spring has sprung, fall has fell, winter is here and it’s colder than usual. but just that first bit.
I feel busier than God on the first day of creation — so much to do in preparation for our trip (we leave this Friday), including finishing up a huge load of work. I’m never complaining when I talk about having a lot of work; as a freelancer, those periods are rain after a drought. Still. A lot of work to get done. So my apologies to everyone for not responding to comments and emails. Oy.
Despite this busy-ness, it’s the first absolutely gorgeous spring day here, and I just had to get out in it for a little breath of air. I took my camera to my dearly beloved Riverside Park, and enjoyed all the blooming flowers in the beds, the gorgeous yellow-green of the leaves, seeing everyone in much less clothing and many more smiles. I think Europe has had this weather for a while, from what I gather, but this is the first one for us, as far as I remember.
So here, a bit of Manhattan:
my standard shot, and why this is my favorite park. It's just so lovely.
this is where parents take their kids in NYC -- these are our playgrounds. Very different from the kinds of playgrounds my kids played in, but filled with parents playing with their children.
the persistence of spring, forcing its way through the cracks
Happy spring, it’s so nice to say that and feel it!
in which i am grumpy
The title of this post uses awful grammar – I know. Up with? But “with whom do I take this up?” fails to reflect my foot-stomping frustration, because it sounds like I’m standing in a well-mannered query line at some British store. (Note, I work with Brits, very lovely people, all of whom use excellent grammar. But then again, I do work for the publisher responsible for THE dictionary.)
Anyway. Who do I take this up with! It’s mid-May, in the northern hemisphere. What did I wear to work this morning? Thick stockings, warm boots, a long skirt, a blouse underneath a long-sleeved sweater, and my leather coat. IT IS MID-MAY and I’m done with this dreary late-winter weather. I know I’m saying that with my Texas accent, and I know that this is somewhere in the vicinity of the average temperature (on the low side, obviously), and I know that my own idea of what the average temperature should be is calibrated from 40+ years in a hot climate, but good grief. I spent last weekend so cold, I sat on the couch covered in blankets trying to stay warm. The super had turned off the heat to the building, [incorrectly] believing it was no longer needed. Because, you know, it’s MID-MAY.
My son says nothing is more boring than talking about the weather, so apologies for being boring. Instead, I’ll be kind of complainey about something else. There’s a food writer I love, who used to be responsible for one of the best food magazines around, and I enjoyed reading her autobiography. She’s a very nice writer. But boy are her tweets purple! Here’s this morning’s breakfast report:
Misty dreamy day, soft green, tender gray. Breakfast in bed. Tea, challah, sweet butter, strawberry jam. Sliced orange drizzled with Port.
Really? Tender gray? Really? That tweet isn’t as egregious as some that leave me rolling my eyes. Purple prose, look it up – it’s just bad writing.
And I’m one to talk – see the title of this post.
grump grump grump.
you’re really no worse than anyone else – give yourself a break, man.
I miss David Foster Wallace. A lot. I find myself thinking about him, about his way of being in the world (and of course the fact that he’s not here). There is a new book coming out titled Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, written by Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky, and this little DFW quote is used in a number of feature articles about the book:
“If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.”
It’s coming out in paper, and in Kindle, and I just preordered the Kindle edition which will release April 13.
It is hard to do that, to be as gentle and compassionate with ourselves as we are with others. (Well, for most people anyway – discounting the truly mean and sadistic.) Of course we know our own true hearts, our own sometimes cruel and mean-spirited thoughts about other people or the world. We know those things about ourselves, and I believe we would be stunned to be let in on the internal dialogue of people we know…..we’d be stunned to learn the things they think, the things they think about us, even though we know we have the same types of thoughts. But we think we are the mean-spirited one, we know that about ourselves. There is a saying in AA (I think?) that goes something like “don’t judge your insides by other peoples’ outsides.” That’s brilliant! We do that, all the time. We struggle, but it looks like other people don’t so we must be failures.
I have a friend who was trying to learn how to knit – to offer a very simple example – and she made mistakes in her first scarf. She had to rip out rows. Her work was flawed and didn’t look all that great. And she thought there was something wrong, she didn’t have the makings of a knitter. But we all make mistakes, and rip out rows, and are aware of that weird place under the arm where we had too many stitches and tried to fix it by doing some strange decreases that really don’t look all that good but if we keep our arm at our side maybe no one will notice and anyway I don’t feel like ripping back so many rows I just want to get the damned thing done.
Of course there’s a fine line between being compassionate with ourselves and excusing ourselves a little too easily. I usually err on the side of keeping myself on the hook, flaying myself with recrimination for every lazy thing, every uncaring thing, I shouldn’t be so harsh, I should’ve I could’ve I would’ve. I don’t want to fail to take responsibility for what I do and say, probably to a pathological extent. But compassion….I could think about how I try so hard, and how I mean well and struggle with my own difficult places just as others do.
All at once, spring appeared in the trees and flowers in my city – it sure helps. The pale greens and bright yellows and pinks make me feel expansive, compassionate, open – even with myself. I wish I’d had my camera with me this morning to show you, but someone else’s photo will suffice for now:
[photo courtesy of newyork808]
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