Moving

I took the day off yesterday so I could help our Zen center move. We’ve been priced out of our former space, right on Broadway in SoHo, one of the more pricey quadrants of Manhattan. Fortunately, we were able to negotiate a deal on a smaller space in the same building, so it was just a matter of boxing everything up and moving it two floors higher.

It’s funny -- the Zendo, when you see it, seems like a mostly empty room. It’s just meditation cushions, an altar, a few big plants by the window, some shoji screens. But then there’s the office, and the kitchen, and all the accoutrements that make a Zendo whole -- some people need chairs, for example, and we have tables for special events.

Pretty soon, you’re hauling a bunch of stuff upstairs.

The job was complicated by a couple of bureaucratic problems that kept us from moving a few things into our storage space and some continuing work on the new quarters. But overall, it went pretty smoothly.

And it was fun. I’ve found that spending time with my fellow sangha members on projects like this really tightens bonds. It’s how you get to know people. Practicing Zen has been interesting because most of it is silent sitting, and as a result there’s not a lot of interaction among Zendo members unless you step outside the standard practice periods.

So moving was good for that -- hanging out, joking around. I might even go back to help set up.

(Photo: Spigot in Dumbo, Brooklyn, Jan. 2008)

Kathleen

Last night I went to see Kathleen Turner speaking with Gloria Feldt at the 92nd Street Y. They’re out promoting Turner’s new autobiography, “Send Yourself Roses,” which sounds pretty interesting. It’s not only about her acting career but also her more recent battles with both rheumatoid arthritis and the bottle.

Turner is funny, even a bit of a ham -- which I suppose should be expected from a famous actress. She’s a hoot, making dry quips in that husky, slightly slurred, vaguely European diction of hers. (Her father was in the foreign service, and she grew up all over the world -- her speech seems vaguely flavored with this Internationalism.)

She talked about a lot of stuff -- her father’s disapproval of her acting career and his sudden death when she was 17; being nude in front of strangers and under heavy camera equipment during the filming of “Body Heat,” which put her on the map in Hollywood; the pain she began feeling during the filming of “Serial Mom” that got so bad she thought she was dying, and eventually was diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis.

I’ve liked Kathleen Turner ever since I saw “Body Heat” in the mid-80s, and I’ve seen her twice on stage -- in London in “The Graduate” and on Broadway in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Now that I think about it, though, I haven’t seen any of her films in quite a while. I think it’s time to add “Body Heat” and “Serial Mom,” at least, to the top of my Netflix queue.

At the end of their talk, I went down the hall past the stage door to find the bathroom -- and Turner stepped right out in front of me! (She seemed very TALL!) I smiled, she smiled, and then she set out to meet the crowd waiting to buy her book. I didn’t try to talk to her. But I think our arms touched as she passed me.

(Photo: Doors in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Feb. 2008)

Documentary

Last night I went to a screening of a documentary film being made by a coworker. I don’t think I should say anything about the subject of the movie, since it’s still a work in progress, but it was terrific. Impressive, moving and absorbing.

I’m amazed that someone who works full time could find enough energy to work on such a huge project. That just blows my mind. I barely have enough energy at the end of the day to open a can of soup!

(Photo: "Rock of Peace," Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Feb. 2008)

Birches

I finished my Paul Bowles novel last night; what an excellent writer! The passage I gave you yesterday really spoke to me, partly because it’s so Zen in its admonition to pay attention to life and acknowledgment of how hard it can be to do so, but also because I’ve been feeling that way myself lately. Time is passing! Am I paying attention?

There were lots of little Zen moments in “Let it Come Down,” although the characters are seriously flawed. (Even worse than most of us, I suspect, though I suppose it wouldn’t have been a very good book if they weren’t.) Bowles is such a nihilist -- no one ever comes to a good end.

Yesterday we had more snow than I’ve seen so far all winter. It began coming down in the afternoon, whitening the sky outside the glass walls of my office. As I walked home I noticed that the falling snow became blue in Times Square, reflecting in mid-air all the neon and the lights from the jumbo video screens. Kind of a cool effect!

The office building where I work has an atrium that’s carefully planted with moss and eight birch trees. It’s kind of our own little Zen garden. Those birch trees looked so great in the snow -- a slice of New England in Midtown!

(Photo: Patch of light in Dumbo, Brooklyn, Jan. 2008)

Time

It was an obsession of Eunice Goode’s that there was very little time left in the world, that whatever one wanted to do, one had better get it done quickly or it would be too late. Her conception of that segment of eternity which was hers to know was expressed somewhat bafflingly in a phrase she had written in her notebook shortly after arriving in Tangier: “Between the crackling that rends the air and the actual flash of lightning that strikes you, there is a split second which seems endless, and during which you are conscious that the end has come. That split second is now.” Yet the fact that her mind was constantly recalled to this fixed idea (as a bit of wood floating in the basin of a waterfall returns again and again to be plunged beneath the surface by the falling water), rather than inciting her to any sort of action, ordinarily served only to paralyze her faculties.

-- “Let It Come Down,” Paul Bowles, 1952

(Photo: Vespa parked by chain-link fence, Brooklyn, Jan. 2008)

More Doves

After yesterday’s post I decided to find the passage about doves in “Cross Creek” that I remember reading years ago. It turns out that little pink feet are just the beginning of Rawlings’ description:

“The little West Indian ground doves are enchanting. They are of the softest gray, with ashes of roses breasts, rosy beaks and tiny pink feet that make a lacy pattern in the sand. They walk rapidly with a bobbing motion, and fly in small explosive bursts, like a milkweed pod popping open. They are amorous, as doves should be, and mate several times a year. I once saw a pair consummate their union on the tip of a crepe myrtle bough, most precariously, and other pairs have mated at the edge of the bird-bath. The male makes a pretense of ferocity, and after having crooned softly for hours to his mate, suddenly ruffles his feathers and pursues her with what would pass for viciousness if she were not so easily and happily caught. I think of them as giving their throbbing call the year around, but I am sure it is a concomitant of the mating, and since the breeding is so frequent, it is only now and then that I realize I have not been hearing the sweet sad cry from the roof-tree.”

So, as it turns out, ol’ Marge was writing about ground doves, not mourning doves -- but they’re so closely related that much of the description carries over. She even offers an explanation for why I hadn’t been hearing the birds during the past few months -- and why they recently perked back up again. Perhaps the weather was sufficiently springlike to set their hormones surging.

Unfortunately, yesterday afternoon, we had a fierce, windy snowstorm. It was bright and sunny all morning, but at about 3 p.m. a howling wind sent objects crashing in the courtyard and literally minutes later, it was snowing. It didn’t really stick, at least here in the city, but temperatures plummeted.

I guess that probably cooled their ardor.

(Photo: Dumbo, Brooklyn, Jan. 2008)

Doves

It’s about 6:45 a.m. now, with the sky just getting light. I’m listening to a mourning dove somewhere in the courtyard behind my building. I’ve been hearing doves for the last week or so -- I don’t know whether they’ve come back from a winter away (do doves migrate?) or reawakened after a winter hunkered down against the cold. But it’s nice to hear them again.

I used to hear mourning doves often when I was growing up in Florida, as I got dressed for school and went out to wait for the bus. They sat in the pines and maples and sounded their sad, low coo as the sun lightened the sky -- just like the one I’m hearing now. Hearing them again puts me right back in my front yard as an eighth-grader, full of anticipation and dread.


Doves are almost annoying to birdwatchers because they’re so abundant -- a birder will see a silhouetted shape on a power line and for a split second think, “What is that?” And then the unmistakable profile of a mere dove becomes apparent. It’s kind of a let-down. (Having birded a bit myself, I can testify to that.)

The best description of a dove I ever read was in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ book “Cross Creek,” about life in rural Alachua County, Florida. I don’t remember exactly what Rawlings wrote, but I remember her mention of its bright pink legs. I’d never noticed that doves have pink legs. But next time you see one, check it out -- they really do.

(Photos: Tree shadows in Dumbo, Brooklyn, Jan. 2008)