An excerpt from Marcelle Manhattan’s lovely piece this week, There’s No Place Like Home:
I move at least once a year.
Since 2003, I’ve subjected myself to six rounds of searches on Craig’s List, six tedious packing rituals, and six tales of mishap with sundry scurrilous moving companies.
You might think me a carefree, irreverent type who treads with a conscience-light, exploratory flounce and lays my whistling head wherever it suits me. But actually, the opposite is true. I’m unsettled seeing my life in boxes. I don’t like spending first nights alone in new bedrooms. In general, I’m risibly bad at goodbyes.
That’s why the most soul-gutting feeling in the world is after the movers have finished, and you’re left standing small and swallowed in an empty apartment, where only months ago you ate and cried and fucked and perhaps fell in love and had your heart broken. But it’s over. So you learn to move on.
In fact, I wonder if I’ve learned too well. Each time I go through a move, I throw away a portion of what I had before-losing some detritus of my life’s misguided homing instincts, like Hansel and Gretel laying crumbs behind them on the way to the Gingerbread Witch. Each time, I shed a piece of my past I no longer care to carry; I’ve gotten the resettling down to a routine, hanging pictures in the same, rehearsed places and hooking up the wires to my electronics like a pro. Which is saying something, since I’m a moron when it comes to technology (don’t ask me why I started a blog).
There’s No Place Like Home, from Marcelle Manhattan.
All the air knocked out of air
Rinsing Feeling — not so bad
what you knew would happen
has only happened later
than you expected
the delay: a blip.
By Todd Colby - at Todd Colby’s GleeFarm.
Journalist Ashton Applewhite is working on her latest book, about people in their 80’s who are still working, called “So When Are You Going to Retire?” Applewhite has a history of deflating social tuisms, most recently demonstrating that, in fact, women often do better emotionally and financially after divorce - rather than the commonplace (but unsupported) observation that divorce is overwhelmingly likely to be bad for wives, and good for husbands. (Cui bono? Who benefits from this sort of factual misapprehension? Just asking).
Applewhite’s set up “So When Are You Going to Retire?” on-line as a sort of notebook/sandbox while she finishes her research.
Undocumentedaliens, of course. Scott Whittle in his
Year of the Bird Project documenting love, and batles among the
Canadian geese in Prospect Park.
We’re adding Blogger Dog to our blogroll. We like this blog for a number of reasons, but most because credit is given where due - unless some other human-dog teams we’re aware of, in which the dog does all the creative heavy lifting - but somebody else takes the credit. Just saying.
This is all very tough on dogs. When a kid doesn’t do his homework - the dog gets blamed. But when the dog does the homework for the kid - shouldn’t there at least be a little credit for the assist?
On the Chinese Calendar, it’s the Year of the Rat. But for our neighbor Scott Whittle, it’s the Year of the Bird. And he has a plan:
2008 is my Big Year in birding, and I’m using it as an opportunity to raise money! Donate a fixed amount for every bird I see this year, and 60% will go to the American Bird Conservancy, a highly respected non-profit that champions the preservation of wild birds and their habitats. The other 40% goes to helping me go for the New York State Big Year record. I’ll be travelling all over the state seeking out every bird that I can, which means lots of trips to Western New York, the Adirondacks, Montauk, and anywhere else the birds might be. That means lots of gas money, cheap motels, and pelagic fees, so I need help! Click here to email me your donation. Just let me know how much you want to give per bird (the most possible birds is probably around 360 or so, so $.10/bird would be at most $36), and your info. I’ll tally the number of birds seen at the end of the year and let you know how much to send. You can follow my financial progress with a live ticker on my blog. Thanks!
We’ll be updating you with Scott’s progress - in birding and in fundraising. Watch this space.
By Todd Colby, poet, “Here’s The Rub:”
Here’s the Rub
Trees don’t look heavy
but they are heavy
and here’s the rub:
you have to cut them down
in order to weigh them
I envision you interpreting
this as a call to arms
the axe is ready
it is very shiny and there
is special grip stuff on the handle
a chain saw is full of fuel
and the souped-up
scale is ready too.
What’s remarkable is
is my head
which is just aching to be shaved
down the hall is a woman –
a little crazy but inspired –
go to her
she has a rubber stamp
alphabet set and she leaves
notes on the trees in the park
with their approximate weight
and degree of their ability
to have poems written about them
(for example: “THIS TREE WEIGHS
APPROXIMATELY 10,000 LBS
ACCORDING TO MY CALCULATIONS
WHICH I CAN EXPLAIN LATER. DEGREE
OF THIS TREE’S ABLITY TO HAVE A POEM
WRITTEN ABOUT IT: 32 %).
She shaved my head
while I was in bed.
More at his blog, Todd Colby’s Glee Farm.
We’ve added another local blog - Brooklyn Heights Blog - to our blogroll. Welcome!
Check out Brooklyn Streets, Carroll Gardens, an excellent local blog.
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