Urban poetry

A thoroughly overloaded pickup truck parked by the Zapote market in San José—flashback from the summer of '22.

Flashback: Peru

At Sara Textiles in Chinchero, our guide with her daughter, and showing off one of the bones the weavers use to lift the warp threads on a loom—which she joked came from her ex-husband.

Sunday bird blogging

I think we all need any excuse to smile these days, so here's a tufted titmouse.

Hey, they always work for me.

Saturday reflections

A truck on the Upper West Side.

I had three separate sets of plumbers snaking my drains this week, trying to locate and fix some persistent clogs and leaks in the building. So I was stuck inside, unable to pee, and trying to create class materials while the machines rumbled and my apartment vibrated. It felt like a giant root canal, but without novocain.

When I was heading for the escalators after class today, I ran into two of my former students, then met three more in the lobby. All of them hugged me and told me that they miss me. I hadn't realized how much I needed a hug this week and I got five.

Urban poetry

This view looking down on an intersection in Midtown Manhattan encapsulates so much of what I love about New York: the geometric shapes of the buildings and the lines in the crosswalks, and the amazing patterns of dappled light on the asphalt, reflecting off the buildings above.

Flashback: Polish TV

This is really a flashback. I took this picture off the television in my hotel room in Krakow in 1995—in case it's not obvious, it's the Polish version of Wheel of Fortune.

Flashback: Jersey Shore

The amusement park on the boardwalk at Point Pleasant in 2021, slightly stylized for effect.

The Library Walk

This is one of the plaques in the sidewalk on East 41st Street, leading to Fifth Avenue and the main branch of the New York Public Library. We're witnessing the dangers of ignorance, and gleeful misinformation, right now.

Flashback: Macchu Pichu

Processing and tweaking photos is one of the few tasks I can put my mind to these days, so here are two pictures of a llama at Macchu Pichu that my critical eye for some reason (okay, I see the reasons--imperfect focus, less than ideal composition) deemed not worthy of inclusion on this august blog.

But today they make me smile.

A foggy day in New York town

A picture of the Hudson from last winter: fog, a ferry, a gull soaring overhead.

Plus you can't even see New Jersey.

American Tune

Harmony always soothes the soul, but this song—written almost fifty years ago—is almost a little too on point for my broken heart right now.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it's alright, it's alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong

Urban poetry

I took this photo with my phone while I was waiting for my car to be inspected a few months ago. I love the color and those shadows.

Because we can probably all use a smile today

Fifth Avenue, during my walk home from school yesterday afternoon.

Saturday reflections

A quote I read today from Molly Housh Gordon, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Missouri:

I think humans in Western cultures often need to feel like there is an upward arc to history and some promised arrival, in order for there to be meaning in our lives.

But the place we are going is just around the sun on a miracle of a planet.

And I want to tell you that we are still alive in a world that is so beautiful and so brutal all at once, and always has been.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin

It's been a long, long time since I read Candide, and philosophy was never my strong suit, but this advice—tend your own garden, don't pay attention to your neighbors, stay out of politics, accept the world as it is and not as we want it to be—is so alluring today.

I am in shock. I want to retreat and lick my wounds and come out in a year or two. Or never. But I don't think I can do that. I'm afraid that it's going to get very very ugly. I might have the privilege of being able to ignore much of that ugliness. But I won't.

I can't.