I can't sleep…
They know, I thought,
like the birds of Iraq before shock and awe
on the first day of spring.
It was said that the sparrows and songbirds stopped singing,
their silence heralding the dropping of bombs.
~ Patti Smith, Her Name Was Sandy. M Train
Image: imandrah-land. Story: Shooting in San Bernardino Kills at least 14
Once he heard the gunfire stop, Matthieu made his way back to the restaurant. “I saw a lot of women dead on the ground,” he said, his voice catching on the “f” of “femmes.” “It was mostly women that I saw.” He found one of his friends, a Brazilian studying in Paris, lying in the middle of the street. She had been seated across from him, and was shot in the chest. Matthieu sat on the ground and held her legs, feeling her shallow breathing. She would survive.
People were running through the streets in an eruption of panic, shouting as the police arrived and tried to establish order. The scene couldn’t be secured; Matthieu worried that the shooters might return. Next to him, a man without injuries held his girlfriend’s lifeless body in his arms. Then, without warning, he ran off. The woman was about twenty-five and very beautiful. Matthieu searched for words to describe her perfect, uncanny stillness. […]
Last week’s victims were normal people doing normal Parisian things: eating and drinking together, going out at night to hear a concert or watch a soccer game. After a few days, the rhythm of Parisian life returned, but a new fatalism hung in the air. People seemed resigned to the idea that more attacks would happen, maybe soon. […]
I remembered that when Matthieu and I first met we’d discussed our upbringings, and religion had come up. His family was Catholic, but I couldn’t remember if he was religious. “I’m more agnostic than Catholic, though I come from the Catholic culture,” he said. “In any case, this isn’t really a moment when I’m thinking about religion. When I think about religion, I always think about it in connection with what’s beautiful, what’s good. But never in connection with evil. I just don’t see the connection.”
~ Alexandra Schwartz, Letter from Paris: The Long Night. Terrorist attacks and a city changed.
Illustration: Arc De Triomphe by Christoph Niemann in The New Yorker
After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
In the days after Paris, Emily Dickinson’s poem kept ringing through my mind as I tried to figure out what I felt—and, surprisingly, didn’t feel. I did not, as the facts emerged and the story took its full size, feel surprised. Nor did I feel swept by emotion, as I had in the past. The sentimental tweeting of that great moment in “Casablanca” when they stand to sing “La Marseillaise” left me unmoved. I didn’t feel anger, really. I felt grave, as if something huge and terrible had shifted and come closer. Did you feel this too?
[…]
I feel certain that in the days after the attack people were thinking: This isn’t going to stop.
~ Peggy Noonan, Uncertain Leadership in Perilous Times
Image: The Economist
I run out the door at 5:30 a.m. to catch the 5:40 Express to Grand Central.
55° F. Breezy. A spring day in November.
Hit me Big Man, hit me with more of this.
There, out of the corner of my right eye, it slithers. A brown snake. A full cup of spilled coffee tipped by the jarring of steel on rough track. It’s three feet away and closing in. Roots of the tree spread.
I point. He catches my eye. He shifts to the empty seat on his left as the snake veers to his right. He tips his hat, grateful.
We both watch the flow, creeping. Two men. A suit on one side with his Tumi bag, Shinola Watch and e-Reader in hand. A construction worker on the other side, with his well-worn blue jeans, a green florescent vest, steel toe boots, leather supple and well oiled. A lunch bag is tucked on top of his backpack.
He turns to his NY Post.
I turn to my e-Reader.
And my morning reader starts to pop.
Michael Wade: “I would be impressed by a college that gives credits for blue collar labor.”
NY Times: Half of New Yorkers Say They Are Barely or Not Getting By, Poll Shows
Steve Layman: You probably don’t deserve what you have. So keep moving and earn it” via Austin Kleon.
The train pulls into Grand Central. And we pour out. I approach the main terminal.
“Awwww Puppy.” I see an older dog ahead at the entrance. A golden lab mix on a leash wearing a blue vest. You look like a “Sadie.” Continue reading “Riding Metro North. With the Blues.”
Monday.
2:45 am.
How quiet it is.
Too soon to wake.
Too late to stop the mind.
A hamster on the wheel, spinning.
Duras: “How quiet it is,” […] “Who’d believe our nights are such an ordeal?”
3:30 am.
Up.
Pre-dawn.
In the Quiet Zone.
Ascending to de Botton’s higher consciousness. Or somewhere.
Alain de Botton: “Perhaps late at night or early in the morning (when there are no threats or demands on us), when our bodies and passions are comfortable and quiescent, we have the privilege of being able to access the higher mind …We loosen our hold on our own egos and ascend to a less biased and more universal perspective, casting off a little of the customary anxious self-justification and brittle pride.”
I do feel that ascension. Now if I could only park here.
6:51 a.m.
Father and his daughter walk to train station. It’s 45° F. “It’s cold Dad.” I look down at her bare red legs pockmarked with goose bumps: “Why aren’t you wearing nylons?” She snaps back at me: “Really Dad? Nylons. Nobody wears Nylons anymore? That’s creepy.”
So, now I’m on the wrong side of 50 and creepy. OK, so it wasn’t a focus area. And, it’s not that I haven’t looked at women’s legs. And there you are, a flat stone skipping silently across the water, jumping decades of fashion revolution. Continue reading “Riding Metro North. Vive la France.”