Day 2 of self isolation:
12.3.20
11.3.20
Just as spring makes an early appearance, the city is tip toeing about, re-cloistering ourselves. There's so much fear but it feels distant still. I'm lucky and we're young and healthy and.... I'm thrilled for state ordered cloistering. I dread spring every year--that feeling of the blankets being ripped off mid REM cycle--but maybe, just maybe, that won't happen this year. Maybe the CDC will shake loose from Trump's head in the sand and send the nation home. And I will be able to love spring again without being told to get out more, to meet up "now that the weather's nice", to be able to bask in my open window with my ample library. Has my home library been built for just such a cloistering?? yes.
The street outside my open window is quieter, emptier. We passed a few elderly people this morning walking to the park but not the usual amount. Just now I heard two groups of kids walking home from school--normally they blend in with all the other street sounds. But today it was quiet enough to notice the audible passing of hours. Not silent...I don't thing Chinatown will ever be silent. The lobsters still are being sold. The winkle shop is open. I think the winkle cat is giving birth, in fact.
And now my bambi is awake. And I have to decide if we should walk outside. It's not a gathering. Just her and me. But the playground could be coated in germs that live for days. The river could be safe.
The street outside my open window is quieter, emptier. We passed a few elderly people this morning walking to the park but not the usual amount. Just now I heard two groups of kids walking home from school--normally they blend in with all the other street sounds. But today it was quiet enough to notice the audible passing of hours. Not silent...I don't thing Chinatown will ever be silent. The lobsters still are being sold. The winkle shop is open. I think the winkle cat is giving birth, in fact.
And now my bambi is awake. And I have to decide if we should walk outside. It's not a gathering. Just her and me. But the playground could be coated in germs that live for days. The river could be safe.
4.3.20
"The inhabitants sat on deck, clattering with plates and cutlery, while cats arched their backs between pots of geraniums." p. 25
"a few weeks later Sonja came to see me. She was pregnant. ... That day at the grocer's she had handed in her notice; she intended to move to a houseboat on the Lea." p. 50
"I remembered the feeling of astonishment I always had when the train put the yards, buildings, roofs, and scrap heaps of Hackney and Bethnal Green behind it and plunged into open countryside. ... It felt strange to be standing in the very landscape whose sudden transition from town to country, seen from a train window had seemed so unreal to me, and even stranger to think of passengers looking out of passing trains and seeing me standing here now. Somebody peering out of a train window on their way to the airport or the Thames Estuary and astounded by the abrupt change of scenery, momentarily anxious perhaps that she had boarded the wrong train, was probably watching me now, registering me as one of the disconcerting features of the landscape, a nameless item of the incomprehensible and sparse Walthamstow Marsh furniture." p. 56
"We drove past the airport, under the signs for Mississauga. Again and again along the way the city already seemed to be crumbling away into rows of one-storey shops, car dealerships and workshops with gaps between them, only to catch and hold its breath again with yet another suburb." p.102
River by Esther Kinsky
All this is a case for river and sea bound cities, and one reason suburbs strike horror in my heart. So many children's books wax eloquent on this ephemeral land-- a house at the edge of town. I always have an image of the inland shore of Jamaica Bay toying with the back of my mind. If we can't afford rent here, maybe there. But I'm afraid to visit it. I'm afraid it's not as lovely as the shore on the edge of my mind. And that the trains don't actually stop there. That's what makes these landscapes so otherworldly.
The unreachableness.
"a few weeks later Sonja came to see me. She was pregnant. ... That day at the grocer's she had handed in her notice; she intended to move to a houseboat on the Lea." p. 50
"I remembered the feeling of astonishment I always had when the train put the yards, buildings, roofs, and scrap heaps of Hackney and Bethnal Green behind it and plunged into open countryside. ... It felt strange to be standing in the very landscape whose sudden transition from town to country, seen from a train window had seemed so unreal to me, and even stranger to think of passengers looking out of passing trains and seeing me standing here now. Somebody peering out of a train window on their way to the airport or the Thames Estuary and astounded by the abrupt change of scenery, momentarily anxious perhaps that she had boarded the wrong train, was probably watching me now, registering me as one of the disconcerting features of the landscape, a nameless item of the incomprehensible and sparse Walthamstow Marsh furniture." p. 56
"We drove past the airport, under the signs for Mississauga. Again and again along the way the city already seemed to be crumbling away into rows of one-storey shops, car dealerships and workshops with gaps between them, only to catch and hold its breath again with yet another suburb." p.102
River by Esther Kinsky
All this is a case for river and sea bound cities, and one reason suburbs strike horror in my heart. So many children's books wax eloquent on this ephemeral land-- a house at the edge of town. I always have an image of the inland shore of Jamaica Bay toying with the back of my mind. If we can't afford rent here, maybe there. But I'm afraid to visit it. I'm afraid it's not as lovely as the shore on the edge of my mind. And that the trains don't actually stop there. That's what makes these landscapes so otherworldly.
The unreachableness.
27.2.20
Books I mean to read but are so heavy or "A Case For Pocket Paperbacks":
The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier
The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore
Jane Kenyon: Collected Poems
At Sixty by May Sarton
A Circle of Quiet by M. L'Engle
Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Nikki Giovanni: Collected Poems
Plant Dreaming Deep by May Sarton
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
note: Temple of My Familiar- solved
Plant Dreaming Deep- solved
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter- solved
anyone want large hardbacks/large in general copies of these? Or willing to trade pocket sizes of any of the others?
The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier
The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore
Jane Kenyon: Collected Poems
At Sixty by May Sarton
A Circle of Quiet by M. L'Engle
Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Nikki Giovanni: Collected Poems
Plant Dreaming Deep by May Sarton
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
note: Temple of My Familiar- solved
Plant Dreaming Deep- solved
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter- solved
anyone want large hardbacks/large in general copies of these? Or willing to trade pocket sizes of any of the others?
Another afternoon nap-- longer sunbeams that caress my books instead of blind my pale slightly shattered eyes-- the cat is sound asleep below the green glowed window full of plants. I can't not see a Levertov poem whenever I see that sill now. It's fitting that she ended her life in Washington State. Where all the evenings glow green and shell pink and some of the days as well. Her green-lit poetry in place. Next time I'm home maybe I'll visit her grave. But Seattle makes me mad, especially the East Side and I think that's where she's buried. Anyways, I appreciate her lack of interest in blue. Everyone is always pushing blue on me but it just reminds me of computer screens and evil corporations' logos. I like my greens and oranges, shells and reds.
18.2.20
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)