Thursday, October 24, 2013

People of the City: Central Park

He is thin, wiry, the septuagenarian's version of gangly. He looks ready to be puffed away, like the puff of his white hair which despite his best attempts is escaping from beneath a beige baseball cap, like the fluff of milkweed pods bursting. Black pants, running shoes, faded plaid shirt under a gray down vest. His face is pale and deeply lined. Tired. His face is a sigh at the end of a long day. His face is a sigh for a memory that lies down next to him every night. A memory that turns to a bitterness in his coffee the next morning, when light comes in his kitchen windows and the comforting dark of her memory can no longer be drawn about him. His face was a sigh for her.

Right now, though, as he passes the bench where I sit in Central Park, the memory lines break into lines of frustration as he gives a sharp tug to the red leash in his left hand. The Scottish Terrier at the end of it has sat down on the sidewalk, facing the way they just came, and is refusing to move. With a barely audible huff, the man walks gingerly back to his dog. He bends down to lift it, turns it around to face the right direction, sets it back down, and begins his forward journey again. Immediately the Scottie turns and pulls in the opposite direction. This is repeated four or five times, each time they get a foot or so nearer to my bench.

As I chuckle, the man looks up. Wearily, even apologetically, he smiles and says, "He doesn't want to go home."

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,

by Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

"Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself," by Barbara Crooker, from Radiance. Copyright, Word Press 2005.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Subway Fare

[This is a weekly post where I talk about whatever I happen to be reading at the moment. No book too great or too small to be read. Since most of my reading happens on my subway commute, I'm calling it Subway Fare.]



Yesterday a friend gave me this book. There's nothing better than having a friend over for breakfast and she turns up with a bag full of books for you to read on your commute. She put this one in my hands and in retrospect I guess I went all Frollo on her, mustering a pained face full of distaste and saying something peevish like "What---is---this---peasant---trash." On the strength of her masters degree in literature, she rolled her eyes and said, "Ignore the cover, you'll finish it in an afternoon."

OK, I will say to no one's surprise and with no animosity to our author Ms. Clare, this certainly did not hit the New York Times list on account of the exquisite writing. Here's a taste of the exposition technique:

He'd asked her to stop calling him Uncle Luke about a year ago, claiming that it made him feel old, and anyway reminded him of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Besides, he'd reminded her gently, he wasn't really her uncle, just a close friend of her mother's who'd known her all her life.

GEE, THANKS FOR MAKING THAT CLEAR, EXPOSITION. "Besides, he'd reminded her gently for the sake of any third party who might ever read the story of their lives and wonder how he and Clary are related since obviously there is no way she has FORGOTTEN unless she is like that girl in 50 First Dates and can't remember ANYTHING, he wasn't really her uncle."(Also, Uncle Tom's Cabin!? Is it possible that a human person who has been alive on the human earth for any amount of time could have only ONE association with the word "uncle" and that it would be a 19th century sentimental protest novel?? Like, how long did you ponder that one, Clare?)

With that minor caveat, I am ready to admit that there are a lot of sexy magic people, which is really why YA fiction exists and NOBODY is complaining about that. Certainly not this girl.

So I've been reading it on the subway. (And in parks. And in my apartment.) But I usually hide the cover.

(Because I still care about what people on the subway think of me because most of them are so well dressed and might be models. I'm sure this is something I will grow out of when I have children.)

P.S. I just read a line that says, "Her voice was like honey poured over ice." Ugh.