Thanks! And Cherry Pie!

Posted November 7, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: news, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Washington and Cherry Pie

A quick thanks to all who bore with me through this election cycle, and most of all to this country.

I have at times been reticent to post political views on this blog.  There is, of course, the fear of offending people.

But a larger fear has been, well, of getting into some kind of trouble.  Professional, political–you name it–trouble.

Some times that hesitancy may be sensible. But when it’s truly fear – a fear that partisanship is so strong that people on the other side will simply not forgive me or like me or read me, or hire me–then I kind of shiver inside.

Because if people are fearful of writing about their beliefs, it will be very difficult to maintain democracy.  (It will also be very hard to write anything very interesting.)

I’m not saying everyone should go around shouting all the time!  And some forms of speaking out are violent, inflammatory, dishonest and really not very useful, even if legal exercises of first amendment rights.

I suspect that I’ve bordered more on the boring than the inflammatory.  Still, I just want to say – thanks.  To you who agree, and especially to you who disagree.  For reading, commenting, and simply being kind.

And to you whose candidate lost, I really do know how very stinging and sour and awful that feeling is.  All I can ask is that you believe that those on this side are as sincere and well-meaning as you believe yourselves to be.

And to those on my side, come on!  Be gracious.

I’m not sure what George Washington and Cherry Pie have to do with all of this, other than the fact that both, like the right to vote and assemble, write and draw, are things (errr… people and things) for which I am supremely thankful.

 

PS – Adding this later – It’s not great to gloat, but I also think acrimony will be worsened if people try to deny the victory.  To say for example that it is a narrow popular vote victory is not mathematically or historically true (if one looks at past popular votes)–it’s a victory of millions of votes, far wider than any George W. Bush popular vote victory.  (Of course, Bush lost popular vote in 2000.)

Comments: 10 Comments

Trying To Keep It Light On Election Day! (Sonnet) (Not Nano-ing At this Exact Moment)

Posted November 5, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Stress, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Post-Eden

Before the sky, a lovely pale, a boy,
tall on glistening grass, tosses a ball,
and I wonder why it is that joy
is not simply inhaled.  Is it the Fall
that keeps us from feeling how it lines
the air we breathe?  Is it that first loss
that keeps us toiling within the confines
of our skins, unheeding unhidden cost?
A soft haze, like a blessing, nestles on
the sea, mutes the horizon, brings the far near.
So much within reach.  The brain wrestles on
its hardscrabble way, yet slowly fear
unwinds, diminished by sky, sea, view.
An inner hand makes the catch, more too.

*****************************************

Ah.  Why is it that joy is not simply inhaled?

In my case, it is partly because I am endlessly fretting.  This evening, the eve of the election, however, I  am feeling so much better–so very much more joyful –  because I’ve made a committment to get up super early and get myself to a swing state where I will work as a poll monitor, helping to people to avoid being disenfranchised.   So hopefully I’ll be able to get where I am supposed to be, and hopefully you will to!

The above is an older sonnet which, if I have access to internet, I also hope to link to dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.  (And I’m sorry the pic’s not the sea!)

And yes, I’m trying to take a break from blogging for Nanowrimo – and I will!  But for here and now, a wonderful and open-hearted day to all.  Take care, and may we all get some peace, wisdom, and sense of unity and pride from all this.  Thanks much.

Comments: 36 Comments

Not Sure Where I’m Going (Nanowrimo)

Posted November 4, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Country weekend, Nanowrimo, Uncategorized
Tags: ,

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Working, sort of, on Nanowrimo in between kvetching about the election and missing blogging and now back in NYC without Internet access (except through iPhone) and can’t quite believe in my new “novel” yet.

So, a bit, frustrated.

Comments: 6 Comments

Tired! A (not) Novel Sensation!

Posted November 1, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Blogging, dog
Tags: , , , , ,

Tired! But Ready To Write! (Maybe!)

I am very tired.

I have always thought of myself as a novelist (not poet!)

It is November 1.

All of these factors lead me to say I hope to substantially cut down on blogging over the next few weeks.

November is “National Novel Writing Month.”  (The original Nanowrimo, invented by Chris Baty – not napowrimo or nablopowrimo or any of the weird na-mo’s.)  The idea is that if you just have a deadline you can write a novel in a single month.

I have, in the past, continued blogging while also trying to write a one-month novel.  But this year, I know that I do not have the time or mental space  to devote attention to both a new novel and an ongoing blog.

So, I’m really going to try to discipline myself this month and not blog so much.

All that said, please do check in on this space every once in a while!  My discipline is extremely faulty.  I will terribly miss you!    Also, I’m still on the dVerse Poets Pub staff and will be doing an upcoming prompt this month (and probably participating in some.)

Before I sign off (and I’ll probably end up saying more about this before Tuesday) – please do VOTE!   Personally, I support President Obama:  because I am a woman who wants equal pay and the control of my own body, because I have a close relative who is about to go to Afghanistan as a serviceman, because I care about the environment, because I believe in science and public education, because I live in a City that is on the front lines of foreign policy bluster, because I live in a City that will need FEMA aid, because I am close to persons who deeply and romantically love others of the same sex.   There are a zillion other reasons, including jobs.  

Two very compelling endorsements of President Obama:  Larry Pressler, Republican South Dakota Congressman and Senator, Vietnam War Vet, here.  Also the Salt Lake City Tribune endorsement of Obama is very enlightening, called Too Many Mitts.   Read here.  

P.S. MANY THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE EXPRESSED CONCERN ABOUT THE WELL-BEING OF MYSELF AND MY FAMILY AND OTHER NEW YORKERS IN THE WAKE OF SANDY!  I still have not been home, I’m running out of clothes, but I am so very grateful for your support, and especially for the support of the online poetry community.  Thanks Thanks Thanks!  

 

Comments: 17 Comments

More Pix – New York Being New York-Crane Still Dangling on 57th Street

Posted October 31, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: New York City, news
Tags: , , , ,

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Above pictures are from my walk/busride home from work quite late last night.  The tall building has a large crane which came loose in the storm and has been dangling over 57th Street, still night secured.  The buses had started and were free, but crowded.  The City seems very bright this morning though and limited subway service is starting.  Still no power downtown. I’ve not been home and am running out of clothes!  A minor irritation, but an irritation!

Comments: 15 Comments

Some (Minor) Pix of NYC after Sandy

Posted October 31, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: New York City, news, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

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Here are a few very minor pictures of damage and traffic.  I haven’t honestly been down to worst affected areas yet (which include where my apartment is located).   Getting around the City was quite difficult today as there has been tremendous traffic.  A lot of that has been caused by the dangling crane on the roof of a very high building on 57th Street.  Basically this means that everything going up to 57th is somewhat gridlocked and everything going down to 57th is blocked – but if you are going downtown below 57th (as in the right hand side of the picture above) you are okay.  More or less.  (Of course, I understand that there are no traffic lights below 39th.)

New Yorkers are great walkers but it’s a bit tiring.  Tomorrow some subway service will be restored. I have to applaud Mayor Bloomberg and city workers (and others) who have been out picking up tree limbs, etc. and moving ahead with the clean-up.

Comments: 7 Comments

Hooked

Posted October 30, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

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Hooked

A woman uptown
comes home to two children
stabbed.  All the next day I hear, silently,
her screams.

Then think, as I see caught fish pulled
onto the esplanade–of how we ache
for silver linings–slitted gills grasping desperately
at thin air, metallic iridescence belly-flopping
on stone–something to be made right, fixed,
bearable–and how, to a fish,
all upper surfaces must
seem silvered – ripples plated by sun
or mist, until whipped
into the sky, it finds
that the world is not as it
has known, that there are vast portions
where neither body nor
instinct can protect, can even
function.

So we too
forge ahead, with or against
the current, but still in the comfort of luminous
viscosity until some terrible ‘suddenly’
when we are pulled
onto a stone slab of rending gasp and bootless
throttle, where the grey of sky is at best
mercurial.

If lucky, we are thrown
back – and though our breathing may labor,
accordion halation un-keyed, we float at last lopsidedly, slither
at a slant.

But sometimes, some one of us
is trapped in that sharded air until, seemingly, the end
of days.

We gasp, spin, in the eddy
of their reverberating
pain, then, gratefully, guiltily,
swim on, faster,
faster.

*******************************************
Hi–many of you know that I’m a denizen of New York City, specifically Battery Park City, and have been evacuated a couple of days.  This poem is not really about that, but something I’ve been mulling over since last week, a terrible terrible tragedy in which a nanny seems to have killed two children and then attempted suicide.  (I’m sorry; it’s a very sad story; my thoughts and prayers go to the families involved.)   I am linking it to dVerse Poets Open Link Night, hosted by the wonderful Tashtoo.I appreciate the concern of all about the New York storm.  We still haven’t gotten home but have been very well taken care of and feel immensely lucky.  The city is also in a good mood, friendly, relieved. 

Comments: 34 Comments

Sandy Poem (In the Midst Of)

Posted October 29, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry
Tags: , , , ,

Sandy Poem (In the Midst Of )

Do you leave the windows open
(against a vacuum)
or closed (against
wet roar)?
Curtains?  Thin but, if pulled,
the mayor tells us, might catch
glass
shards.

Still cake
has just been made; life
lets us eat it.

A rich cake, moist (though in this warped/wet
night, it feels somehow
dry too, yellow straight-edged
wedges able to keep
their shape
like sanity, sun).  We’ve left

the windows
open–small apartment
needing air – and for a while it’s the images
from the computer sweep
us, floods
fled, though every now
and again and now and
now
the here/now wind
shakes with
scream-edged
harshness
everything, unsettling
that sliver of sweetness that sits
so light upon my
stomach, that extra pinch
of crumbs I sneaked
as part of
my serving, dumb
undeserved
luck.

*************************

Trying to pass time in storm – I am the kind of suggestive person whose stomach gets more than butterflies.  Agh. So here’s kind of a poem.  So worried about my City right now – complain about it plenty, but hate to see it down. 

Comments: 14 Comments

Sandy

Posted October 29, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Uncategorized

Actually, getting pretty scary outside right now – only sounds – intense wind, every once in a while a shout or siren.

Sandy is not a good name for a storm.  It is the name of something friendly, soft, beachy, tanned.  Little Orphan Annie’s Dog?

So glad to have left Battery Park City, a wind tunnel on even a becalmed day.

 

Comments: 9 Comments

Sandy – Uptown New York (Update)

Posted October 29, 2012 by ManicDdaily
Categories: New York City, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

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I hesitate in the middle of a big storm to mention clouds, much less silver linings.

But, as some limited compensation, these terrible situations can bring out the “friendly” in people.

Often in New York City, casual acquaintances (meaning the people you live near for years) nod (at most).  But yesterday, in Battery Park City (an evacuation zone), everyone in my laundry room, on the esplanade, or waiting interminably for the elevators, actually talked.  The big topic  – whether or not they were leaving.

If they were leaving, they talked of a friend somewhere;  if they were not leaving, they talked about how difficult it had been last year (during Irene) staying with a friend somewhere.

Dogs seemed to be a particular problem at friend’s apartments during hurricanes.

One guy (who was not leaving) explained that the brick he carried into the elevator was to be put in his water-filled bathtub.   (I never quite understood what the brick was supposed to do, but I did learn exactly which building site to go to to get my own.)

I personally had very mixed feelings about leaving.  Our building–as many stayers pointed out–is concrete.  Additionally, I’d bought a ton of food.  (Bottled water, I was to learn later, is extremely heavy.)

That said, if you wanted to leave by subway, you had to get out before 7.

So now, I am up  in Harlem (a far higher area of the City).   And people have been super kind – helping us unwedge the suitcase (with all those bottles) from the subway stairs, retrieving my necklace (from the subway platform) when my own unwedging efforts caused it to fall off.

And, although, I know there are difficult things going on – flooding down in BPC and a horrible crane dangling on 56th street–it’s been calm enough here that we could, at one point this morning, walk over to a nearby community garden, taking wet garbage for its composting operation.

Soil, I guess, goes on.

(Regardless of Sandy.)

PS – I was a bit irritated waking up this morning that we’d left BPC – the weather had been so calm at that point- but then I read about the flooding and, in the end, I really do urge people to listen to the authorities.  Terrible to make the lives of first responders worse in an already difficult situation.  That said, I know I’m super lucky to have a place to go, warm, dry, and with people I love (who compost.)  Good luck to all.

Comments: 5 Comments

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