DK, Daybreak. November 22, 2020. 6:30 to 7:02 am. 41° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT
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Walking. With MJF.
Monday morning, 5 a.m. The night before, wind gusts up to 60 mph, heavy rain, and a tornado set down a few miles away. Trees down. Thousands without power in Fairfield County. The Kanigan house? Silent. The lights burn, the furnace hums, Susan and Eric sleep. All is well.
I walk.
Cove Island Park. There’s no evidence of havoc on the beach. It is swept clean. No drift wood. No trash. No humans. The sand is firm underfoot. I leave faint shoe marks. I don’t look back.
I never look back.
It’s likely why the title of his book, No Time Like the Future, caught my attention. Michael J. Fox‘s new memoir, is pumping through my earbuds.
29 years old: Parkinson’s.
58 years old: Spinal cord surgery (unrelated to Parkinson’s) followed by long term rehab.
“I got grim,” he said in an interview in 2019. No shit.
I’m Canadian, like MJF, without the famous part. He was born 5 months earlier, and yet handed a deck of cards that I’m not sure I could ever play.
He’s written 3 other memoirs titled “Lucky Man“, “Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist” and “A Funny Thing Happens on the Way to the Future.” You get the picture. It’s almost as if he was built to take the blows.
He’s narrating this new book.
Shame, that’s what I feel, as I have to slow down the narration speed on Audible to catch each word. Most with Parkinson’s speak slowly, but not MJF. He speaks rapidly, with certain words trailing off at the end of certain sentences. Actor. Married, 30 years. Father. Prolific fundraiser for Parkinson’s. Writer. Narrator of his own books. Super Man.
I walk, and I listen. Continue reading “Walking. With MJF.”
Hmmmmm….
Neither season after season of extreme weather events nor the risk of extinction for a million animal species around the world could push environmental destruction to the top of our country’s list of concerns. And how sad, he said, to see so many among the most creative and best-educated classes, those from whom we might have hoped for inventive solutions, instead embracing personal therapies and pseudo-religious practices that promoted detachment, a focus on the moment, acceptance of one’s surroundings as they were, equanimity in the face of worldly cares. (This world is but a shadow, it is a carcass, it is nothing, this world is not real, do not mistake this hallucination for the real world.) Self-care, relieving one’s own everyday anxieties, avoiding stress: these had become some of our society’s highest goals, he said—higher, apparently, than the salvation of society itself. The mindfulness rage was just another distraction, he said. Of course we should be stressed, he said. We should be utterly consumed with dread. Mindful meditation might help a person face drowning with equanimity, but it would do absolutely nothing to right the Titanic, he said. It wasn’t individual efforts to achieve inner peace, it wasn’t a compassionate attitude toward others that might have led to timely preventative action, but rather a collective, fanatical, over-the-top obsession with impending doom.
—Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through: A Novel (Riverhead Books, September 8, 2020)
Photo: Patty Maher, Light & Dark
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
Yes,
even when I don’t believe—
there is a place in me inaccessible to unbelief,
a patch of wild grace,
a stubborn preserve, impenetrable…
music that builds its nest in silence.
— Anna Kamienska, from “Lack of Faith,” Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska.
Notes: Poem Source: The Vale of Soul-Making. Photo: theogosselin (Morning lights. Morning Sights) (via Mennyfox55)
Sunday Morning
I could not predict the fullness
of the day. How it was enough
to stand alone without help
in the green yard at dawn.
How two geese would spin out
of the ochre sun opening my spine,
curling my head up to the sky
in an arc I took for granted.
And the lilac bush by the red
brick wall flooding the air
with its purple weight of beauty?
How it made my body swoon,
brought my arms to reach for it
without even thinking.
*
In class today a Dutch woman split
in two by a stroke—one branch
of her body a petrified silence—
walked leaning on her husband
to the treatment table while we
the unimpaired looked on with envy.
How he dignified her wobble,
beheld her deformation, untied her
shoe, removed the brace that stakes
her weaknesses. How he cradled
her down in his arms to the table
smoothing her hair as if they were
alone in their bed. I tell you—
his smile would have made you weep.
*
At twilight I visit my garden
where the peonies are about to burst.
Some days there will be more
flowers than the vase can hold.
— Susan F. Glassmeyer, “I Tell You” from Body Matters. (Pudding House Publications, 2009)
Notes:
- Poem: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
- Photo: DK. Daybreak. October 4, 2020. 6:30 am, Cove Island Park, Stamford CT.