Wide Awake, Crescent-Shaped

I see the moon and the moon sees me
High up over the apple tree


I can still hear my mom and dad singing this to me,* and with it that vague, buttery feeling that all little kids should have that everything is good and everything is connected. Like, if you can see the man in the moon (and yes, you want to see him so bad when you're 3, so you do), you're pretty much set.

Here in New York City, I'm embarrassed to say I don't even know if the moon is supposed to be visible to telescope-less eyes every night.  It's like that in many other urban areas, where most of the time you can't see stars because of light pollution. The glare and clutter from street lamps and lights in and outside office buildings spills into the sky like frat boys at Santacon, peeing in the street and such.

It's not just that we can't see the night sky. it's that as a result, I think we're out of whack, oversolared and overexposed.  If you're like me, you'll feel especially overstimulated in summer, when the sun is biggest and loudest. A real scheister who won't get off the stage until gravity forces its departure, the Donald Trump of things-in-the-sky (HELLO, you shouldn't look at him directly either). Even the sidewalks glare at you, and riding the subway is like licking a moist underarm (Eeww! Sorry).

Fortunately, there is hope--and it's made of green cheese. Okay, it's actually more like rocks, but Ayurvedic experts and others recommend moonbathing as cooling and calming, a way to balance the sun's yang energy with some loony (as in lunar) yin. I found a blog post on this practice that blows my mind (and P.S. if you wanna dig a little deeper you can find the author's body and spirit analysis of various world leaders).

So this past summer I started watching the sky in earnest. At first, it was like some bad crush, with me practically salivating as  I'd catch a glimpse of the moon over the East River. I'd be close to panting as I'd get off the bus and throw my groceries or bag upstairs and run outside again, only to find the ghost of my beloved taunting me from behind a pack of dirty-tricking clouds. Some nights it would seem like the moon was tracking a cubist path, now a cut-out hanging atop a tree with Scotch tape, then minutes later a papery disc holy communioned between two apartment buildings.

But slowly, somehow my aim just got better, and me and the moon had some quality time. In Texas in September, she (she? Yeah, she's a she for sure in Texas) acted as a tour guide for a leg of our sunset cruise around Austin's Ladybird Lake, as a million bats emerged like butterfly shadows to greet her.

And these past few days, whoa…it's like the moon's on 'roids, swinging big and low and bulbous, precisely timing orbit and phase in order to be his biggest self. (Yeah, this Supermoon's a total shock jock). On Sunday night I turned off all the lights, opened the windows and did my before-bed meditating while gazing at the moon; I'd close my eyes and see the Kodachrome version like a glowy doorbell on my third eye, then woke up the next morning thinking, The moon is a prodigal sun.

On Monday night I had to lie on the living room floor to get a good view, Ira looming over me from the coffee table, a la Supermoon, Siamese Cat edition. I'd close my eyes and see the moon waning into tomorrows, then woke up this morning and knew, Love is the moon looking at the sun. Or, love is that which flows between the moon and the ocean.

I also knew, like it or not, this is the story I have already been and have to start telling over and over, no matter that others have already told it better, no matter what a crappy or not job I do of it. I tell mine with cats and girls, and moms and brothers, and sacred beings and freshwater pearls. I wish it were a little easier to tell, like the story of the first kitten to do a pirouette (that's still on my list!), but it's kinda the one thing that explains everything to me.

Love is the moon thinking about the sun.




* I didn't realize until this writing it's an actual song! One of family members must have changed the words from "down through the leaves of the old oak tree" to "high up over the apple tree," in homage to the tree outside my window. To this day no Macintosh has been able to raise the bar set by this tree.

And then there's this.





While writing this, my inner juke box cued up  and busted out "Sunrise, Sunset," and  I'm in the backseat of my family's light blue Caprice Classic again, forced to listen to this borderline creepy and way-too-depressing-for-a-kid song--sorry, Tony!--on 8-track.

Songs I Love in 88 Words or Less: "Salvation"

“Salvation,” Elton John & Bernie Taupin
 
The latest installment in my little series—for my mom on her birthday.  (It’s not the first time my card has arrived a day late. )

At the bottom of the hill I  met a man with a cane, carrying a pack of Dunhill Blues.
“I’m going to quit,” he said, "when I get to the end of the street."
“Good luck,” I said.
“I’m going to quit today.”

I saw my mother fall at the bottom of the hill.
She couldn’t talk, eyes shut to light
the path
She squeezed my hand when she got there:
A developing Polaroid of a shy ingenue,
a violet on her first day in the world.






I don’t think I’ve shared my own video here before—it was a limited release, and supposed to be as close to a minute as possible : )

A Letter to My Dad About Some Important Things

Dear Dad,

Remember the day of Mom’s funeral? It was glorious, mid-August, and if you wanted a word to describe the space between the sunrise and the sunset as a noun, I would say exultation. Butterflies and hawks, all things light and bright and airborne, accompanied us, the yang to the yin of your day…

How many times did you say it doesn’t snow like it used to? Well, you got a beautiful, magical nor’easter that shut down the town. I walked around the block in the morning before the funeral Mass, the first to make tracks along Main Street in the kind of snow that whispers and sparkles.

As we drove to the cemetery, we were the only ones on the road, save for your distinguished guides lining either side of the street—those elegant old East Hampton trees, heavy and proud with snow like kindly wizards.

Three members of the Honor Guard were waiting for us at the cemetery, standing at attention in their dress blues, snow on their eyelashes. I can see now the white gloves that folded your flag with such love and care…I bet you know, of course, it takes 2 officers and 12 different folds, ending in a triangle of white stars on a blue ground, a sliver of starlit sky to guide you on your way.

And their faces, so full of reverence for a member of their Navy family. I saw in their eyes what your service meant to you—and I’m sorry, and kind of embarrassed, I didn’t understand sooner. My feelings about the military were colored more by what I had seen about Vietnam, but everyone says, and you should know, how special the WWII veterans are. My friend Kathy told me that her father, who would have been 91, enlisted in the Navy when he was just 17. “You probably didn’t get it back then," she said, “because these veterans didn’t talk or boast about their service at all.” I am making you a promise that I will submit your name and a photo to the online World War II National Registry.

I can see you nod and smile… I think that means I have the go-ahead : )

After the flag was presented to George, a bugler played Taps. I also think you told me, though I mustn’t have been listening, how beautiful and perfect that song is. The notes shimmered through the snow like golden leaves becoming, swelling, not wanting to leave quite yet, the first notes ever played of the last song in the world.

Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky
All is well, safely rest
God is nigh.

And the snow, it kept coming, swirling and whirling like we were inside that most beautiful mystery with you. It fell on the white roses that we left for you, blossoming in the middle of winter in your enchanted forest. Each snowflake a koan, and each petal an answer..

Is being the same as to be?
Or is becoming bigger than being?
Was the first song heard by the listener or the musician?
Did you hear the roses bloom in the snowfall?

One easy answer: What we decided to sing to you in closing after Father said the prayers. We sang loudly. We sang strongly. I sang it like I always sing this song, like you’re right there next to me and singing it with me…

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don't care if we never get back.
For it’s root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win, it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game!

So you know, we were also joined at the cemetery by a couple who was wandering by the church and attended your Mass. Afterward they came up and hugged me and said that even though they didn’t know you before, they felt like they did now (Confession: During Mass, several of us kind of talked a whole lot about you and shared some of your best stories.)

Leave it to you to make new friends at your funeral. : )

All my love,
Pune

I love this song, and especially this version. A honky-tonk cellblock “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” kinda.

 

Little, You Do Know

I was one of those dreamy kids, the kind that don't really exist anymore, mostly because of the Internet and because moms would totally get crap for letting their children do, well…nothing. Each hour spent looking for four-leaf clovers I swear made room for something new in my head, like the imagination is this giant hole only you can dig for yourself, its adult size determined by how much space you can shovel into place by the time you are, say, 12…

I walked to the library every week and carried home my loot--goopy Nancy Drew, bad dream-making Alfred Hitchcock. I talked to the flowers in the backyard, scared to touch the bleeding hearts, lightly fingering the churchy Queen Anne's lace… I danced to my sister's terrible records (for hours!), drew ladies in ruffly, bustle-y dresses, raided the bathroom cabinet and mixed up concoctions in the sink, explaining to the television audience (the one behind the mirror, of course) exactly how to combine the ingredients.

I remember clearly one Saturday afternoon in late winter, when I took my red, white and blue basketball (cue up the Harlem Globetrotters theme song) and walked up the road and through the field to the basketball court at Most Holy Trinity to practice by myself. We had just formed our first girls' basketball team, and I was the center. I was 11 and there was nothing I couldn't do--keep up with the boys during sprints in gym class, hit triples during our lunchtime baseball games, get 100s on my tests, write, sing and perform my entry in the school song contest (to the tune of "Camptown Races," the only other song besides "Jingle Bells" I could play on the guitar)… So on that March day, I was full with potential, like the forsythia buds that my mom had brought into the house to force-bloom. As I looked up at the net I had this vague feeling that things were going to get complicated in the distant future, but in that moment, at least as far as I could see ahead of me, the world was kind and mine.

I'm pretty sure that's a basic rule to live by if you're a kitten like Ira, and I would do anything to keep his life--and that of his big brothers, Lorenzo and Derrick--that way, always. Dogs and cats have that pureness and sureness I get really fierce about protecting, because it seems like even kids have to let it go sooner and sooner… and somebody has to have it or we're all screwed.

At 13 weeks old, he reminds me that with every day dawns a whole new world, and there he is waiting for the sun. The first time he met Derrick and Lorenzo, he launched himself at them like a rocket, a kitty Odysseus finding his long-lost friends. (They reciprocated…a month later.) When he's hanging out on his cat tree or perched on the foot of the bed and sees me walk by, he gets so excited that the force of his wee-kitteh happiness knocks him off balance, and I am forever making sure he doesn't fall. He can't quite yet contain his meows either--I'll say his name softly, Ira, Ira, Ira, and he does this redonkulous bobble-head thingie, his whiskers start wiggling and only then does the meow come, like it's something he's still figuring out the choreography for… Can you imagine if you got that happy to be recognized, when they called your name at, say, jury duty, or when you're next  in line in the post office?

When Derrick showed his little bro how to play Bathtub (Cat A jumps in bathtub and uses magical kitty powers to make sure Cat B, who may be otherwise engaged in another room, knows the game is about to commence; when Cat B approaches, Cat A leaps out of the bathtub; Cat B chases Cat A), they played this every morning for a week. Then one day Ira tried to initiate the game while there was water in the tub.

Well…nothing much happened. He tumbled into water that went up to his little chocolate-brown cat spats and zoomed right out, galloping through the house in celebration. The next day he was back in the tub, watching the faucet drip.  I was too scared to try out for basketball in high school, and now I think I sing so badly I'm embarrassed to do karaoke (tho I practice it in the bathtub--I could probably do "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," if they even have that one.)

Ira knows, in his tiny cat head, that it's not about how it's done, it's simply that it's done. And if you carry on as though good things will happen (like your big brothers love you even though you steal food and treats out of their bowls and push them off the prime real estate), maybe good things will happen. That people love you more the worse you sing karaoke, that it's the best feeling ever when someone's happy to see you, and that the world is big and you are small but not.








Incidentally, the MHT girls basketball team played just one game. We won, but I wasn't in it because I'd broken my finger the day before.

A Letter to My Dad on Father's Day

Dear Dad,

I'm sorry I can't be there to give you black licorice, Superman socks and a pair of Groucho Marx glasses (you looked so good in them!), but I wanted to tell you these 8 things I love about you.

1.) You respect everyone...
No matter who it is, you always look at someone and nod at them in acknowledgment when you pass by. I think of this every day when I get on the elevator in my apartment building and feel someone avoiding my eyes. We walk through each other like there's no one else there, even when we're inches away. It's what we do.

But then I see that gentle, expectant look on your face when you greet someone you may or may not know. Doesn't matter--it's the same look. (I've caught you doing it to the neighbors' dogs, which makes me love you even more.). So I think of you and say "Good night" or "Have a good day"  when I get off the elevator. I kinda mumble so they may think I'm talking to myself, but I promise to keep working on it.

2)…even commonly mispronounced words
Yup, you're one of the few people I know who actually says the second "e" in vegetable and the "a" in comfortable, showing me not to overlook the little things in life. And let's not get started on "berserk!"


3) You don't talk trash about people.
It occurred to me the last time I saw you that you don't say bad stuff about ANYONE.    I think the worst I've heard you say is that someone's a "freeloader" or a "wise guy," but with all that practice, it's like you probably couldn't even insult someone if you tried.

I think this means I have to forgive you for writing that really nice letter to George Bush. : )

4) You have great skin.
93 and STILL NO WRINKLES! Seriously, folks. I think it's directly related to #3. And maybe #7.

5) You still do whatever it takes to make us feel at ease.
Oh, Dad. I know it upsets you when you can't remember things.  First of all, it doesn't matter--everybody forgets stuff. And second of all, I'm on to you. I see how you make jokes to make us feel better about it, and how you keep finding new ways to anchor yourself in the present. You'll talk about the cardinal-red flowers that have just started to bloom, or the birds who have visited our backyard that day. That's what a good dad does, and you're only getting better with age.


6) You taught me how to tie a tie, shine my shoes and keep score at a baseball game.
All of these things take a little extra time and care. And darned if I don't know a 6-4-3 double play when I see one.

7) You have ice cream every day and always give IHOP a little treat during dinner (and lunch, and, well, probably breakfast, too).
Life is to be enjoyed. Why not with caramel sauce and maraschino cherries?

8) You have great taste in women.
Barbara told me that she recently found you looking at the beautiful photograph hanging near the fireplace of you and mom on your 50th wedding anniversary. "She was such a good person," Barbara heard you say out loud. Yeah, you're right about that : )

Enjoy your day. Can you feel the big hug I'm sending you?

Love,
Pune
Daughter #5, Kid #6
(Hair still pink)




P.S. Meet you back here next Father's Day for 8 more reasons!

6 Things I Will Remember About Training for My First Marathon

Yes, I completed my first marathon on September 28! I don't often write about running because I feel like a bit of a sham, but it's weird calling myself a dancer, too, so, well…I usually just think of myself as a mover.

In any case, I trained for the Hamptons Marathon for 16 weeks and a lot of stuff happened. Here's some of what makes me smile the most:

* One of the reasons I signed up for this race was to figure out if I could make peace with my hometown, my childhood, the "me" who lived there who I sometimes dislike and pretend not to know…one of the Sunday morning group training sessions in East Hampton had us running down to 5 different beaches. Running through the fog and salty sea air, I started to feel the magic of the beautiful place where I grew up, accessing it like breathing, slowly and wholly, as I made my way through morning mist… I realized this is part of me, period the end, and no tourists or developers or stupid celebrities  who've overtaken it…or even myself!…can take that away. I'm the mist, I'm the ocean, I'm the sand and sky… it twinkles in me like a firefly.

* Maybe it was the endorphin release that sent me to some canine plane of consciousness, but about an hour and 15 minutes or so into my long runs, this weird communication thing would start happening with the dogs I'd run past. I'd notice them from hundreds of yards away and they'd turn around and smile at me. Happened on every long run. There was one English bulldog in particular, by Chelsea Piers--I wish I knew what he was saying to me, because I think it was something funny and motivational, the doggie version of Chris Farley as Matt Foley living in a van down by the river...

* Sonic memory: One of the runners at a training run in East Hampton, gloriously, unknowingly farting for about 1/2 a mile as we discussed shih tzus (One reason not to wear headphones…not to hear people farting, but to realize you are the farter…)

* My first 20-miler: Running down Madison Avenue when they closed it to traffic during Summer Streets on a gnarly hot August Saturday, listening to Prince's "Sometimes it Snows In April" on my iPod and smiling and crying at the same time because it made me think of how much I missed/love Bing.

* Stopping at the concession stand on Atlantic Beach to get water on a slimy and bright July day, and some jerk getting out of his car mumbles to himself as I pass by that you're not allowed to run on the dunes. It took me about a minute to realize he thought I was the one who'd been running on the dunes (slow to grok, I know!). Little did he know I am the dunes : )  In hindsight, I would have loved to have whupped his passive-aggressive honky @ss.

* On a bunch of Monday nights toward the end of training, I'd run with my friend Hope in Central Park. Before meeting her, I'd go into a candy store on Madison Ave. to get Gatorade, where there was a resident kitty who had his own cubby. One evening in early September, I noticed a little glittery hot pink scooter parked outside with pink unicorns and ribbons tied to it. When I went in, a little girl (clearly the scooter owner) was sitting on the floor with the candy cat, saying goodbye to him because she was going away for Labor Day and wouldn't see him for a while. The cat was totally in love, licking her and letting her pet him. I hear they remodeled and candy cat doesn't have a cubicle anymore, so I'm thinking of getting him a kitty bed and just sort of leaving it there. Pink, of course. : )



If I'm running in a race, with a group or with someone else…I don't like to listen to music. But by myself, it's fun to listen to  crappy 70s and 80s songs and full-length albums. Here's the first song on one I listened to a lot this past summer:

She, Shells, Sanctuary

Recently I was asked to provide a photo of myself as a baby for a group birthday card, along with a one-line riddle offering a clue to whom the person in the picture is. If you've never done anything like this before, you should try it.

I couldn't find a baby picture (trust me, I looked like Archie Bunker in a white lacy blanket), but what I did find was way more than "that'll do."

Student of cats, turtles and the forces with which flowers bloom...

Maybe my turtle friend, or his turtle daughter, is still around, and maybe I'll finally catch up to him when I run the race at the end of this month : )

I Feel Like Chicken Tonight

Readers of this blog will understand my surprise when, on a recent visit to my parents' house, I went to check on the Multiple Marys tableau in what was once my childhood bedroom and found neither hide nor, uh, habit of them. Nothing. In their place were a few additional Jesus figures I hadn't seen before, flanked by a proportionately Godzilla-sized ceramic dachshund.

"What did you do with the Marys?" I immediately questioned my sister, brother, mom and dad, who were seated line-up style in the livingroom. Silence. They shook their heads like they had no idea what I was talking about.

"And they weren't Marys anyway--they were Saint Theresas," I told them. The only reason I knew that was because I was gently corrected by a friend when I posted the photo on Facebook. She, clearly having paid way better attention in Catholic school than I had, knew that Saint Theresa was often depicted with flowers, which were (I think) miraculously transformed from a loaf of bread she kept under her cloak (I think the word is scapular, but no--that sounds like something you put in your mouth when they take dental X-rays). I did a search but couldn't find a reference to the loaf of bread anywhere, but that's a handy party trick indeed, especially if you forgot to pick up something on the way.

(I know--that's probably totally sacrilegious and I'll have to, like, buy a 10-pack of indulgences to make up for it.)

In any case, I soon teased out that another of my sisters had likely removed the St.Theresas when she was preparing the room for visitors the weekend before. I looked around, but couldn't find where she stashed them, or what inspired the new installation shown in the photo above--Christ on the cross sandwiched in between 2 large chickens made out of tiny shells. I took some artistic license actually, and left out the outermost figures (Hummel figurines, one the "Chimney Sweep") on either side of the chickens and--though I'm not sure there this was intentionally part of the grouping, but they were symmetrically placed at far left and far right--two white Thermos bottles.

WTF. Just….WTF?!

I'm pretty sure my sister didn't mean it this way because she makes a lot of fried chicken, but I immediately interpreted this particular grouping as a statement about the suffering of birds in factory farms. When I was about 5 or 6, we'd often pass by a duck farm in Southampton and I was thrilled whenever we drove that way--I GOT TO SEE DUCKS!!!--until the day I figured out why they were there. They were going to die because people were going to eat them. I can still remember sitting in the back of the car (a burgundy Cutlass Supreme) and my heart expanding and breaking and then closing as the scene I'd always looked forward to turned into something… undoubtedly, all-the-way, no-going-back bad.

It took me years to fully make the connection between my ducks and my, or anyone's, decision of what to eat. I'm not sure exactly when I learned that people could be vegetarian or not eat Spaghetti-Os or whatever. I'm pretty sure I thought everyone everywhere (mostly) ate the same things (except at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, where THEY FREAKIN' SAILED DOWN A DRINKABLE CHOCOLATE RIVER!). When I finally figured out it was indeed possible to be a person who doesn't eat ducks, it wasn't really any earth-shattering discovery--more like I'd already decided long ago in the Cutlass Supreme, only I hadn't really known what I was deciding.

And what about my old room and the Two Chickens for Jesus? The only thing that remains of me in the room is the Woody Allen switchplate, which is hidden behind a desk. It looks like someone tried to remove it, but those screws aren't going anywhere unless they rip the whole thing out of the wall. And incidentally, one of my favorite articles I ever wrote was about a therapy chicken named Ruby who worked with traumatized kids. She did get a special award and flew to New York (on a plane, of course) to receive it, but I wanted to honor her here.

For you, girl, and for my ducks too: a musical composition that sometimes takes a short flight and then settles in, and this art installation of great tho inadvertent import. And the chicken equivalent of a river of drinkable chocolate, though I'm not sure what that would be.

Wordless Wednesday: Everyone's Lookin' For It

Everybody wants to be acknowledged. And thought so fondly of that they’re sometimes missed before they’ve even left. That must be why I saved this clipping from our local paper. It was the early days of “Pune,” so to see this sign meant, well, everything to me.

Shakin' All Over

Just last month, a minor earthquake shook eastern Long Island. According to the Sag Harbor Express, 14 people from my hometown—East Hampton—reported to the US Geological Survey that they felt the 3.9 magnitude quake. It was about 10:45 a.m. on a Tuesday morning.

“Well,” I thought, “at least she wouldn’t have been in bed at that time.”

That she would be me as a kid.

Yup, surprise, surprise, I was a Nervous Nellie as a child, prone to anxiety of all sorts. I would read Alfred Hitchcock mysteries and books about the world’s greatest natural disasters before bed, have scary dreams and then wake up in the middle of the night, listening intently for rumbling and shaking, at which point I was sure the ground would split in two and the house would fall into the gaping chasm. Which would, of course, immediately close back up.

I think a lot of kids worry about similar stuff—a well-adjusted friend recently told me the first thing she’d do when she woke up in the morning when she was around 9 was drink a glass of water to make sure she hadn’t developed rabies overnight—but it often got in the way of fun things for me. Like for about a year or so I was constantly scared that I was going to throw up in front of everyone, so never made it to the Christmas pageant one year when I was supposed to be one of four cows in the nativity scene. I’m not sure cows are physically able to throw up. Horses can’t, right? I even got a fancy velvet dress from Gertz (spellcheck, East Hamptonites?) to wear. Not that cows wear velvet dresses either, but that’s what I would have worn under my costume.

Anyway, back on the subject of shaking and glamorous outfits, about 10 years ago I performed a solo bellydance number to this song at a bar in Alphabet City (ignore the weird Elvis stuff if it bothers you; this isn't about Elvis but it's the only video of this version of the song):



I have no idea what I was thinking, but I was definitely on some sort of mission. I'm no solo performer. Perhaps it was my way of making up for not playing a cow at Baby Jesus’ manger. Anyway, I recall a ridiculous conversation I had after my number with a Capricorn involved somehow in the printing industry:

Capricorn: I noticed you from across the room.

Me: I think it’s because I’m the only one wearing a glittery bellydance costume.

Capricorn: No, it was your eyes.

Me: Well, I do have on these gigantic falsh eyelashes.

I’d like to take the time to salute all Capricorns, who get such a bad rap from most astrologists for being boring, stubborn and stingy in all ways. It’s untrue and not fair. I like Capricorns, so there! Bing’s on the cusp, and Puffer was right in the middle.

And here’s some more stuff to shake all those cobwebs out:





P.S. If memory serves, one of the other cows was Ted, who used to eat ticks and insects on the playground.

P.S.S. I guess I didn’t know that rabid animals can’t drink water.