various

uncertainty

To a commenter on yesterday’s post, I offer this added line or two  –  uncertainty?  It shifts, that’s all. I’m 18, I travel to the States and I don’t know where I will live. Here? In Poland? Elsewhere? And with whom? And what work will be mine?

Kids are born, they approach their teen years and I have the same questions, only it’s about them now: will they find good partners in life? What will they do?

And then, it shifts again: will I be healthy tomorrow? And will he be healthy too?

music

James Taylor is in my head still. Especially as sung by Carole King. I had left the States (in 66) singing the Beatles and I came back (in 71) to Carole King. You could say that she reintroduced me to America. Five years had passed since I's been here and boom! I'm in a new world! The whole country seems like it is swaying on its heels, riddled with uncertainty. This is the New York I had left behind? My days of taking the skateboard to Central Park are over. The air seems dense, not with summer smog but with campus smoke. Of the kind I hadn’t smelled before.

So there is Carole King and “you’ve got a friend” and “beautiful” (remember? You've got to get up every morning, With a smile on your face, And show the world, All the love in your heart...) and these became my lyrics.

morning

We wake up and Ed pulls up youtubes – of Carole King, of the Shirelles, of Celine Dion. Carole King hits, all of them, and I read her biography on line and I think – when did she become 70? Oh, I know: the year I turned 59.

Outside, there’s just a touch of rain. The kind that tingles when it comes down in warm drops. A pleasant effortless rain that does no good but no harm either. The roses love it, so do the chipmunks.

A garden is a panorama of nature's foibles. One set of issues replaced by another. I notice that the pansies and the lupine, mollycoddled and finally revived, were chomped off this morning by some animal who found my efforts delightfully tasteful. So let me show you one revived rose, because tomorrow, she's likely to be gone.

later

In the afternoon I do some writing, yes, good, there's that. I note that I'm on page 130 so that's seven added this year. Consdier it pathetic or good or somewhere between the two. And then, because I need a break, I make this:

You think ice cream? Yes, true. Creamy and frozen. But what is it? Just one ingredient: banana. A daughter told me of it -- a recipe that calls for ice cream made with just bananas and my verdict is that it tastes just like bananas.

In the evening, my older girl comes over with her fiancee and it's so tempting, so tempting to just keep her here because she and I enjoy Olympic watching even as the men would yawn and turn away from the competitive events, but I resist.

 

 It's not as if the Olympics will end tonight and we can go back to normal. They'll be a tug for the next two weeks and I expect that every night I'll go upstairs to a sleeping Ed and I will say -- I wish you had watched and he'll say -- yes gorgeous and we'll fall asleep and wake up to a new day.