Night Falls

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I confess. I love to read in the hot tub after dark. I put my Kindle in a quart-size zip lock bag, lie back, and rest my “Kindle bag” on one of those inflatable bathtub pillows. Not jets, no light. All I want is the sky and the sounds of the night.

I read as the night falls around me.

Precisely at sundown, daylight dims, the gulls are gone and the Canada geese come honking like New York City traffic. First they arrive in pairs.

As dark descends, there are fours and sixes, until finally a great flock circles wide where the creek feeds the harbor. They fly low, continuing to honk.

“Here we are! Make way!” they announce, until finally the entire squad cruises to bed down for the night along the shore line.

Then the barred owl arrives, landing high up in a Douglas fir about seventy-five feet away. I only know he’s there because of his melodious call in the pitch black.

“Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you?”

From somewhere around the Judd Creek bridge, I hear a muted response.

“Who-cooks-for-you?  Who-cooks-for-you?”

Next comes the moon, rising high against the velvet sky. I admire it through the silhouette of the blossoming cherry tree before me.

The tub is just hot enough to warm my weary bones and lull me to the edge of dozing off.

My dog Lily lies nearby on a cushion covered with her much-loved wool saddle blanket. She’s a Golden Retriever/Great Pyrenees mix, so the Pyrenees in her is here to love and protect. She’s never far from my side.

30 minutes later feels like an hour.

“C’mon Lily. Time to go in.”

She is as reluctant as I am.

Kindle in a quart bag.

Willpower

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Willpower is not my strong suit. It’s not my weakest weakness, but I could do better. What are the biggest weaknesses in my willpower folder?

Writing and Reading.

Writing should not be an issue for a writer. When I get these ideas in the middle of the night, when I awaken with my teeth clenched in my mouthguard and my eye mask askew, my hands shaking with the visage of the ethereal nightmare that I’m watching grow smaller and smaller as it drifts out the window, lifting up into the naked branches of the cherry tree, and beyond, into the clear clear clear dark sky, I reach for my laptop.

I open a Word doc and type the sentence I want to remember, the sentence that will fuel my message later. Much later. I have too many writing prompts on too many topics.

But Reading. That’s my biggest downfall, my Achilles’ heel.

I am constantly finding one thing after the other to read online! (Exclamation points are another weakness but I have almost conquered that one, and you’ll note that the previous exclamation point is warranted!.)

“The anatomical basis of Achilles’s death is more likely to have been injury to his posterior tibial artery behind the medial malleolus, in between the tendons of the flexor digitorum longus and the posterior tibial vein. This area would have been included in Thetis‘s grip.” See what I mean? I’m pathetic.

The New Yorker tells me that I’ve hit the wall. I’ve read all the free articles they’re going to allow me. “Subscribe for $1 a week and get a tote.” I have too many totes, but I very nearly do it. I fear that if I subscribe to one, the rest will follow like literary dominoes. The Wall St. Journal, The Washington Post. Like the 12 Temptations of Christ, they’re calling out to me from their individual browser windows until I have filled way too many hours of my day with an endless loop of reading.

The New York Times is a deep bottomless pit of content. Yes, I do subscribe to The New York Times, digital edition, so it’s my own fault. I had been a faithful print subscriber to The Wall Street Journal for years, and then, damn it, the he/she faceless, anonymous paper delivery person kept forgetting (even when I left notes) that on Wednesdays, if he/she left my Wall St. Journal in the Beachcomber tube, the weekly Beachcomber would not be delivered. They penalize us like that. (Fair enough.)

I finally had enough of occasionally missing out on Wednesday’s local news, obits and the Calendar. I called The Wall St. Journal and told the man in India about the tube that the he/she, faceless, anonymous paper delivery person was hijacking everyday and, with unfortunate results, on Wednesday’s. “I would like to cancel my subscription.”

I would miss Dan Neil, the automotive columnist, whose blend of wit and mechanical knowledge is quite attractive to me. I wouldn’t miss the $5000 Gucci handbags in the monthly magazine section. I wouldn’t miss the Financial pages because I never read the Financial pages. I wouldn’t miss that humor guy whose pieces appear in the lower right spread “below the fold” on the Opinion page. (Below the fold is where they put the lesser content.) I can’t remember his name, but I sincerely believe that I could write a humor piece as good as he. (And don’t tell me it’s “as good as him”. When did the world switch from “he” to “him” in this context? It’s everywhere. Don’t they read Grammar Girl?)

Here I go again, off an another reading tangent. I googled* “Wall St Journal opinion page humorist” and after Peggy Noonan (!) I find a list of Top Humorists. Stephen King is #1 on this list. Joan Collins is #3. What? Art Buchwald, my childhood idol (You think I’m joking?) is #7. Tsk.

The man in India asked if I would keep my subscription if he directed the he/she, faceless, anonymous paper delivery person to install a proper tube for The Wall St. Journal. Like a good customer service rep, he diffused my annoyance and I agreed to allow 2 weeks for the tube to be installed.

I waited 4 weeks. Still no tube, and yet another lost Beachcomber issue. I called and there was no distracting me this time. I cancelled my subscription and went online to subscribe to The New York Times. I’m sure that Rupert Murdoch is not going to miss my $99 per half year.

Now I’m reading a whole new litany of favorite columns. Modern Love is best. I crave warmth like the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Facebook is my love/hate relationship. Why does someone have to ask a question of their readers that I feel responsible to answer?

This morning a fellow writer, a friend, who is writing a novel set in the time of Boccacio, posted “Who can tell me what the paste left after the oil is pressed from olives is called in Italian? In medieval times, it was a treatment for arthritis and joint pain.”

I responded,
“No, I cannot. However, thanks to your question and my lack of self-control with Google, I now know more than I need to about olives— production, harvest and economics!”

I’m incorrigible.

I found a solution to my lack of willpower with respect to Reading online.

I decided that, beginning today, I shall unplug my laptop when I begin to read online. When the power percentage reaches 0% and my MacBook powers down, that’s it. Tough luck. I’ll have to proceed to the items on my “To Do” list.

Did it work? No. As soon as the pop-up warned me that I was at 5%, I ran for the charger. I needed to finish “How Weed Got Me in the Best Shape of My Life”. What? I don’t need weed to exercise. But I was curious. This is Washington state, after all.

I should note that the day after I cancelled my Wall St. Journal subscription, I found that a shiny new Wall St. Journal tube was in place at the end of my driveway with the morning’s issue.

The very next day, it was unceremoniously removed.

*Is the verb “google” upper case or lower case? When I google it, I get everything to do with the search engine and nothing to do with the verb. 😉

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New Yorker Envy

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I refer to New Yorker subscription envy. Not New Yorker resident envy.

Sure, it would be fun to live in NYC—maybe for a month or a semester. (It’s been decades, but maybe once again I’ll find myself with a syllabus.)

I see myself hitting up the museums I’ve not gotten around to. The Cloisters, for example.

The museums I’ve not gotten to the finish of. The top of the Guggenheim ramp, e.g.

And I would take the bus to museums that were closed on the day that I visited. The Whitney.

When I needed a break, I would sit on the stairs at the Metropolitan and eat a hot dog with sauerkraut while watching the tourists pass by on the Double Decker Bus. This is the only place where I eat hot dogs with sauerkraut. I’ll enjoy the hot dog as much as the martinis and the view of Central Park from the Met’s Roof Garden Cafe. Martinis make me tipsy. Very. Is that why I usually stick to wine? I think I’m now old enough to let my guard down.

Every night I would take a cab to Broadway and see a show, since I have never seen a Broadway show. Broadway cast shows on tour, yes. Actual Broadway cast, no. Yes, I have Broadway envy, too.

And when I missed rolling around in the grass, I would head to Central Park  with a blanket and a thorough spraying with DEET for a total immersion in their microcosm of nature, placed as it is like an open terrarium in the midst of Lego block skyscrapers.

I digress.

I love The New Yorker. I envy a friend’s subscription. The issues are stacked on her coffee table when I visit. I put down my glass of wine and turn to the cartoon. Why can’t I be so witty as that?

I read a paragraph or two, but then my friend has returned to her place across from me on one of her delightfully unique and artistic chairs. Her taste is impeccable.

She eyes The New Yorker in my hand and admits that she has fallen behind.

I, who have just read a wonderful fantasy of reading the stack of New Yorkers in a tropical location, pick up my iPhone and send her the link.

“Estás sola?” I’d been asked, at the airport, and on the bus, and when I ordered my dinner later at the open-air restaurant. Are you alone? I liked the way the word sounded when put to me in Spanish, like a woman’s name fashioned from the English word ‘soul.’”

I get that a lot, too. Enjoy.

A BIKINI, A TOOTHBRUSH, AND 44 ISSUES OF THE NEW YORKER

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Relevant Reading

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tearsI’ve been reading since before dawn today. I awakened to find 2 tweets that led me into a couple hours of insight on themes that I’ve considered frequently during the writing and editing of The Girl with the Black and Blue Doll.

Life. Death. Tears. The Universe. Themes that I devoted way too much time to during my childhood.

1. from Glynn Washington (NPR’s SnapJudgment host, who was so generous with his time and thoughts when we met at Snap studios in Oakland, CA, Spring 2014)
2. from Rabbi Evan Moffic (I’ve never met him. He began following me on Twitter, and, in following him back, he’s put some Faith back in my Spiritual.)

The readings…
1. Washington shared yesterday’s NY Times’ Opinion, “Sabbath” by 82-year-old writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose memoir (On the Move) was published in April. To quote Sacks’ website: The book is by “the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human.”

Sacks has had a second diagnosis of cancer, and he says they’ll be no recovery this time. One-third of his liver has been impacted thus far.

Sacks’ Opinion piece is a beautiful memoir in itself, about Life coming full circle.  All of our lives will eventually come full circle, if they haven’t already—as mine has—and it’s always a joy to read and learn from another person’s journey. I won’t do the article justice if I try to explain it here. Just read it.

Reading yesterday’s Opinion piece lead me to Sacks’ July Opinion in the NY Times My Periodic Table. Again, a timely piece relevant to my recent nights under the stars. When we find ourselves in a fragile part of our life, many of us often turn to the Universe. Lying under a sky “powdered with stars” (Milton), it’s difficult not to contemplate our place in the big picture.

2. Rabbi Moffic shared his thoughts on Tears, initially re: tears and funerals. Why You Should Cry Your Eyes Out.

From his article: “In truth, however, tears are a sign of strength. They are a sign of life. They are a sign of real feeling. We cry because we are alive. We cry because we care.”

I don’t cry nearly as much anymore. When I do, thankfully it’s more likely to be from Joy.
When, if, you read my memoir, you’ll know that, as soon as the Sisters at St. Joseph School got me in their grip, I learned about the value of Prayer.

I began to pray almost every day for one thing: Death. I prayed during the long school bus ride in the morning, in between my fantasies and daydreaming. I prayed during morning prayer and afternoon prayer and the prayer before heading home. I prayed at night as I lay awake in my bed. I prayed for Death to come ASAP—but it never did. Year after year, my prayers went unanswered.

Then I left home for college at age 18, and I stopped praying for Death. At that point, I discovered a totally different version of Life and was ready to embrace it. I prayed for Life.

I don’t pray much anymore. I guess I feel that what’s done is done.