remember (to use a coined phrase) returning to Seattle after a few weeks in L.A., or that summer in the Bay Area (remind me to write about that) and needing to reclaim my new city by walking from Ballard along 45th to the U district, from Montlake to downtown to Queen Anne. That's a lot of walking and it was compulsive.

Like a cat spraying or dog sniffing. Really. Try to stop me. Even last Wednesday night when I was in Queens around 83rd Street (off the 7 train). I was thrilled to be on new-to-me streets and had to push myself to find my destination. All I wanted was to walk and explore. The area was much like any other area off the 7 train but still . . .

So we can assume my metabolism has upped and warmth isn't the issue it was in younger days. Not sure how a scientist would compare Los Angeles weather with New York weather. Not my concern.

Oh the famous walks of Wordsworth in the Lake District. Oh those D. H. Lawrence characters going for their three-hour strolls in the English countryside after a Sunday dinner. I no longer marvel but simply wish I did even more of it, walking. An hour on flat city streets has nothing on hikes in the wilds (however defined in gem-y England).

It's cold outside and my fingers have walked a few meters over the keyboard. My coffee cup is empty. Time for tea. Time to get outside again.

graphic: http://www.theaa.com/images/travel/maps/walks/Cambridge_Walks_Map17.gif