Ithaca, N.Y., October 2007

I just heard the other day that Ingmar Bergman died at the end of July. It took me a while to figure out that this must have happened while I was on my Zen sesshin retreat, which is why I had no idea. I was sorry to hear it, as he’s one of my favorite directors.

People think Bergman’s movies are bleak, but I think their austerity is what makes them so beautiful. They’re harsh but honest, with no distracting frills. I like that sense of Scandinavian economy! And they’re never boring, though sometimes it takes a while for me to muster the psychological energy to tackle a Bergman film. I’ve had “Through a Glass Darkly,” “Winter Light” and “The Silence” - collectively known as the Trilogy of Faith - sitting in my Netflix queue for months. I keep moving them down the list.

Another noteworthy recent death: Laurel Burch, a designer most famous for colorful products featuring cats. Right before I went to live in Morocco in 1992, I bought a Laurel Burch mug, and I actually took it with me into the Peace Corps. It was decorated with images of people in colorful costumes and called “Familia del Mundo,” which seemed appropriately Peace Corps-ish.

I was so attached to that mug, having my coffee from it every morning, that my friends used to joke that I’d have to go home if it ever broke.

Fortunately, it never broke. I still have it. In fact, I’m drinking from it now!

Ithaca, N.Y., October 2007

In 1992, when I was 25 and about to leave for the Peace Corps, I hopped into a car with two friends and drove cross-country from Florida to Ithaca, N.Y. Our destination: Moosewood Restaurant, the vegetarian cooperative that spawned a couple of cookbooks and fed my vegetarian imagination, as well as my vegetarian stomach.

I was still learning how to be a vegetarian then, and the Moosewood cookbooks were my Bibles. They showed me that vegetarian food didn’t have to be nuts and twigs. (Though personally, I kind of like nuts and twigs!) My friends and I ate there three times, filled the in-between hours exploring Ithaca, and then drove home again.

When I moved to New York in 2000, I was eager to get back to Ithaca and spend a little more time. Of course, life intervened and I didn’t get to go back until this weekend.

What a great town! With a bit of fall in the air, the leaves on the maples were beginning to change. Not only did I go back to Moosewood - which is still terrific and which has expanded quite a bit since my last visit - but my friend David and I got to explore some of the nearby state parks and natural areas.


Ithaca is surrounded by rivers and streams feeding into Lake Cayuga, one of the finger lakes, and those waterways have carved all sorts of narrow trenches and valleys into the surrounding hills. There are several state parks around with waterfalls, rushing rapids and serene woodlands. I saw about a zillion chipmunks.

We went to an antique shop in quaint Trumansburg, where David got overcharged by $5 for some old postcards and photos, and we also wandered near the campus of Cornell University and explored downtown Ithaca, which has a lot of cool shops and restaurants and photo opportunities. Of course, I even found some cool street art!

Lower East Side, Sept. 2007

You know, nearly every day I write something here that makes it sound like I have my act together. (I like to reinforce that idea, even for myself.) Well, today I have to burst that annoying bubble and make a confession.

I can be a hypochondriac.

I know, I know - I’m all about letting things be and facing the ever-changing moment. But this is one part of my life where I utterly fail at taking my own advice -- when my mind takes me so far out of reality I can’t even tell what reality is.

It started in seventh grade or so. A boy in my hometown died from a rare brain infection that he contracted swimming in one of our many lakes. I spent nearly every day in the lake in summer, and as a result I became terrified that I’d been exposed to this same malady. (My family still calls this the time I “got the amoeba.”)

I went through a similar spell over rabies when I discovered a sick squirrel in a vacant lot near my house. I came home and told my mom about it. She said, “You didn’t TOUCH the squirrel, did you?” And of course I had. I was terrified for days.

I still have this tendency. A swollen lymph node makes me wonder about cancer. I worry about HIV, even when I don’t do anything that would give me HIV. My asthma, which came back to life early this week, is at least partly stress induced -- and the more it flares up, the more stressed I get.

The best way to treat my asthma, I have found, is to take it easy. Watch a lot of movies, go to bed early, skip the gym for a couple of days. That’s what I’ve been doing this week, and it’s been working.

I don't like admitting that this part of me exists. But there it is. Really facing life means even facing the parts of ourselves we don't particularly like -- right?

I’m going to continue the relaxation trend this weekend by going to Ithaca with my friend David. We’ll probably do some easy hiking and eating out and exploring. A full report to follow on Monday! Have a good weekend!

Ludlow Street, Sept. 2007

I didn't mean to imply yesterday that anything even remotely exciting kept me from getting to work on time. I was just late and didn't have time to write. I had a lousy night's sleep because my asthma was acting up a bit. Fortunately, last night things were fine and I slept soundly.

I love this piece of street art. It seems to be telling us that insects have hearts too! So remember that next time you reach for the Raid!

The lobby is being remodeled in the building where I live, as I think I've mentioned before. Today I'll be staying home at least part of the day because the workmen need to drill an access hole for a TV cable (even though I don't have cable myself!) as well as paint the front door. I have to hang out here until the paint dries because the apartment door has to stay open until then. So, yes, I will literally be watching paint dry. Woo hoo!

Howard Street, Sept. 2007

Looks like I'm going to be a bit late to work today!

Greenwich Avenue, Sept. 2007

You’ve seen that annoying e-mail spam that contains a string of nonsense words as well as an advertisement (probably for Viagra). All those nonsense words are there to confuse spam filters, to convince them that the e-mail is legitimate communication.

Well, yesterday I got one of these messages. But the nonsense turned out to be a sort of found poetry. It didn’t mean anything taken all together, but the lines were quite beautiful:

Wide, whited fields, a way unframed at last
Glimmering of light:
What is there in the depths of these walls
Wind, sleet. The branches sway,
into early blooming. Then, the inevitable blizzard
The surge of swirling wind defines
So, startled, quivering,
At four, the spectators leave in pairs, off
A salamander scuttles across the quiet
Covering the land
Down the road, at Cypress Gardens, a woman
XII. The Mystery of the Missing Ships: The Franklin Search
As it sits there like an eventual
Empty streets I come upon by chance,
Between the vertex that the far-lit gray
As if your absence now concluded long ago.
on their own little seat cushions, wearing soft caps
Glimmering of light:
Coextensive with everything? How could they know?

As I read it, I thought, "What IS this?" These were definitely snippets of someone’s real writing. I was especially intrigued with the line mentioning Cypress Gardens, since I lived in Winter Haven, Fla., for several years - the home of Cypress Gardens. So with Google’s help, I began searching.

I learned several things. First of all, apparently this is a really common spam poem! Many other bloggers have written about receiving these same lines, or varying mixtures of them. But I was also able to trace the words back to their original source, which turns out to be here.

All but one of the lines in my spam poem were stolen from this University of Chicago Press Web page, from the work of poets like John Hollander, Gail Mazur, Robert Pack, Yves Bonnefoy and even Paul Verlaine and Victor Hugo. The only line not from this page is the one about “the mystery of the missing ships,” which turns out to be a chapter title from this book, by Jeannette Mirsky, mentioned on another page on the same Web site.

So let's give credit where it's due. Here’s a code to the authors of each line, by initials:

(JH) Wide, whited fields, a way unframed at last
(PV) Glimmering of light:
(YB) What is there in the depths of these walls
(VH) Wind, sleet. The branches sway,
(GM) into early blooming. Then, the inevitable blizzard
(RP) The surge of swirling wind defines
(VH) So, startled, quivering,
(GM) At four, the spectators leave in pairs, off
(GM) A salamander scuttles across the quiet
(PV) Covering the land
(GM) Down the road, at Cypress Gardens, a woman
(JM) XII. The Mystery of the Missing Ships: The Franklin Search
(JH) As it sits there like an eventual
(YB) Empty streets I come upon by chance,
(JH) Between the vertex that the far-lit gray
(RP) As if your absence now concluded long ago.
(GM) on their own little seat cushions, wearing soft caps
(PV) Glimmering of light:
(JH) Coextensive with everything? How could they know?

Do I have too much time on my hands, or what?!

Upper East Side, Sept. 2007

An utterly random news update on my weekend activities:

-- I finally went to S'Mac, the macaroni-and-cheese restaurant in the East Village. This tiny place can get very crowded, and in the past I've left without ordering. It was all the rage when it first opened early this year. Maybe things have cooled off a bit, because when I walked by on Saturday at lunch there were actually empty tables! I had macaroni with Spanish manchego cheese, fennel and shallots. Yum!

-- Had dinner with my friends Pam and Bryan on Saturday. Ordered "smoked asian chili" from a Chinese restaurant because I thought it sounded interesting. But it turned out not to be chili as in beans, but chili as in big green chili peppers - with nothing else - and they were bloody HOT. Not sure what I was thinking. Trying new things has its downside.

-- Somehow, in the course of growing up, I missed ever seeing the movie "Caddyshack," even though it was all the rage when I was in high school. Finally watched it last night. Funny, more or less, but probably funnier to a 16-year-old.

-- I don't really follow college football, but I have to point out that my alma mater, the University of South Florida, is having a killer season! The Bulls are ranked #6 in the country, having just beaten both Auburn and West Virinia. This is a school that didn't even HAVE a football team when I went there, and the fact that even I can get excited about this ought to show how amazing it is!

-- Took lots of photos! Wandered through parts of the East Village (a regular haunt) and the far West Village and Tribeca, near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Found lots of street art I'd never seen before. Should be up on my Flickr in about a month. (I'm SO behind.)

-- The weather this weekend was AMAZING!