Let’s talk for a minute about the etiquette of gifting books. The etiquette is that you probably shouldn’t do it. First of all, there is a 99% chance that you’re going to gift a book that someone won’t like. You’re gifting it because you like it, but you don’t know what the other person likes, so it will probably sit on a shelf somewhere. Second of all, it’s like gifting someone a vacuum cleaner. Great, but now I have to spend ten hours cleaning the house.
I’d been away from New York for over three months. I returned to the city in the fall of 2018 only to discover that my local barbershop had turned into a Baskin-Robbins. Why do changes in the landscape accelerate as one ages? You take a quick shower and another Duane Reade opens. You wake from an afternoon nap and there’s a new president. The second you hit sixty, life becomes the unstoppable bus in the film Speed.
“No, eat the carrot first. Please.” She leaned forward, knife and fork on each side of the plate, a paper towel tucked in her collar. “It’s important.” He finished the carrot, then picked another from the bowl and put the whole thing in his mouth. “They’re good for you, believe me.” … “For the eyes, right?” “That’s a lie… Carrots,” she paused for effect, “give you the will to live.” “What do you mean?” he said, chewing. “It’s a root. And roots prevent you from getting the blues.” She picked one from the bowl; it gleamed under the kitchen light. “You see, carrots become bright orange because it’s so dark in the ground. They make their own light because the sun never reaches that far—like those fish in the ocean who glow from nothing? So when you eat it, you take in the carrot’s will to go upward. To heaven.”
NY Times Book Review: “Odd Couple Roommates, Bonds by Pills and Precarity. Ocean Vuong’s florid new novel, which seeks to find the dignity in dead-end jobs.”
Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
Humphreys was a shingle building with a handwritten sign above its entrance—HUMPHREY’S BAKED GOODS & SANDWICHES. Even before I opened its screen door, the unmistakable smell of bread baking wafted outside. Is there any better smell on earth?
4:30 a.m. yesterday morning. Forecast called for 90% to 100% cloud cover, and light rain. Again, damn it. Rinse & Repeat. I stare at the app, irritated. I pay $50 / year for this smartphone app, and it’s consistently wrong. Yet, I pay. And I believe. And I walk. Oh, Lord. Let it be wrong again today. And light rain it did; Rain enough to keep the pesky humans at home. But it let up. And there I am. Alone. Standing on the break wall, with the fog lifting. I snap the shot. I stare at the LCD screen, and I don’t see what I see in front of me. The HuMan tool can’t capture it. Beautiful can’t describe it. Ethereal.
Painter Giorgio Morandi: “One can travel this world and see nothing. To achieve understanding it’s necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see...Nothing, or almost nothing in this world is truly new, what’s important is the new, different perspective an artist chooses to look at the world.”
It’s been 1,828 consecutive (almost) days on this Cove Island Park walk. Like in a row.
Yes, it’s the same Cove Island Park track. May 5th makes it the 5 year anniversary of this walk.
And, the Magic Show goes on.
Notes: See other photos from Wednesday morning’s walk here.
