Posting on Air (Not)

Posted September 19, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Vicissitudes of Life, writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Isn't life grand!?

I am flying back from Florida to New York and the flight attendant has just announced that we are over 10,000 feet and that permitted electronic devices can now be turned on and also (omg!) that this airplane is equipped with WiFi service – ‘just check your sky magazine for details.’

I am not the kind of person who checks sky magazines for details any more than I am the kind of person who reads instructions before assembling a baby carriage.  There are screws and bolts and bits and pieces and  somehow you’ve got to jam them all together so that you only have one or two of the silly things left over.

You call my kind of people the bargers-ahead; the damners of the torpedoes.

But I digress.

Wifi on the airplane!

Yes, I was almost asleep.  Yes, I’d been actually reading print media.  Yes, I’d even been looking out the window.

But hey, yippee!

I don’t write this as a complete troglodyte.  Wifi on the airplane gives me a whole new reason to look out the window.  Now I’ll be able to write about what I see.  More importantly, I’ll be able to think about what I see.  (Looking silently is maybe just doable, but thinking silently?  Without pen or pad or laptop!?  No way, for a manic barger torpedo-damner.)

I compose my excited first line as I drag out my laptop:  I’m flying.  I’m posting.  I’ve got the Atlantic Ocean to my right, and two empty seats to my left!

 

 

(Hey, I can even post a photograph.   I drag out my camera and take a shot of this herd of beautiful little puffs of clouds and ocean and shoreline as my computer boots up.  Then try to log on.)

Yes, there is Wifi on the airplane. But it costs $10 per flight.

Do I really need to post right here, right now?

Wasn’t I about to go to sleep?

It’s not the money; it’s the principle of the thing.

I know the airlines will not give you a free lunch any more, but can’t they spare a little bandwidth???

The clouds are petering out.  The shore is no longer visible.  Enjoy the sky.  Still blue, still free, for now.

 

 

 

 

Better Make The Most of It (while still free).

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Back to NY from FL

Posted September 19, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , ,

A New Yorker's Concern About Bare Feet

I have been in Florida these last couple of weeks and am returning home tomorrow.

I have to confess to being very happy to return home.  Not to leave my parents who have transplanted themselves here, but to get back to New York City.

Weirdly enough, what I will enjoy the most is a return to nature.

There is certainly nature down here–nature with a capital N as in the end of Ocean, the middle of Hurricane–Nature that is beautiful but so forceful people seem to need to insulate themselves from it.

I’m looking forward to the kind of nature that I can walk around in even at noon and open my windows to.   (This assumes no more NYC tornadoes.)

Actually, the main thing I’m looking forward to is simply walking.  People walk in Florida, but either (i) on the beach or (ii) early in the AM with big sneakers and determined elbows.

I try to do errands on foot.  These are not comfortable walks–aside from the heat, it feels a bit odd to schlep plastic shopping bags on the beach.   (BTW, butter melts if left on hot sand even in a bag covered by clothing.)

I’ve learned not to wear black.  But even in muted colors, I don’t really fit in.  I’ve started one fire and one explosion in the last two weeks. When I drive, which I hate, I roll all the windows down.  (Yes, it’s very hot without A/C.)

Maybe what I’m anxious to return to is my personal nature.

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Why Jeter Wasn’t A Cheater

Posted September 18, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Baseball, elephants, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
it?

Why Derek Jeter Wasn’t Cheating When He Pretended To Be Hit By a Pitch.

1.  It might have gotten his sleeve.

2.  And did get him on first base.

3.  If it had hit him, it would have really hurt.

4.  They do it in soccer. (And they have a World Cup that really does involve the whole world.)

5.  In fact, feigning/bluffing is a time-honored tactic in any game.  (See e.g. poker.)  (Forget soccer.)

6.  He’s a Yankee and I’m from New York.

7.  He’s Derek Jeter (and I’m from New York.)

On base

(PS – sorry these are a re-posting of last night’s drawings.)

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Derek Jeter (A Biased View)

Posted September 17, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants
Tags: , , , , , , ,

It’s a game.  He plays it very well. 

Very very well.

(If you like elephants, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon or http://www.backstrokebooks.com.)

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Missing New York Storm Draft Sonnet (From Florida)

Posted September 17, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: news, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Windswept, wind-littered

Missing New York Storm (September 16th) Sonnet  (From Florida)

September storm in New York hustles through
in one or two, at most a scant fifteen,
New York minutes, and I, the professed New
Yorker, wasn’t in it; I who would have been
proud to complain of the urban canyon wind,
to bemoan felled branches, the wild thwacking
of the flag outside my building, send
this poem from a far place lacking
in tall, grey, and even, it feels to me, speed,
where everyone seems required to beam
in public, but some with stern primness (no need
to bring up politics)–I miss my home!–
its nitty-gritty, windswept, wind-littered, stone.

(Karin Gustafson – suggestions welcome.)

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Draft Poem Process – Blocking Writer’s Block

Posted September 15, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: dog, Uncategorized, writer's block, writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Okay (to the regular readers of this blog), I admit that the draft poem posted at about 1 a.m. this morning is blank verse in the truest (and possibly, worst) sense of the word.  I’d like to dignify it with some epithet like Creelyesque, but I’d hate to do that to the wonderful Robert Creeley.

Instead, I’ll explain away the poem by giving it as an example of an effort to block writer’s block.  If you want to write, you have to write.  It really is as simple as that.   You have to do it without being too precious about every single result.  That’s probably an elemental rule for getting yourself to do anything creative.

Waiting for the right conditions, the right mindset, even a modicum of brain power, may put you in a queue of one forever;  if you wait for inspiration, there you might be–in the abandoned mind bakery–holding a ticket that is never called.  (Even if it is called, all those wonderful half-baked goods may have gone completely stale by the time you actually get to the counter!)

Sure, an inner voice may tell you urgently that you are  a writer, an artist, but it’s unlikely to tell you in the hurly-burly of every single day exactly what to set down.

That’s where doggedness comes in (and not necessarily the doggedness of the wiggly happy dog that greets you at the door every evening.)  It’s more like the dog that is pawing pawing pawing at the zipper of your backpack because it is sure that somewhere inside nestles a treat.   Sometimes that treat is the old remains of a bagel; sometimes it’s chocolate!

Which, I know, yes, is terrible for dogs.  (More for us.)

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If To Be (Draft Poem)

Posted September 14, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry
Tags: , , , ,

If To Be

If to be is not to be
challenged,
then how can I,
if you keep
telling me
when already,
all right,
I do.

If to be is to be
sure, then
didn’t I?
Sure.
All right.

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Inconvenient Body (Draft Sonnet)

Posted September 14, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I think it’s Billy Collins who says something about poetry coming from a place where you start out with nothing to say.  (Something like that.)

I should probably not confess that I really have little that can be said (at least in a public forum) this evening.  So let’s try for a poem, a sonnet.

The Inconvenient Body

The body is not of the modern world.
Babies do not nurse only before nine
or after five. ( I remember how mine twirled
a finger against hair, cheek, breast, in a kind
of slow-mo dance even when demons
screamed to hurry up this time, nod off.)
They don’t grow out of it–older humans
too refuse to fall in space allotted,
to manifest symptoms in an orderly
fashion, to fit recovery into
a three-day weekend, but sordidly
succumb to ills that don’t begin to
improve till mid-week (if then), their tick-tock
measurable enough but off the clock.

(I know the last couplet doesn’t quite work but it’s late and last couplets are always the problem with sonnets.  I welcome suggestions.)

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Ocean/Overmedication

Posted September 13, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: news, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

One good thing about these days in Florida–the ocean.

One bad thing about these days in Florida–overmedication.   (Thankfully, not of me.)

I am recovering my “sea legs.”  I use the term in a completely made-up sense which has nothing to do with walking up and down the deck of a ship.  (The problem with me and ships is not my lack of sea legs, but “sea stomach.” )

I’ve gotten completely furious at doctors here.

My sea legs are legs that are willing to rush into the surf and dive below the next incoming wave.  This can be dangerous–not so much because of the force of the wave–but because, lately, my determination to achieve the sense of freedom the dive imparts has led me to take it at a depth of two feet.

I am more and more convinced that many of them (doctors) substitute treatment for attention.

I’m still not as brave as I once was.  Years of having my mother trail out to the beach after me shouting fearfully “you have children!” have taken their toll.

By that, I mean that they (doctors) often seem not to review cases or listen or attend to patients, but to simply prescribe tests and medication.  Loads of tests, loads of medication, for years.

But my mom stays at home these days, and I swim!  (Not just wade.)   And I’m often the only one–the only sea-borne human on the entire horizon!

One question that arises is whether doctors are more likely to overtreat the heftily insured. .  And what happens to patients who don’t have an advocate?   Someone to say, for example, “gee, if his blood pressure is 65 /42, maybe he shouldn’t be on two separate types of blood pressure lowering medication.”

So strange–the waves are not large this time of year, the jelly fish are not bubbling, the water temperature is pretty perfect (cool on initial entry, then immediately comfortable.)

Can the over treatment actually be intended to protect the doctor?  Document attempts to try everything (whether needed or not)?

Is it the school schedule?  The fact that this is the opposite of Spring Break?

Or, maybe…maybe… it has something to do with the big black fin I saw both this morning and yesterday, that dark rhythmic curve above the waves?

I hesitate to call them sharks.

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First Time Away From New York on 9/11 – Missing Bagpipes

Posted September 11, 2010 by ManicDdaily
Categories: 9/11, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This is the first 9/11  since the 9/11 that I have not spent in the City.  (I’m guessing I don’t have to tell you which one.)

I don’t particularly like 9/11 in the City.  I live a block or so from Ground Zero.  It is a somber difficult place on the anniversary, full of detours and no-crossing barricades.  The only thing good are the bagpipes.

There is always the question of whether or not to go to the ceremonies.  I usually just listen to the bagpipes–the sound travels–and then don’t go, or if I do, it is by chance, walking past the site to work while some of the names are being read.

This is not because I don’t respect the names or the day.  I simply find them too sad.

I realize this evening that I have never been away before because on every other 9/11 I’ve had a child living in the City, and I’ve felt, silently, that I could not risk being away from a place and time that reverberates with crisis if one of my children is there.

I know that if something (something else) happened, I would not necessarily be able to help my children, no matter how many cars mothers are supposed to be able to lift.   But there it is–something that 9/11 has left with me, not only the sense of past loss, the understanding of potential loss.

Away from the City, there is television coverage.  It too is sad–the footage of the actual day completely intolerable– but also maddening–actual commemoration nearly outweighed by posturing, schmaltz, sensation.   With only the barest wheedle of bagpipes.  Bagpipes are really not the same on tape.

For a poem (a villanelle) about 9/11 and also children, click here.

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