Sunday Quote

He who limps is still walking.

-Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

Is this over yet?

Watching the fellowship of the rings (first part of Lord of the Rings) for this zillionth time with my daughter this Thanksgiving Eve (I am a LOTR fan from way back)but it is the first time the ten year old has seen it. Lines like Frodo saying: "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened." and Gandalf replies: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” have me in all my nerdy glory sighing with the life wisdom and wonder of it all (and swooning over Aragorn, of course as my 23 year old daughter does same with Legolas) and the ten year old who has been up and down, in and out of the kitchen restless is finally heard to say (near the heart-wrenching end) "Is this over yet?". Sigh.

Chill Hot Chill

It's chilly in the morning and then too hot at work and then at home, cold again. The pattern of the late fall and impending winter, I am sure. But I like the month of November, not just the turkey-stuffing-cranberry-delicious holiday, but so much of it, the husband saying how you can really see the sky with all the leaves down, the sense of change, the shift into a different way of seeing and feeling; I think the part of the soul that craves solitude and going deeper loves November.

Sunday Quote

Neatness was not one of the things he aimed at in life.

- George Selden, The Cricket in Times Square.

In the eye of the beholder

I'm a fool for rust and cracked cement and shadows and angles and the juxtaposition of things and the broken and discarded and the inarticulate and the monuments to some things that refuse to leave but linger on...I love old city brick and abandoned lots and I think there may be nothing more beautiful than a yellow light shining from a dark and foreboding building. I would probably wander around after the apocalypse unspeakly moved by the beauty of the rubble, the way the sun cast light over the broken and rusted girders. That is until the zombies came. Then it wouldn't be any fun at all.

Scrub-a-chugga-chugga

Wonder what this sounded like to the driver going underneath? Noticed this slow-moving train scrubber (a guess - seemed to be scrubbing the tracks) while I was pulled over to the side trying to figure out how to get unlost...

Sunday Quote

God is alive and magic is afoot.

-Leonard Cohen

The Hula Hoop is Still Up

Near summer's end my youngest overheard me saying how I wanted some of the dead branches down from the elm but I couldn't reach them. So he tried to knock them down by chucking a hula hoop up in the tree. Which stuck. And has hung in there through several branch-thrashing wind and rain storms of summer and autumn and now is still there even after all the leaves have come down. I am now quite fond of this hula hoop and it is a family thing to check if it's still up. I hope it makes it all winter - hang in there, hula hoop! You can do it!

Dear Borders Books

Chose snap of cute baby Yak to illustrate my small rant (get it, yak?) - at a bookstore with my son this afternoon, in the children's room to hunt down a picture book. The children's area looks like a bomb hit it, books - the great big expensive kind - flung all over the floor, one woman sitting there with her kids had big drinks for them all (because we all know the place to serve your children hot chocolate is not in the cafe but among the new books), her son had opened up (OPENED UP!) a magician kit and was playing with it (I am talking removed the plastic, tore it open, removed the pieces, and he was around 8 - well old enough to know better), her daughter was having a gimme-gimme tantrum on the floor kicking up books - a girl around four, her mom was doing the "work it out yourself" school of parenting called non-responsible ignoring, and I couldn't even get through their mess to look for a Jane Yolen book I wanted. The girl kicks a Dragonology book at me in her whiny rage and my inner librarian kicked in and began picking up the books and stacking them as the mother stares at me in disbelief. Her son had the grace to look guilty and try to sneak everything back in the ripped box, the woman makes a remark about other people making this mess and I smiled and suggested her daughter cease kicking books that cost about twenty dollars a piece and possibly help me pick up the books from the floor. Which she made a vague gesture at - she picked up two without getting up. I am surprised she didn't call me names. Mind you, this store is in a very expensive area of New York and this behavior is not uncommon whatsoever. Mentioning that the children's area was trashed to some clerks and how I could never work there because I would surely get fired getting mad at bad behavior. One told me how she has to write a letter of apology - with a gift certificate (!) to a very rude customer who wanted her to wrap gifts FROM ANOTHER STORE along with her purchased books and when she objected, the rude customer got management. Is this what we are coming to in this economy - shop owners so afraid of losing money that they put up with rude twits and force their staff to suffer indignities? Dear Borders, I buy an absurd amount of books, cards, and miscellany from your stores and I do not appreciate having to watch you tolerate rude people who destroy items. This is not the first time. News flash: these people are NOT BUYING - they are spilling, ripping, trodding upon, wrecking items but NOT BUYING. I am buying. And I would like you to allow your staff to tell people they are not allowed to ruin merchandise unless they are going to pay for it, treat stores like free-for-alls with their children, and punish staff and humiliate them for being appropriately appalled. I think all true bookstore lovers - and we are the buyers - would agree. And with the holidays coming up - all shop and store owners of all merchandise - same message. And please, everyone, let's play nicely out there in this big lovely world. Thank you. Rant over and out.

Sunday Quote

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

-Henry David Thoreau

Neon night-lights

I have always loved the lights of the city. Even little cities like the one where I live now are enough to charm. When I was younger people always told me they saw me in a country setting someday, but if I had the bucks I would have an aparment in the city and a little house on a New England island. For now, I'll take the electric lipstick smears of neon blur.

A' haunting we will go...

My new and dreadful camera mostly presented blurred and ruinous photos - but this one, of the ten year old walking to join his friends for trick or treating, captured that October's end sense of magic.

As ever

Thinking of you on your day, Anne and Grace. Love.