Via the New Yorker

Time to read.
This week's New Yorker, (June 2 & 16, 2014) was mine to mine today. No chores, husband doing the grocery shopping, no yard work to do. This article, about reading, sent me on a journey.
The Critics. Ghosts in the Stacks
Through it, I came across this meditation by Penelope Lively, on growing old.
So this is old age
If you have time, and you will need a half-hour or so, read it through. Her ruminations on aging are poignant, timeless, heart-breaking and life affirming
I am close to the "high C" of 60 (though I am likely to see 90, given my genes) and looking back on my life, my choices and examining the person I have become. We all have many varieties of who we are, as Sir Thomas Browne so eloquently explained.
What I thought about after a while was that it is so human to consider aging. The other creatures we share the planet with do not ponder this. They don't think, or perhaps aren't aware, of how quickly time passes.
When you are young, being old is a distant reality. When you are old, your youthful self is a faint shadow, and a layer, too, one of the many that make present you, you.
One thing I came away with, after reading Penelope Liveley's essay, was that it is a good thing to leave go of envious striving. I don't know about anybody else, but, that has been too much a part of my life.
As the edge of the plank gets closer, it seems to make more sense to appreciate, to enjoy, or maybe just to surrender, to you.

A summer Sunday

Total blow-off day.
And what does blow-off mean?
Oh? Hmm... Well. Um.
I guess going to the pool for the afternoon.
On Sunday. With chores to do. (Christ, I can't believe I ever wanted to be a grownup!)
So.
Dormont Pool was cool and playing the soundtrack of my life

Here's a partial playlist
Sara Smile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvHK8-g7qRw

"I Can't Get No. Satisfaction" Rolling Stones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrIPxlFzDi0

"Let's Get It On" Marvin Gaye (miss you!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6QZn9xiuOE

"Spirit in the Sky" Norman Greenbaum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZQxH_8raCI

"Boys of Summer" The Eagles https://vimeo.com/214448651

"Heart of Glass" Blondie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU_4-5RaxU

(Thank you Deborah Harry for being a female voice out there).

Holy crap. Am I this old?

Feet splashing. Sun shining. Music playing.
Total blow-off day.
Tremendous. As great as cooling my feet at Cedar Falls on vacation.

Summer night

Discipline disappears in the summer.

All I want to do when I get home is go outside, play with the dog and enjoy the dusky sunlight on the patio under the umbrella.

So I do.

Bird Park fungus. Another life form I don't know much about.

Last night, we sat outside and watched a tiny, fragile spider fling itself from umbrella rib to umbrella rib, vibrating wildly in the breeze. And after a bit, a thick cloud of starlings, or some variety of noisy black bird, darkened the sky in a cackling rush, zooming to the treetops of the park.

I know so little about this world, and am reminded of it every day.

That's why I love watching the life that goes on around us, as oblivious of us as we are of it.

Downtown today, in a flower bed outside a PNC branch, I watched a sparrow feed bits of purple petunia flower, torn from the bed, to two squawking chicks.

Petunias!

As I walked past the bank's ATM, a man waiting to use it, who obviously had been watching me watching, said "Givin' you a nice bit of entertainment, aren't they?"

That made me laugh.

I don't know a lot about this world that I love to watch, but thanks to Shannon M. Nass for this really informative article in the Post-Gazette today about fireflies.

Delightful.

Cocoon

Sunday, a warm April noon, found me in the park with the dog.  This after an entire Saturday spent under covers and comforter, dosed with Nyquil, fighting a nasty cold after a perfectly lovely evening with friends, enjoying dinner and a great performance of "The Book of Mormon" at the Benedum Theater. Glutton/punishment?

Carl was sick too, but on Sunday I came up out of my raspy, stuffy fog, long enough walk Twist.

We

Bird Park creek edge

wandered down to the park, and while she had her nose down in something savory, I saw, for the first time, a yellow-bellied sap sucker. They are very shy, hopping out of view, apparently, on whatever tree they are perched on, if anyone is watching. I learned this after I got home and consulted my Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds. He was very interesting, too big to be a downy woodpecker and about the same size as a hairy, but with different markings, red on the head and white/black/white stripes along the side of his face.
Then, to complete the walk, a Mourning Cloak butterfly (in rather ragged shape) flitted across our path and basked quite elegantly on an fairly ancient log. I don't have a butterfly book, but I'm thinking after all the interesting ones I saw last summer that it's time to get one. Mourning Cloaks are very pretty: chocolate brown wings edged in ivory, with sapphire dots lined between the brown and the ivory. They're not unusual but I thought this little guy, with his raggedy ivory-edged wings, was lucky to have survived nasty March, cocooned safely against cold.

Maybe why that's he was not in such great shape.

March took its toll. On just about all of us.

The pleasure of rituals

Set the table!

For many years in my youth, those were my mother's evening instructions. All of us kids had assigned tasks and, looking back, I think I enjoyed the setting of the table more than the clearing of it. Not that I enjoyed either one that much.

Now I am much grown up and enjoy the pleasure of my family's company a great deal more than when I was young and took it for granted. That we can still gather, cook and eat together is a gift worth celebrating.

Thus, setting the table is a pleasure, creating a welcoming place for each diner to set down to. The settings are not perfectly matched, but that's OK. The people are.

Tacos in Homestead

New Valentine's Day tradition: Lunch in an out-of-the way spot with friends.

The greeter inside Smoke.

Four of us went to Smoke, on 8th Avenue in Homestead, land of beautiful old buildings and boarded up storefronts. We had delicious pork and veggies tacos, one order of Mexican mac and cheese and luke-cold (no ice) soft drinks all around.
 I have completely lost touch with the eastern boroughs since leaving Wilkinsburg so long ago for the South Hills. And I think of Homestead only as  a place to be gotten through on the way to Kennywood and Sandcastle.
But this old U.S. Steel mill town has some really gorgeous early and mid 19th-century buildings, including this one, which is for sale and listed with Howard Hanna. Wow! Wish I had a few million and a vision.
You can also see lots of things like this in Homestead storefronts. Also, random kids will try to sell you pirated movies on DVDs. I think a longer day trip is pretty much in order.

Homestead, Pa. storefront, Feb. 14, 2013

Things left behind

   As I have grown older, I have done two things that strike me as absurd. (Not the only two things, absurdity-wise, however.)

   I shopped too much, thus acquiring too much. And I've edited too much, thus getting rid of, well, maybe not too much, but perhaps stuff that could have weathered a more critical, and less fanatical, getting-rid-of-stuff eye.

   I wish, I wish, I wish that I had so much time back. Like the hours that I spent browsing  record stores in Columbus, Ohio, flipping through the vinyl late one, or any, night after class, after dinner or studying. Trying to decide which LP was worth my five bucks.

   Oh God. All that time, and now I wish I didn't have all those LPs. They are old, ancient. Their covers are worn and scratched by cats.

   We moved on to cassette tapes, to CDs, files on the computer.

   And yet.

   Playing those old records reminds me now, so many years later, of who I was. I like that. I realize I don't want to cast away my old, or should I say, young, self. Everything that I had, that I bought, that I considered, was a function of a person learning and growing.

   So I think I will stop trying to discard the trappings of my younger days. Because they were builders of the person I am today.