Manhattan Minutes

Manhattan Minutes

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It’s the City that Never Sleeps — and I’m a person who doesn’t sleep much. Not the best combination. Which is why I find myself typing these words at this hour in this city.

Do I do the practical thing, which is try to get a few more of those elusive 40 winks?

No, of course not. 
I’m answering work emails, writing posts, editing a story — and getting ready to walk downtown. That last one — that’s the fun part! 
For this trip I’ve had only minutes in Manhattan, but I’m trying to make the most of them.
Passing the Birthday Torch

Passing the Birthday Torch

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Yesterday we celebrated Suzanne’s birthday at the newlywed’s house. I’ve only spent two of my oldest daughter’s last five birthdays with her — given the long sojourn in Africa — so this October 23 was cause for special celebration.

It felt like a passing of the torch. We came to her rather than the other way around. She showed us new paths for walking, the way the sun slants in her back windows, some wedding gifts they just received. There was a giant cookie rather than a cake.

But when we finally all gathered (arriving in three separate cars and one bike), there was lots of laughing and talking — while consuming great quantities nan, rice, lamb vindaloo and chicken tikka.

It’s a marvelous ride, parenthood. Not always smooth, of course, but unstinting in the possibilities it provides for  surprise and gratitude and joy.

The Wind Today

The Wind Today

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The wind is unsettling and brave. It rattles pipes and the branches. It shakes leaves from the trees. It is used to having its way. You might even say it is a bully, but that would not be fair.

The wind today is like rain, blowing with such intensity that I want to brush it out of my hair and eyes. I come inside from picking up the newspaper surprised to be dry.

I tried to take a picture of the wind, of the leaves swirling in its wake. This is all I could manage.

Should I walk now or wait? Wait, I think. It is difficult to be calm when branches are bending and air swirls around you in gusts and eddies. Best to hunker down with a good book and a cup of tea.

Smells Like Fall

Smells Like Fall

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A headline in the paper yesterday: Feels like summer, smells like fall. Exactly! Trees are yellowing and thinning. Leaves are piling up, collecting in gullies and storm drains. Mums are in their glory.

But all of this is happening (yes!) in 80-degree temps. The evenings have been chilly enough to set the trees on fire, but days are warm and mellow. It couldn’t be better for someone who longs for summer temperatures all year long.

Meanwhile, that lovely aroma, the acrid smell of autumn, is in the air and on the tongue. These are days you wish would last. The color and the light, each day a drop of butterscotch or honey.

Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy

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In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance describes his unlikely journey from a chaotic childhood in Middletown, Ohio, to college, Yale Law School and a real shot at the American dream. It’s been a good book to read during this crazy election season, as we have a national conversation (shouting match) about “making America great again.”

While Vance does not disparage the government help he receives — the Pell grants and scholarships and the four years he spent in the Marine Corps that turned his life around — what made a difference for him, he says, was not policy but people: his grandparents, sister, aunts and uncles.

They were there to pick him up when he was down, to show him by example how to live his life. But they — his hillbilly tribe — have deep-seated problems of their own that government policies alone won’t solve.

To read this book is to feel both depressed at the depth of these problems and inspired that someone can surmount them. It is, also, to realize how complex are the workings of the human heart.

See How They Run

See How They Run

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Washington, D.C.’s Metro system has been much maligned lately, both here and, frankly, all over the media. But here’s one advantage that is seldom mentioned: Metro keeps us in shape.

I thought about this today while running for a train. D.C. strap hangers know how long it will be until another train appears, so when they see one coming — especially at the end of the Silver Line, where the tracks are visible across a vast stretch of elevated sidewalk — they take off.

This is in addition to the escalator and stair-climbing (systems are often broken so you’ll be climbing no matter which you take), the balance improved by frequent standing in crowded cars, and, of course, hanging on for dear life (great for upper body strength).

The commuting life is a healthy life, as long as you ignore the stress levels. Take those out of the equation and you have the perfect fitness opportunity. Puts a whole new spin on the words “in training.” Why join a gym when you have Metro?

Moon Shadow

Moon Shadow

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I took the flashlight, but I didn’t use it. The moon was bright enough to light the road and throw shadows on it — dense and hulking where woods meets the road, a more delicate tracery where only a tree or two (and earth’s atmosphere) stood between me and the orb.

The illuminated landscape was like a negative, an inside-out version of the view. Devoid of life and color, a dreamscape in black and white.

I passed no cars until I was on the way home, their harsh, artificial glare a counterpoint to the natural light.

It was like plunging into another world, this early morning walk, like visiting a barren island nation.

One Year

One Year

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Sometimes when I can’t sleep I wander into Suzanne’s old room, where there’s a four-poster rope bed that I made up using Mom’s quilt and pillow shams after my last trip to Kentucky. It’s the same room where I’ve stored a lot of her jewelry, papers and photographs. I’ve whiled away many wee hours in there lately, reading and thinking, remembering her last days and hours.

Today marks a year. While it’s been a full one in most senses of that word — personally, socially, politically — it seems little more than an instant since she died. Like the flipping of a switch or the turning of a dial, it’s another world I live in now.

It’s difficult to understand this new world in a few weeks or even in 52. The strangeness of it constantly surprises me. But there is one surety: I know she’s at peace now, and that brings some comfort.

As for the long nights, when I get drowsy again I turn off the light and snuggle into the covers, her covers.  I feel her presence there in the dark, and finally, finally, I can sleep.

Week Without Metro

Week Without Metro

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It wasn’t planned, it just worked out that way, but as of yesterday, I’ve had one week without Metro. And yes, it’s been nice! It won’t last, of course. I can’t pull off a drive everyday. But if nothing else I will appreciate the reading time more next week when I jump back on the much reviled public transportation system.

In general, a train or bus is a good place for walkers to be. You hoof it to the bus stop or the subway. You make it work.

But time is a factor, too. And with daylight hours dwindling, walkers need every minute they can find.

So let’s hear it for a week without Metro … and more Metro-less weeks to come!

With Pen in Hand

With Pen in Hand

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The late Oliver Sacks was called “Inky” as a boy because he always had ink-stained fingers. He began keeping a journal at age 14 and had completed more than 600 of them by the time he died at the age of 82 in 2015. 

Sacks ended his autobiography On the Move with these words about writing’s importance in his life:

The art of writing, when it goes well, gives me a pleasure, a joy, unlike any other. It takes me to another place — irrespective of my subject — where I am totally absorbed and oblivious to distracting thoughts, worries, preoccupation or indeed the passage of time. In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until I can no longer see the paper. Only then do I realize that evening has come and I have been writing all day. 

 Over a lifetime, I have written millions of words, but the act of writing seems as fresh, and as much fun,  as when I started nearly seventy years ago.

In fact, he was writing with great clarity up until days before his died, his collaborator reported. “We are pretty sure he will go with a fountain pen in hand,” she said.

I can’t think of a better way.






(No photos of pens, but here’s one of paper!)