at the beach with friends

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(meanwhile, in nyc:

greg ran into a dancefest in washington square)

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back at the beach:

janine and i stopped at an art gallery opening . . 

(lost on purpose, acrylic and oil on canvas - janine's favorite)

i saw two shooting stars saturday night, the 10th, part of the perseids meteor shower.

listening to the crickets and katydids . . 

sunday:

early monday morning:

saying good-bye to janine . .

monday afternoon . . waiting for the technician to arrive to service the oil burner . . 

reading goldfish on vacation (!) by sally lloyd-jones.

tuesday . . at the bay with jason . . 

wednesday morning . . 9 am . . last day at the shore . . 

helping jason fasten his surfboard to the roof of the his car before we got on the road home.

home again . . after hours in traffic!

happy to see greg and the cats again and to have a delicious plate of spaghetti and meatballs.

outside the customs house

a trio of photos from our visit on saturday, july 27th, to the smithsonian american indian museum . . 

early morning poem

under the lemon tree

not rain, but fine mist

falls from my lemon tree,

a balm of droplets in green shadow.

six years now my mother gone to earth.

this dew, light as footsteps of the dead.

she often walked out here, craned her neck,

considered the fruit, hundreds of globes

in their leathery hides, figuring on

custard and pudding, meringue and

hollandaise.

but her plans didn't work out.

the tree goes on unceasingly--lemons fall

and fold into earth and begin again--

me, i come here as a salve against heat,

come to languish, to let the soft bursts--

essence of citrus, summer's distillate--

drift into my face and settle. water and gold

brew in the quiet deeps at the far end

of the season. leaves swallow the body

of light and the breath of water brims over.

my hands cup each other the way hers did.

by marsha de la o, 2015, found on the poetry foundation website.

august 9th - knitting and an artist's talk

lots of time when i finally sit down to work on this baby cardigan, cricket likes to join me.

even with his help, i have managed to finish it. well, i do still need to sew the buttons on, but it's currently blocking in the bedroom. it may take a long time to dry, as it's very humid and hot again . . 

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greg, chanda and i attended an artist's talk at the rubin museum this evening. it's the last one in a series for their exhibit of current himalayan art (which we participated in for artist sonam dolma brauen in march).

kunsang gyatso spoke about his piece titled goddess of tangerine which began for him six to eight years ago when his parents left him a shrine to care for (they returned to nepal). when he himself returned to nepal in past years, he noticed that the mountaintops were no longer always white with snow. they had become more brown and rugged with the warming climate. for this piece he has imagined what if the tangerine were to go extinct? would we venerate it as a goddess? would we elevate it? i was also struck with the difference of living in the beauty of the himalayas with its small outdoor shrines hidden in nooks and crannies along mountain paths, and the indoor display of the museum's shrine room in a corporate glass and steel building, and then the artist's shrine to the tangerine, displayed with paint, glass filaments, plexiglass, concrete, foam and wood; so different from soil and rocks, air and water, insects and small animals. also, there must be a difference with the warm at home shrine that his parents left him and the shrine of his artwork. our museums display our cultures and the beauty we find in our cultures, but it is not the warmth of the culture itself: the physical and spiritual actuality. we have to imagine all of that. i've been thinking about this in relation to raja shehadeh's palestinian walks . . the beauty of his home, changed irrevocably by strangers claiming it to be their's -- uprooting olive trees and building walls.

i really appreciated hearing him speak . . 

chanda and i took a quick peek in the gift shop where i picked out two tea towels; one for morgan and harley and one for ryan . . all of whom have new apartments! greg was being a bear as he was very hungry. he didn't get to have a snack before leaving for the talk right after finishing work.

he was ready for some ramen from misoya, the restaurant near us (where we ended up doing take out as they were very busy and had a twenty minute wait for a table).

and it's my dad's birthday today . . he would have been 98.

spaghetti and meatballs

another rainy grey and chilly day . . it only went up to 69 degrees.

i ended up making all this marinara sauce . . 

and meatballs . . 

i blame the weather . . it felt so much like autumn . .