shymala

Hot chocolate with salt, maple syrup, orange oil, cinnamon and vanilla, just perfect after a long, cold walk. Wind is still strong and cold down by the Verazzano Narrows Bridge. My neighborhood, and I, are relatively lucky. This is the bottom of Bay Ridge, facing Staten Island, what the cabbies describe as 'under the bridge'. We have power. There's a large downed tree uprooted from the sidewalk and fallen across the street fortunately just short of hitting the opposite house, partly because some branches broke off. Lying across the road it's about the height of a man's waist. Down by the Narrows, there's a large hollow pipe, half the width of this tree trunk but at least half again as long, lying on the rocks below the boardwalk and partially submerged. The exposed end is full of bolts and other fittings, I try to guess what it is: something from a ship, or a pier, perhaps? Somewhere a business is probably filing an insurance claim for this lost pipe. There...

"Do you know what happened to me today?" This from a slight, well-put-together woman I smiled at during a walk. She said, "My job is so stressful, I just walked from..." 3+ miles, and she was in work clothes & shoes. She had meant it as a casual, would you believe, how funny, comment. But then she broke down. Not for long, she pulled herself together pretty quickly -- 5 mins of letting it out, tops. But what are we doing to people, in this country? Millions and millions on the edge of endurance. I was home sick on Sunday, and read myself the service out of an antique prayer book. There are verses from the Bible read during services. The surprising thing was that this very old version of the prayer book had about 3x as many verses about the responsibility of the wealthy to give, share, sustain, as the contemporary prayerbook. God, despite the evil that is coming out of the far-right, is not a fiscal conservative. We are, in fact, our brothers (or sisters) keepe...

We had a storm this morning, early, not a monsoon but in that general direction: lighting, thunder, wind, rain. And now it's past and the sounds are shifting down from that wildness. The hush surprises my ear. There's one remark from an arguing seagull. Other sounds slowly begin to make themselves heard. It's like the pause between movements in a symphony. Now the songbirds are tuning up. The slow movement is starting. There's a shushing sound, car going by on wet road. It's going to be an urban pastorale. Hah! And now a crow! And here is the wonder of it, to me: this entire landscape of sound could be happening in Port Klang, Malaysia. If I close my eyes I can see the domes of mosques, a restaurant overlooking fishing boats and serving chili crabs... I never expected this in Brooklyn. The world is vast and almost unbridgeable, sometimes, and then there are moments when the far is achingly near. Good morning, friends.