Red Leaf

A maple rag.

Rainbow!

Yesterday at 5:30 pm. Now for the closer look.

small things in the park

fritsch's

ashes ashes

On the West side of my street grow many ashes. The ones closer to my house have leaves that turn yellow, and most of these trees have lost their leaves already. Farther down the ashes are still thick with petticoats of yellow leaves while the leaflets closer to the crown are sun caramelized to a deep red. To see these trees' flaming bleed once every year is worth the wait.

Around Kensington

A few practical matters: A lot has been going on around Kensington; jazz concerts in the E. 4th St. garden, a new wing of Jaya Yoga recently opened, and more is to come soon. In particular I'm looking forward to the Sean Casey Halloween Party on Oct 31 from 12 - 5, and the Kensington World's Fair, this Sunday Oct. 24 from 11-4 featuring live music, dance and food from around the world.

cherry blossoms in october

A small tree blooms now, near Seeley Street and the Prospect Expressway. No one told it this is harvest season? I suppose it's getting mixed messages, like everyone else.

fasciation

Coleus lands on the far side of beautiful. Maybe it is ugly, maybe it is too beautiful to tolerate. As if to maximize surface area it curls in on itself like the tissues of the brain, the bronchial sacs, the intestines, the regions where maximum exchange provides the fuel for life.

Seeds fall from the drying coleus heads every time the table shudders. They are very small, black shiny seeds, so light they are more like the husks of tiny dry beetles than anything that could start a new life. Too light to be easily sponged up, they stick all over my hands. It is horrible.

Turns the Wheel

These signifiers flanked the performances of Murder in the Cathedral staged in St. Joseph's through last weekend. I was nearly floored by the articulation of their wings as well as the beauty of the choir and acoustic instrumentation that accompanied the performance. Afterwards they had to sweep me up off the floor. What can I say? Sometimes the wheel turns but does not remain still.

Senator Eric Adams was among those to introduce the event last Saturday. It was compelling to hear the articulate Adams speak of the way the play affected him when he read it years ago as a police officer. It sounds like an apt transposition to me.

mirror

I wonder to what extent the depths of the sky mirror the depths of the ocean but it is beyond my imagination to percieve it. It's more easy for me to sense the ocean's heft, the power of its mass and the thickness of liquid, a body outsizing my own by infinite measures.

At Coney Island on Sunday what I hoped were dolphins turned out to be swimmers swimming laps far out in the sea, hearts pumping in the cold cradle waves. A man with a bandaged right hand ran by my friend and I as we drummed. Two dressed up in knife sharp 50s fashions tried to get our attention but we just kept drumming. A woman who grew up in Coney Island and was visiting for the first time in decades kept going on about how disgusting it was there on the beach. Where she lives, there are cows, llamas, buffalo, she said. My friend was very kind to her but I balked inside at the assertions of her speech, still convinced beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

blunt objects

Grown on the East End of this island at the Garden of Eve Farm, which supplies the Kensington CSA in Brooklyn. You may be happy to know that these caused me no harm whatsoever.

8th Avenue

Vigilari et factus sum sicut passer solitarius in tecto: I watch and am as a sparrow alone on the roof top. The irony is that if one can't stand alone and perhaps be willing to be despised one has little of value to offer the consensus, because consensus reality is only another kind of dream full of shadows.

downtown HS

adaptation

These ducks made themselves at home in a Prospect Park puddle that became a pond last Thursday and Friday when Brooklyn was seriously sluiced by hurricane Nicole.

Nicole and Aldous

This copy of Point Counter Point lay sodden on the sidewalk outside a Windsor Terrace park on Saturday morning, next to a red and blue pile of hardcover Huxley that included Those Barren Leaves, Huxley in Hollywood and Antic Hay. It's been a long time since I read Brave New World. I wouldn't mind remembering exactly what spectrum of wisdom his mind burned with.

underground forest

Whitehall subway station

cloud pearls

We toured the beautiful Urban Assembly New York Harbor School housed in the old Coast Guard Infirmary on Governors Island. Perhaps it is the only school to offer scuba diving as an incentive for good grades.

I got seasick on the 3 minute ride back from Governors Island to Slip 7 in Manhattan last Friday, perhaps the swells were more powerful than usual on account of Nicole, or perhaps it's just part of adjusting to the scope of new horizons I now face as the mother of a 13 year old. All I know is that I am among brave, adventurous and very committed people.