bike riders and street art on a saturday!
Surfboards and street murals on Sunday.
Caroline
Shepard why are you naked. Prof Benjamin Heim
Shepard replies why NOT naked. Living with a photographer
provides many joys.
All weekend, the
cycles whirl.
Storms make their way through the
seas.
“…hurricane
accelerating away from the Mid-Atlantic coast. In the Bahamas, victims picking
through the devastation. In the Southeast, cleaning up debris. And in
Washington, …President T waged war over his forecasting skills…”
At war with ourselves.
But what is real?
The beaches close Friday and
Saturday.
I plan to ride there Sunday.
For one more dip, a final wave of
summer.
Would we be oK?
Dorian rips through the Caribbean.
Leaving homelessness in her wake.
Our future
Our fate,
we wonder.
Maybe not his time, but a matter
of time.
Dreams meander through my mind.
I’m at an old friend’s house
showing him a diamond.
A secret talisman.
A testament to something special.
Conversation animated.
Brecht and jobs, NYU and kids.
The making and breaking of bonds,
erosion like the cliffs.
Talking slows.
Too much other chatter.
Ideas constrained.
Full of colors, lights.
Choral transformed.
Dulled.
“And
to my state grew
stranger, being transported”
Worries Prospero,
a tempest leaving him at a loss.
“The creatures
that were mine, I say, or changed 'em”
wondered.”
Things becoming stranger.
The table cluttered.
More and more rubbish.
The conversation slows.
More and more garbage.
Piling up.
The diamond is gone.
Comradeship lost in the wreckage.
.
Riding in and out with the tides.
The teenager and I ride bikes
to the park.
Where Bill and Joe talk Critical
Mass and Extinction Rebellion.
If we don’t win this one, we won’t
win any of them.
The
little one looks like Flo in Mel’s Diner, skating to and from vamped up, whirling down Smith
Street.
The bikes pop wheelies on the Manhattan Bridge.
The skate boarders beat back the AstroTurf
in Tompkins Square Park.
West on 9th street,
JC’s play was Washington Square Park.
His, “little musical with the big heart ….” opens the space.
The anarchists piling inside
Judson Memorial.
Up
at 67th Street Gladys hosting book group.
Its hard riding 6th
Ave, more cars, horns, agitation.
A city discombobulated.
DiscussingEducated
Why didn’t she leave earlier?
Wound after wound.
Why’d she come back?
Did have Stockholm Syndrome?
What’s the relationship
between trauma and mental illness?
“The thing
about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you're
having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I'm fine, you think. So what if I
watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I'm not falling apart.”
Rejects
her parents but not the system that imprisons her.
“It’s strange how you give the
people you love so much power over you.”
She confesses.
“I'm a bit curious about how her pre-memoir mind works. If anyone finds it pls send it through,” ponders Catherine.
Friends dropping by,
We wonder about the Trials of Job
that we all endure from time to time.
“Job arose and tore his robe and
shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I
came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the
LORD has taken away…”
Off we ride, meeting at Grand Army
Plaza.
A week after
“Hurricane
Dorian touched land on the Bahamas… battered the islands for two days, killing
at least 43 people… leaving 70,000 homeless as it damaged .. nearly half of the
homes on Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama….”
Beaches in New York open Sunday.
Dorian’s damage done. ?
Whose next?
Down Prospect Park West.
Toward the holy land.
Steven recalling riding through
Nazareth,
Crashing on a hill.
Where Gabriel
told Mary she would bear a child.
Stumbling, breaking
four ribs.
Down Rugby road,
the bikes take us,
Toward Sheepshead
Bay.
Past Floyd Bennett Field, Southeast Brooklyn.
Writing on wall along
the shore of Jamaica Bay.
“Whenever I find myself growing
grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever
I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up
the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an
upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from
deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats
off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my
substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws
himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”
Walt Whitman, wonder the riders. Who wrote that?
Moby Dick
Beach Rides always surprise.
Holy Brooklyn, epic poems
everywhere.
Bridges and streets, up over the
bridge, past a boat in the distance, talking about water and work.
Beach dreams dancing.
Down the bridge, past my favorite
trees.
Birds on the beach.
Surfers in the water.
Swimming bodies bobbing up and down.
Talking about hikes in
Ecuador and Peru.
Stay in Lima, suggests Christine.
Collecting sea shells.
Birds visiting, sharing.
Our waterfront giving.
Dorian receding, cold water, dark
clouds.
Cracking brews, chatting with buddies.
Last day for lifeguards.
Friends down the beach.
“..fun riding and
swimming with you today!” says Christine. “I found my friends on the other side
of the rockaways, and we took the ferry back to Manhattan; perfect!”
Riding back.
Back down Flatbush,
through Holy Brooklyn.
Dreams, water, hope, beer, bikes, graffiti, restaurants
along the way.
Past coffin warehouses on 3rd Ave.
Meeting Rob, chatting about Alice
and Fred and the way we cope with our horrors.
Caroline and I talk about the tender
spot from here to there.
Waking and
wondering what happened to those dreams.
Reading the
memorial for Susannah
Hunnewell, who left us, left the Paris Review
for parts unknown.
Hopefully we all feel that?
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