Around Here

I returned to the preserve yesterday, for another go of hiking, and like many a reprise it was touched  with an air of wistful remains, familiar, intact, accepting, yet infused of something departed. Heading toward the trail, I crossed a grassy hill at the edge of the preserve, where a family stood  looking down at the gleaming wetland. “Mother, can you please get out of the frame? I’m trying to take  a picture.”  “Ok...”  said the mother, who stood where she was. She pointed to the east. “What’s that?” “The observation tower.” “Then let’s go there!” A stylish elderly woman, perhaps an aunt or grandmother standing apart from the rest, smiled as I  crossed behind the others. “I don’t want to get in the picture!” I quipped. “Heavens no,” she returned  with a naughty smile. The large dad, imperious and silent, gave me a baleful look. On the trail, the sky was more overcast than before, heavy with stifled rain. The rich green foliage  flickered over ...

O n an overcast day in the suspension after Christmas, I went for a hike at the local nature preserve.  The trail has a good deal of uneven ground, rocky hills and steep gullies that challenge the body in useful ways.  The only encounter along the way was with a couple of young Indian fellows who  called me “sir” and  deferred the path to me. There was a young family somewhere that I could hear but not see. I stopped at the bench on a dock overlooking a pond that I like. I often go there to watch wildlife or to read.   Music: "Habitual Ritual" by Revolution Void On a path nearby the young family, whom I could still hear but not see, drifted by. A loud boy among them loudly thwaked, with a stick that he must have been carrying, random things that drew his aimless wrath, a tree, a rock, a shrub. The ducks I was watching were startled, momentarily alert, then returned to their patrolling and feeding. On the hike back I saw what appeared to be the evidence of ...

Music: David Huntsinger / Piano Winterlude

I ’m following your posts from the trenches. I read somewhere just recently that deciduous trees shed  their  leaves in winter precisely to avoid bearing a burden of limb-fracturing snow. Oh dear. I share your  grief. I  remember when a tropical windstorm broke and toppled the massive old cycad outside my  bedroom. Other green  things, big and small, over time, filled the void, but I miss that grand old lady.  I’m told Staten Island really got  pasted in the hurricane. I lived there for ten years after fleeing  Manhattan in the late eighties. Leave it to your youngsters to turn things around. They still have the instinct to find an opportunity, in  everything, for  play. Isn’t that why we’re here? When did we lose that?  I never understood daylight savings time. I always thought they got it backwards. Who needs daylight  at 9 pm  or nightfall at 4 ?  Have you seen Mamet’s (screenplay) “The Edge”? He has a knack...

I stopped by McD a while back for a breakfast burrito and a cappuccino (not bad). The burrito comes with salsa, and when asked if I wanted hot or mild, I said "One of each... you know me." The counter boy flipped back "Yeah, you like it spicy... and then mild." Impudent monkey. I stopped by not long after that for a coffee. Sparky was there. I ordered the coffee. “What, no chicken?” he said. “Not this time, thank you. Just a coffee.” “Let me guess. You like it hot.” The kid is a riot.

W hen I opened the door, there stood Edna, my nearly deaf elderly neighbor  who lives alone on the ground floor. "I think my smoke alarm is going off," she  said. My own hearing isn't what it used to be. But even with the hearing in my  left ear half gone, I could hear the hypersonic squeal, a distant mosquito, from  the second floor. It followed us to the elevator. Still audible as we approached  her condo it didn't, oddly enough, seem to be growing louder. Once inside I could still hear it... but still faintly. It was not the smoke detector.  So where was it coming from? Some other condo? Somewhere in the  neighborhood? A feebly dying appliance? I turned to Edna so that she could  read my lips. There it was. The squeal. I moved in closer. It was coming from  her hearing aid. "It's coming from your hearing aid," I shouted.  "What?"  "I said it's coming from your hearing aid!"  She...